Damon Edge "I'm a Gentleman"

Damon Edge
I'm a Gentleman
7" single
(New Rose Records, 1985)

There's an old saying about the sum of something being greater than its parts. This is often true of bands, and few more glaringingly so than San Francisco proto cyber punks Chrome. From their early days spitting out ice cold, metallic, chopped up weirdness on albums like Alien Soundtracks and Half Machine Lip Moves, to the final days of doom-laden, danceable whomp on thumpers like 3rd from the Sun and the two volumes of The Chronicles, the duo of Damon Edge and Helios Creed could do little wrong.

Unfortunately, they went their separate ways in the early '80s, with band founder Edge moving to France and retaining the Chrome name 'til his death in 1995 and both releasing music as solo artists. I used to slavishly buy any new release by either, always hoping that something would live up to their past glories. Sadly, nothing I ever heard did. I ended up ditching all that I had by both save this one, kickin' little single by Damon, from his first solo album, Alliance. I love, love, love this song. Maybe one day I'll revist the stuff I sold and discover I was wrong (I won't say things like that have never happened to me), but 'til that happens, I'll be spinning this puppy.

Creed revived the Chrome moniker for a few albums after Edge departed this mortal coil, but what I heard of them was little, if any, better than the near dozen that Edge released without him.

Moondog "Logründr No. XVII in E Major"

Moondog Instrumental Music by Louis Hardin LP (Musical Heritage Society, 1978)

Moondog (née Louis Hardin) was a blind, homeless, Viking-garbed musician and composer who lived on the streets of Manhattan in the mid twentieth century. Probably not what you'd expect of the composer of this beautiful piece for pipe organ. He recorded and released scads of records from the late 1940s until his death in the late 1990s. The parent of today's piece is an album of instrumental classical compositions, though Moondog also dabbled in jazz, madrigal, big band music, and stuff that's much harder to genrefy other than to call it Moondogesque. I first heard of him when I bought a 7" EP of all Moondog covers by the band Love Child in the late 1980s. I picked up a CD compiling his two major label albums for Columbia Records not long after, and was hooked. NOTA BENE: I tagged this West Germany, in addition to USA, as Moondog moved there in 1974, a few years before this was recorded.

Kevin Ayers "Didn't Feel Lonely Till I Thought of You"

Kevin Ayers First Show in the Appearance Business The BBC Sessions 1973-76 CD (Band of Joy, 1997)

Unhinged I really can't think of a better word to describe the playing of guitarist Ollie Halsall with Kevin Ayers. I've featured Kev before, and Ollie was most likely the soloist on that song, in addition to this one, but there are no musician credits on the wee 7" record or sleeve. Ollie's soloing on the original studio version of this song on Kevin's fifth album, The Confessions of Dr Dream and other stories, was certainly out there, but this version, recorded for BBC1's John Peel Show on July 9, 1974, makes it almost sound tame, in comparison. The studio recording, btw, was his first work with Kev. The two ended up working together until Ollie's untimely death in 1992. I'd actually known Ollie's name since 1978, thanks to his being a studio Rutle, but never heard him really let loose 'til I started listening to Kev in the early '90's, thanks to my friend Audrey. He was also in other bands, like Tempest and Patto, but I must confess I have not yet checked them out. I only have so many ears, you know.

Two "In My Head"

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Two
Voyeurs
CD
(DML Music Entertainment, 1998)

I think I'm one of about five people that actually dug Rob Halford's dance-metal-thing Two. Sure, Fight (his first post-Priest band) had gone splitsville, and he'd said that metal was dead, but he meant popularity-wise when he said it. Not long after Two kinda fell apart, I guess when it hit that lotsa folks hated it, he fired up the metal again with his third band since leaving Judas Priest, Halford, then rejoined Priest, for a really good album, Angel of Retribution, followed by a stinky embarrassment, Nostradamus. They'd gone poop before, can you say Turbo?, then flushed it with good stuff, aka Painkiller, in the past, though, so my fingers are crossed.

Oh, yeah, so, like, today's selection is the bonus track from the Japanese version of Voyeurs. Unlike the Japanese bonus track on his previous outing, Fight's otherwise heavy-f'ing-kick-ass second-and-final album A Small Deadly Space, it's an actual song!

Kevin Ayers "Animals"

Kevin Ayers
Animals
7" single
(Columbia [Spain], 1982)

Around twenty years ago, my friend Audrey made a compilation tape of Kevin Ayers stuff for me, thinking I would like it.

I did. A lot. I knew the name, but had no idea who he was or what his music was like.

I started getting what I could find and eventually, several years later, found a website with a fairly extensive discography. This might be the rarest of the lot, though I don't know for certain. I do know, however, that it was released only in Spain, where Ayers was living at the time, in Deià. I also know that the first time I saw a copy come up on eBay, the winning bid was around $200! I just checked Quicken, and I paid $13.19 for my copy, shipping from Spain included.

HA!

There are no musician credits, but if that's not Kev's usual cohort, the amazing Ollie Halsall, on guitar, I'll eat my hat. I get to choose which hat, though.