The Decadent Herbs
The year I spent as a full time wanna be rock star.
It was 1985, I was twenty years old and just back from nine months volunteering in India. I’d decided not to go to university, but instead to try my luck as a rock star, all I needed was a band.
The OwlBadger Guide to Yes
Part 3. Late Classic Period.
This is the third part of the Owlbadger guide to Yes. It covers, what I’m calling their ‘late classic period’, the albums: Tales From Topographic Oceans, Relayer, and Going For The One. This period is far more patchy in terms of quality than the ‘early classic period’, but features two Yes masterpieces that cannot be missed and much other music that any Yes fan will enjoy.
The OwlBadger Guide to Yes
Part 2. Early Classic Period.
This is the second part of the Owlbadger guide to Yes. It covers, what I’m calling their ‘early classic period’, the albums: The Yes Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge and Yessongs. This is when the band produced much of their best work. The output of these albums is consistently excellent, especially compared with the more patchy ‘late classic’ period that we will be looking at next.
The OwlBadger Guide to Yes
Part 1. Introduction and Early Albums
This is the first in a series of Owlbadger guides, where we look at the work of one band or artist with a critical and opinionated eye. The idea is that someone unfamiliar with their work has an insight into where to start, what to spend time on and, more importantly, what to ignore; this is information that’s difficult to glean from an impartial source such as Wikipedia and is especially important with a band such as Yes, with a career spanning decades and an output that ranges dramatically in style and quality. There’s the added complication that some of their most commercially successful work is music that Owlbadger fans will heartily dislike. It’s easy to be mislead into thinking that Yes are simply awful 80’s MOR if all you’ve heard is ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’, and that would be a great shame because, as I hope to show, Yes music from their early to mid 70’s era is one of the most glorious artifacts of the golden age of rock.
Awaken My Love!
Wonderful 2016 funk experiment by Childish Gambino
“Awaken, My Love!” is the 2016 studio album by Donald Glover, under his stage name Childish Gambino. A modern take on 70’s psychedelic funk and somewhat of a Prince tribute, it manages to combine crowd pleasing melodies with some quite messy left-field experimentation making it one of the more interesting records of the last few years.
The Aristocrats
Debut album by supergroup session players
This is the 2011 self named debut album of instrumental supergroup The Aristocrats. A textbook exercise in instrumental rock. No overdubs, just virtuoso guitar, bass and drums playing fusion infused rock.
Flying Microtonal Banana
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard's psych rock masterpiece
Flying Microtonal Banana is the ninth studio album by Melbourne psych rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Released in 2017 as part of their five albums in one year project, it’s a psychedelic masterpiece of driving rhythms and exotic eastern melodies.
Dojo
Jouis' laid back masterpiece
Dojo is the debut album by Jouis, Brighton based graduates of the local BIMM music school (the name is a French word that translates roughly to “High enjoyment”, apparently). A quintet when the album was recorded in 2015, and now a trio. It is a wholly undiscovered gem of a record, full of immersive, laid back, progressive vibes, and probably my favorite album of 2016.
Do Hollywood
The Lemon Twigs debut album
Released in October 2016, this is the debut album by the Lemon Twigs. The creation of the teenage D’Addario brothers, Brian and Michael, it’s a work of quite astonishing precociousness.
Seal St. Lawrence
My primary school years.
Seal St. Lawrence was my primary school, a tiny church of England school attached to the parish church.