The Arthur Lee and Love post elektra thread... (search/Destroy, I guess)

1. One GREAT album
2. Two really good albums

... instead of one quite good single album and one quite good double album. "False Start" isn't as good as either "Four Sail" or "Out Here" but still fun I suppose.

I like "Vindicator" a lot... and I like "Real to Reel", Arthur as soulman!!

Theres a pretty terrific discography in the "Forever Changes Concert" DVD booklet. But, obviously, it does not give a 'star' rating or any descriptiveness.

The "lost" album from 1973, "Black Beauty" is OK but not really that great.

I worry about those last four.

http://love.torbenskott.dk/albums.asp

http://product.half.ebay.com/Out-Here_W0QQprZ3114007QQtgZinfo

i'll bet you could get this vinyl copy cheaper though (quick, only 9 hours left!):

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=306&item=250024319245

Ha ha, I used to (try to) play that in a band - that and "Gather Round"... and "Singing Cowboy" (in another band)... and "Signed DC" (as a cross between the ist album +"out Here" versions)!

Will update you all later...

Is it true that Arthur and Jimi Hendrix once recorded an entire album together, and it's been in licensing trouble this long?

In general, it's all good stuff... except:

1) Doggonne.. a short track about how Love split up and Arthurly got a new band together pretty quickly. And then a drum solo.

2) "Discharged" - meant to be a pointed anti-war and anti-army song. Actually sounds like what the "evening with Wild Man Fischer" album was a demo for.

And this is a bad thing?

Right, have finished a listen to "Out Here", and a lot of what is said is true, but I can't help thinking it makes sense. Even with the drum solo and the 'jamming', it's a totally cohesive and fine album.

My overall impression, however, is that Arthur lost a great band and found a good one. The songs are just as good as any, the production seems cutprice, but all in all I'm glad it's here.

OK, next up is "False Start" and not False Strat like I almost typed in there. I don't hold out much hope looking at those last few track titles, but you never know...

I'd have said "Beefheart" there, but we all know that wasn't to the detriment.

Not on every track, granted, but they are there.

But what you said is pretty much OTM, as they say.

"My little Red Book" = "Fit but you know it" !!

OK, saw this on Saturday, need someone to buy me it for Xmas

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413uCgEenvL._SS500_.jpg

I never did go for that "False Start", so when I see that box in foppalike for cheap, I get.

Lots of live tracks too

Who knew about Thomasine & Bushrod? Not me!

Thomasine and Bushrod go on a crime spree through the American south between 1911 and 1915, acting as Robin Hood type heroes who steal from rich, white capitalists, then give to Mexicans, Native Americans and poor whites.

An Robin Hood-esque blaxploitation movie...and the riches are disseminated among...seemingly anyone who isn't black?

"Ooh whee, good gracious mighty, noll noll noll... LOL"

Which one has "Everybody's Gotta Live" on it? That song is awesome!

It's on "Vindicator" AND "Reel to Real"!

lol "an robin hood"

the best version of everybody's gotta live's a bonus cut on some issue of vindicator i think; it segues in after four minutes of a kind of boring rocky song called busted feet. it's got like a choral feel, it's really beautiful.

for s/d, i love that's the way it goes on the end of electrically speaking. it's a totally beautiful song and a really great performance, with him janging his guitar pretty hard.

the best version of everybody's gotta live's a bonus cut on some issue of vindicator i think; it segues in after four minutes of a kind of boring rocky song called busted feet. it's got like a choral feel, it's really beautiful.

That's "Reel to Real"

What I mean is, that's the version on "Reel to Real" you're describing there

Anyway, theme song to "Thomasine and Bushrod" is really nice, lovely singing by Arthurly

What I mean is, that's the version on "Reel to Real" you're describing there

ah, cool beans. that's pretty much the only one i haven't got, i think, having picked up studio/live a while back, which has the bestest singing cowboy.

Anyway, theme song to "Thomasine and Bushrod" is really nice, lovely singing by Arthurly

i haven't heard this. is it on black beauty & rarities?

oh &, out here!, yall! that's the one i put on the most. the first time i saw him they played listen to my song, and signed d.c. with wailing harp and all.

vindicator has my all-time favourite arthur lee song title:

Every Time I Look Up I'm Down or White Dog (I Don't Know What That Means)

So, I did get it cheap (£5 in Fopp)...

"False Start" was much better than it looked like it might be, but I think: For all that the songs are supposed to be radically different in feel to Forever Changes, they seem quite similar in style to me. However, the best track seemed to be a live recording of a track from the eprevious album...

So, finally, if I was to pick one to hear, it might be more likely to be FC or DaCapo. But then, the albums were made to be played *then*, not stand as historical achievements etcet.

So, glad to have them, will play again sometime, but there it is.

vindicator also has 'you can save 40% but you're still a long ways from home', right?

the love site says there's a bunch of stuff forthcoming: something mark linn has been working on that must be some sort of unreleased comp or half-made project (not gethsemane not gethsemane not gethsemane), and some other things that are probably more straightforward. also arthur's BOOK, or at least a book that draws heavily from his manuscript.

so has anyone heard that "reel to real" LP from '75? it's probably the most obscure LP by lee, no? i'm sure it's terrible, i'm just curious...

also wikipedia sez he released some more material in the late 70s--an EP or something. what's that about?

and along the same lines, anybody heard the "unreleased album" that Sundazed just put out?

Ah, was just going to say the same thing.

If you ever stumble across a bootleg of a gig he did at the Garage in London in June 94, it's well worth getting. He had the High Llamas being Love for a night, and they turned up with instrumentation to do all the songs justice, not just Forever Changes, but flute and harpsichord for the Da Capo ones - they were a miles better Love than Baby Lemonade ever were. The old C90 I had is miles better than the CD that got released of a gig with Shack being Love for a night behind Lee.

yow, that sounds awesome (the high llamas love gig) -- anyone know where to track it down?
I'm also curious about the Love Lost Sundazed album ... I was prepared to not pay attention to it, but I think Other Music gave it a slightly over the top rave in their year-end reissues round-up.

"You Are Something", off Out Here, is a great song, with a catchy melody, a breezy vocal, and a lyric with a mix of confusion, paranoia, and bliss.

Should I get Four Sail? I only have the first 3.

yeah, i think all the post Forever Changes albums are underrated. They're different from the original band, but still good.

No reason not to. (xpost)

I'm also curious about the Love Lost Sundazed album ... I was prepared to not pay attention to it, but I think Other Music gave it a slightly over the top rave in their year-end reissues round-up.

yeah, but they do this with everything.... i take their recommendations with a serious grain of salt.

true, they are trying to move product -- but this review seemed kind of over the top even for them ...

maybe that just means the album is zzzzz and they're trying harder to push it? that seems to be the case sometimes. "i know what you're thinking--this album is from their boring period. BUT NO!! it's the best thing ever! it will blow your mind!" etc.

here it is:
Arthur Lee is simply the man. Not as in "The Man" we Negroes fear and loathe -- but as the last true rock star. The depth of his stature and claim to such a title was emphatically demonstrated over and again during the last few years of the erstwhile Love-man's life, when this eternal fan caught his act several times in New York and Los Angeles. Whether swelled with Swedish strings or stripped down to punk essentials courtesy of Baby Lemonade (and once, on the Strip, Johnny Echols!), those performances of Love's 1967 landmark (and Sgt. Pepper riposte) Forever Changes re-situated Arthur Lee as the final great link to the pantheon of singing-guitar mavericks of the genre including the Elder Utah Smith, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley. Lee was deemed eccentric because he didn't reserve his rock & roll finery for the stage, controversial because -- as Bam-Bam's presidency is showing -- the world is still scared of a genius colored boy. A unique, feral power emanated undiminished unto the end from the Memphis native who was self-anointed as the "first so-called black hippie" and founded the psych-rock cult of Love in Los Angeles in 1965. Yet pain and internal strife was often Lee's lot, long before he expired from myeloid leukemia in 2006.

After the iconic prelude to suicide that was Forever Changes, the newly excavated Sundazed release of Love Lost, originally recorded in 1971 for Columbia, illustrates the complicated transition of the precocious young artist who survived the end times he had foreseen. Gone is the baroque and bravura of Changes, swept away to present a soul stripped down to the barest twang and blue note hallmarks of his southern cultural heritage. It's somehow fitting that Love Lost comes from the rock & roller and metallic connector whose masterpiece was slated to be produced by Neil Young and who claimed to be the key mentor-progenitor of Jimi Hendrix. (Would that this collection were the hypothetical super-session that should have been consummated by Lee and Young). Reframing the portrait of 1970s Arthur Lee, Love Lost throws down in the barn with Young's proto-grunge of the same period and also -- not just because he covers the Voodoo Chile's "Ezy Ryder" and invokes his style on cuts like "I Can't Find It" and the majestic "Product of the Times" -- seems to serve as a sonic exorcism in the vein of Tonight's the Night. Love Lost could be viewed as the Singing Cowboy mourning not just the then-recent loss of his fellow Afro-freaky-deak lone ranger but of his own relative golden era sourced between Clark and Hilldale. This is essential listening to ken the dark heart of a wholly original artist who, despite his early laurels and legend, outlived his initial cultural moment and genre to suffer the albatross of becoming as lost to time as this long-player from the vaults. [KCH]

four sail is great

Arthur Lee is simply the man. Not as in "The Man" we Negroes fear and loathe

stopped reading at that point.

I have a promo of that Blue Thumb Recordings reissue somewhere. Is it really worth going through all the uncatalogued slipcase promos to find?

OK, I totally missed the release of Love Lost, never heard about it. Also Black Beauty has finally been released... I don't remember there being a track called "Lonely Pigs" tho!

Has 'Black Beauty' been re-released...can't seem to find a copy anywhere...heard samples...sounds incredible...

guess it hasn't come out yet? link above is still for "preorder".

13 months later still unreleased!
cool cover tho

http://www.highmoonrecords.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/img_400x400/love_front_lp_2_.jpg

hmm

was wondering if Black Beauty had actually finally been released when I saw this thread active. Thought i saw a reference to it in a recent review section too which I'd hoped indicated it had moved beyond the coming soon stage.

Is the Edsel compi Out There out of print? GUess I've had my copy for best part of 2 decades. It compiled the material from Out Here and the other lp contemporary to it, which I guess were the Blue Thumb recordings? Put them together on a single cd anyway. I neglected to pick up the Blue Thumb box despite it hanging around the racks in the local HMV for ages.

& I don't see much talk about the Forever Changes book which is pretty revelatory. John Einarson did a great job in editing/co-writing the thing. A must read for any fan I would think.
Also the interview with Johnny Ecchols in the Ugly -Things that came out earlier this year. That's the one with the Love cover not the one that's just coming out.#33, this one http://store03.prostores.com/servlet/uglythings/the-152/UGLY-THINGS-%2333/Detail

Which edition of Out Here has the endlessly shredding solo on 'Is More Than Words...'?

Reel to Real Deluxe Edition

I feel like I've known about Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer's infamous Zigzag interview all my life but, until a few minutes ago, I'd never actually read it and it's... even funnier than I thought it'd be!

http://love.torbenskott.dk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3221

totally awesome

holy shit that is amazing.

Curiously, that page seems to be down now. The original interview was published as a limited edition supplement by Zigzag magazine in August 1971. It was reprinted by the Love fanzine, The Castle in 1993, but had to be edited for libel reasons - it is pretty libellous - and now it's disappeared from the internet, hmmmmmmmmmm.

More about Snoopy, from 2017, I hope he still lives here!

https://www.livingbiginatinyhouse.com/tiny-house-tours/rockstars-woodland-cabin/

Page is back btw

August 1971

thanks, i was curious about this