I've got myself a copy of "Three Week Hero" by PJ Proby. "Three Week Hero" is that rare album that boasts Led Zeppelin as the session musicians, just as they were on the cusp of turning into Led Zeppelin from being the New Yardbirds. The story is well told so it's not worth rehashing but basically Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones had one last session to do as session musicians and they pulled in the rest of Led Zeppelin - Robert Plant and John Bonham - to round out the backing band.
The funny thing is that it's immediately obvious it's the guys from Zeppelin doing their thing. The instruments are the very same that feature on 'Led Zeppelin I'. The music itself is hopelessly psychedelic hippy-ism so the band just trundles along. The octane value never goes up so the album never grooves or kicks like 'Led Zeppelin I', so it's an odd experience. I guess it's a record that shows how soul destroying session work would have been.
PJ Proby made the observation that he never saw the guys from the band again. I have a hunch I might never listen to this album again.
The Human Stamp Collection Album
The other CD I got form Amazon is this little number. Lots of people from 70s and 80s prog acts make an appearance on this album.I've had it for a couple of days in the car and it's got its moments. It's certainly better than 'Heaven and Earth' by Yes, namely because it actually has a pulse.
It's sort of got a great collection of Bass players going, with Chris Squire, Tony Levin and John Wetton making an appearance. Steve Hillage is also on it as are Rick Wakeman and Geoff Downes. Better still, when they come on, you can instantly tell it's them, which is really cool. Somebody has to make prog albums.
Spiritual BS For The Musically Inclined
I've been trying to get a hold of Rudolf Steiner's lectures on music for some years now. The quest started when I went through a phase of listening to lots and lots of Glenn Gould playing Bach and Oscar peterson playing jazz and Steve Vai playing his way-out guitar. I kind of talked myself into a concept frenzy of reaching for the esoteric in music through music and of course nobody had written anything about such notions except tangentially, Rudolf Steiner's lectures kept being referenced.
Well, here they are in one book and it makes for some seriously whacky - nay whacked out- reading. I can't say I ascribe, say, any of my music to spiritual states of my mind and dreaming lucidly in my sleep. And I sure as heck don't know if Steiner was even passingly familiar with jazz or blues (he was too early in history for rock), so there's really nothing of practical value here, but it does show somebody trying to write something about music without actually being a musician. It's weird - a bit like if I wrote a book on architecture or woodblock printing and ascribed all the creative process to sleeping and lucid dreaming. You'd think I'd gone nuts. Well, that's how nutty this book is.
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