Doom & Gloom Dispatch #26: Fly Into The Mystery
Tacoma Park, 801, Moby Grape, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, Yo La Tengo
With echoes of John Fahey in its name, you might at first expect Tacoma Park to be a fingerstyle acoustic guitar project. And hey, this self-titled album starts off kinda like that — but wow, does it go in a lot of different directions as it progresses. And pretty much all of them are great, whether exploring burbling analog synth zones or floating into majestic psych-rock jams. The duo (made up of Ben Felton and John Harrison) are fully committed to eclecticism, which is something to get behind. And even though some of it leans towards experimental / improv-y, Tacoma Park has a keen sense of melody and dynamics. The tunes here welcome you in and keep you coming back for more.
801 - Reading Rock ‘76, Reading, England, August 28, 1976
Eno rocks out! A few years back, I wrote this Invisible Hits column for Pitchfork about Brian Eno’s short-lived career as a rock star. I included this tape — one of the few gigs by 801, his short-lived band with fellow Roxy Music dude Phil Manzanera, plus some Matching Mole and Curved Air dudes. Cool dudes!
Even cooler: I think what’s linked above is a notable upgrade from a higher quality tape source. Don’t get too excited, it’s still a pretty rough audience tape. But we’ll take what we can get! And we love pretty rough audience tapes don’t we? It’s like being there in a field in England, digging some progressive zones.
801 only lasted for three gigs (one of which was officially released), but they sound like a pretty fully formed and cohesive band … they could’ve toured arenas worldwide! Maybe. Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream with Brian and Phil! (And for more, you can check out this sweet 801 rehearsal at Queen Elizabeth Hall from a few days later, too.)
In addition to that Tonight’s The Night-era audience recording that Neil released a few weeks back, we also got a massive, overdue archival haul from The Ducks! It’s terrific, highly recommended — and it’s definitely not made up of audience recordings. This short-lived Santa Cruz band isn’t just a murky chapter in the Neil Young saga … it’s also a murky chapter in the Moby Grape saga. So much murk! The Grape’s bassist/vocalist Bob Mosley was a Duck, adding his tunes to Neil’s and Jeff Blackburn’s.
The Ducks, naturally, sent me flying back to Moby Grape, which eventually sent me to this fresh upload from the venerable Prof Stoned, who is really supplying the goods in 2023. The professor kids around a bit about this being an actual unreleased live album planned by Columbia — it’s not, but it is absolutely great.
Details: This set improves upon the official 2010 live-album by using an alternative stereo mix of the Monterey set (rather than the rough mono mix that Lou Adler supplied to Sundazed); by adding Hey Grandma from the 2017 bluray (in mono, as it comes from the camera audio feed) and with all tracks being given the PS demix/remaster treatment.
All that and a Tommy Smothers intro, too! Moby Grape are on fire throughout their all-too-brief Monterey Pop performance; it’s interesting, too, how economical the band is, with songs often lasting no longer than two minutes (though obviously they stretched out in other settings). They pack a lot into those minutes though — beautiful harmonies, abrupt tempo changes, rad guitar work. In some other universe, Moby Grape is as well-known as the Dead and Buffalo Springfield … Don’t Skip this one!
Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - Town Hall, New York City, October 9, 1976
Nineteen-seventy-six must’ve been a weird year for Jonathan Richman. After spending most of the decade waiting in the wings, he finally released his debut album Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers in May of that year. But right on its heels came The Modern Lovers LP, collecting his first band’s classic early work.
“The guy who bought the tapes ya know said ‘Can we release this stuff?’” remembered Jonathan. “Cuz he owned Beserkley Records and I was recording for them. And I said 'I guess if you want to,’ but I wasn’t thrilled with the idea. I didn’t even consider it my first record, to me it was a bunch of demo tapes, but I said oh okay. So he released all those things which to me were just old history.”
So in a sense, Richman had two debut albums out at the same time — two very different debut albums, really. The tension there is palpable at this NYC gig, captured on a pretty decent audience tape for us to check out all these years later. A lot of the crowd seems to want Jonathan to crank things up and play “She Cracked” and “Pablo Picasso.” And why wouldn’t they? Over at CBGB and Max’s, bands like Talking Heads and the Feelies were borrowing quite a bit from the old Modern Lovers’ sound (even borrowing old Modern Lovers themselves as the case would be with Talking Heads).
But of course, Richman had moved on from that period — though not entirely. In stripped-down acoustic mode, he and the band play a few of those earlier tracks: “Roadrunner,” “Hospital,” “Astral Plane” etc., amidst the innocence of songs like “Ice Cream Man” and “Abominable Snowman In The Market.” It’s a great listen, and feels like a win for the band in the end.
John Rockwell in the New York Times wrote: Mr. Richman’s performance was preceded by a magician and a juggler. The juggler was pretty good, but their appearance suggested a rather too calculated attempt to be cute. And when Mr. Richman first came on, nervous and tentative, singing quiet songs for a crowd that expected volume and energy, he began to look like the Tiny Tim of rock. But if Tiny Tim attained a passing poignance through his tortured innocence, Mr. Richman actually succeeds in touching one in musical terms. That is not to say that he isn’t very strange indeed. But by the end of the evening he had won the audience over to his new, present‐day self, free from nostalgia for his past and free even from the sound of rock. Songs that had brought sidelong glances and embarrassed grimaces at the beginning came back as triumphant encores at the end.
Yo La Tengo - The Grotto, New Haven, Connecticut, October 23, 1987
The always-awesome Yo La Tengo is out there promoting This Stupid World in 2023, playing what some are calling the band’s best shows ever to adoring crowds. It wasn't always that way! Not that this performance — another fantastic offering from the Alex Butterfield Archives — isn’t killer. It really is! It’s just that not many people at The Grotto seem to really know much about Yo La Tengo. You can almost count the hands clapping. “How ya doin’, New Haven!!!??” Ira Kaplan shouts, rock-god-style, at the outset, to a thoroughly muted response.
The band (then consisting of Ira, Georgia and bassist Stephan Wichnewski) had just released their second LP New Wave Hot Dogs and much of the set is devoted to ferocious versions of tunes from that (kinda underrated?) album. There are also plenty of covers, of course — a vicious “A House Is Not A Motel,” “For The Turnstiles,” Antietam's “Orange Song” and a ripping “Rip This Joint” to close things out. Also some rarities, like an Ira-sung “White Rabbit,” which would show up about a decade later as "Demons" in a Georgia-led recording for the I Shot Andy Warhol OST.
And then YLT oblige a request for Ride The Tiger’s “Cone Of Silence” — a request made by our taper himself. This stupid world might not have been quite ready for Yo La Tengo in 1987, but they were getting somewhere.
From The Doom & Gloom Archives
Luna - Maxwell’s Hoboken, New Jersey, February 22, 1992
Keeping things somewhat Hoboken-related, here’s a Luna show recorded at the venerable Maxwell’s club in early 1992. According to Dean Wareham’s recent memoir, Black Postcards, this was the first show the band played with ex-Feelies drummer Stanley Demeski. I can only imagine after the literally crazy rhythms of the Feelies, Stanley’s Luna gig was positively relaxing. But he fit in with the band perfectly – when he left Luna after the band’s 1995 masterpiece, Penthouse, they lost a certain something (though don’t get me wrong, there are countless great post-Stan Luna jams too). The show also features Grasshopper from Mercury Rev on second guitar – this was before Sean Eden joined the band. Moreso than the band’s debut, Lunapark, which was released later in 1992, the Maxwell’s show provides a clearer transition between Wareham’s former band, Galaxie 500, and the sleeker stylings later-period Luna. There are even a handful of nicely re-worked G-500 songs in the set.
Currently Reading: Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy
Thanks again for the Luna post and all of your ongoing great research.
Missing the link for the Luna Maxwell's gig, sir. Would love to hear it!