Last week, I went for quantity, with 18 albums in my playlist. That does not mean I listened to them so that I could brag about how much music I listen to. No, I listened to every single album with attention to its contents. What instruments were used? How did the lyrics mesh with the instrumentation? Etc. This week, I listened to six albums, several of which I listened to more than once.

Nash the Slash / Children of the Night

This is easily one of the most disturbing album covers in my recent memory.

Nash the Slash / And You Thought You Were Normal

Nash the Slash / American Bandages

I listened to the above three twice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=het1kl-A8qw

Wikipedia with some editing:

“James Jeffrey “Jeff” Plewman (March 26, 1948 – May 10, 2014), better known by his stage name Nash the Slash, was a Canadian musician. A multi-instrumentalist, he was known primarily for playing the electric violin and mandolin, harmonica, keyboards, glockenspiel, and other instruments (sometimes described as “devices” on album notes).

Nash worked as a solo artist beginning in 1975, founding the progressive rock band FM in 1976. Soon after releasing the band’s first album, Black Noise, in 1977, he left the band; he resumed his solo career in 1978 (it was not until after Nash’s departure that the album was widely promoted, eventually charting and receiving a gold record award). He rejoined FM from 1983 to 1988, followed by a brief reunion from 1994 to 1996, all concurrent with his solo work.

Nash’s music covers an eclectic range, varying from instrumental—mood-setting and shoe-gaze music to rock and pop music with vocals. In addition to giving concert performances, he composed and performed soundtrack music for silent films, presenting these works live in movie theatres to accompany screenings of the films. Another venue for his music was in performances to accompany the viewing of paintings by surrealist painter Robert Vanderhorst, an audiovisual collaboration, which took place in 1978 and again in 2004.

Nash famously never allowed guitars on any of his solo albums and singles. He turned down Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour‘s offer to lay down a guitar track on his Children of the Night album. It takes something special to turn down an offer from David Gilmour.

I don’t know what to make of his albums. They are exotic and non-conformant. Discogs has them pegged as Rock/Darkwave/New Wave/Prog/Rock. I have always had a soft spot for electric violin, Nash the Slash used that as his primary instrument. 

I like his cover of 19th Nervous Breakdown just because it veers away from the original recording by The Rolling Stones and becomes a unique recording by Nash, with no guitars. I’m not sure what Keith Richards would think of that! Another song that gets a work over is Smoke on the Water, which becomes Dopes on the Water. The music of Nash the Slash is not music for the faint of heart. Nash the Slash made music that challenged the boundaries of music and pushed them further out of the comfort zone of popular music in the early 80’s. He was a nonconformist and stayed that way in the three albums of his that I have.

American Band-ages, released in 1984, featured covers of popular American songs. The album, intended for the US market, never got the push it needed due to distribution and management problems, including a change in record labels.

American Band-ages featured Bandstand Boogie/American Band (We’re An American Band), veering from big band to punk on the same track. Wow, what a way to start an album. What follows is Born to be Wild. It sounds like the original but doesn’t. The electric violin and the use of synthesizers mimic the electric guitars featured in the original by Steppenwolf. I had a big deja vu trip listening to Born to Be Wild in the movie Easy Rider on YouTube. That movie resonated with me as a rebellious teenager in 1969. The Nash the Slash remake of Hey Joe blows. Hey Joe, it has been covered so often that no one knows the song’s origin. The most noteworthy version is likely the Jimi Hendrix Experience cover from their Are You Experienced album. You can do Wikipedia for more covers.

Another thing I noticed is the length of the tracks on American Bandages; these are not three-minute radio edits. The songs run from the shortest, Hey Joe, at 3:34 to several at four and five minutes and the closer, 1984, at 7:08. These are three songs per album side, and I like it. He gets a groove going on these songs and he works it with all the musical toys he can muster, but no guitars.

So I listened to Nash the Slash twice over the course of a couple of days and gave them a good listen, not a casual noise in the background while I did something else kind of a listen. I got his music, but not everyone did.

I suggest reading and listening here if you want to listen to his music and find out more about him as a person.

Rick Nelson The Very Best of Rick Nelson

Ricky Nelson (May 8, 1940 – December 31, 1985) was an American musician and actor. From age eight, he starred alongside his family in the radio and television series The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1957, he began a long and successful career as a popular recording artist. The Very Best is a standard Best Of album. It contains some hit songs you may recognize if you are a boomer like me.

NDTC Singers The Very Best of NDTC Singers

This album contains songs from several Caribbean nations, including my favourite, Jamaica. Truthfully, it is the only Caribbean island I have been to, but I liked it and would like to return. My Jamaican princess, Valerie, listened to this alongside me and hummed to many songs.

Bible Club Umbra

This album has been sitting on the back burner for a week or so. I enjoyed the first spin, so I found the lyrics and gave it another spin, reading along as I went. And then I forgot about it for one reason or another. And now I am listening to it again and hoping to flesh something out to write about.

This album starts out with some relaxing guitar and other instruments over some vocals that sound other-worldly. A nice chill track. Track two has a more or less alt-rock sound and recognizable vocals telling us about the futility of life and eventually getting to a place where they can forget everything and start a new life. Nihilist, that word pops up early in the song. A nihilist is a person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles. The lack of moral principles is a frightening thought. I can get on board with rejecting religion, heck, I’ve done that and feel fine with how my life is going, gut rejecting moral principles is on a whole new level. Life needs some morality to function, we can not throw out all concepts of good and proper. Without moral principles we will devolve into a culture of savage brutes trying to suppress each other. Come to think about that, and maybe we are living there already.

Track 3, Umbra, tells us what we are experiencing in the here and now. 

“Everyone cycling around not knowing why or how

Just drudging on

for a bliss that’s promised

Rid me of this mind now

Tell me there’s truth, things will get better

…

As I cast off these things

I grow older and weary”

That just about sums it up for me, I feel old and weary. There are moments of bliss, like when I get some new music that takes me of to the promised land. Please tell me that things will get better. Great music in the alt-rock genre. 

Track four takes the author to a dark and dreary place with some very interesting music, I found myself ignoring the lyrics and just soaking in the music. It has a feeling like listening to a click track that moves in and out with instruments that move in and out, not neccissarily in sync with the lyrics, but it works. I get lost in this track and put it on instant replay.

Track five explodes with the pent up angst, anger and weariness that the author has been carrying about for far too long. 

“We’re all eating cardboard

Crap wrapped in tinfoil

Bleached clumps of empty substance

We eat it just to feel

Saturated

Uncomplicated

Watch out

Why won’t you hear me out

So watch out

You’re gonna hear me out

Don’t

Don’t waste my time

Don’t waste my time

With all your lies”

“Capturing the stark awareness of a world stuck in disarray, ‘Umbra’ is a dreary rumination on the state of affairs in this post-consumerist world, offering vignettes of the symptoms of late-stage capitalism. Materialism has gone non-material, substance is replaced by empty filler, and callous waste of life. More now than ever before we are within the darkest shadow of our times – the umbra – a shadow cast by a force that overpowers.” – Bark PR http://www.barkpr.co.uk/

Five tracks of fusion alt punk, rock and shoegazing lamenting the world of capitalism and materialism. An album that sounds great despite the dreary tone of the lyrics. They use two guitars to great effect as they wander in and out and playing around each other and together. I want to hear these guys ten years from now to hear how their world view has changed, or hasn’t. Chalk Umbra up as a five star record.

p.s. I listened to their earlier music, and it is good listening.