The balearic beardo beach hippie album canon

That's awesome. Seriously.

Yeah, I've always been a passenger when I was on journeys along those lines, and it was always some situation where I was in a car in which the stereo was busted or the equivalent thereof.

That being said, as unlikely as it may sound, early Scott Walker served me well traversing the Marin headlands...and also, one of my best memories of hearing "Eight Miles High" was when driving south towards SFO airport territory and seeing a huge bank of fog eclipsing the water.

In short, I am deep green with envy as far as it concerns being able to soak in these musics in their proper contexts. Like, smoke up and drive across the Bixby bridge or go do it up on some beach thereabouts while listening to "Draft Morning" or some such. I think it's worthwhile to do, even if only in the spirit of experimentation as far as concerns these music/geography nexuses.

i'd like to know more about what those crazy hippies were listening to in Ibiza or Goa before the whole balearic style emerged...

http://www.goagil.com/albums/Scrapbook/OLD_GOA_2.sized.jpg

Alt-F "Danny O'Keefe"

:(

http://img523.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lp801ea9.jpg

I heard the great whales crying,
saying, "Brother, brother, we are dying."

http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/5928/lp801ea9.jpg

Does this thing fit in here somewhere?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/197/493414410_5d1852d241.jpg

I can't really look at the thread title without the pictures of the freaks in the gatefold popping into my head to the tune of 'Pali Gap'. There's that whole globe-trotting jetting-off-to-a-hippie-beach-party vibe in the (terrible) film too.

maybe much of l.a. music wow-dom is due to the ambition factor- ppl historically have gone there to "make it"...and/or some of them end up playing in highly "professionalized" environments as studio musicians-- hence you end up with yr "yacht rock" acts, etc...by contrast, nocal is more "laid-back" for real, and so stuff comes out of there that lacks the chart-making urgency that l.a. stuff has. this is a theory with millions of holes in it, but i'm throwing it out there nonetheless

OTM I think - one of the things that links IICORMN and No Other (see poll thread), as well as Forever Changes (Beach Boys too, come to think of it) is the odd disjunctive MOR associations you get with each - The odd Anita Kerr harmonies on Tamalpais ....on the Crosby records, the no quite schmaltz of Strength of Strings, the Herb Alpert-ness of Clark and Hilldale....

Maybe those associations only seem odd because we've been fed this myth about the 60s, about how them cool hippies and folkies were against pop and Hollywood schmaltz. But in reality, American folk and pop have always been inextricably linked.

That said, I don't think this applies to the Beach Boys. They grew up in the pop realm.

Good point.
The individual Byrds pre- careers are exemplary in this respect

Totally. And it even extends to the Bay Area. Before Marty Balin was a folkie, he was a teen actor/singer who dug Tony Bennett. At the time, that seemed bizarre. But listen to some of Balin's great ballads with the Jefferson Airplane, and you realize the guy is a great crooner, who understood classic Tin Pan Alley singing.

Huh. Cool, I don't think I've ever made all of those connections, and even if I had, probably would not have been able to articulate them in the fashion that you guys have done here.

Marty Balin, wow. I have such a weakness for some of the Starship-era stuff-- Miracles, Count on Me, Runaway... I guess Scott was comparing some of that stuff to Chris Rea upthread, but I'm not sure that I hear it. The near seven-minute version of Miracles, for one, never fails me. Fool if You Think it's Over, by contrast, sounds like yr standard issue Benny Mardones-ish yacht-rock material.

Runaway is saddled with a godawful bridge that I can't listen to without cringing, but otherwise, me love the MB.

All this So-Cal vs. Nor-Cal talk makes me want to post a gem from this guy...

http://therisingstorm.net/audio/mu-300x300.jpg

Merrell Fankhauser is the mannn. He purportedly invented the riff for "Wipeout," then became obsessed with Hawaii and it's mythology and made this album with dudes from Beefheart's band.

And he's from CENTRAL CA, aka Arroyo Grande, aka halfways between SF and LA. And this album rules--though perhaps a bit on the proggy end of this spectrum--it totally fits.

He still hosts the most hilarious cable-access show in that area, called Merrell Fankhauser's Tiki Lounge. His wife tapes it in their living room(!), and I was lucky enough to be there when he interviewed Swedish psych band Dungen . I think they sorta started their association that led to these rereleases on Dungen's Subliminal Sounds label...

http://www.subliminalsounds.se/DOK/merrellfankhauser.html

That was the most awkward interview ever, btw. "What's your name and what instrument do you play?..." followed by broken english, etc.

Mu is the "lost continent" aka what some people call Hawaii (where dude lives now). straight up hippy beach music. i posted a song from that album ("Eternal Thirst") to my site. sounds like tim buckley on vocals and jeff cotton of beefhart's magic band on slide guitar. there's a crazy long percussion breakdown with weird ass chanting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(lost_continent)

xpost

holy crap. look at this! this is the most balearic beardo beach hippy video ever!

seriously, that video pwns this thread

"nobody wants to shine" has an incredible bassline, too

just wanted to reiterate how fucking amazing Terry Reid's Seed Of Memory is. by far my favorite album of his (even though i love all the stuff i've heard by him) and it totally fits in this thread. funked out folk rock w/a bit of twang.

http://robotsinheat.com/trax/OohBaby.mp3

There's a mix from dirk of eskimo recordings on lovefingers that's all balearock/funky/folky/classic rock. Great stuff.

http://www.lovefingers.org/mp3/dirk.mp3

Think there's also another one on beats in space worth searching for.

but part of me thinks that what makes crosby and phillips and f'wood mac "fit" fairly easily under the umbrella of "balearica" and acts like the band and the dead (and feel free to disagree with me, anyone) fit far less easily under that same umbrella is some kind of interestingly-felt relationship with the beach or the idea of "beach" that LA has and SF doesnt.

just wanted to point out (as brought to light here:No Other V If I could Only Remember My Name) that the grateful dead theyselfs made a large part of crosby's best album. So there was a lot of the same stuff going on, and I think the dead actually made some albums that would be perfect for this thread.

but you're dead on about la being oriented much more towards the beach. i duno if it manifests itself in a genre that is concerned with being rural in nature, however.

i mean la as a city, by the way, not as a musical entity. and country/americana is what i'm referring to by 'a genre that is concerned with being rural in nature'

Just had a brainstorm, it doesn't have even the slightest amount of twang in it though.

http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/7811/b00000250l01sclzzzzzzzmb6.jpg

Its about as hippie as funk gets without being Sly.

Check the title track.

Check out Linda Perhcas,Parallelograms. Doesn't cut it on the beardo part (and perhaps not the balearic part)but it's pretty damn boss on all other fronts.
http://music.geocities.jp/viennagarden/parallelograms.jpg

Um, make that Perhacs

well perhacs i will check it out....

she does live in hawaii if that makes it fit in the thread

great, great album btdubs

is "balearic" just the self-aware Other Music-goer's way of looking down on people that jumped on the "yacht rock" thing?

its a term we made up to make you annoyed

Does yacht rock presuppose dinghy rock?

There's a few Perhacs tracks that almost work, but that record is way too intimate to be included here, and I feel it has a certain English folk formalist vibe to it that is decidedly un-balearic. But it is a great record indeed.

nobody has used the word "oceanicity" yet :-/

played 80s trivial pursuit this weekend and had the question asker scoff and say "you are SOOOOO never going to get this,,, name a zurich born harpist that was listed in three US billboard charts in 1984."

i got up and threw my Andreas Vollenweider record in his face!

i can't remember the question, but the same thing happened when they asked about the william hurt film gorky park. the soundtrack's epic, assholes!

i'd also like to point out this jean michel jarre video. he plays a stack of synthesizers on the beach!

in my opinion the underpraised-in-recent-years Tranquility Bass album should be on this list

hahahaha jaxon i hope you stormed out after that

never got into the album, but the Tranquility Bass singles and comp tracks, the ones on the Exist Dance Transmitting from Heaven CD, are total classic.

http://www.starsend.org/graphics/mgtropicalheat.jpg

I've been avoiding this album for a long time since I kept on hearing that this was Ashra's low point, but given it's balearic sounding title (Tropical Heat) and it's Gottsching I figured it's worth a listen. It's not nearly as bad as I anticipated. I'm not sure if this would be the right thread to post this in, but I'm surprised this album hasn't been reconsidered (maybe it really is that bad) or at least mentioned*.

*the search function turned up nothing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ennMD1fPtXA

This remains one of my favorite ILX threads.

On the Herb Alpert tip: his disc with Hugh Masekela has got some lovely stuff on it.

holy shit is that the sample on the beginning of Biggie's Hypnotize?

yess indeed... wasn't it the theme to general hospital or something as well?

http://17.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks1e259DQJ1qzoj6fo1_100.gif http://12.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks1e0d57MK1qzoj6fo1_100.gif http://22.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks1efuT6kh1qzoj6fo1_100.gif

today is a good day for a desultory beach party

those are credit stephd.biz btw

http://stephd.biz/gifs/5/peacock.gif

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This record is so this thread......

Oops...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu2bT-yEiWc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9wbumIKJJ0

that batteaux record is great. this is the track of theirs to get. Mirror. so amazing
http://www.divshare.com/download/9846879-0a2

i have a paul horn record where they cover High Tide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxRvI6k4nPI

awesome revive. was hoping we could get this thread going with some recommendations again, feel free to disagree with the following...

steve winwod - arc of a diver. if you can get with his voice there are some great tunes on here, "spanish dancer" especially
http://p.dada.net/cspv/59-10-68-10-00-MetaPreview-Cover-JPEG256x256/steve-winwood/arc-of-a-diver.jpg

yello - claro que si. a lot of yello songs are just ott balearic, i think this record has more of that vibe than the others (disagreements welcome). they don't exactly scream 'hippie', but some of the early stuff might be cosmic enough to fit. also check "blue green" from the record before this one, also on ralph
http://www.musicline.de/cover/Yello_Claro+Que+Si_602498307564.jpg

little river band - s/t 1975. real surprised nobody has mentioned them here yet. "it's a long way there" is a pretty ideal fit for this thread imo
http://bigpondmusic.com/images/AlbumCoverArt/117/L/Little-River-Band2.jpg