Silver Apples

It annoys me when people talk about music and say "listen to this it was like soooo way ahead of it's time", or "when do you think this was made ?" and then you are meant to gasp that it was actually 10 years earlier than anything else that sounds like it.

However I'm going to be a complete hypocrite and say that I seriously couldn't believe this group the Silver Apples was from the late 1960's when I heard them, in fact it's hard to even think of anything to compare them to now, possibly it still doesn't exist yet .

The Silver Apples were a duo in the the New York psychedelic electronic scene (I think they were actually the only ones in the scene), with a pile of up to 9 audio oscillators and countless other custom built controls they produced some really quite fantastic tracks. They recorded three albums, Silver Apples 1968, Contact 1969 and The Garden 1970. The Garden (my personal favorite) was actually only released in 1998 after the recording was found in an attic. Apparently the cover of the Contact album with the Pan Am flight simulator on the front and the plane crash image on the back didn't go down too well and resulted in law suits and the end of the band and the record label.

Each album is full of unexpected surprises, The Garden takes the cake. There is a series of tracks called noodles, like Tabouli Noodle, Swamp Noodle or Fire Ant Noodle which seem like musical doodles, of pulsing bleeps and rhythms that build, then suddenly there's is a kind of electronic dueling banjo's sing along called John Hardy, before moving onto a very sweet poppy song about the life of an owl with hoot noises and a slightly deranged but pleasant synth melody.

I actually suspect these guys accidently slipped through a spacetime wormhole created when tinkering with one of their instruments (see below) and ended up in a highly advanced alien civilisation - dropped some acid, had a bit of a jam with the locals, then slipped back through and are waiting 400 years for everyone on earth to finally understand what they were on about, there's no other explanation.

Hothouse

I don't usually read science fiction but this book caught my eye, Hothouse by Brian Aldiss it's possibly the strangest thing I have ever read. Despite it's title and theme it's not actually related to the global warming predicament, it was written in the 1960's and is set several million years in the future as the sun is expanding into a supernova before it eventually burns out. Naturally down on earth it's very hot but the plants love it, they love it so much infact that colossal banyan trees grow to the size of continents.

Very little animal or insect life has survived and the plants have become very nasty and aggressive in their fierce competition for nutrients. Humans have survived but only just, and have evolved to be much smaller with green skin and live amongst the branches of the giant trees in a very primitive existence. But a series of events including a giant spongy spider like vegetable that can float to the moon and back and some killer seaweed, eventually lead to one of the humans ending up with a all knowing mind controlling fungus growing on his head. Eventually with the help of a creepy talking land fish they come to know their fate.

My favourite line is "After all you are the first fungus to solve the riddle of the universe" after a few chapters of this book a comment like that doesn't even seem slightly absurd.

Giant Beavers

This has to be my favourite of all the Pleistocene megafauna creatures, a gigantic beaver ! What a cool period in evolution... (well very cool infact as it was the middle of an ice age), imagine all these familiar animals of today but supersized !

Some other favourites are the giant penguin (Anthropornis nordeskjoeldi) or equally as ugly the giant sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii). Australia had a an interesting array of megafauna too including a giant wombat like thing called a Diprotodon and a colossal kangaroo (Procoptodon) which grew to 3 metres high.

Sadly most of these amazing creatures shrunk/became extinct around 45,000 years ago due to climate change and possible human over hunting (come on... who could resist a gaint beaver steak for dinner), some lasted till more recent times–there were Woolly Mammoths still roaming Russia's Wrangel Island up until 1700 BC. 70% of the Woolly Mammoth genome has been decoded and so it might not be too long until some of these giants walk again... bring back the giant beavers I say...

Cowboy In Sweden

I really should dedicate my first post to the late Lee Hazlewood who's song 'The Night Before' inspired this blog with it's title, not becuase I usually wake up wearing stirrups, filled with remorse surrounded by empty whisky bottles on a beach in Sweden trying to remember the previous night/week...

This clip is from the Swedish TV special 'Cowboy In Sweden' which Lee made in 1970 when he moved to Stockholm. There's a lot of arty and meaningful horse riding going on in the show... and the cowboy/Sweden juxtaposition is a little odd to say the least. The album of Cowboy In Sweden is definitely one of my favorite Lee moments though, melancholy themes and even slightly haunting at times, the duet of Leather and Lace with Swedish hottie Nina Lizell rivals any Nancy and Lee ballad...

The Night Before

Welcome to the Night Before a journal of music, art, films and other things that I like...