John McLaughlin With The One Truth Band - Electric Dreams

My copy of this is a US pressing, which has been ‘manually rebranded’ for CBS in international markets. I’ve read about this but never seen it in the wild before. The back cover has been redacted with a texta and the labels have black rings stuck over them, obscuring the Columbia logo. This would’ve been someone’s job, man.

Talking of shit jobs, L. Shankar, the violinist on this album, went on to play on Phil Collins’s Face Value album the following year.

This album came out the year after my favourite J.Mc album, and it’s a clear move further into the rock sphere, which for my ears, makes it a tad dull.

I’d never properly looked at the sleeve before today. The front photo is a sepia toned photo of old mate John sitting at a white Formica fold out kitchen table in his jim-jams and satin dressing gown. Before him is a coffee cup full of pitch black fluid, with a spoon standing up in it. Now this could be seen as uncouth, although please remember Johnny-boy comes from Donny, where this is probably OK. Also, the black fluid could be Yorkshire tea.

Behind him, his appliances seem to have gone boonta, have adopted ghostly manifestations, and are levitating. This is particularly worrying because what can only be described as a kettle/clock combo are plugged in quite high up the wall on a short cord. If it stopped levitating it would be just dangling there.

To make matters worse, ALL FOUR rings on his electric stove top are blaring. Turn them off, man!

As if all this isn’t bad enough, there’s a ghostly girl stood outside the window holding a suitcase. No-one wants that.

Nightmare.

Here’s an interesting snippet for you: the son of Fernando Saunders, who played bass on this album, represented Hungary in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014.

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John Spithead

2025-03-05 02:52:58

We got one there. We got one there.

John McLaughlin - Electric Guitarist

I believe that this was the first proper jazz-fusion LP I bought. I remember picking it up in JiFS Records, Chadwell Heath in about 1984. (Man, I'd fucking love to go back and have a dig in that shop again!) I was an avid reader of guitarist magazines at the time and kept reading about McLaughlin and his Gatling gun playing-style, and just had to hear it. There was no way of hearing it before buying in those days, so it was a bit of a gamble, although to be fair, I knew I was going to love it.

All the big guns are wheeled out in support of McLaughlin on this album and they all get a fair shake of the sauce bottle.

The second track, Friendship, is a frequent spinner on my earworm jukebox, and has been for some 40 years now.

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Miles Davis - Live-Evil

It was Fathers' Day yesterday in Australia. I try my best to be a conscientious objector (I mean, the kids didn't ask for me to impregnate their mother, thus forcing them into existence, and so really have no need to thank me for doing my basic duty to them in the intervening years), but my bastard children won't have it. In an attempt to limit the proceedings, I suggested that - if they must - they just fill a Live-Evil shaped gap in my record collection and be done with it. It was a partial success, in that I do now own a Record Store Day reissue of the album on teal-splatter (What a time to be alive, eh?) vinyl.

I haven't heard Live-Evil before and it's quite a substantial work, so these are just my initial thoughts:

- Like I say, there's a lot of it. It's going to take time to digest.
- This is firmly in the On The Corner ballpark, although generally dialled up a notch or two. Davis is wah-wahing away like a man possessed.
- John McLaughlin's guitar sound, let alone his playing, took my breath away.

Anyway, I might add further comments in future as I get into this more.

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Miles Davis - You're Under Arrest

It is commonly said that this album was Davis’ stab at a commercial hit. As if him covering two of the day’s recent pop hits (Human Nature and Time After Time) was ever going to get him into the top ten. I don’t think this is the case, and I'll tell you why.

First off, the usual way for jazz players to score a money-generating crossover hit back in those days was via the dancefloor, hence you get jazz-fusion albums with soul singers added for a couple of tracks, see Wilton Felder (feat. Bobby Womack), Sadao Watanabe (feat. Roberta Flack), Ralph McDonald (feat. Bill Withers) etc, not by recording two instrumentals of slowish-tempo pop hits, slathered in John Scofield’s chorus pedal-laden guitar.

Secondly, no-one has ever said, “We need a pop smash, get John McLaughlin on the phone!” And McLaughlin is all over this album like a twiddly-jazz rash. Sometimes, it’s both him and Scofield. Jazz foot & mouth.

Thirdly, it’s always been part of jazz to take a slab of popular music and do something special with it. Davis has done this before: Porgy and Bess anyone?

Finally, Davis kept both of the covers in his set for the rest of his career, which he would be very unlikely to do if he didn’t value them highly.

So, let’s talk about the covers, shall we? Human Nature, was written by one of Toto and discovered and finessed under Quincy Jones’ keen eye, for inclusion on Thriller which gives it a bit of a ick-factor. However, it is arguably NOT just a Noncey McNonceface song, and it is helpful to untether the song from its most famous singer. Davis’ version of this is just wonderful. I just wish it were longer.

Cyndi Lauper, who wrote and first performed Time After Time, has undergone something of a revision of her status as an artist, so her work is no longer seen as pop drivel, as it largely was at the time, but as something of greater import. That’s fine: times change. However, it’s important to bear in mind that Davis had selected this song from the depths of the low-status, disposable shite pile, where it dwelled at the time.

I'm on my fourth or fifth spin of this album, and I like it a lot.

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