The Styrous® Viewfinder: Miles Davis

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May 31, 2023

1,000,001 CDs 21: Tina Turner ~ Foreign Affair (Tina & Kaisik)

Tina Turner ~ Foreign Affair

cover design by

photo of album cover by Styrous®

Tina Turner, "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", died last week; Tina was one of my "Immortal Loves" (link below) and, of course, I was devastated.

When I heard about her death it brought back to mind the wonderful tales Kaisik Wong told me about his fashion adventures, which were many. He worked with such music icons as Betty Davis, wife of jazz musician Miles Davis, Leila And The Snakes, and there was his encounter with Tina and Ike Turner which was at the top of my favorite tales by him.

I chose this CD to honor her because it's one of my favorite albums by her, she is wearing one of the fashions similar to the those Kaisik designed for her . . .

Tina Turner ~ Foreign Affair

interior cover photo by

photo of album cover by Styrous®

. . . one of the songs on the album was produced by Rupert Hine who also worked with Turner on her Private Dancer album, the packaging for the album was totally cool and the music is pretty good as well.

Tracklist:

1 - Steamy Windows, Written By Tony Joe White - 4:03

2 - The Best, Producer – Tina Turner, Written By H. Knight*, M. Chapman*e - 5:28

3 - You Know Who (Is Doing You Know What), Written By Tony Joe Whitee - 3:45

4 - Undercover Agent For The Blues, Written By Leann White, Tony Joe Whitee - 5:20

5 - Look Me In The Heart, Written By B. Steinberg*, T. Kelly*e - 3:42

6 - Be Tender With Me Baby, Written By A. Hammond*, H. Knight*e - 4:18

7 - You Can't Stop Me Loving You, Written By A. Hammond*, H. Knight*e - 4:00

8 - Ask Me How I Feel, Producer – Tina Turner, Written By A. Hammond*, H. Knight*e - 4:46

9 - Falling Like Rain, Producer – Rupert Hine, Written By D. Munday*, S. Stewart*e - 4:03

10 - I Don't Wanna Lose You, Producer – Roger Davies, Written By Albert Hammond, Graham Lylee - 4:20

11 - Not Enough Romance, Written By Dan Hartmane - 4:04

12 - Foreign Affair, Producer – Roger Davies, Written By Tony Joe Whitee - 4:27

Companies, etc.

    Phonographic Copyright ℗ – Capitol Records, Inc.
    Copyright © – Capitol Records, Inc.
    Mastered At – DADC Austria

Credits:

    Executive-Producer – Roger Davies, Tina Turner
    Management – Roger Davies, Roger Davies Management Inc.
    Mixed By – Chris Lord-Alge
    Producer – Dan Hartman (tracks: 1 to 8, 11)

    Producer – Dan Hartman (tracks: 1 to 8, 11)

Notes:

Limited Edition Passport Edition.

TINA TURNER Foreign Affair (1989 UK limited edition 12-track CD album including The Best and Steamy Window, in special 7" x 5" (appr. 17 x 13 cm) passport pack with integral 16-page booklet and gold embossed artist/title/logo on the cover).

This edition of Tina Turner's Foreign Affair album is limited. It has the Original album "foreign Affair".
The Presentation of this Limited Edition: It comes in a custom passport design with a designed Tina Turner Coat Of Arms on the cover.

Inside we get the wavy background that reads Tina Turner Foreign Affair, which is repeated just like inside a real passport. No detail is left out here, the passport cover is a Navy Blue/Indigo colour with Gold Colour printing for the titles and Emblem. The back of the front cover has Tina Turner's album Logo in a blasted rosy pink colour, which turns purple towards the right. It also features some lyrics from the title track, in a handwritten style. After the song credits we get a passport details page for Tina Turner with a nice photo and a printed signature. The following pages contain the photographs from the Foreign Affair album artwork shoot.

The complete set is resented here in a scrapbook/photo album feel way. The Middle Page contains the Iconic Image by Herb Ritts that appears on the Foreign Affair Tour Programme and the Steamy Windows Single Cover. The back page has a full-page photograph of Tina. Detail is that the song titles appear over the each of the pages in a passport stamp nature. All individually designed with the credits for the writers, composers and producers within each unique shape.

The Disc comes in a white slip cloth that is housed inside a pocket at the back that you slide the Disc into... So basically a Limited Edition that goes well with the Foreign Affair Concept. An Collector's item that is becoming increasingly rare to find as it has been deleted for many years.

Passport has release number CDP 7 93129 2 and states "Printed in UK".
Disc has number CDP 7 91873 2 with artwork similar to the regular UK release. CD states "Made in Austria", although it is said there is also a disc with matching passport artwork.

℗ © 1989 Capitol Records, Inc.
Made in Austria

Barcode and Other Identifiers

Label Code: LC 0148
    Rights Society: BIEM / MCPS
    Matrix / Runout (Variant 1): CDP-7918732 11 A1 MASTERED BY DADC AUSTRIA
    Matrix / Runout (Variant 2): CDP-7918732 11 A7 MASTERED BY DADC AUSTRIA

Viewfinder links:

Rupert Hine

Immortal Loves

Ike Turner

Tina Turner

Kaisik Wong

Net links:

Rupert Hine

YouTube links:

Tina Turner ~ Foreign Affair (complete album)

The Best

Falling Like Rain

Look Me In The Heart

Steamy Windows

Undercover Agent for the Blues (Live in Barcelona 1990)

Undercover Agent for the Blues

Sing on, Girl!

Styrous® ~ Wednesday, May 31, 2023

1,000,001 CDs Archive
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~

December 31, 2022

20,000 vinyl LPs 329: Jimi Hendrix ~ Band of Gypsies

Jimi Hendrix ~ Band of Gypsies

vinyl LP front cover

cover photo by Jan Blom

photo of album cover by Styrous®

Fifty-three years ago today, on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1969, Jimi Hendrix introduced his group Band of Gypsies at a show at the Fillmore East in New York. Parts of that show and the following show on January 1 were recorded and later released as this live album, Band of Gypsys.

Jimi Hendrix ~ Band of Gypsies

vinyl LP back cover

cover photos by Jan Blom

photo of album cover by Styrous®

It the first and only album without his original group, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and featured Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums. Some of the songs represent a change in Hendrix's music from his Experience repertoire and became the basis of funk rock. Band of Gypsies contains previously unreleased songs and was the last full-length Hendrix album released before his death.

Jimi Hendrix ~ Band of Gypsies

vinyl LP label, side 1

photo by Styrous®

According to Sean Westergaard of AllMusic, Band of Gypsies is one of the best live albums of all time and an important recording for Hendrix.

Jimi Hendrix ~ Band of Gypsies

vinyl LP label, side 2

photo by Styrous®

Sputnikmusic's Hernan M. Campbell believed Machine Gun is one of Hendrix's most captivating performances. Miles Davis commented about the song that "Jimi liked what I had done with Kind of Blue and some other stuff and wanted to add more jazz elements to what he was doing. He liked the way Coltrane played with all those sheets of sound, and played his guitar in a similar way. Machine Gun is as much about the late 1960s American race riots as the war in Vietnam. Guitarist Vernon Reid describes it as "like a movie about war without the visuals. In many commentaries about Band of Gypsies, Machine Gun is singled out as the highlight of the album.

What a way to end the year!

Tracklist:

Side 1:

A1 Who Knows 9:34
A2 Machine Gun 12:38

Side 2:

B1        Changes - Written by B. Miles* 5:11
B2        Power To Love    6:55
B3        Message Of Love    5:24
B4        We Gotta Live Together, written by B. Miles* 5:51

Companies, etc.

    Manufactured By – Capitol Records, Inc.
    Mastered At – Sterling Sound
    Published By – Bella Godiva Music, Inc.
    Published By – Miles Ahead Music Inc.

Credits:

    Design – Victor Kahn (2), Victor Kahn (2)
    Lacquer Cut By – RL*, LH*
    Performer – Billy Cox, Buddy Miles, Jimi Hendrix
    Photography By – Jan Blom (2)
    Producer – Heaven Research
    Recorded By [Live] – Wally Heider
    Supervised By [Remixing & Engineering Supervision] – Eddie Kramer
    Written-By – B. Miles* (tracks: B1, B4), J. Hendrix* (tracks: A1, A2, B2, B3)

Notes:

Recorded Live-New Year's Eve 69-70 At Fillmore East New York City
Green Capitol labels. Labels with Capitol™, not Capitol ® as shown on other green labels.

Barcode and Other Identifiers

    Matrix / Runout (Side A runout (Variant 1)): STAO-1-472-A Z5#1 LH Sterling RL
    Matrix / Runout (Side B runout (Variant 1)): STAO-2-472-B Z5#1 LH Sterling RL
    Matrix / Runout (Side A runout (Variant 2) ): STAO-1-472 X1#1 STERLING RL
    Matrix / Runout (Side B runout (Variant 2)): STAO-2-472 X1#1 STERLING RL
    Matrix / Runout (Side A label): STAO 1-472
    Matrix / Runout (Side B label): STAO 2-472
    Rights Society: ASCAP
    Matrix / Runout (Side 1 (Variant 3)): STAO-1-472 X1#2 STERLING RL 0
    Matrix / Runout (Side 2 (Variant 3)): STAO-2-472 X1#3 STERLING RL 0

Jimi Hendrix* – Band Of Gypsys
Label:    Capitol Records – STAO-472
Format:    Vinyl, LP, Album, Gatefold
Country:    US
Released:    1970
Genre:    Rock
Style:    Blues Rock, Psychedelic Rock

Viewfinder links:

John Coltrane

Billy Cox

Miles Davis

Jimi Hendrix

Buddy Miles

Net links:

YouTube links:

Changes

Machine Gun

Message Of Love

Power To Love

We Gotta Live Together

Who Knows

Styrous® ~ Saturday, December 31, 2022

20,000 Vinyl LPs Archive
MAIN MENU - Blog Articles
~

November 18, 2021

Bruce Conner ~ photographer & so much more

Bruce Conner
date & photographer unknown

Bruce Conner was an American artist who was born in McPherson, Kansas, on November 18, 1933; he worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography. I could have put him in any of those categories but it is his photography that I love, so, here he is.

In 1959, Conner founded what he called the Rat Bastard Protective Association. Its members included Jay DeFeo, Michael McClure (with whom Conner attended school in Wichita), Manuel Neri, Joan Brown, Wally Hedrick, Wallace Berman, Jess Collins, Carlos Villa and George Herms. Conner coined the name as a play on 'Scavengers Protective Society'.

He and his wife were living in Massachusetts in 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Conner filmed the television coverage of the event and edited and re-edited the footage with stock footage into another meditation on violence which he titled Report. The film was issued several times as it was re-edited.

He was an active force in the San Francisco counterculture of the mid-1960s as a collaborator in light shows at the legendary Family Dog at the Avalon Ballroom. He also made a number of short films in the mid-1960s in addition to Report and Vivian. These include Ten Second Film (1965), an advertisement for the New York Film Festival that was rejected as being "too fast;" Breakaway (1966), featuring music sung by and danced to by Toni Basil . . .

Bruce Conner ~ Breakaway - 1966
Toni Basil film still

. . . The White Rose (1967), documenting the removal of the magnum opus by fellow artist Jay DeFeo from her San Francisco apartment, with Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis as the soundtrack; and Looking for Mushrooms (1967), a three-minute color wild ride with Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles as the soundtrack. (In 1996 he created a longer version of the film, setting it to music by Terry Riley).

Conner was among the first to use pop music for film soundtracks. His films are now considered to be the precursors of the music video genre. They have inspired other filmmakers, such as Conner's friend Dennis Hopper, who said, “Bruce’s movies changed my entire concept of editing. In fact, much of the editing of Easy Rider came directly from watching Bruce’s films." In 1966, Hopper invited Conner to the location shoot for Cool Hand Luke which starred Paul Newman; the artist shot the proceedings in 8mm, revisiting this footage in 2004 to create his film Luke.

Conner photographed many of the punk bands in San Francisco. During the 1970s he focused on drawing and photography, including many photos of the late 1970s West Coast punk rock scene. His 1978 film used Mongoloid by Devo as a soundtrack.

The Bruce Conner papers are held by the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Conner's 1976 film short, Crossroads, was preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in conjunction with the Pacific Film Archive, in 1995. The film features 37 minutes of extreme slow-motion replays of the July 25, 1946, Operation Crossroads Baker underwater nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The event was captured for research purposes by five hundred cameras stationed on unmanned planes, high-altitude aircraft, boats near the blast, and from more distant points on land around the Atoll. The location was selected in part because the network of islands formed an almost complete ellipse around the detonation site, allowing for a comprehensive documentation of the event from numerous angles.

Bikini nuclear blast - July 25, 1946
photographer unknown

The documentary film featured music by electronic artist Patrick Gleeson and minimalist composer, Terry Riley.

Bruce Conner had twice announced his own death as a conceptual art event or prank; he died on Monday, July 7, 2008, of natural causes, the last survivor of the Bay Area Beat era art scene.

From 2016 to 2017, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art featured an exhibition of Conner's multimedia work entitled, It's All True, which was derived from a letter that the Conner wrote to his friend, collaborator and art collector, Paula Kirkeby, in 2000, listing the many ways he had been characterized in the media (link below).

Viewfinder links:

Toni Basil

all things Beatles

Bruce Conner

Miles Davis

Jay DeFeo

Devo

Patrick Gleeson

Dennis Hopper

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Michael McClure

Terry Riley

Net links:

Academia ~ Bruce Conner

The Brooklyn Rail ~ Tribute to Bruce Conner

Bruce Conner ~ Crossroads

KQED ~ Artist who Twice Declared Himself Dead

LA Times ~ Conner worked in assemblage, film, sculpture

The New Yorker ~ Bruce Conner’s Crusade of Reinvention

NY Times ~ Bruce Conner, SF Artist With 1950s Beat Roots dies

SF Gate ~ Prolific Beat era artist Bruce Conner dies

SFMOMA ~ It's All True

Smithsonian ~ Bruce Conner papers

University of Chicago ~ Bruce Conner’s thinking of you

YouTube links:

Atomcentral ~ Crossroads Baker

Bruce Conner -

Atomic bomb (edit)

Breakaway (documentary)

Mongoloid

A Movie (documentary)

It’s All True

Museum of Contemporary Art ~ Bruce Conner: Mongoloid documentary

Styrous® ~ Thursday, November 18, 2021

Photography

Photographers
MAIN MENU - Blog Articles

November 6, 2021

Adolphe Sax ~ The saxophone & other weird wonders

Trombone a six pistons - 1866

photo: Rama

Today is the birthday of Belgian inventor and musician, Adolphe Sax, who invented the saxophone, which bears his name. But he also invented many other strange brass instruments, most lost in the thrash bin of history only to be dredged up occasionally by special groups of musicians interested in strange instruments.

I saw some of his bizarre designs when I was in Vermillion in South Dakota. The University of South Dakota is home to the National Music Museum which has over 15,000 American, European, and non-Western instruments; it is one of the world's largest collections of music instruments.

Hector Berlioz discovered the instruments Sax was inventing at the time, fell in love with them and utilized them in his works. He liked the sound of brass instruments and used them in many of his works.

In 1844, Sax invented the Saxtromba which was designed for the mounted bands of the French military, probably as a substitute for the French horn. The saxotrombas comprised a family of half-tube instruments of different pitches. The name of the instrument combines Sax's surname with the Italian word for "trumpet" (tromba). By about 1867 the saxotromba was no longer being used by the French military.

Saxtromba soprano - 1844

~ ~ ~

The Saxhorn is a family of valved brass instruments (although at one point ten different sizes seem to have existed). Designed for band use, they are pitched alternately in E♭ and B♭, like the saxophone group. that have conical bores and deep cup-shaped mouthpieces.

Saxhorn - 1866

Modern saxhorns are still manufactured and in use. The B♭ soprano saxhorn is called a flugelhorn. Joe Bishop, a member of the Woody Herman band in 1936, was one of the earliest jazz musicians to use the flugelhorn. Shorty Rogers and Kenny Baker began playing it in the early fifties, and Clark Terry used it in the Duke Ellington orchestra in the mid-1950s. Chet Baker recorded several albums on the instrument in the 1950s and 1960s. Miles Davis popularized the instrument in jazz on the albums Miles Ahead and Sketches of Spain, (both arranged by Gil Evans). Sketches is my favorite album by Davis. Other prominent flugelhorn players include Freddie Hubbard, Tom Browne, Lee Morgan, Bill Dixon, Wilbur Harden, Art Farmer, Roy Hargrove, Randy Brecker, Hugh Masekela, Tony Guerrero, Jimmy Owens, Terumasa Hino, Woody Shaw, Guido Basso, Kenny Wheeler, Tom Harrell, Bill Coleman, Thad Jones, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Loughnane of the rock band Chicago, Mike Metheny, Harry Beckett, Ack van Rooyen and Maynard Ferguson. My favorite album by Ferguson is Conquistador released in 1977, I used the title song for the opening of the Obiko Art to Wear show, Tribal Visions, at the Fort Mason center in San Francisco in 1989 (link below).

Most jazz flugelhorn players use the instrument as an auxiliary to the trumpet, but in the 1970s Chuck Mangione gave up playing the trumpet and concentrated on the flugelhorn alone, notably on his jazz-pop hit song Feels So Good. Mangione, in an interview on ABC during the 1980 Winter Olympics, for which he wrote the theme Give It All You Got, referred to the flugelhorn as "the right baseball glove".

~ ~ ~

The bass saxhorn was built by Adolphe Sax in 1863. This instrument features several innovations by Sax, including his six independant valve system and a pavillon tournant, or moveable bell that can be adjusted by the player to direct the sound of the instrument. Sax’s system of six independent valves was devised to correct the intonation problems of typical three-valve instruments, which can sound out of tune when valves are used in combination. Sax made a wide range of instruments with this system, including saxhorns, trombones, trumpets, cornets and horns. Saxhorns like this were featured in the Banda, or stage band of the Paris Opéra that Sax formed and directed from 1847 to 1892.

Bass saxhorn - 1863

~ ~ ~

Sax’s system of six independent valves was devised to correct the intonation problems of typical three-valve instruments, which can sound out of tune when valves are used in combination. Valve trombones were useful in situations where using a slide was awkward, such as while marching or playing in a cramped orchestra pit.

Tenor valve Trombone with six pistons - 1866

The valve system used on this instrument is detailed in Sax’s 1859 patent (France, No. 39371). It is an ascending system, since the valves do not add extra tubing to the instrument’s length. Instead each of them isolates different amounts of the instrument’s total tubing. Each valve is to be used on its own and causes the instrument to sound a half-tone lower than the previous valve. Sax applied his six-valve independent system mostly to saxhorns and trombones.

Also detailed in the 1859 patent is the valve venting system seen on this trombone. Instead of having a vent hole in the bottom of each valve cap as is usual, the casing of each valve has an external tube for venting. This was designed to make the instrument more durable. It permits air to escape when the valve is depressed (like a typical perforated valve cap) but prevents dust from entering the casing.

Despite these innovations and the quality of their construction, Sax's six-valve instruments did not achieve lasting popularity. Players were reluctant to learn such a radically different fingering system and the instruments were much heavier to hold than conventional three-valve models.

~ ~ ~

Saxtuba is an obsolete valved brasswind instrument conceived by Sax around 1845. The design of the instrument was inspired by the ancient Roman cornu and Roman tuba.

Saxtuba -1867 Wood-engraving: Le Monde illustré

In the 1770s, the French artist Jacques-Louis David carried out extensive researches into the ancient Roman instruments that appeared on Trajan's Column in Rome. Two of these instruments – the straight Roman tuba and the curved cornu – were revived in Revolutionary France as the buccina and tuba curva. To devise the saxtubas Sax merely added valves to these natural instruments, thus providing them with chromatic compasses. Furthermore, he designed them in such a way that the valves were hidden from general view, thus giving the impression that the instruments were primitive natural trumpets only capable of playing notes from a single harmonic series.

~ ~ ~

And last, but certainly not least, is my favorite instrument for pop music, the alto saxophone, also referred to as the alto sax or simply the alto, is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Invented by Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846, it is pitched in E♭ and smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano. It is the most common saxophone and is commonly used in popular music, concert bands, chamber music, solo repertoire, military bands, marching bands, and jazz (such as big bands, jazz combos, swing music). The fingerings of the different saxophones are all the same so a saxophone player can play any type of saxophone.

Altsaxofon

photo by Mikael Bodner

The alto saxophone had a prominent role in the development of jazz. Influential jazz musicians who made significant contributions include Don Redman, Jimmy Dorsey, Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt, Lee Konitz, Jackie McLean, Phil Woods, Art Pepper, Paul Desmond, Cannonball Adderley and Stan Getz.

Of all the above mentioned jazz artists my very favorite is the Stan Getz 1977 recording of Another World. The title song is an extraordinary experimental sonic voyage (links below).

Stan Getz ~ Another World
cover photo by Guiseppe Pino

photo of album cover by Styrous®

In the pop realm, my all-time favorite is the 1979 album by Madness, One Step Beyond. The title song has an awsome (literally) sax played by Lee "Kix" Thompson to say nothing of their wacky and wonderful instrumental interpretation of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky (links below).

Madness ~ One Step Beyond

cover photo by Lee "Kix" Thompson

photo of album cover by Styrous®

~ ~ ~

In 1863, a saxophone solo, composed by Jean Baptiste Singelee, was commissioned and published by Sax himself. There is a recording of it (link below) played by Randy Emerick on an original Adolphe Sax baritone saxophone made in 1861 at Sax's first saxophone factory. The piece, Septieme Solo de Concert, would have been first played on an identical baritone saxophone.

The musicians are:
Randy Emerick, 1861 Adolphe Sax baritone saxophone
Richard Brookens, soprano saxophone
Neal Bonsanti, alto saxophone
Scott Klarman, tenor saxophone

In 1874, Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, composed a suite of ten pieces for piano entitled Pictures at an Exhibition. In 1922, Maurice Ravel arrenged it for full orchestra and utilized the beautiful sound of the saxophone at it's best (link below).

In 2015, Google celebrated the 201st birthday of Adolphe Sax with a series of Google Doodles created by Lydia Nichols that feature Sax with his various musical instruments.