The N&G Listening Club V1 - Archive only

Mr Moore said:
I gathered! There was so much venom in your original comment. He seems so harmless to me so it made me laugh my bollocks off to see such anger aimed his way and I totally got it. He DOES inject himself into everything on that show.
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He's also the worst interviewer ever. He annoys me mostly because he ruins what should be an excellent TV show.
 
MadLucas said:
QUESTION:
I have found several mono issuings of this recently, but I am wondering how mono translates with all the stereo panning happening on track one. Can anyone speak from experience with mono vs. stereo of this album?
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I have the recent mono Jackpot reissue that was remastered by KG and cut at RTI. It’s sounds really good, but it is definitely is lacking the stereo effects when I compared it against the stereo stream. I don’t mind, as I find lots of those early stereo recordings quite jarring, but if you want the album to have full psychedelic appeal best hunt down the Speakers Corner stereo reissue...if you just want a great sounding record I really enjoy the Jackpot mono.
 
Just saved it offline on spotify. I’m excited to spend time with this tomorrow.

I’ve actually spent very little time with Dr John despite living in southeast Louisiana my entire life. I did get to see him live a few years ago for free when he headlined the Baton Rouge Blues Fest. his age was extremely obvious in his lack of performance energy, but the tightness of his band and his whole vibe ruled.
 
Dr. John, The Night Tripper - Gris Gris (Speakers Corner Records, ATCO SD 33-234, Germany, 2018 reissue)

CD396F86-A73F-4C87-8C7D-217C690BE420.jpeg

Loving the inspiration to pull this one out again, cheers @syngts!

What can be said about this? It’s hard to pigeonhole Dr. John into a style or genre. It’s blues, it’s jazz, it’s New Orleans funk by way of Afro-Caribbean influences but mainly, it’s Dr. John. The man is his own style.

I’ve been lucky enough to see the good Dr at both Tipitina’s in NO and here in London at Hammersmith. He never fails to put on a great show. At the London gig he came from behind his piano and started dancing to the jam and at one point he did this incredible squat move that a man of his age and girth had no right to pull off. You could almost feel the crowd gasp in a collective ‘is he gonna get up from that?’ but boy did he, all to casually return to his keys and continue playing. What an absolute dude. If I had a top hat I’d wear it just to doff it to him.

EDIT: And I love just how visceral at times this record is. Who needs lyrics when you can just spit 'Ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom'? Genius.
 
ChristoBee said:
I'm a bit sad my pick from the previous forum got axed by the burning of the place. :cry:

I tried many time to connect with Gris-Gris, because it should be something I dig, but never achieved to really have the strenght to keep on listening. Maybe I'll try again.
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Sorry about that. Did you have the last pick? (Her?) Somehow it wasn't on the last list I had made before the forum went down.
 
MadLucas said:
You know, I regrettably had never checked out this album (or Dr. John) before today.

First impressions:

1. Loving the African rhythms. I recognize these from a lot of Ghana music on track 2 in particular, would love to know how close or far off I am with that assessment.
2. I am seriously wondering how much time Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, or Arthur Brown spent with this album. I am hearing a lot of "borrowed" elements that I am legitimately wondering if came from here or from similar musical listening to what Dr. John was checking out.

Again, I plead ignorance to this artist and album so if I'm wayyyyyy off, please point me in the right direction :)

QUESTION:
I have found several mono issuings of this recently, but I am wondering how mono translates with all the stereo panning happening on track one. Can anyone speak from experience with mono vs. stereo of this album?
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The more I listen to him, the more Tom Waits I find as well. I'm not sure how I feel about this..
And it's very interesting, since he (Dr. John) didn't seem that much of an experimentalist before this. He mainly did R&B arrangements and piano sessions and said this about working with Frank Zappa (taken from the article I linked here):

“Frank had written me this part to play, five or six notes on the piano over and over – not much different than Sonny and Cher. In the background a twenty-voice choir croaked out monster sound effects, something like ‘Gggrrrrrrhhhhrrr!’ When I had had about all I could take I asked Les McCann to hold down my chair, telling him I had to go to the bathroom. I walked out of there and never came back.”

That's what makes me think this album is more than music. He wasn't trying to only be provocative and experimental just for the sake of standing out, or otherwise just recording an album to get fame and money. I think this was more of a spiritual and passionate undertaking. Not something you really see anymore nowadays..
 
What I Liked:
The length. It's basically perfect. We get a full feel for the vibe, songs set a groove and end without trying to draw out some trance state or something. Just when I thought I couldn't take another song espousing gris gris it ended (and the final song is the best imho).

The ambiance. It's like a live take with most of the Dr.'s vocals and several accompaniments. Clearly there are some studio loops being used but the overall mix is slightly off kilter throughout. Occasionally the bass is either too present or not present enough but everything else seems to find a spacious hole to live in without seeming overly layered which is often typical of psychedelia and other tribal/chant sorts of things.

What was just OK:
The subject matter. Except for the final song I never really felt tripped out or like there was a spell being cast which I do believe was the intention behind the production. The music itself supported the theme quite well but the lyrics and their execution, while not bad, was nothing in line with say Jim Morrison (a more musical style) or maybe Buddy Guy (a more spoken word style). I really got the impression a live performance would better lend the emtion behind the voice that just didn't carry so well into the recording.

What I didn't care for:
The vocal enunciation/mix. I felt like I needed a lyric sheet in front of me most of the time. I get some of this is probably african or creole but there were plenty of times I was certain it was plain english and I still didn't know what the hell they were saying despite it being repeated ad nauseum. I had this issue with both the lead vocals and the supporting ones.

The stereo effects. While this may have contributed to some of the ambiance I did so like, I felt it often detracted from the cohesive whole. It feels like the early efforts at quadraphonic production where it is being done strictly for effect and not with artistic genius. I will do another listen on headphones and use the mono mix.

Overall score: A minus. It's a solid pick that introduced me to a new artist (I had heard of him but never heard an album of his). The style and the set are absolutely superb and any serious collector of 60's psychedelic sounds would have to consider this essential. I feel the album does suffer from production woes that if executed slightly better would have pushed this to an A+ quite easily.
 
Mr Moore said:
Dr. John, The Night Tripper - Gris Gris (Speakers Corner Records, ATCO SD 33-234, Germany, 2018 reissue)

View attachment 1324

Loving the inspiration to pull this one out again, cheers @syngts!

What can be said about this? It’s hard to pigeonhole Dr. John into a style or genre. It’s blues, it’s jazz, it’s New Orleans funk by way of Afro-Caribbean influences but mainly, it’s Dr. John. The man is his own style.

I’ve been lucky enough to see the good Dr at both Tipitina’s in NO and here in London at Hammersmith. He never fails to put on a great show. At the London gig he came from behind his piano and started dancing to the jam and at one point he did this incredible squat move that a man of his age and girth had no right to pull off. You could almost feel the crowd gasp in a collective ‘is he gonna get up from that?’ but boy did he, all to casually return to his keys and continue playing. What an absolute dude. If I had a top hat I’d wear it just to doff it to him.

EDIT: And I love just how visceral at times this record is. Who needs lyrics when you can just spit 'Ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom'? Genius.
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what a cool story!

I think I'll forever have to live with these three musical regrets of mine, that I'll never get to see Tom Waits, Dr. John or Jim Morrison live in concert..
 
syngts said:
Ladies and gentlemen, it's an honor to put this thing in motion.


And for the first N+G Listening Club record we'll put time in motion as well as we go back to 1967.
It's an year in which time itself is very shifty -- there's lots of Eddies in the space-time continuum.

The Beatles have just projected the psychedelic-fueled hippie era into the absolute mainstream with the release of Sgt. Pepper, practically breathing the same air for several months as Syd Barret and co. down at Abbey Road Studios in London. 3 months later, they put out their deliciously-psychedelic debut, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It's not a hot take to say this period was a peak of human artistic creativity.

The artist behind our record however was tasting a different kind of air; he was actually on the doorstep of the place this whole movement called Home. Across the pond and across the continent, not only a creative but also a climatic hotbed was giving life to Los Angeles. You had icons like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and Love, all creating some of their best works; Frank Sinatra was just awarded 5 Grammies in a local ceremony, and Sony & Cher were filming their musical thriller comedy Good Times. But while they were busy with that nonsense, one of their session players, a very talented pianist/guitarist, took advantage of the free studio time the duo's work thankfully created to lay down a more natural and grounded concept...only not in the way you might think.

Inspired by Haitian Voodoo books his sister thought fitting to serve as gifts, Mac Rebennack managed to conjure to life one the few soundscapes truly worthy of the psychedelic title. For while many other works claiming this label could be seen as coming from an escapist drug affair of a western society completely forsaken by any sort of spiritual connection with the land and world it inhabited, this was supposed to be different. Think more Cortes' & Ramahlo's Paebiru than Are You Experienced. More Jim Morrison's Oedipus relentlessly chasing down his father on The End than Grace Slick's Alice tripping down the hole on White Rabbit. And for its daringness, it didn't go unnoticed -- ripples of it carry all the way to Bone Machine era Tom Waits (supposedly, he was so enchanted by the album he drafted Mac's producer Harold Battiste to work on his last two Asylum albums -- just before he as well went off the beaten path with Swordfishtrombones).

This is to be listened at night. Put your kids to sleep. Feed the dogs and let them outside. Cats will probably love it.
It is a smoky affair, instruments and voices permeating from all possible angles as if from a swampy ceremonial gathering just outside the planes of this realm, sometimes far away, sometimes really close, at all times unreachable. So put this on. Light something up -- a candle at the least. And let Mac Rebennack's words take you away:

“To you whom I may communicate with shortly through the smoke of Deaux-Deaux the rattlesnake whose forked tongue hisses pig Latin in silk and satin da-zaw-ig-day, may the gilded splinters of Auntie Andre spew forth in your path to light and guide your way through the bayous of life.” ​
– Dr John
​
Gris-Gris, by Dr. John, The Night Tripper
View attachment 1120
Spotify • iTunes • Youtube​
Click to expand...
WONDERFUL pick! Dr. John is such an underrated artist IMO and this is among his best albums.

Well played!
 
syngts said:
Ladies and gentlemen, it's an honor to put this thing in motion.


And for the first N+G Listening Club record we'll put time in motion as well as we go back to 1967.
It's an year in which time itself is very shifty -- there's lots of Eddies in the space-time continuum.

The Beatles have just projected the psychedelic-fueled hippie era into the absolute mainstream with the release of Sgt. Pepper, practically breathing the same air for several months as Syd Barret and co. down at Abbey Road Studios in London. 3 months later, they put out their deliciously-psychedelic debut, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It's not a hot take to say this period was a peak of human artistic creativity.

The artist behind our record however was tasting a different kind of air; he was actually on the doorstep of the place this whole movement called Home. Across the pond and across the continent, not only a creative but also a climatic hotbed was giving life to Los Angeles. You had icons like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and Love, all creating some of their best works; Frank Sinatra was just awarded 5 Grammies in a local ceremony, and Sony & Cher were filming their musical thriller comedy Good Times. But while they were busy with that nonsense, one of their session players, a very talented pianist/guitarist, took advantage of the free studio time the duo's work thankfully created to lay down a more natural and grounded concept...only not in the way you might think.

Inspired by Haitian Voodoo books his sister thought fitting to serve as gifts, Mac Rebennack managed to conjure to life one the few soundscapes truly worthy of the psychedelic title. For while many other works claiming this label could be seen as coming from an escapist drug affair of a western society completely forsaken by any sort of spiritual connection with the land and world it inhabited, this was supposed to be different. Think more Cortes' & Ramahlo's Paebiru than Are You Experienced. More Jim Morrison's Oedipus relentlessly chasing down his father on The End than Grace Slick's Alice tripping down the hole on White Rabbit. And for its daringness, it didn't go unnoticed -- ripples of it carry all the way to Bone Machine era Tom Waits (supposedly, he was so enchanted by the album he drafted Mac's producer Harold Battiste to work on his last two Asylum albums -- just before he as well went off the beaten path with Swordfishtrombones).

This is to be listened at night. Put your kids to sleep. Feed the dogs and let them outside. Cats will probably love it.
It is a smoky affair, instruments and voices permeating from all possible angles as if from a swampy ceremonial gathering just outside the planes of this realm, sometimes far away, sometimes really close, at all times unreachable. So put this on. Light something up -- a candle at the least. And let Mac Rebennack's words take you away:

“To you whom I may communicate with shortly through the smoke of Deaux-Deaux the rattlesnake whose forked tongue hisses pig Latin in silk and satin da-zaw-ig-day, may the gilded splinters of Auntie Andre spew forth in your path to light and guide your way through the bayous of life.” ​
– Dr John
​
Gris-Gris, by Dr. John, The Night Tripper
View attachment 1120
Spotify • iTunes • Youtube​
Click to expand...
You really set the bar high with this write up! I better start drafting what I want to say so I'm ready when my name gets called.
 
While many people may say "Right Place Wrong Time" was the Dr. John song they knew or listened to a lot, my first, and most repeated listening with him was off of Harry Connick Jr's "20" (1988) album. (In my youth, I was a huge jazz vocal lover). He dueted with Harry on a very chill rendition of "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans". I never really dove into his catalog, so Gris-Gris was a great listen last night. "I Walk on Guilded Splinters" was my favorite track, with "Mama Roux" and "Croker Courtbullion" not far behind. Will be enjoying a few more listens to this over the week - great pick!
 
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