Jimmy Reed and Elmore James, Guitar Terrorists

Last Days of May leader Karl Precoda is smart. Thus he will never attain mass popularity, nor will he win over the aging ex-college radio DJs who worshipped at the altar of the Dream Syndicate, the band in which he played throughout the early to mid-80s. Precoda's excessive, overdriven chord washes defined the L.A. band's most vital material, including their classic The Days of Wine and Roses. When he left, frontman Steve Wynn traded raw-nerved neo-psychedelia for worthless, trad-influenced cow-punk.

Having resurfaced in Virginia more than a decade later, Precoda refuses to soften or compromise, ignoring both trends and former fan bases. The Last Days of May do not cater to "mature" people who have shelved their Dream Syndicate, Hüsker Dü and Soft Boys albums to accept the vile adult solo outputs of has-beens like Wynn, Bob Mould and Robyn Hitchcock. Unlike many of his former left-of-the-dial peers, Precoda doesn't fancy himself an "alternative" singer/songwriter. His appeal to traditionalists is limited. He doesn't give a rat's ass about songs; he's a technician, an analog scientist and a musician's musician. The Last Days of May's loose, all-instrumental, live-in-the-studio jams make the wildest Dream Syndicate trips sound like Poco.

Despite his penchant for free-form wanderings, Precoda is not a jazzbo convert?although the phrase "radiant black mind" does resemble the title of some long-lost nugget on ESP?nor is he one of those ambient fools acclaimed by The Wire and the postrock generation. He believes in the power, the expressiveness and the emotional depth of real rock, though he seeks to dismantle the form's cliches. Radiant Black Mind is an experimental, improvisational and somewhat meditative endeavor, but it never sacrifices physicality for evocativeness. This follow-up to the Last Days of May's overlooked, 1997 debut locates the intersection of sprawling, THC-stoked heaviness and sooty, textual pitter-patter. But even when the going gets obtuse and placid, bassist Thomas Howard and drummer James Ralston exhibit an understanding of the fundamentals of rhythmic weight and motion. Don't be misled by the quiet subtlety of eerie tracks like "ECG 102A" and the opening "The Mezz"; the Last Days of May create meandering body music that uses artful restraint and avant-garde noise to tilt the axis of thoroughly tangible, unself-conscious acid rock. Yes, hippie, those might be bongos you hear on the juicy, wah-wah-propelled "Up from the Equator."

Sometimes the stuff can fade into the background and come off as aimless, even tedious and snoozy. But Radiant Black Mind's running time is a gracious 47 minutes, which means it won't drone on and on to the point of exhausting your dinner guests. At the very least you'll have no trouble basking in the rich megawatt hum of Precoda's amp and instrument. His solos and his lovingly deployed, percussive creaks skate atop supernatural shivers of feedback; his alternately clean and crackly phrases are both sensitive and robust, leaving a vapor trail of reverb and tremolo that fills wide open spaces with high- and low-end heat lightning. When his noodlings slowly coalesce and crest into eternity on the epic, awesome "Apollo Cabinfire," he can communicate pure, radiant energy. His musings are far less alien than the similarly intended gnarl of out-guitar heroes Caspar Brötzmann and Elliott Sharp. You may need to alter your reality or think really hard in order to fully digest Radiant Black Mind, but you certainly won't need any artificial stimulants or theory classes to appreciate Precoda's bold stylistic intentions.

Jordan N. Mamone

The Very Best of Jimmy Reed The Very Best of Elmore James (Rhino)

In the electric guitar's infancy, there were two schools of fretboard assault: one was the slow, torturous quaver of Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker; the other was the slick, smooth stylizations of Kings Freddie and the Beeb. Somewhere between the two you had the terrorists whom I consider the actual founders of sonic cool: Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and these two surly guys. What these cats were laying down wasn't "blues," it was "rock 'n' roll," and it would be reiterated again and again for the next 20 years at least. Forget about Berry and Bo for now; for one thing, they've already been properly enshrined in that hollow Hall of Shame out in Cleveland (as if residing in a mausoleum next to a bust of Billy Joel is any particular kind of "honor"). But make no mistake: Jimmy Reed and Elmore James were every bit as important as those two Chess-men.

A quick listen to these latest volumes from Rhino tells the tale. For one thing, like Chuck and Bo, Reed and Elmo were masters of repetition?virtually every song they ever did sounds almost exactly the same (or at least "elements" thereof did). Reed's style was kind of a Mississippi mudslide, like sludge rolling down a hill, a laconic shuffle that nevertheless continued to build momentum throughout each stanza of each song's three-minute duration until it reached the point of obsolescence. At which point he had no option other than to just do it again. And he did, ad infinitum. As this collection proves, Reed was nothing if not consistent. Too drunk ever to profit from his own innovations, he'd have to wait a decade or so until he was reincarnated in all the Brit bands he'd influenced; the Stones covered "Honest I Do" on their first LP and plundered his basic riff structure for "Little By Little." The Yardbirds, meanwhile, bastardized "I Ain't Got You." However, Reed's legacy could also be heard in the work of such lesser-known (at least at the time) phenoms as the Pretty Things (whose "I Can Never Say" was a complete Reed ripoff) and the Velvet Underground (who were definitely influenced by the raw prickly sound of his hollow-bodied picking). Did I mention the Animals? They copped more than their share of Mr. Reed's licks as well.

If Jimmy Reed was repetitious, Elmore James was motionless. Once in a while, on, say, a "Madison Blues" or "Hawaiian Boogie" (a "novelty" song not unlike Chuck Berry's similar album filler from around the same time), he'd invent a new way to basically say the same thing. But for the most part, he just plowed ahead with his trademark lick, not so much as if it were the only one he knew how to play, but as if it were the only one he could be bothered to play. Like the Ramones, I guess he figured that if you can't say it all with one immortal gesture, then why bother? Perhaps the fault of subsequent rockers, after all, is that they ultimately tried to float too far from the ever-grounding center.

In any event, if you doubt the man's vision, a quick listen to "Midnight Rambler" by the Stones or "Revolution" by the Beatles or the Yardbirds' "Nazz are Blue" or anything by the Peter Green Fleetwood Mac tells the tale: Elmo James was as essential to the birth process of rock 'n' roll as Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Fats Domino. He died drunk in 1964, his legacy scattered amongst at least a dozen different labels. Rhino's done an admirable job of piecing it together. Bravo, can't wait for the next installments of this series, reputedly Lightnin' Hopkins and Freddy King.

Joe S. Harrington

Friends & Relatives Yes (east west)

Four questions for Yes.       1) Why are you so scary? All those bird sounds and synthetic electronic noises you throw in at the start of the live version of "Close to the Edge" scared the dog so badly he's refusing to come in now, even though it's pouring rain. He doesn't understand the concept of "noodles and jam" and, thinking on it now, neither do I.

2) How can you be so self-indulgent and get away with it? Taken as one, these two CDs last as long as The Talented Mr. Ripley (which was pushing it, itself). At least 100 of the 140 minutes here are filled with the same twiddly electronic noises that scared the dog. The 22-minute-long "Journey" toward the end of CD2 is possibly the most convoluted, pretentious piece of "music" I've heard since the last Beck album. Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds" was like this?but that told a story, too.

3) Is Rick Wakeman still the craziest man on Earth? From the credits on "No Expense Spared," it appears so. Wakeman with Wakeman. Whoa! Talk about your split personalities... No wonder the dog has taken to cowering under the lemon tree.

4) Why do you exist? It was bad enough that Yes inspired a whole generation of mullets to come out and breathe the fresh air with "Owner of a Lonely Heart." But have you actually listened to any of Tales from Topographic Oceans?

The dog is howling piteously now. Sorry, dog.

Everett True

Grind It! Roosevelt Sykes/ Victoria Spivey (Total Energy)

Down in New Orleans, "Big Chief" John Sinclair has been cranking out a series of releases, including MC5 outtakes and live cuts, his own work with the Blues Scholars and performances from the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festivals he coproduced in the early 70s, on the Alive!/Total Energy imprints. His latest production spotlights a couple of astonishing sets recorded at the 1973 Ann Arbor fiesta by two of the giants of the first blues boom, which, most likely coincidentally, preceded the Great Depression.

Roosevelt Sykes, whose stately piano stylings earned him the sobriquet the Honey Dripper, opened the event displaying a characteristic combination of wit, charm and incredible musical talent. The seven songs collected here show Sykes to have been in full command of his blazing blues/boogie technique, with his voice showing remarkable strength and range for a man who was then approaching 70. Pulling the bellowing bluesniki of the greater Detroit metro area firmly into his pocket, Sykes barrels through a few of his big hits, like "Driving Wheel" and "Night Time Is the Right Time," before acrobatically charging, without accompaniment and without a net, through "Run this Boogie." His lowdown moaning version of the Cab Calloway signature piece "St. James Infirmary" and his ribald ramble through the outrageous "Dirty Mother for You" allow Sykes to shower the audience with more of his singular brand of sticky sweet stuff.

Queen Victoria Spivey (pronounced spivvy) hits the boards to register her dissatisfaction with a certain "black snake," reprising her 1926 recorded debut, "Black Snake Blues." Backed by the Brooklyn Blues Busters, described in the liner notes by Sinclair as "a crack band of Italian and Jewish homeboys," Spivey rolls through an appealing, often buoyant, six-song set. During the elegant "Organ Grinder Blues," she and the band find their respective pockets and count what's in them, coming together into a fist of tough blues. They maintain that edge, forcing their way into your face during the two closers, the hip-rolling "I'm Tired" and the transcendent encore, "Brooklyn Bridge Blues." Maybe it's not cool to dwell on the last century, but music this pure and real will have you running to the oven to see if something's burning.

(Alive!/Total Energy Records, POB 7112, Burbank, CA 91510)

Don Gilbert

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