pauln Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 So what happens when a couple of very musical and talented Canadian studio musicians decide to make a record (in the 70's)? You get Klaatu, and as they liked the Beatles, it sound a little like the Beatles, in fact, they did not identify themselves on the first three records (but did provide mysterious clues) so that a lot of folks thought it really was the Beatles back together... Although some of the music is quirkey and funny, a lot of it is absolutely gorgeous stuff - some of it will test your system too, that's a fact! So who has heard them and what do you think? The production quality is first rate, and they use a lot of different instruments - if you have not heard them, they are worth the listen. Should I say they are a little weird or should I let you find out for yourself? Pauln Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 I like Klattu..I couldn't believe it when I found an album I had reissued on CD! Yes, I remember when everyone thought it was the Beatles too! I never bought into that hype, but I did find their music interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted January 5, 2006 Author Share Posted January 5, 2006 I just listened to my two favorite Klaatu albums... (the first two) ...got to love that mouse squeak. One wonders where present music nowadays gets their influences. Seems to me that the old music was more open to suggestion... Pauln Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubai2000 Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 And I thought I was the only one liking them []. I got their first two (?) albums on vinyl (the one simply called 'Klaatu' and the other is called 'Sir Army Suit') and if ever I saw more on LP (how many LPs did they produce?) I'd get them. Wolfram Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djk Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 Anus of Uranus, He's a friend of mine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted January 5, 2006 Author Share Posted January 5, 2006 And I thought I was the only one liking them []. I got their first two (?) albums on vinyl (the one simply called 'Klaatu' and the other is called 'Sir Army Suit') and if ever I saw more on LP (how many LPs did they produce?) I'd get them. Wolfram I think Sir Army Suit is their third. The second is Hope, see http://www.klaatu.org/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubai2000 Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 Thanks for the link - now I know what I shall be looking for [Y]. Wolfram Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boom3 Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 Klaatu Barada Nikto I saw Patricia Neal (my fave actress) in New Orleans in 2003, performing onstage with Joel Eng in Capote's Christmas Story. I couldn't justify the 75 extra clams to go to the 'reception' where I might have had a chance (if I only had the noive) to ask her to utter that memorable line. Actually, I might have ask her for another memorable utterance from 1965s' In Harms Way: "I'm not a lady, Rock!" said to the John Wayne character. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 I just listened to my two favorite Klaatu albums... (the first two) ...got to love that mouse squeak. One wonders where present music nowadays gets their influences. Seems to me that the old music was more open to suggestion... Pauln A lot of present day music get their influences from late 70's punk and even 60's stuff that is basically a reaction to over mixed/processed (to them) studio work. The idea is to get back to the rawness that made rock great in the first place. When I subjected my son to ELP and Yes he remarked that now he understood why punk happened. It represents a returning to the guy on the street from the virtuoso musicians of prog rock. I'm not sure I like it but I do appreciate where it comes from. A case in point is that the Beatles stopped performing live because their latest stuff was so studio enhanced (among other reasons I'm sure). _______________________________________________________________ The original harm's way: "I will not have anything to do with a ship that is not fast because I intend to go in harm's way." John Paul Jones Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted January 5, 2006 Author Share Posted January 5, 2006 Its funny, Klaatu is full of weird and delightful surprises. Don't take them to seriously. On the link there is a place where you can read about the individual songs and the techniques utilized - like using a portable radio as the lead guitar amp, a pickle jar of coins as a percussion instrument, discovering that a song on the first album has lyrics that make sense played backwords and using it backwards on the third album as another song, playing a piano with thumb tacks stuck on the hammers at half speed to get a full speed harpsichord sound... they were experimenting. I also noticed that the guy that did all the Rush albums was around helping them. Now as for Punk's origin, I think it was a hard reaction to Disco. My time frames below may be off a bit with a lot of overlapping of styles, but I have always thought that the recent progression of musical development has been a fairly downward course from musicians making music to non-musicians making non-music. Something like this... 1950s It was expected that any music was performed by musicians and singers that knew how to sing and play, albeit there was a creative and musical movement away from this being just the domain of the professionals. Lots of jazz influence in the mainstream. 1960s The Rock movement, which was based on a new instrumentation and more agressive approach to the blues (in America) and BBC (in England). It was still expected that singers could sing, and musicians could play their instruments, although the acceptable bounds were being stretched a bit. Lots of good stuff in this period. 1970s (early) Progressive Rock, a temporary reversion back to more virtuoso composition and performance while still continuing to explore instrumentation and formats. Lots of good stuff in this period. 1970s (late) Disco takes over and loud comercial drunken boomy bass is pronouced to be music to pick up women by. This is when I stopped buying popular music (because this is about when I think that they stopped making it) 1980s Punk becomes the antithesis of Disco by reverting to a primative approach to Rock-like music with little regard for production values - lots of poor execution of singing and playing 1990s (early) Punk matures and offshoots a more casual and slick 90's sound with a return to singing and playing instruments and catchy edgy tunes 1990s (middle) The Grunge movement seems to come from nowhere - slows everything down and takes a minimalist approach to heavy sound so even well executed tunes don't reveal whether these guys have talent or not. At its best, there are some novel and interesting things here done with new chord progressions, but there is also some confusion begining to build as to what makes up harmony and its relation to melody. Still, for musicians there was some good here. 1990s (late) The Buzz is born, a sort of punk grunge garage band slacker loser attitude sound in which it is clear that the musical composition and execution take second place to comercial driven catchy hooky riffs and lyrics. Expectation is diminishing that singers can sing and players can play. Lots of obvious mistakes in chord progressions (like confusion, ignorance, or just raw disregard concerning major, minor, and dominant seventh). Progressions sound like they were made up by someone without a sense of music. 2000s (early) Rap music, back to boomy bass with an attitude, now the 'singers' forgo attempting to sing and just speak or shout the lyrics, and the 'musicians' no long play instruments but do scratch patches and tape loops of peices of old songs and noise. The concept of chord progession is gone. Although this seems to be an attempt to make the reversion to non-music performed by non-musicians that cannot play or sing fully complete, there is something here that appeals - it may really be a unique and novel kind of musical form (but it sounds like it comes from Saturn or someplace!) - strangely, it becomes extremely popular and covers everything for a while (maybe still does?). 2000s (a little later) Hip Hop spawns from Rap and quite honestly I have no idea what is going on here. Like a teeny bopper form of Rap? 2000s (middle/now) HT movies and TV seem to be becoming a major source of music (some of it older, most of it sort of shlockey to fill dead space in TV and movies where the script writers seem to have stepped out for a coffee and a smoke). It now seems de rigor to list these tunes in the credits scrolling up for however many minutes it takes to list the dozens and dozens of them. Well, I did not intend to write a book when I started this - hope it does not read to much like a rant... there is no accounting for taste (especially mine!) Pauln Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 Its funny, Klaatu is full of weird and delightful surprises. Don't take them to seriously. On the link there is a place where you can read about the individual songs and the techniques utilized - like using a portable radio as the lead guitar amp, a pickle jar of coins as a percussion instrument, discovering that a song on the first album has lyrics that make sense played backwords and using it backwards on the third album as another song, playing a piano with thumb tacks stuck on the hammers at half speed to get a full speed harpsichord sound... they were experimenting. I also noticed that the guy that did all the Rush albums was around helping them. Now as for Punk's origin, I think it was a hard reaction to Disco. My time frames below may be off a bit with a lot of overlapping of styles, but I have always thought that the recent progression of musical development has been a fairly downward course from musicians making music to non-musicians making non-music. Something like this... 1950s It was expected that any music was performed by musicians and singers that knew how to sing and play, albeit there was a creative and musical movement away from this being just the domain of the professionals. Lots of jazz influence in the mainstream. 1960s The Rock movement, which was based on a new instrumentation and more agressive approach to the blues (in America) and BBC (in England). It was still expected that singers could sing, and musicians could play their instruments, although the acceptable bounds were being stretched a bit. Lots of good stuff in this period. 1970s (early) Progressive Rock, a temporary reversion back to more virtuoso composition and performance while still continuing to explore instrumentation and formats. Lots of good stuff in this period. 1970s (late) Disco takes over and loud comercial drunken boomy bass is pronouced to be music to pick up women by. This is when I stopped buying popular music (because this is about when I think that they stopped making it) 1980s Punk becomes the antithesis of Disco by reverting to a primative approach to Rock-like music with little regard for production values - lots of poor execution of singing and playing 1990s (early) Punk matures and offshoots a more casual and slick 90's sound with a return to singing and playing instruments and catchy edgy tunes 1990s (middle) The Grunge movement seems to come from nowhere - slows everything down and takes a minimalist approach to heavy sound so even well executed tunes don't reveal whether these guys have talent or not. At its best, there are some novel and interesting things here done with new chord progressions, but there is also some confusion begining to build as to what makes up harmony and its relation to melody. Still, for musicians there was some good here. 1990s (late) The Buzz is born, a sort of punk grunge garage band slacker loser attitude sound in which it is clear that the musical composition and execution take second place to comercial driven catchy hooky riffs and lyrics. Expectation is diminishing that singers can sing and players can play. Lots of obvious mistakes in chord progressions (like confusion, ignorance, or just raw disregard concerning major, minor, and dominant seventh). Progressions sound like they were made up by someone without a sense of music. 2000s (early) Rap music, back to boomy bass with an attitude, now the 'singers' forgo attempting to sing and just speak or shout the lyrics, and the 'musicians' no long play instruments but do scratch patches and tape loops of peices of old songs and noise. The concept of chord progession is gone. Although this seems to be an attempt to make the reversion to non-music performed by non-musicians that cannot play or sing fully complete, there is something here that appeals - it may really be a unique and novel kind of musical form (but it sounds like it comes from Saturn or someplace!) - strangely, it becomes extremely popular and covers everything for a while (maybe still does?). 2000s (a little later) Hip Hop spawns from Rap and quite honestly I have no idea what is going on here. Like a teeny bopper form of Rap? 2000s (middle/now) HT movies and TV seem to be becoming a major source of music (some of it older, most of it sort of shlockey to fill dead space in TV and movies where the script writers seem to have stepped out for a coffee and a smoke). It now seems de rigor to list these tunes in the credits scrolling up for however many minutes it takes to list the dozens and dozens of them. Well, I did not intend to write a book when I started this - hope it does not read to much like a rant... there is no accounting for taste (especially mine!) Pauln Not really a rant, just your version of history. The looping and scratching was started way before the end of the 90's though. Take MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" for example. A pure Rick James line with dancing and a one phrase lyric. Even before that there was "Just the two of us" which in its chord progression sounds a lot like 50 ways to leave your lover. Yeah disco sucked for rockers but punk was already gaining ground before disco became overbearing. Nice synopsis Pauln. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 Interestingly enough, the experiments you speak of are being toyed with by today's youngsters. So maybe Klaatu has had more influence on them than the Beatles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mighty Favog Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I've got a combo CD from them, Klaatu / Klaatu "Hope". I do vivdly remember "Calling Occupant (of interplanetary craft)" getting some airtime on the radio around here in the late 70's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted January 9, 2006 Author Share Posted January 9, 2006 I will say that I get the sense that the little Hulksters today have a wider range of aquaintance with the musical past, but its not deep. Think about TV - they know Barney Fife, Gilligan, Festus, Spock and the rest, but only incidentally, not through actually watching the shows while going up. LP sides vs individual songs kind of thing... I am glad to hear they are continuing to experiment - something has to change or I may never buy another piece of popular music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted January 9, 2006 Author Share Posted January 9, 2006 I've got a combo CD from them, Klaatu / Klaatu "Hope". I do vivdly remember "Calling Occupant (of interplanetary craft)" getting some airtime on the radio around here in the late 70's. Karen Carpenter did a cover of Calling Occupants... http://www.richardandkarencarpenter.com/SN_CallingOccupantsOfInterplanetaryCraft.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myhamish Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I've still got most of Klaatu's stuff on LP around here somewhere. On one of their albums, they did a track called 'Little Neutrino' - a spacey thing with vocals run through a synth. This track had some bass explosions at the end that could rip the average woofer into little shreds of black paper (back before sub-woofer days). Klaatu was made up of a couple of members from the Canadian band 'Lighthouse' from the early '70's. 'Lighthouse' did well in Canada with a couple of hits 'One Fine Morning' and had a real rocking version of the Byrds '8 Miles High'. (still wonder if there was some deep subliminal reference to pharmaceutical spelunking in that tune). Speaking of vintage Canadian bands, anybody ever hear of 'The Collectors' from Vancouver? They eventually morphed into 'Chilliwack' but the Collectors were quite unique again. Hamish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted January 9, 2006 Author Share Posted January 9, 2006 I've still got most of Klaatu's stuff on LP around here somewhere. On one of their albums, they did a track called 'Little Neutrino' - a spacey thing with vocals run through a synth. This track had some bass explosions at the end that could rip the average woofer into little shreds of black paper (back before sub-woofer days). Klaatu was made up of a couple of members from the Canadian band 'Lighthouse' from the early '70's. 'Lighthouse' did well in Canada with a couple of hits 'One Fine Morning' and had a real rocking version of the Byrds '8 Miles High'. (still wonder if there was some deep subliminal reference to pharmaceutical spelunking in that tune). Speaking of vintage Canadian bands, anybody ever hear of 'The Collectors' from Vancouver? They eventually morphed into 'Chilliwack' but the Collectors were quite unique again. Hamish Yeah, they're really not explosions though, they are the little Neutrino ripping through you! It is the strangest effect - sounds like reality is being torn open... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted January 10, 2006 Author Share Posted January 10, 2006 http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/10/060110164416.p4z0rnx6.html What is happening to music... and its listeners. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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