Straight up share today.
https://postpunkmonk.com/2023/05/10/jerry-harrisons-the-red-the-black-is-finally-back-in-print-in-deluxe-2xlp-expanded-package-ive-been-waiting-42-years-for/
Jerry Harrison’s “The Red + The Black” Is Finally Back In Print In Deluxe 2xLP Expanded Package I’ve Been Waiting 42 Years For [part 1]
Jerry Harrison: The Red + The Black [Expanded Edition] – US – 2xLP [2023]
Disc 1 [red vinyl]
- Things Fall Apart 4:57
- Slink 4:20
- The New Adventure 5:05
- Magic Hymie 4:48
- Fast Karma / No Questions 3:55
- Worlds In Collision 5:09
- The Red Nights 4:57
- No More Reruns 4:21
- No Warning, No Alarm 3:35
Disc 2 [black vinyl]
- Things Fall Apart (Instrumental Mix) 4:22
- Slink (Instrumental Mix) 8:55
- Fast Karma / No Questions (Instrumental Mix) 3:55
- Magic Hymie (Instrumental Mix) 4:01
- No More Reruns (Instrumental Mix) 5:20
- Worlds In Collision (Instrumental Mix) 6:47
- The Red Nights (Instrumental Mix) 4:39
I’ve been waiting years to write this. I hope you’re sitting down as we’re going to be here a while. My relationship to this album goes right back to its beginnings. It was some time in the fall of 1981 when my good friend and musical sounding board chasinvictoria was living in Atlanta while I was in Orlando, and we swapped tape letters frequently until such time as we were once again living in the same city…about two years later. These were filled with chat and songs. Occasionally a full album deemed too important to miss. One of these tapes contained “The Red + The Black;” Jerry Harrison’s first solo project made during the downtime following the explosive “Remain in Light” album and tour that seemingly ended TVLKING HEVDS to all appearances.
I recall reading criticism at the time saying that this was strong music in the same Afro-Funk vein as “Remain In Light,” but that Harrison was no David Byrne. I didn’t hear a note of this music on college radio and there were no videos to see. Had chasinvictoria not send me a cassette of it, I might have been immune to its considerable gravitational pull for at least a decade. By the 90s, though, this was exactly the sort of album I would buy if I ran across on principle. And I bought a copy soon after exposure to the cassette I was sent. I treasured that album as I waited for the inevitable [I thought] CD of the title. But I didn’t risk disappointment. I held on to the LP even during the Great Vinyl Purge of 1985 that saw me trading off records willy-nilly that I one day planned to get on the silver disc; once they existed.
By the mid-90s, I still didn’t see any CD, so I held on to the LP with the notion that I would make my own CD in the coming era of CD burners I was anticipating for about eight years before it became reality. Meanwhile, the Internet happened, and one could read about lots of music one didn’t necessarily see in stores. It was perhaps 1998-1999 when I found out that there had been a “Red + The Black” CD made for the Japanese market. It was released in 1990 and even though that was exactly the time when I was buying a ton of Japanese CDs via catalogs like Sound City 2000, I never saw that title. But I eventually saw copies on sale on this new thing called eBay. They weren’t cheap; $80-100 was the norm.
It took me several tries where I was outbid, but eventually, I nabbed a Japanese copy [complete with obi!] for under $100. I think I might have paid $40-80 [I can’t remember exactly now] and was very pleased with finally getting a copy on the silver disc. Eventually, just a few years ago, I noticed that there was also a German CD of this title. To date, the only CDs of Harrison’s first solo album. While I was looking for the CD in the late 90s, by the time the new century rolled around, I was busy discovering the chronovore resource that is Discogs.com. It didn’t take me too long to start digging around for 12″ singles, promo remixes or indeed anything at all related to this album as auxiliary material from its campaign, but to my astonishment, there was only this single UK 7″ single below entered into the Discogs database.
JERRY HARRISON
Sire | UK | 7″ | 1981 | SIR 4053
- Things Fall Apart
- Worlds In Collision
This stunned me because much of the personnel of the Expanded Heads [Adrian Belew Bernie Worrell, Dolette MacDonald, Nona Hendryx, Steve Scales] carried over to this album from the “Remain In Light” tour. Little did I know at the time that Harrison first encountered Ms. MacDonald in his 1980 side project Escalators, built around Busta Jones. That EP fell between “Fear Of Music” and “Remain In Light” and at the same time he produced a European single for Nona Hendryx; “Love Is Like An itching In My Heart.”
NONA HENDRYX
Barclay | GER | 7″ | 1981 | 0036.052
- Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart
- X-Ray
Meanwhile, he became friends with the great Bernie Worrell. All of these musicians and more became invited to join the Expanded Heads lineup that performed the “Remain In Light” tour. In the aftermath, they were a perfect fit to bring the songs that Harrison had written between “Fear Of Music”‘ and “Remain in Light” [the latter was improvised in the studio] that found their way to “The Red + The Black.”
The new pressing was accompanied by something even better than a 12″ single; an almost full instrumental mix of the album. Before Record Store Day 2023, when this was unleashed to the world, details on exactly what the second disc entailed was thin on the ground. I was so desperate for more that even if these were straight instrumental versions, I would have been fine with that. Fortunately, Harrison and his right hand man, Eric Thorngren, made new remixes of seven of the nine tracks. Even the existing instrumental “The Red Nights” was given a new interpretation. And the album was re-sequenced to make an even better flow, in my view. I can hardly wait to review this but first there’s that immense album on disc one to contend with. Tomorrow.
Next: …Better Red Than Dead
https://postpunkmonk.com/2023/05/11/jerry-harrisons-the-red-the-black-is-finally-back-in-print-in-deluxe-2xlp-expanded-package-ive-been-waiting-42-years-for-part-2/
[…continued from last post]
The first song was densely packed with Latin rhythm right out of the gate with a 3-2 son clave rhythm abetted by marimba and congas before the keys and bass joined in to find the song snaking across the dance floor. The great George Murray had one of his finest post-David Bowie band bass performances on “The Red + The Black,” before he retired from music, on half of the songs here. Harrison didn’t wast time in in picking sidemen here with Yogi Horton completing the rhythm section on most of the tracks. Harrison’s performance of the lyric, examining a person who was part of a failed relationship, jabbed his vocal stresses on the off beats to syncopate with the dense rhythms.
After the first verse, Adrian Belew’s distorted, vacuum-cleaner-hose lead guitar writhed in anguish as the ladies of the BVs [Nona Hendryx, Dolette McDonald, Koko Mae Evans] managing to wring volumes out of simply repeating the words “falling all apart, breaking all the rules” three times. Nona Hendryx was the vocal arranger here and attained a co-production credit between herself with Harrison and Dave Jerden for good reason. An extended Belew solo in the middle eight took its turns with Harrison’s synth solo [sounding like something Worrell might have played] following through to be concluded by Harrison’s deadpan guitar making its point with an undercurrent of finality. “Things Fall Apart” was a good choice for the one single that we’ve seen yesterday was released in the UK from the album.
But maybe Sire missed out by not issuing the Reggae-adjacent “Slink” as a single here. TVLKING HEVDS picked the song to include in their “Speaking In Tongues” tour for good reason. The organ skank held the spotlight but the ladies of the BVs more than held their own; adding their sunlight to the most laid-back and casual of the songs on offer. One can really pick out the distinctive drawl of Ms. Hendryx out of the mix. Harrison made the right decision to add his sunny melodica to the track for an effervescent hook. For this cut only drummer John Cooksey [Salsoul Records, Ashford + Simpson] joined second bassist Tinker Barfield [M+M, Space Cadets] in bringing the vibe of the album as close as it came to the territory his bandmates in Tom Tom Club were exploring concurrently.
Have you ever been in a traffic jam?
“Slink”
Have you ever needed a gram?
heh heh…I have!
But I got over it,
un huh… I got over it
Then the album shifted up to high intensity with “The New Adventure;” with what sounded like Belew guitar harmonics standing in for a forest full of howler monkeys as the fevered track soon erupted into a seething miasma of percussion, with Steve Scales [Tom Tom Club] multiplexing güiro, claves, and cabasa for a scorching intensity. Its lurching rhythms circling to maintain tension without ever daring to release it. The deep bass here was Harrison on synth; braying like a hippopotamus, and the only melody was down to the backing vocals as the palpable sense of heat and dread made a tropical hell of the track with the perpendicular stabs of the lead synth attacking minimally. A finer setting for the lyric I could not imagine as the future of America seemed to manifest in the song’s vibe.
Get ready for the new rage,
“The New Adventure”
Get ready for America’s new day
Get ready and get out of the way
As taut as the last song had been, the album reached a fevered peak at the end of side one. “Magic Hymie” was a the only co-write here; credited to Hendryx and Worrell as well. George Murray’s bass engaged in call and response with Bernie Worrell’s warbling synths in the deceptive intro as the the deepfunk drums and clavinet kicked in and the track burst into metaphoric flames. Harrison employed gales of intense laughter, mixed low throughout the track, as the kind of tension release hook that the last song had us begging for but were only given a deferred delivery of in this next track.
Astringent squirts of Moog synth bass were liberally applied by Worrell here; creating a jam to sit next to the best of P-Funk while the backing vocals wove a further polyphony into the massive track. Harrison sounded like he used an Eventide Harmonizer to distort the pitch on his vocals; all dealing with the release of great anxiety through unforeseen action on the part of the singer. The track stuttered to a break where the backing track dropped out as Harrison altered his delivery to that of a bland, midwestern, motivational speaker delivering a condescending lecture on how to extricate oneself from the bad juju the track dealt with. How could this album ever begin to top the intensity of this song?
Face the chair,
“Magic Hymie”
A firing squad
Without the heat to bring your fear
You’ll never know… what you can do
Next… Into The Abyss
https://postpunkmonk.com/2023/05/12/jerry-harrisons-the-red-the-black-is-finally-back-in-print-in-deluxe-2xlp-expanded-package-ive-been-waiting-42-years-for-part-3/
Jerry Harrison’s “The Red + The Black” Is Finally Back In Print In Deluxe 2xLP Expanded Package I’ve Been Waiting 42 Years For [part 3]
[…continued from last post]
In spite of its rather abstract title of “Fast Karma/No Questions,” side two of the album began with a funky song of animal attraction where Tinker Barfield’s bass was interlocking with Bernie Worrell’s clavinet to syncopate all day long. This certainly could have been a single somewhere, surely?
Then the album reached a delirious fever peak on “Worlds In Collision.” It began with a foreboding drone overlaid on a chittering rhythm box. It could have been a swarm of flies on a corpse; it could have been a phalanx of bombers overhead. It certainly didn’t bode tidings of great joy. Then Harrison began reciting the voiceover lyrics which were abstract, yet with political overtones. When the bass guitar [Harrison this time] entered the thick mix, the bass line dared to dance among the doom-laden vibe.
Foley effects of barking dogs [five years ahead of Pet Shop Boys “Suburbia” remix] added to the palpable sense of threat, but the pressure cooker of the song was only beginning to build. Harrison continued to perform the lyrics in sprechgesang, referencing “all you mothers” before chuckling at the ambiguity of the phrase. This song was surely pointed at both kinds. Then Adrian Belew’s distorted guitar solo hit like a vial of acid in the face; fattened with delay in the right channel for an almost binaural spread in the dense, foreboding mix.
Eventually, Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies were overlaid on the writhing mix as Harrison returned to the song; daring to follow Adolph Hitler by leading a children’s chorus declaring how everything will work out fine. The Belew returned to fan the flames higher still as Harrison’s agitated vocals reached a breaking point in the song and album. Giving the final word to Belew as he recited more closing lyrics that sounded like propaganda, with his voice filtered for maximum dystopic impact.
Then the track segued into the healing ambience of “The Red Nights” and it’s as neat a feat of sequencing as I’ve ever heard; matching achievements on Eno’s own “Here Come The Warm Jets” or on Yello’s “Solid Pleasure.” TIn fact the first t wo minutes, suggested that Harrison was at least matching Fripp and Eno at their own game, with two minutes of probing, placid, ambience that would fit exactly on side one of Fripp + Eno’s beautiful “Evening Star.” With Yogi Horton’s expert drum fills, teasing the song along gently until Belew once again entered the mix along with the ladies of the backing vocals; guiding the gentle distortion to a healing place this time.
When “No More Reruns” faded up from the languorous conclusion of “The Red Nights,” it seemed like an addendum to the album. The static, mid-tempo groove seemed to be from another album entirely, and Harrison delivered his lyric in character; slurring his delivery for character emphasis. The drumming danced around the strict rhythm box setting the methodical pace. With Latin rhythmic undercurrents calling back to “Things Fall Apart,” but this was another song that circled its energy without resolution. The closest that it came to resolving the tension were the jabs of Harrison’s guitar that slashed out from the song like the fists from the boxing scenario in the first verse.
The concluding “No Warning, No Alarm” made the re-connection to the sort of Latin beats that opened the album. Harrison’s verses were a staccato stream of quick, percussive syllables becoming a part of the groove rather than sitting on top of it; only approaching singing on the chorus. Apart from the BVs, the main “singing” here was relegated to the horse-like whines of Belew’s guitar. Repeat until fade.
Next… The Red + The Black In Dub
Jerry Harrison’s “The Red + The Black” Is Finally Back In Print In Deluxe 2xLP Expanded Package I’ve Been Waiting 42 Years For [part 4]
[…continued from last post]
The dub mix of “Things Fall Apart” began gingerly, with the delicate TR-808 percussion track alone in the spotlight with just naked claves, shakers, and cowbell that were otherwise buried in the album mix for the first four bars until the marimba and the live drums and congas fattened the sound up considerably. Then the guitars and bass brought the track into familiar territory. But the order of the solos in the mix was altered, with Belew’s and Harrison’s solos teased up front. The clarion call of the BVs then took things to the next level, followed by seriously unedited solos from Belew that lasted for a third of the song until they faded out with the vocals.
“Things Fall Apart” was fairly straightforward; but “Slink” was the most radical example of the border pushing traits of the new mix, with the song more than doubled in length to 8:57! The drum/organ/bass skank was sturdy enough to carry our load for miles on end. And this was what happened. With the guitar licks a shining example of the melody coursing through the song when there were no vocals this time to grab our attention.
Harrison used a more complex take of his melodica solo right up front which was followed by the appearance of the BVs, with a tidy drop at the end of the first bar that isolated the vocals. Then we got more guitar solos which were followed by completely different takes of Belew solos that were unused in the original mix. All the while, the groove was fat and steady as the melodica entered into a call and response with Belew. Eventually allowing Belew to slowly bend chords into gently swooping harmonic structures. Leaving room for the organ skank to ride this one into the sunset.
Next we got a bold shakeup in the running order with “Fast Karma/No Questions” moved into track three position. A synth sequence led for a bar before Yogi Horton’s compressed drums cascaded downward with Bernie Worrell’s clavinet into a tumultuous fill that really got the song rolling. Harrison’s synth leads occupied a horn space here; allowing Worrell to syncopate powerfully with the bass. I loved the drop where breathy BVs and the cowbell ruled the song for a few bars before another mighty fill roped us back into the fat, funky vibe. It’s clear that Harrison and Thorngren’s tactic in the dub mix was to give the band more attention than ever. That’s what Harrison claimed in the new liner notes, and it was more than backed up in practice thus far. If this album had begun it’s history as a showcase for Belew and Worrell, it had now become a feast.
The vibe of “Fast Karma/No Questions” built nicely into the seriously funky intensity of “Magic Hymie.” Rhythmic synth loops had the sound of a man laughing and talking to someone about laughter and jokes dropped into them. Then he said, “now check this m*****f***** out, he’s going to make a million dollars f****** with a machine!” Then, catlike synth yowled over the still grooving synth loops. The basses of both George Murray and Tinker Barfield went to work and there was still room for Worrell’s almost lewd Moog synth to strut with seriously funky abandon. It sounded like we were getting served a grande slice of Worrell here; as with some of Belew’s solos, all notions of the economy of editing were out of the window here. Thanks goodness! Because Harrison had made a serious jam that much more funky.
The most radical shift of all occurred to “No More Reruns,” now following “Magic Hymie” as a sort of chill-out transitional piece before the dub album’s grand finale. Guitar loops and chirping synths gave way to congas with a deft sprinkling of 808 percussion. Liquid reverb rendered the music into a bubbling brook of sound, before synth patches we don’t remember started sproinging to the fore. Finally, the bass and drums joined in to flesh out the rondo. Shards of Harrison’s guitar accentuating the off beats until a drop let the loops and rhythm box until finally backing vocal lines arrived to become the track’s coda.
LESS ADOLPH HITLER, MORE ADRIAN BELEW
Finally, the track that I am deeply in thrall to, “Worlds In Collision,” was now moved to the penultimate position in the program; all 6:48 minutes of it. It got off to a very glitchy start with the humming drone and hyperspeed rhythm box diverging drastically from the monoloithic sound of the album mix. The droning was also variable in pitch; sounding much less like bombers and far more like flies swarming on roadkill. The rhythm kicked off with the drums and barking dogs were making their appearance right up front as the bass was accentuating the groove. Then a drop that lasted a bar with stutter gating led the bass back, bigger than ever.
A new tremolo synth patch that I can’t recall from the LP mix soloed for a few bars while wood block percussion and just the drums got a couple of bars until the delay guitar hook became the gateway to an even more scorching Belew distortion solo. Given freer reign in this longer mix. Harrison stutter gated Belew’s solo which lasted much longer than the same climactic solo on the LP mix. Almost subliminally in the mix were the sounds of men chanting. One can only imagine that there were hours of Belew soloing recorded for this record. Just when you think it must surely be over, it just kept coming, like a hurricane. Flattening any resistance. Until abruptly, it ended with a drop leaving the guitar reverberating.
The dense, foreboding harmonic that next came forth heralded the now highly altered vibe of “The Red Nights.” It was cheeky of Harrison to remix the instrumental cut on the album, but now it was more pensive and questioning than the LP mix. Seagull peals of Belew’s guitar built up the extended intro which lasted almost three minutes, with tambourines and shakers sustaining the tension before the guitar solo from Belew finally cut the tension. But the release of the vocals was delayed until the very end of the now 5:21 track. And the noise solo from Belew never gelled into the healing balm that the LP cut was in comparison. This time the mood was more conflicted.
I have to say that the activity of listening to both the original album, which is never far from my ears, along with the new remixed instrumental disc has been an incredible gift of late. I can’t stress how as soon as I learned about Discogs.com in 2007, I’ve been haunting that place in search of any mention of promo remixes of any of this material! When the years revealed no obscure promo remixes at the very least, I was resigned to my fact of just having the album itself to seduce my ears, but the appearance of the expanded album has been a late in the game boon that I never anticipated.
It seems almost churlish to suggest that perhaps with the dub album, that Harrision was possibly addressing the criticism I read from several quarters suggesting that while Harrison had made an album that sat comfortably along side “Remain In Light,” he was certainly no David Byrne. Quite frankly, the music here was so heavy and dense, that Harrison’s vocals didn’t disappoint me in the slightest. Besides, he was canny enough to enlist Nona Hendryx to arrange the vocals and she provided excellent work as she always did.
According the the new liner notes, Harrison said that he began writing this material in the break between “Fear Of Music” and “Remain In Light.” Which suggested to me that this was material intended for the fourth TVLKING HEVDS album before Eno and Byrne moved the band in an improvisatory, groove-oriented direction with lyrical content laid over them afterward, instead of conventionally bringing songs to the table.
Having had that experience of building dense grooves on his last record allowed Harrison to have the best of both worlds on “The Red + The Black.” Allowing this album to be a spiritual brother to the third and fourth Heads albums with songs that linked back to “Fear of Music” and a production style that was informed by the Heads next phase. I can certainly hear lines of continuity between a track like “Memories Can’t Wait,” my favorite song from “Fear of Music,” and the even heavier “Worlds In Collision;” my favorite song here! After this I don’t think it can get much heavier! And with the cream of the Expanded Heads contributing much here, this will always be the album that I had wished that TVLKING HEVDS had made.
Alas, this album towers over anything that band did from 1983-1988, but I’ve been resigned to that conclusion now for decades. And this expanded version of “The Red + The Black” only manages to boldly underline that state of affairs. Many thanks to Jerry Harrison for forst making in 1981, and now expanding in 2023, this extraordinary album. I’m besides myself with anticipation that I’ll be seeing Harrison and Belew in less than a month playing music from “Remain In Light” and, one fervently hopes, a track or two from this album as well!
-30-
Adrian Belew + Jerry Harrison Touring “Remain in Light” Across North America Imminently
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2305.22 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2880 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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