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ROIO of the Week [Recordings
of Indeterminate Origin]
Click
on the panels to download artwork
Stomu Yamashta's
Go
Europe 1976
[SEIDR 026]
Live at Royal Albert Hall [?], London, England, May 29, 1976.
A relic from the
prog-rock years, Stomu Yamashta’s Go was quite a superstar band of
its time in 1976. It had Steve Winwood, dragged out from hibernation following
the collapse of Traffic, Michael Shrieve the drummer from Santana, Al
DiMeola the hot guitarist from Chick Corea’s Return To Forever and
the German electronic musician Klaus Schulze [Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra
Temple]. How on earth they all gathered to report to work under Japanese
jazz-rocker Stomu Yamashta is probably buried under a mountain of mouldy
UK music weeklies.
This concert, said
to be recorded on May 29, 1976 at London’s Royal Albert Hall, was
probably the first public performance of Go. Nobody is certain whether
this date or venue is correct. This recording appeared in the late '80s/early
'90s on a bootleg label Kiss Deluxe. They claimed the year as 1976 in
Europe. Hardly helpful but the sound quality is exceptional and from the
stereo soundboard.
As The Guardian’s
Robin Denselow wrote in April 1976, the Go album is a rock-classical hybrid
with a rock opera thrown in. To complicate matters, the story actually
starts on side two of the LP. This concert opens with the album’s
side two - Ghost Machine, Surf Spin, Time Is Here, Winner-Loser then heads
over to side one with Crossing The Line. It’s about a cosmic battle
between Kurata and Fu-shen and we presume an abstract of the old good
versus evil rivalry since the beginning of time. Set in the cosmos, the
story gives lots of space for the musicians to exercise their imagination.
Note the number of percussionist and keyboard players in the group. Yamashta
himself was a student at Boston's Berklee School of Jazz where he studied
jazz drumming. But it was not to be.
Like all the bands
from this period, it was a struggle to find the right balance between
commercial appeal and artistic endeavour. While Go wanted to be artistic,
the results are mixed. Ghost Machine really is hand-me-down Traffic with
Winwood a bit lost about what it’s about. He sounds a bit more himself
on Winner-Loser, the only song on Go that he composed.
Otherwise, the rest
of the rock-hybrid songs [Time Is Here, Crossing The Line and the unreleased
Make Up Your Mind and Go] all have Al DiMeola’s jazz-rock touch also
known as the Mahavishu approach to fusion. The 15-minute long Crossing
The Line attempts at Pink Floyd’s majestic Dark Side with singer
Karen Freedman doing her best Clare Torry imitation.
The only track here
that goes to outer space is Surf Spin which has Klaus Schulz and Yamashta’s
ambient techniques for a brief six minutes. Here was probably what Go
should have had more of. The contest between Schulz’ spiralling synth
and Yamashta’s revving sounds are much more interesting than the
rest of the performances cliched rockisms.
But cliched rockisms
are what’s still required for that standard record contract. Interesting
music will always start at the fringes of the scene. As you will hear
in this short series, prog rock could hardly break away from the sound
established by Yes, Pink Floyd and ELP. The further they tried to "progress",
the more they sounded the same.
All the songs on
Go are composed and arranged by Stomu Yamashta with lyrics by Michael
Quartermain. Steve Winwood only wrote one.
- Professor
Red 
Click on the highlighted
tracks to download the MP3s (these are high quality, stereo MP3s - sample
rate of 192 kibit/s). As far as we can ascertain none of the tracks have
been officially released.
These tracks are no longer available for download. Kindly email us at
singbigo@singnet.com.sg if
you want to download these tracks at a later time.
| |
|
| Track
01 |
Ghost
Machine 7.42m # |
| Track
02 |
Surf
Spin 6.33m # |
| Track
03 |
Time
Is Here 7.32m # |
| Track
04 |
Winner-Loser
5.00m # |
| Track
05 |
Crossing
The Line 15.53m # |
| Track
06 |
Make
Up Your Mind And Go 9.57m [unreleased] |
# from the Go album
Lineup
Stomu Yamashta - percussion & synthesizer
Klaus Schulze - "space machine"
Al Di Meola - guitar
Steve Winwood - keyboards and vocals
Michael Shrieve - drums
plus
Pat Thrall [?] - guitar
Jerome Rimson [?] - bass
Brother James - congas
Karen Freedman - backing vocals
Click
here to to buy Stomu Yamashta's Go albums.
Or visit Raven Records for the albums.
For more... email singbigo@singnet.com.sg
with the message, "Put me on your mailing list."
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