Some music is just music. Whether it's good, bad, or somewhere in between; interesting or boring; derivative or original, it's just music. You listen; you like it, or not; if you do, maybe you listen again.
Then there's that other kind of music, the kind that's like the tip of an iceberg, or the nose of a starship emerging slowly from another dimension, or a feature film censored and watched on a black and white TV. Music with baggage. Music with a long tail like a comet.
Helion Magister is a new appellation for Michael Miner, who was an original member of the seminal San Francisco band, The Great Society. Remembered today mainly for being the band Grace Slick left to join Jefferson Airplane (though the story was more complicated than that), The Great Society lasted but a year. It did, however, make some influential recordings, now rarities, which included - alongside the original version of Darby Slick's classic "Someone to Love" - songs credited to one "D Minor," the artist now known as Helion Magister (and Bullman Atavar Crowe and several other things).
Helion Magister has emerged after many decades with a new home-recorded CD on which he re-makes a couple of Great Society songs, adds some others in the same psychedelic rock vein (whether they're new or have been knocking around for some time, no one knows) and branches out into the nuttier side of spoken-word noise-rock.
With the opening bars of the title track you know right where you are: back in 1966 San Francisco, tripping your brains out. A bluesy bass line, guitars twirling like spaghetti, tinkling hi-hat, and what sounds like a whip, drive the incantatory vocals. "Daydream Nightmare Love" and "That's How It Is" are re-imagined but recognizable versions of Great Society songs that in those days inclined towards Sonny-and-Cher pop - but don't any more. In the former, vocal tradeoffs and tight harmonies evoke a sound familiar to fans of Jefferson Airplane, and a slightly loopy guitar solo boasts a playfulness evocative of Big Brother and the Holding Company's Sam Andrew and James Gurley.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Jon, I've moved this to Advance.net, a place affiliated with about 10 newspapers around the country.
One such site is here.
Also please let your contact know, if you had one, that this article, is published at one more place. That helps to show they get two?, three? for the "price" of one.
Thank you.
Temple Stark
2 - manymen
thanks for the additional sites. and the price IS right.
blogcritics is the wildest battle site i've seen. even the official comment policy is blood-drenched-- and so many hands in the offal! it touches the heart.