Existential meditations on the passing of time, eerie guitar sounds,  Simon Gallup’s crisp bass lines coated in hazy synths and piano passages  that sound as if they were played by ghosts in a haunted house. In a  clear departure from the still somewhat punk-rocky vibe of their debut, Seventeen Seconds slowly arrives at the kind of sound The Cure  eventually became famous.

One that combines the dire and despair of  human experience with a pinch of cheeky playfulness. Even though people  associate them with all things dark and bleak, they are at the same time  a cheerful band, in a wonderfully bizarre way. That undoubtedly has got  to do with some of the biggest hits they went on to produce and the  aesthetics they adapted as a means of sticking a middle finger in the  faces of everyone who pigeon-holed them as gruff and drab. But if you  have the advantage of knowing what will come, you can foresee some of  that in their earlier work already.

"Again and again and again and again and again"  - A Forest (The Cure)

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The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. It has been  announced that the world will end because of lack of natural resources.  Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that  they thought they wanted. Ziggy was in a rock-and-roll band and the kids  no longer want rock-and-roll…”

The concept follows the character “Ziggy Stardust”, a space alien who  manifests himself as a self-indulgent rock star who takes this form to  try and convince humanity to alter their path of destruction.

Through a very long and distinguished career, David Bowie’s absolute classic is the 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It takes the musicianship and experimental of Bowie’s previous album, Hunky Dory  in 1971, to a whole new level where Bowie really hit his stride and  forged his distinctive sound. Although it is a concept album, nothing  feels forced and nowhere is it repetitive, just a grand parade of songs  which collectively tell a story. Bowie’s lyrics and vocals are deep and  emotive, albeit tragic, while guitarist Mick Ronson held the music down to a respectable rock level with his sharp and fat guitar riffs.

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This week on the Vinyl Crusade we feature the 4th Installment of the show dedicated to the cultural revolution and esoteric magnificence of Led Zeppelin IV. Tune in Fridays at 6.00pm EAST and Saturdays and Sundays at 9.30am EST and 6.30am PST on Megazine Radio.

It was in a mystic way that the strange world of Led Zeppelin IV  began to open itself to me. The album conjured up a world of forests and  magic and spirits, of gods and fertility rites and the dark secret  powers of the earth. There was a kind of “wayward Tantric Magic” evident in the lyrics, melodies and intentions illuminated in their music. We were invited to enter into the mysteries of primitive ritual, to  “dance in the dark of night and sing to the morning light.” The songs  invited us to re-imagine a long forgotten world, to turn away from the  dominance of Christian-Western rationality towards the sensual pagan magic of another time and place: “Tired eyes in the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.”

The songs promised a deep synthesis of the  erotic and the religious, a convergence of drugs and mysticism, the  awakening of a strange but authentic “reason” which transcends the  stifling limits of distorted modern escapism, so dominated by technology and utility. As  the majestic nature inspired ode to all humanity “Stairway to Heaven” so aptly puts it:

And it’s whispered that soon

If we all call the tune

Then the piper will lead us to reason

And a new day will dawn

For those who stand long

And the forests will echo with laughter.

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It's 1974 and like the Cure so aptly put it, its Friday and I'm in LOVE. That's right I'm at the local record store (Brashs) cueing up to buy the third studio album by UK rockers, The Sweet and their break out album, Desolation Boulevard. This glam band from the 70's influenced me as a person, as a budding rebel and as a conscious musician daring to break out of the mold of what was expected of me by my peers and by my parental dynamic.Who could forget the unmistakable smash hits of, Ballroom Blitz, Fox on the Run, Teenage Rampage and Blockbuster. So in a nut shell these guys were my jam and still grace a top ten spot in my coveted list of all time fav rock acts of the last 40 years.

Desolation Boulevard  included original members lead vocalist Brian Connolly, bassist Steve  Priest (RIP), guitarist Andy Scott, and drummer Mick Tucker. Formed in 1968,  they quickly teamed up with the pop songwriting machine that was Nicky  Chinn and Mike Chapman, with whom they produced bubblegum hits with like “Funny Funny,” “Co-Co,” “Wig-Wam Bam,” and Little Willy to pen a few.”

But by 1974 Sweet wanted to be taken seriously, and in so doing parted ways with Chinn-Chapman, although Desolation Boulevard,  or at least the U.S. version (which differed drastically from the  English release), consisted of a Side One consisting solely of  Chinn-Chapman contributions. While Side2  featured a new tougher, rougher and heavier sound,  it won them some real critical respect; indeed, Pete Townshend asked  Sweet to open for The Who across the UK on a tour to support "Who's Next". Who could forget the unmistakeable smash hits of, Ballroom Blitz, Fox on the Run, Teenage Rampage and Blockbuster. So in a nut shell these guys were my jam and still grace a top ten spot in my coveted list of all time fav rock acts of the last 40 years

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How Dark is the Moon and the Lunar world in your life and why would a  record from 1973 still hold such incredible sway in the conscious  mindset of millions of people all around the world today? There is a  small and hallowed number of seminal and quintessential vinyl albums  that define a generation, accurately express a cultural revolution and  create a musical stairway to the stars....after all isn't that what we  are all made of and isn't that where we, the human experiment stem from?

Dark Side of the Moon changed my life forever and heralded a spark of conscious understanding, awakening and awareness way back when I was at a cross roads in my personal life, relationship, career and my deeper and closer connection to god with a very small G. This episode of the Vinyl Crusade is a special one because it was produced a while ago but never really made the grade in my book and so it remained unpublished until now. Why is that you may ask? Well this album which opens with the breath of life itself and the madness of normalcy contained within it is something that the collective is learning to re-experience all over again. After some 4 months of rigid lockdown and restrictions to one's Civil human liberties our world in some instances is starting to breathe normally again. The content of this album and it's visionaries, the immutable Pink Floyd understood that back in the reflection of illusory time between 1970-1973. The music featured on today's program is not the work of Pink Floyd but a modern day incarnation aptly titled, Floyd9 featuring the eclectic talents of Pollyanna Bush from San Francisco on lead vocals and yours truly on guitars with a little help from some friends, Rikki Buckingham (UK), Maniswita Jaiswal (India). Greg Delapaix (US) and Rhys Henrickson (Australia). To consciously re-interpret this album in 2020 during the highest degree of planetary Retrogrades and to lift it's vibration to new heights of healing and immersive experiential value has been a long time coming while being a very real dream of mine. Today it's higher spiritual value, expression and liberated sense of itself comes full circle as Saturn goes direct, Jupiter goes direct and on Sunday Pluto will join them going direct to complete the Trine of new possibilities for our earth family.

Forty five years after its release, Dark Side remains a brilliant  prog-rock masterpiece. It has spent nearly 1,000 weeks on the Billboard  200 (that’s just about half the number of weeks on the calendar since  its release). It explores money, death, time and decay, and it’s helped  three generations of teens reflect on the nature of their existence.

But we don’t care about any of that. We care about the cover because the cover helps us find the nature of spirituality.

It’s simple and mysterious: A prism splits a ray of white light into  the colors of the rainbow. The space behind the prism is black. The  picture has nothing to do with any song. How does a splitting ray of light connect to spirituality?

We can think of  the rainbow as an array of spiritualities that point back to their source, god, the one ray of white light. But how can that be? How can there be more than one way of living in a relationship with the Divine?

We’re all different. No two people have the same mix of temperament,  education, life experiences, hurts and concerns, cultural traditions --  the list goes on and on. god knows that and to reach us he provides  variations on a relationship with him. We pick the one or ones that make the most sense to us. And in that communion lies the separation that no longer infects or affects our lives anymore. Are you truly primed and ready to receive the wisdom of Dark Side of the Moon from a completely new and fresh perspective today? Please tune in and feel the new vibration for yourself!

Tommy (The Who)

We start the Vinyl Crusade with the quintessential journey into the mind of a deaf, dumb and blind boy...Tommy and the double album that has been labelled by fans and critics alike, "The Amazing Journey".

The Who’s Tommy has been hailed as a landmark album from the late summer of love period in 69 and it's easy to see why. It’s quite easy to pass the story of Tommy off as a something weird and unexplained, or even just a bunch of random topics compressed into an album that’s trying to be quirky. But I’ve come like so many to discover the depth of energised personal spirituality behind Pete Townsends experience in writing Tommy and the relationship between the album and spiritual leader Meher Baba.

So sit back relax, don the headphones, pour a glass of your favorite  libation and immerse yourself in an Alex Ginsburg meets Hunter Thompson  type journey into the healing power of music, higher vibration and frequency. This is no ordinary detailed analysis but a complete Transpersonal journey into the human conscious experience.

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Are you listening....really listening to Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stoneage? How does one listen to "Songs for the Deaf" you ask with trepidation...well its simple, you open your ears, throw caution to the wind and the Californian magic will flood in.

The myth is often so much better than the reality. It’s great to hear  about the excess, but the hangovers are less often recorded. Great to  hear about the drugs, but less to hear about the dependency. Brilliant  to witness the amazing rock’n’roll, much less brilliant to be present at  the soundcheck.

The achievement of Queens of the Stoneage is to do all three: be masters of the myth, deal with the reality, and be masters of their rock as well.

‘Songs For The Deaf’, their third album, finds them capitalising on this  unique position, and nearly all of what you might want from them and  their music is here. There are great titles (‘You Think I Ain’t Worth A  Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire’), displays of extraordinary  rock’n’roll (‘A Song For the Deaf’) and great disturbing pop (‘No-one  Knows’), and they all contribute to Queen's mystique. Having begun as a straightforward three-piece band, they’re  now something else altogether. Their world – sexual, drug-filled, and  occasionally paranoid – has become progressively darker, and as such we  find them nothing less than guardians of the rock flame.

It’s an intoxicating story, and obviously one that’s no less exciting to musicians. So here, joining full-time Queens members Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri are – once again – former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan, and Dave Grohl of Nirvana / Foo Fighters fame. Importantly, these are the sort of  people who have seen a lot and done a lot, but also those who are  pretty consistently on top of their game. It’s a dream team.... and then some!

So a voice announces “I need a saga…” and, sure enough, one begins. Of course, it takes in what are for QOTSA  some routine stops – pills, punk rock, dark humor and death – but  ‘Songs For The Deaf’ is an album very aware that these in themselves are  neither empirically interesting, or even anything new. ‘No One Knows’  and ‘First It Giveth’  stamp a dark mood on the record that never quite  lets up – instead, it creates a woozy, disorientating world of sound  that attempts to find the most innovative way possible of visiting  signature rock subjects. There are still moments of release here  (there’s the great ‘Gonna Leave You’, ‘Another Love Song’ and the  Lanegan-sung ‘Hangin’ Tree’), but the greatest achievement of ‘Songs For  The Deaf’ is that it isn’t an album that tells you what it was like –  this is one that puts you right there.

By 1967 Cream had had one rather false start. Fresh Cream, their  first album had been a rushed and rather too purist collection of blues  standards and curios, and as such was already by 1966 considered out of  step with what was occurring around them. “I Feel Free” had hinted at  the wild lysergic undercurrent, but they’d yet to find their heartland  in the London underground. One reason this had happened was because of  the band’s backgrounds, not only in the blues (as Eric Clapton defected  from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers) but also in Jazz; both Jack Bruce and  Baker having served time with Graham Bond. Luckily this wide-ranging set  of backgrounds was invaluable in their next step.

Second time around it was far different. Chemicals had been imbibed,  Clapton had struck up a friendship with Australian artist Martin Sharp  who not only provided the lyrics of “Tales Of Brave Ulysses” but also  came up with the splendidly baroque cover. Meanwhile Jack Bruce was now  working with underground poet, Pete Brown, whose lyrics were equally  trippy. “SWLABR” (it stands for ‘She walks like a bearded rainbow’),  “Dance The Night Away” and “Sunshine Of Your Love” were perfect  encapsulations of the point where the blues got psychedelic and in turn  got heavy. “Sunshine…”’s riff is at once iconic and defines the power  trio aesthetic that was to prove so popular with the band’s many  disciples.

The other creative catalyst was producer Felix Pappalardi. Co-writing  both "World Of Pain" he also helped transform the blueswailing “Lawdy  Mama” into the slinky “Strange Brew” – a contender for best album opener  of all time. Clapton’s guitar had by now been exposed to the effects  heavy stylings of Jimi Hendrix and his heavy use of wah-wah gives  Disraeli Gears just the right amount of weirdness, making this probably  the most experimental album he ever made. The modish inclusion of Ginger  Baker’s rendition of “A Mother’s lament” was the Edwardiana icing on  the cake. By the band’s demise, two years later Clapton had returned to  his first love – straight blues and the band had become the barnstorming  power trio hinted at here. For a short time they were bringers of peace  and love.

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