Eruption by Focus

Here's an extract

but I know this album very well. No, it wasn't a quartet, it was a bigger line-up..

Cheers anyway.

I've been trying to work out what it could have been.

I thought maybe something by the early incarnation of Chicago, but I've been looking at their song titles and nothing springs to mind.

The 'whole side' thing should narrow it down... not many jazz rock groups did songs that long.

If it is the above piece - then there are two possibilities. One that it is Jimmy Page's work for Kenneth Anger's film of the same name. The film was a celebration of Aleister Crowley. Page failed to deliver a completed soundtrack.

So, sometime later - Anger turned to Manson acolyte and convicted murderer but sometime musician - Bobby Beausoleil - who was given permission by the prison authorities to record music for the album. This is the more likely option given your date reference.

The album has 6 eponymous tracks numbered 1 to 6. No 5 is over fifteen minutes long. No. 6 around ten. Incredibly, it's on Spotify

http://open.spotify.com/album/5pk3Fu369hrE00HdQai0jY

It is a dark and fascinating tale and a little Googling and You Tube-ing around the names and titles above will find you some, um, interesting things.

The two clips below are first - an extract of the Page work - and the second Beausoleil's

I've had a bit of a listen to the Beausoleil thing - first time ever -and despite the music - being made by a deranged individual - it is not without beauty and charm

Listen with the lights on - and unchemically assisted - may be sound practice

May the angels be with you

Page

Beausoleil

John Hiseman's Colloseum..Valentine's Suite maybe?

Brand X and Isis Mourning ? (is that close to Compass Rising?)

This feels like watching a likeable person on Who wants to be a Millionaire getting closer and closer to the Big One...Compass Rising...Isis Mourning....there's a good chance....C'moooon!

had an album called Fish Rising

Aftaglid

but real nice to hear again. Yeah, this kind of sound and soloing, bit more jazz chops.

or Mike Gibbs, so clearly no help, I'll be genuinely interested to see how you get on ...

Amboss (compass ?)

but he'd have had Waterfalls out at that time, and it's too awash with echoplex sax to match your description.

Hmmmm, still pondering...

Waterfalls

Can you direct us to a song that is *very similar* ? might help jog the old brain cells

"Capricorn Rising" by Don Pullen , know nothing about it other than it was released around 1976, and sounds "jazzy". Help, anyone?

only long and building and intense

sort of like this (please excuse the quality)

and a groove a bit like this

do you think it might have been long-lost prog rock legends Ozymandias the Hellebore from their legendary opus Annals of the Lenten Rose?

It sounds like it might be the side long "Excavation of the Underling Kind of Theocrates" which featured Moog, Crumphorn and a speeded-up sample from a local boy-scout troop's accapella rendition of Deep Purple's "Blooodsucker". Could it be that?

I didn't even have the pleasure of hearing whatever the heck it is on AM radio in the United States, BUT NOW I'M BLOODY WELL HOOKED ON KNOWING WHAT IT WAS YOU HEARD TOO, you swine.

Next time you remember a half-dreamed listening experience from the depths of time, do us all a favour and just hum it to yourself occasionally, OK?

http://www.progarchives.com/subgenre.asp?style=30

might be worth a go-he has very broad tastes in jazz and might have a good idea or lead

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006x41z

watching

They were previously a straight-ahead rock group, and this was a new direction for them at the time. I hope you like it...

...I'm still looking out.

This is fun.

y'all ain't heard this in a while.
Warning: widdly and demands attention span.

And this might be your introduction to a fine but obscure British band (whose bassist died recently). RIP Jeff Clyne

"Irridescent Butterfly" - played again and again?

Big Fun ?
http://nostalgae.blogspot.com/2007/09/miles-davis-big-fun-1974.html

Was out that year ?

can't be caught out there, Nick. No, not Miles, great though Big Fun is. More good suggestions?

Do you know the name of the radio station you heard it on?

what the phrase "Compass Rising" could mean. One clue is that it is the emblem of the El Paso Museum of History. A Texan/Southern connection ?

https://www2.elpasotexas.gov/history/_documents/Entire%20Press%20Kit%20i...

Also seems to be a popular name for yachts.

had a '71 album called Barefoot Boy with a 20' track called Call To The Higher Consciousness, lots of guitar and piano. I can't find a definitive clip of the track but it is in the background of this bloke's video of his junk drawer. Obviously.

http://ricklawn.com/category/recordings/compass-jazz-quartet

The band self produced an album entitled, “Compass Rises” in 1971 that featured original compositions written and arranged by Lawn and Ives.

See http://www.purevolume.com/compass

This copy of LP has gone but should help you track it down

http://cgi.ebay.ca/COMPASS-RISES-Private-1973-Ohio-Rhodes-Modal-Jazz_W0Q...

and this may be an online file source (can Stimpy advise on safety ?)

http://thatsallritemama.blogspot.com/2009/11/compass-on-schoolhouse.html

If I could give you ten arrows I would! Declan, y'see, the massive will *never* let you down: no matter how arcane the grail. I'm absolutely *delighted* for you!!! BTW all the other stuff posted by the massive has given me an education in an area of music I'd never much bothered with before..Bring on the next treasure hunt! We're making dreams come true here folks....

Just email me through the website....Once again, delighted for you!

breathe again.

Well done Nick!

now I gotta hear this tune

it was Ozymandias the Hellebore...

but can I just say that this has been the most compelling and revealing thread I've read since I started lurking around these parts. It's got it all: nostalgia, desperation, head-scratching, soul-searching, discovery, disappointment, melancholy and a truly enriching sense of community engagement. It's like one of those heartwarming slow-news-day stories where the entire population of Arimo, Idaho downs tools and works together to rescue puppies that have fallen into a disused well.

If you're reading this, staff, can we make this a regular feature in the magazine? Can we get people to submit their half-forgotten unGoogleable fragments of history so that the Massive can give their memories the redux treatment?

Please?

For me, this thread has been a rollercoaster ride, from several angles.

The itch (thanks Peterb) needing scratching was identified (thanks Nick). End of story? Well, the immediacy of the web (thanks Fraser) meant not having to scurry after a long-deleted LP for 300 bucks, you could hear it, or at least some of it, right now, in real time (thanks Nick).

That it failed to thrill me like it did back then launches, of course, the soul-searching (thanks Pax) bit. There are very few opportunities as clear-cut as this for comparing an experience and, crucially, your memory of your eveluation of that experience, with the same experience and its attendant evaluation 35 years later.

It's not just a matter of being underwhelmed (thanks Peterb) or inspired (thanks Nick Duvet)or even deluded, this is a basic object lesson in how the same stimulus (Compass Rises) can elicit almost diametrically-opposed reactions in the same subject, me, ranging from electrifying to ho-hum. 35 years apart!

And what has changed? Obviously not the music, I've changed, me! This is the astonishing bit, the sheer extent of it. I'm not a temps perdu kind of guy, yearning for my youth, thay hasn't been an issue since my middle-age crisis, some while back. No, this is a cleanly-defined, clearly-identifiable watershed, which is likely to make me reconsider and shake up many of the givens in my life. Only a question about something once heard on the radio, now a thruster boost, a kick in the ass, to keep on developing and improving as a person. Seriously!

Finally, thanks Massive. I feel at home and among friends here, even though it's only words in my computer monitor. Isn't life miraculous?

For this and everything on this thread (and indeed others)

"He not busy being born is busy dying" as the man said--so more power to you, and I hope you'll use this experience in any way that works for you BUT I'd still suggest a quick email to Rick Lawn, or posting here

http://www.purevolume.com/compass

which another band member seems to read, just to check you didn't hear a one-off recording-as they were obviously doing gigs in that era and had more material than what is on the album e.g.

Ives, along with Lawn, wrote and arranged "What is Man?" an ecumenical jazz service that featured "Compass," church pipe organ, vocals, a baritone soloist, and a narrator with an accompanying slide presentation. It was performed in New York City and later produced for television by Iowa Public Broadcasting.

Their list of "covers" sounds a bit broader than the classics of pre-Miles jazz:

Compass" performances are multi-directional, displaying a diverse variety of jazz compositions to include original material, along with tunes performed by the great jazz masters. To follow is an abridged list of jazz artists with accompanying tunes that "Compass" has previously performed: Miles Davis [Solar, So What, 81, Footprints]; Horace Silver [Jody Grind, Mexican Hip Dance]; Duke Ellington [Take the A Train, In a Sentimental Mood]; Charlie Parker [Billie's Bounce, Au Privave]; Thelonious Monk [Straight No Chaser, Round Midnight]; Cole Porter [Night and Day, I Love You]; Sonny Rollins [St. Thomas, Doxy]; John Coltrane [Mr. PC, Resolution, Bessie's Blues]; Rodgers and Hart [Have You Met Miss Jones]; George Gershwin [A Foggy Day, Summertime] ; Keith Jarrett [Lucky Southern]; and Antonio Carlos Jobim [One Note Samba, Wave and Triste].

But I'm not about to second guess you.

Anyway, the tale says an awful lot about memory and how we shape it--a great interest of mine, having a rather idiosyncratic memory myself. I'm still, myself, learning to appreciate the wisdom of this:

Sometimes I think audiophiles are crazy. If the point of it all is our love of music, we often forget that the brain is where it happens—not in CD players, cables, or speakers. The most dedicated music-lovers—musicians—usually aren't audiophiles. For them, listening to a recording means appreciating the music in their minds and imagination, not as a sound coming from speakers.

I often think of a scene in 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould. The piano prodigy is maybe eight years old. He sits motionless, head in hands, next to an AM table radio as it blares out a slow, graceful symphony. The sound is just awful, the strings distorted into a whine of white noise. But for the young Mr. Gould, that's quite beside the point. When he lifts his head, he's tearful, distraught, and powerfully moved by the music.

Gould reached through the sound into the music, and then through the music into the composer's soul—and he found something powerful. Sonic fidelity (or lack of it) was incidental. He could have listened to that music through a tin-can telephone.

But you won't hear anyone talk like this in an audio salon, or in the audio mags (except, perhaps, for this one). Those magazines are not called The Audiophile's Neurons or The Absolute Auditory Cortex or Neurophile. They're mainly about equipment, and they reinforce our habit of externalizing our auditory pleasures. We believe not only that our favorite recordings will sound better with, say, the latest and greatest amplifier, but also that we'll enjoy them more. Why does the promise of a better musical experience always lead us to listen to other components—to glowing tubes on a shiny chassis, or piano-lacquered speakers? We might as well look inward to see if we can better appreciate and understand the music we already hear in our listening rooms.

---from http://www.stereophile.com/thinkpieces/300audiophilia/#