Search - Peter Ivers :: Knight of the Blue Communion

What an Everest of a first album!

Mitchell Lee | Richmond, VA United States | 06/20/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is the VERY BEST album of all time. It strides above the mediocre rabble of pop music in the exalted company of Coltrane's My Favorite Things; Miles' Blue; Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle; Pugh Rogefeldt's Ja A Da Ja; Zappa's Hot Rats, Grand Wazoo and Overnight Sensation; Zalman Yanovsky's Alive and Well in Argentina; Captain Beefhart's Lick My Decals Off; Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited; Blas Emilio Atehortua's Inolvidables de Columia; Freddy Leon y su Nueva Onda's Con "El Burrito" y otros Exitos; Harry Partch's The Dreamer That Remains - A Study in Loving; Joe Byrd's The United States of America; Rahsaan Roland Kirk's The 3 Sided Dream in Audio Color; Shockabilly's The Dawn of Shockabilly EP; The Soft Machine's first LP and The Residents' Duck Stab / Buster & Glen.





What makes each of these so great is this unlikely paradox: Each creates something new under the sun and simultaneously something near perfection in its form and substance. It is like a new born speaking 6 languages. For example, before Hot Rats there was nothing in the world like it. After Hot Rats there has been nothing better in the same style. Zappa, Underwood and Harris gave birth to a new style and perfected it all at once. This is the marvel of these idiomatic musical masterpieces.





Peter Ivers' Knight of the Blue Communion, in particular, is so tough, so stark, and so original! It screams out across the years, "You fools, this is where pop music should have gone! Turn back! Turn back!" What a harp player he was! What quirky, powerful melodies all slimy and sexed up by harmonica, oboe and bassoon! What confident interesting rock percussion R. Frank Pozar! What a stupendous, dramatic singer/actor in Yolande Bavan! What twisted, brilliant words from Timothy Mayer! What an Everest of a first album!





When, if ever, is his second LP for Epic going to see release? It is like the Mona Lisa II sitting in a can in the SONY vaults. Write SONY! Music lovers, storm the Bastille! We must free the hostages!





Here are the credits from the original Epic LP:





Side I


Cat Scratch Fever (7:38)


Water Curtain (3:45)


Dark Illumination (4:18)


Confession (2:11)


Traveling Lightly (8:15)





Side 2


Showroom Model (4:29)


Tobacco (2:22)


Lord God Love (5:00)


Knight Of The Blue Communion (2:45)


Gentle Jesus (9:00)





Produced by Sandy Linzer / Engineer: Roy Segal





Yolande Bavan -- vocals


Peter Ivers -- harmonica


Henry Schuman -- oboe


Steve Kowarsky -- bassoon


Paul Balmuth -- soprano and tenor sax


Tony Ackerman -- guitar


Richard Youngstein -- contrabass


R. Frank Pozar -- percussion


Joe Seale -- intermodulator





All music composed, arranged and conducted by Peter Ivers/Lyrics by Timothy Mayer





Tim and I wrote these songs between August 1968 and May 1969, and his words deal with themes with which he was vitally concerned. The lyrics don't mistake themselves for poetry.


"