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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What an Everest of a first album!, June 20, 2007
This review is from: Knight of the Blue Communion (Audio CD)
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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing else like it, August 20, 2008
This review is from: Knight of the Blue Communion (Audio CD)
The first time I heard this album, I hated it. I thought it was one of the worst things I'd ever heard. I almost threw it away. I didn't listen to it again for about a year. The next time I tried, I put it into the car CD player on a long trip through the mountains. I let it play over and over. On the second or third listen it suddenly began to make sense to me. I didn't hate it anymore. I began to like it. And like some weird drug, it wormed its way into my brain and wouldn't let go. I've listened to it every day since then. In fact, it's become my favorite album. I've never heard anything else like it. I have a weird feeling that I will never hear anything like it again.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A long-buried masterpiece rediscovered..., September 1, 2009
This review is from: Knight of the Blue Communion (Audio CD)
Wow, I don't know how this album escaped my attention for so long. Of course, it had been out of print for many years, but at the time I first discovered Peter Ivers with his wonderful album Terminal Love from 1974, it wasn't that old or rare, but somehow I didn't even know a previous album existed for this quirky, unusual musician, until recently. The fact that this came out in 1969 speaks to the really astonishingly bizarre substance of this music, placing it in a league with Zappa and Beefheart, certainly. Even the strange British and European groups that melded the classical avant-garde with jazz and rock instrumentation and song structures didn't show up until years after this recording.
What can you say about a rock record with a woodwind trio of oboe, bassoon and saxophone, plus harmonica and a rock rhythm section, and melody lines that sound more influenced by Schoenberg than Lennon/McCartney? Peter Ivers wrote this batch of songs after studying with the legendary contrabassist Buell Neidlinger (known for his work with everyone from Cecil Taylor to Karen Carpenter), and you can hear the serialist influence. Anyone with a passion for 'weird' music has got to love this record, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to those rock fans who have an appreciation for somber 20th Century chamber music and free jazz.
A funny story I have to go along with this album... Back in the 1970s I was a teenager living in Massachusetts, and I got much of my musical education from listening to WBCN-FM, which was at the time one of the most progressive 'underground radio' stations in the country. WBCN is where I first heard the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, Steve Reich, White Noise, and so many other then-obscure musical artists. Well, there were a couple songs I heard on that station that I always remembered (for over thirty years, after hearing each song only once in the early 70s), but that I did not know who recorded the songs. I only knew the titles: "Showroom Model" and "Cat Scratch Fever" (not the Ted Nugent staple tune, obviously). I was just about knocked out of my senses when I played this album for the first time, in 2007, and heard BOTH of those songs for the first time in 30+ years, and came to find they were both by Peter Ivers! (but with a female vocalist, otherwise I would've known it was Peter from his distinctive voice). Great songs they are, too, still sounding as potent now as they did when I last heard them around 1972...
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is one of Peter Ivers' 8 releases. Browse Peter Ivers' Discography 
