Upon my initial listen to Joan Torres’s All Is Fused‘s Revolution, the album’s opening song, “Rebellion,” I was blown away and I knew I was in for a treat. Now, don’t me wrong, this is album may not be for everyone, especially those who looking for the next pop song with sugary-sweet lyrics. This album (and band) is for the musician. The individual who truly appreciates the art, the craft of putting musical notes together to create a song and eventually an album.

The new record entitled Revolution from the San Francisco area progressive Latin jazz six-piece opens with the stellar track, “Rebellion.” The six=piece takes the listener on a journey through rolling ebbs and flows of the brass section, heavy bass lines, and exotic guitar riffs. It opens with heavy guitars and brass, then breaks off into bass guitarist and bandleader, Joan Torres, slaying on the bass.

Interwoven between the electric guitars and heavy lines, the percussion and brass section is so successful in offering continued depth to the song. Guitarists Gabriel Vicéns and Sergio González bring the heat on the electric guitars and transform the track from drum and bass and add in some rock elements. The brass section is what really brings the song to life. The track is very in-your-face and upbeat. At a running time of 5:47, the band is really able to create a song that prepares the listener for the rest of the album.

On “High Stakes,” the San Francisco sextet creates another chapter in the story that is Revolution. Less than a minute into the track, the bass steps into the spotlight, and helps create a contemporary jazz vibe layered with the percussion, brass section, and guitars.

The tracks “Moving Mountain” and “Loss” take a different approach; while still progressive, they turn toward a mysterious ambiance in both songs. On “Moving Mountain,” it literally opens with a mysterious vibe and crescendoes into some heavier guitar riffs. The same riff repeats continuously as the control of the music changes from quiet to loud in mere seconds. When you think it’s going to be entirely ambient, it grows from quiet guitars to heavy, electrifying guitars and again, that in=your-face musicianship that you hear in Joan Torres’s All Is Fused.

The track “Loss” starts with more gentle guitar strumming and a string quintet that is able to musically illustrate the seasons of loss in the 4:26 running time. The listener can almost feel the draining emotions of loss, the sadness, sometimes guilt, and the ebb and flow of different emotions. It takes you almost a journey through nature. If you listen closely, you can feel the trickle of a waterfall, and then the track naturally flows into tranquility.

“Aftermath” is well-balanced between progressive Latin jazz and contemporary jazz. This is a track is going to kick your ass. It punches you in the face immediately and breaks off into separate parts of bass and piano, with a piano solo being truly an iconic element of the song.

You can find Joan Torres’s All Is Fused on most social media including BandCamp, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Artist: The Beatles

Song Title: “Revolution (Take 20)”

Year: 1968, unreleased

I recently approached my editors with an idea of writing a Lost and Found article on a single song. An odd request, to be sure, but I was ultimately given permission, provided I could make it into a Lost and Found piece. Given the number of circumstances behind this, that actually was not difficult. Sure, most songs have stories behind them, but a full article? Yet here I am, doing it because outside of the more hardcore Beatles fans, this probably slipped by a lot of people. A history lesson on The Beatles is not needed here, that much is obvious, so let’s jump right into it, shall we?

50 years ago this year, The Beatles wrote and recorded their first double album, titled “The Beatles”, but more commonly known as the “White Album”. It was, for them, a reaction to the excess of the previous year’s releases; rather than a million overdubs, they decided to strip down the arrangements and rehearse tracks, with the idea that the rehearsals would then be treated as the basic tracks. They all also came with their own songs/ideas and were arguing more and more almost from the very beginning. Indeed, their problems, and eventual breakup, actually started with the recording of this double album. One of the songs that would end up being at the center of the problems? “Revolution”.

As some (or maybe even most) people know, there are 3 “Revolution” tracks. “Revolution No. 1”, which is a slower, more acoustic take, was used on the album. “Revolution No. 9”, which consisted of tape loops, backward effects, and random noises, was also placed on the album. Finally, “Revolution”, which was an upbeat, electric version of No. 1, was released as the b-side of “Hey Jude”, and is probably the best-known version of the three (despite being the final version recorded; more on that in a bit). Over the years, while there was some curiosity as to the usage of the numbers, it was never really explained. Indeed, #1 and #9 are so completely different from each other, that it was just chalked up to “Lennon being Lennon”. This view, though, would end up changing.

In 1988, Mark Lewisohn, who is considered one of the leading authorities on The Beatles, released, “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions”, which was a complete chronicle of every bit of music the band had put to tape during their time in Abbey Road Studios. Indeed, Mr. Lewisohn had access to the entire vault, and the book was presented in a diary format, along with interviews with various studio personnel, covering every session held; who played what, the work that was done that day, how the music, sounds, even overdubs, were recorded. It even chronicled the few unreleased tracks that were there, as well as alternate mixes and versions of songs.

In this book, it’s revealed that “Revolution #1” was the very first track recorded during the “White Album” sessions. All takes went to normal lengths, roughly 4-5 minutes…..that is, until take 18, which not only began immediately after the previous take (resulting in the engineer’s take announcement appearing on the recording) but ended up being over 10 minutes long! Yup. Over 10 minutes of jamming on the same chord sequence, with Lennon yelling “Alright” repeatedly, then just yelling and mumbling. Quite a sudden difference. Further overdubs would be added, including the sound of a radio station changing, Paul and George repeatedly singing, “Mama, Dada”, the band singing “Ahhhhh” in unison, along with horn overdubs, would bring the song up to take 20.

Now, at the time, Lennon was keen on putting this on the album and even wanted to release it as a single. For obvious reasons this wasn’t gonna happen; as it is, even the main body of the song was considered too slow for a single release. This is how we ended up with the single, “rock” version of “Revolution”. As for the 10+ minute album version, Lennon decided (or was persuaded, depending on the story), to chop the final 6 minutes off and fade out the main song, thus creating the version of “Revolution #1” we know on the album.

Not to let anything go to waste, he then took those last 6 minutes, which already contained various loops, and used it as the basis for “Revolution #9” by adding more tape loops with the help of both George Harrison and Yoko Ono. This would also make the album, albeit not without some fighting.

So we now know both “Revolution” #1 and #9 started from the same recording. It was considered one of the holy grails for fans, despite the overall dislike for #9. After all, just how would they actually sound together? A monitor mix, recorded from a studio playback but with Yoko rambling on top of it, leaked on bootlegs in the 90s, but was of poor quality to really listen to.

In 2009, The Beatles announced that they would be releasing brand new remasters of their catalog. This was a huge deal, as their albums were only ever released on CD once, in 1987. For years people were crying out for new remasters; while other artists re-released past albums, using the newest technologies to improve the sound of their albums (or, in some cases, make them worse), The Beatles albums just sort of languished. 2009 changed all of that. We got brand new remasters of all their albums, official releases of the mono versions, and even “The Beatles: Rock Band” video game. It was wonderful. Just a few months prior, though, we got the unexpected. The full, 10+ minute version of “Revolution (Take 20)” suddenly appeared on a bootleg and the internet. Not only that, it was in practically perfect quality, being a mono mix taken straight from tape.

It’s still a mystery as to who leaked it. It’s generally believed that only 2 copies of this mono mix existed; one in the vault of Abbey Road Studios, and a copy that Lennon himself took that day. Along with that, the timing of the leak was interesting, coming at a time when so much focus was on the band due to the impending remasters.

Finally, there was the reaction of those involved; the band, etc. Their reaction was…..nothing. Yup. None of the band, their estates…..nobody said a word about it, and in the research, I’ve done, to this day they still haven’t. The only reaction came from the record label, which was to have it removed from youtube. Too little, too late though. So, an excellent sounding copy of an unreleased version of a Beatles song leaks shortly before the brand new remasters are released, and they don’t have much of a reaction if any. Not only is the source unknown, but the options for such are limited. Could it have been done by them for extra publicity? Perhaps, but they’re not exactly a band that needs it.

Regardless, we finally got one of the holy grails. While it was reported by the press, it wasn’t quite as huge as you’d expect. Maybe it was because part of it involved “Revolution #9”, which a number of fans aren’t fond of due to being overly avant-garde. Maybe it was due to the label trying to stifle it as much as possible. Or maybe, just maybe, many people outside of the super hardcore fans didn’t know there was a story behind it or the importance behind the leak.

If you’ve read this, though, now you do. To think, this was 50 years ago this year, and it took 40 years to get to us. Now, if we can just have “Carnival of Light…..”

The only version on youtube was slowed down, I guess as a way to keep it up there (you know how people do that). However, here’s a link to a Beatles fan site that has the song posted at the correct speed: https://www.beatlesbible.com/2009/02/24/unreleased-revolution-1-mix/

Hometowns create two kinds of people- those who stay and those who leave. The two members of Revolution, I Love You chose to leave their hometown. They chose to leave an area in Delaware that they never considered rural until someone considered it rural for them. That someone is in Philadelphia, which is where the band moved to a little over a year ago.

Philadelphia- surrounded by the wilds of Pennsylvania, the tax-free lifestyle of Delaware and the enigmatic free for all of southern New Jersey, is the kind of city that draws folks in. It brings folks like Rob Lindgren and Jason Reynolds, the two lone members of Revolution, I Love You- two gentlemen, self-described as bookish, who in their non-rocking hours are peddlers of windows and doors at two area home improvement super stores. For college, one went down to Towson University in Towson, Maryland and one went to University of Delaware- yet neither one finished- opting instead for music. They both agreed that school just wasn’t working.

It is just the two of them in Revolution, I Love You. A person would have to have the golden voice of Ronnie Spector to make them even consider expanding their lineup. Revolution, I Love You lives together, up in grumpy old Roxborough, in an apartment that has walls they lined with carpets they bought on sale. Practice is logistically harder in the city, much harder than out in that rural area of Delaware where they came from. Their apartment is their laboratory- not just a place to live. It is merely not only a practice space, but a recording studio. The band is working feverishly on their second album, “We Choose to Go to the Moon,” named after a line from a President John F. Kennedy speech, with the hopes of releasing it later this spring. Their first album was “Noise Pop Death Ray”- a phrase that became a descriptor for Revolution, I Love You. It served as an easily accessible answer to every young band’s toughest question: what kind of music do you play.

Revolution, I Love You was a phrase made popular in France in 1968, when it was written on city walls, along with other Marxist writings. Lindgren admits, while sitting in a coffee shop with a book of essays on Russian Literature sitting on the table, that he and Reynolds “are kind of bookish.” Lindgren’s interest in philosophy partially drives his and Reynolds’ vision of what they want their band to be. Revolution, I Love You is deconstructed pop music- a breakdown of the music of Costello and the Boss and Phil Spector sucked through a rusty filter of industrialized, hipster dance music. It is dirty purity- sweet, yet not at all simple.

The elements of traditional pop are there- the harmonies and smooth melodies. The songs that Revolution, I Love You write start out simply enough, maybe some guitar and/or piano accompanied by vocals. But then, as Lindgren says with a smile, it gets all messy. It gets destroyed and ravaged with bleeps, squeaks and drones- massaged by programmed drumbeats and fuzzy guitar loops.

“We have a penchant for sound,” Lindgren admits.

Reynolds and Lindgren have become scholars of pop music after growing up listening to Iron Maiden, Guns ‘n Roses, and progressive rock and according to Lindgren, spend many late nights on the couch, immersed in Jameson-fueled discussions about what it is exactly that makes music good.

Revolution, I Love You isn’t natural music. It’s not straight from the soul to you music. It’s straight from the dome with a sharp left turn through the knobs of electronics, eventually showing up at your doorstep hours later looking beaten up, bruised, confused, and looking for a hug.

How on Earth then, do Revolution, I Love You play a live show without breaking the bank on ringers and any other additional musicians they can find? Their set lists must look like football playbooks.

Lindgren says that Revolution, I Love You will try to build their sets in the same way a DJ would. In short, they are not ones for requests. Each member has a table in front of him. Lindgren’s has a loop station and a programmer on it, while Reynolds’ has a large keyboard on his. Both of them play guitar and both sing- Lindgren handling lead vocals and Reynolds backing him up.

“It’s just us two and programming,” Lindgren says.

Whether it’s choosing to go to the moon or noise popping a death ray, it’s ultimately Revolution, I Love You- a penchant for sound, knobs, and Jameson. It’s modern day pop music. The future is here and the walls are carpeted.