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Alice --- 2002 Music from yet another play, Alice is a slightly longer album than its co-released mate, Blood money, but from what I remember did not impress me one bit. Still not sure why he decided (or the label decided) to release both albums simultaneously. An odd decision, I would have thought, forcing people either to pay double what they were expecting or, worse, having to choose between the two. Again, both Waits and Kathleen write all the songs, and produce the album together. It opens on the title track, something reminiscent of his older albums, a slow, soulful number with alto sax from Colin Stetson, making this I believe the first album in some time not to feature Ralph Carney. It's a moody, morose piece that drags its feet along slowly, stretching out its last cigarette as the sodium halo from the streetlights temporarily spotlight it then vanish as it moves on down the street. A low vocal from Waits, very restrained and almost tired in nature, then the sound of a lonesome train whistle and the chug-chug-chugging of the engine introduces a harder, rawer vocal for “Everything you can think”, with a very Franks Wild Years feel, but again slow and meandering. I was going to say nice marimba, but I see it's actually Swiss hand bells, and there's also a wavering, twisting sort of carnival rhythm to the song. Things stay slow for the rather nice “Flower's grave”, riding on nice cello, violin and clarinet; the general melody puts me in mind of “On the nickel”, while “No one knows I'm gone” has an interesting line when Waits sings ”Hell above and Heaven below”. Again things move slowly and stately, sort of like being in a funeral procession I feel. The music is good but it's a relief to get some uptempo finally when “Kommienezuspadt” (no, I don't know) kicks things up nicely with a manic song that just seems to be Waits enjoying himself as the band goes all New Orleans jazz. Some suitably crazy laughter from the man and we're into “Poor Edward”, where everything slows down again with a kind of waltz, driven on piano and cello, but tips up nicely for the shuffle of “Table top Joe” with a real Vegas swing. “Lost in the harbour” has some good pump organ and again cello and violin, another slow effort but with a nice bittersweet feel, sort of reminds me of Final cut era Floyd for some reason, and I have great hopes for a song titled “We're all mad here”. Kicks off in a “Singapore/Underground” vein; in fact it's very “Underground” now that I listen to it carefully. It's not the uptempo loonfest I had expected --- no “I'll be gone” or “Cemetery polka” here --- but at least it's a little more interesting. A dark ballad then for “Watch her disappear”, which recalls the sort of spoken vocal used on “9th and Hennepin” and driven on cello and bass, while “Reeperbanh” trips along on banjo and some fine clarinet and with a ragged vocal from Waits. That oh-so-familiar lone piano then leads in “I'm still here”, which really sounds like something off One from the heart, a short song which then gives way the the Country-infused “Fish and bird”, remaining slow as we move towards the conclusion of the album with “Barcarolle”, and we end on the only instrumental, “Fawn”, with a distinct old Hollywood feel to it in the violin and clarinet that drive the final tune. TRACKLISTING 1. Alice 2. Everything you can think 3. Flowers grave 4. No-one knows I'm gone 5. Kommienezuspadt 6. Poor Edward 7. Table top Joe 8. Lost in the harbour 9. We're all mad here 10. Watch her disappear 11. Reeperbahn 12. I'm still here 13. Fish and bird 14. Barcarolle 15. Fawn Yeah, I think the main problem I have with this album (in case you didn't notice) is the slow tempo of about ninety percent of it. I'm used to Waits kicking it up a lot, throwing out odd rhythms and using strange instruments, howling like a demon one moment and whispering like a drunken angel the next, and really, nothing like that happens on this album. As I mentioned, it really is, for the most part, the musical equivalent of driving slowly along behind a funeral in a cortege, respectfully ambling along behind the hearse but in reality wishing you could floor the pedal. The pace seldom picks up, and though the songs are certainly not bad, there's a sort of miasma of self-pity and brooding hanging over them like a dark cloud. To be perfectly honest, of the two I prefer Blood Money: at least it had some faster and more atypical songs. Hell, at this point I'd be prepared to admit I'd prefer The Black Rider! It may have been weird and inaccessible for the most part, but at least it kicked out the stays and had some fun. This is just for most of it dour, stolid and depressing. My least favourite Waits album may have just changed. |
A mere two years later, Waits had his next album out, one that would, for the first time really in his career, contain songs that had a political message. Mostly a man who tended to shy from either airing or writing about his beliefs --- political or religious --- if he indeed has them, Waits's songs have always been more personal, more intimate and concerned with people than policy or national events, but on this album --- perhaps affected by the events of 9/11, perhaps not --- he boldly stepped into that area which he had avoided up to this point.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-Realgone.jpg Real gone --- 2004 It's a return to the use of turntables, his first use of this new "instrument" since Mule variations, which adds a very mechanical, almost alien feel to the opener, “Top of the hill”; kind of hard to hear the vocal really as it's more or less subsumed under the raucous guitar work of Marc Ribot and Casey Waits (I don't know if he's any relation) on the turntables. Strange track, very like something off maybe Bone machine or even The Black Rider. It's got a kind of swing to it but I don't really like it. It's pretty repetitive and it goes on way too long, well outstaying its welcome. Slower then and with a metal-sounding drumbeat (not heavy metal; it sounds like he's hitting metal pots or something) “Hoist that rag” opens with a wailing, Franks Wild Years-style vocal then Waits growls the chorus, the song itself a clear reference to the flag, presumably of the United States but I expect it's meant to refer to any national flag, the idea of dying for your country. There's a slow amble as we move into “Sins of my father”, and when I said before that a song at eight minutes was the longest Waits has recorded I was certainly wrong, as this clocks in at a massive ten! There's a real feel of Rain Dogs and Swordfishtrombones to this, and it is a good song but again does it need to be that long? Essentially it follows the same melody all the way through, and yeah, being Waits he could probably add another twenty verses, but it has six already. Some very nice banjo and guitar, and we slide on into “Shake it” which has little other than claps and guitar, very Bone Machine. Again the vocal is hard to make out, though it probably isn't saying much. “Don't go into that barn” seems to retread the path walked over ten years previously when Waits penned “Murder in the red barn”, and has the same sort of manic, almost panicked vocal with some slick bass driving the tune. A very folky kind of jaunt in “How's it gonna end?” with a low-key vocal and then “Metropolitan guide” kicks down the walls as Waits and his band just go all crazy, mad rhythms and a scratchy vocal, a real sort of improvisational jam. “Dead and lovely” is a mid-tempo bitter ballad of the type Waits does so well, with some good guitar and bass. It's interesting to see here Waits return to his basic style in terms of musical instruments; whereas prior to this he has used things like cello, viola, pump organ, glass harp, celeste and others on his albums, here he's sticking mostly with the guitar/bass/drums/piano/banjo combination, with a few exceptions of course, but in general it leads to a more organic feel to the record. This track is probably my favourite so far, maybe tying with “Sins of my father”, which has really grown on me. A return to the spoken vocal from “9th and Hennepin” for “Circus”, which has him bring back the chamberlin, just as I mention his using only “normal” instruments, and bells tinkle away nicely in the background, giving the piece a sort of dark fairytale feel, while “Trampled rose” is pretty acoustic with a kind of moaning vocal. The vocal is low and the music very sparse for “Green grass”, with some whistling (don't think I've heard that since The Early Years --- not including the whistle at the end of “What's he building?”) then we're going all industrial with “Baby gonna leave me”, and so into “Make it rain”, a sort of slowed-down version of “Such a scream”. I know, I've said that before, but it's true. Listen to it. We close then on another political song, as Waits in the persona of a soldier bemoans his lot in “Day after tomorrow” --- ”They fill us full of lies everyone buys/ About what it means to be a soldier/ I still don't know how I'm supposed to feel/ About all the blood that's been spilled” --- nice laidback acoustic line carrying the song, and it ends the album well. TRACKLISTING 1. Top of the hill 2. Hoist that rag 3. Sins of my father 4. Shake it 5. Don't go into that barn 6. How's it gonna end 7. Metropolitan glide 8. Dead and lovely 9. Circus 10. Trampled rose 11. Green grass 12. Baby gonna leave me 13. Clang boom steam 14. Make it rain 15. Day after tomorrow It's certainly an improvement on the last two albums, and in some ways it's Waits getting back to what he does best, but I still find it hard to get excited about this album in the same way as I enthused about, say, Blue Valentine or Rain Dogs or even Bone Machine. I haven't listened to it very much, but I do remember that I tried quite hard to get into it at the time my brother gave me a tape (yeah, what of it?) of the album but found it very hard to. Could it be that Waits is losing his spark? There are only two albums left now in his discography, one of which, his most recent, I've already reviewed, so the final one to be done here will be the massive three-disc, fifty-plus-track compilation put out by him in 2006. That one's gonna be some amount of work! |
Although Waits's last album was 2011's Bad as me, I have as I mentioned in the previous entry already reviewed this (you can find it here http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ml#post1117949) so that leaves only one album before we wrap this up, but it's bloody gigantic. In 2006, Waits got together all the unreleased songs, pieces of music, ideas and demos he had recorded over the years and put them all together on what would become a three-disc collection. In an attempt to not just throw everything there in no order, he arranged them into three distinct groups, which he called individually, “Brawlers”, “Brawlers” and “Bastards” and released the entire thing under that title.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ver_art%29.jpg Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards --- 2006 Here's what Waits has to say about the collection: ”A lot of songs that fell behind the stove while making dinner, about 60 tunes that we collected. Some are from films, some from compilations. Some is stuff that didn't fit on a record, things I recorded in the garage with kids. Oddball things, orphaned tunes. It was just a big pile of songs. It's like having a whole lot of footage for a film. It needs to be arranged in a meaningful way so it will be a balanced listening experience. You have this big box with all these things in it and it doesn't really have any meaning until it's sequenced. It took some doing. There's a thematic divide, and also pacing and all that. There are different sources to all these songs and they were written at different times. Making them work together is the trick.” The first disc (“Brawlers”) is rooted more in his work on albums such as Heartattack and Vine, Rain dogs and Blue Valentine: stuff more rock and blues-based, while the second, “Bawlers” is the ballads with the third being experimental and spoken word material that comes under the heading of “Bastards”. All in all there are a massive fifty-two tracks, so you'll understand if I skim though them here. I'll do my best to point out and focus on the better ones, but many will be just a line or a few words. Disc One: “Brawlers” “Lie to me” is an untempo barebones rocker which has elements of Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years about it, pretty manic with an almost indecipherable lyric, and it's pretty guitar driven, followed by “Lowdown”, which reminds me of Bowie meets ZZ with its hard-edged rock feel. The next one is called “2:19” yet runs for over five minutes, and has some cool harmonica nad interesting percussion. Oh, I see: 2:19 is the train time. Fair enough. Reminds me a little of “Filipino box spring hog” off Mule Variations. “Fish in the jailhouse” rocks along well, kind of reminds me a little of “A sweet little bullet from a pretty blue gun”, “Bottom of the world” is Country-infused acoustic with a real hobo idea to it, “Lucinda” has a much more Bone Machine mechanical feel about it with somehow a feeling of an old folk ballad, and then we get one of very few covers, as he takes on Leadbelly's “Ain't going down to the well”, followed by the traditional tune “Lord I've been changed”, with of course a heavy gospel influence. “Puttin' on the dog” is a blues-infused harmonica-driven mid-pacer, but highlight of at least this disc, if not the whole album, is “Road to peace”, where Waits spits out his anger and frustration at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his voice sad and bitter against a swinging blues beat as he sings ”The last thing he said was/ God is great and God is good/ Then he blew them all/ To Kingdom Come.” At seven minutes plus it's a longer song than we're used to getting from Waits, and the most scathing of the US Administration as he growls ”Bush is afraid to risk his future/ In the fear of his political failures/ So he plays chess at his desk / And poses for the press/ Ten thousand miles from/ The road to peace.” One of his most telling lines in the song is ”If God is great and God is good/ Why can't he change the hearts of men?” Why, indeed? “All the time” goes back to the grindy vocal with a hint of mechanisation in it that we hear on Bone Machine, then he hits up The Ramones for “The return of Jackie and Judy” before skipping along without a care in “Walk away” and then another cover in Phil Philips's “Sea of love”. Two tracks then complete this disc, the first being “Buzz Fledderjohn”, a slow folk acoustic (with added dog!) and the closer allowing Waits to work with his longtime friend who is mentioned a lot all through his earlier albums, Chuck E. Weiss, as “Rains on me” takes us one third of the way through this collection with a gospel-infused folk ballad. Disc two: “Bawlers” A short, sort of lullaby-like tune, “Bend down the branches” opens the second disc, followed by “You can never hold back spring”, like something off Closing time, with piano and trumpet driving the tune. “Long way home” has a very downbeat Country feel to it, with violin holding court on “Widow's Grove”. Everyone probably knows “Little bit of poison”, since it featured in Shrek II, and “Shiny things” slips along on a nice banjo rhythm with I think clarinet. There's a return then to the opening of One from the heart for “The world keeps turning”, slow measured piano ballad with a gentle (for Waits) vocal, a Country waltz for “Tell it to me”, even some steel guitar in there to add to the Country flavour, while “Never let go” sways along nicely on a piano line somewhat reminiscent of “Innocent when you dream” in places. “Fannin Street” has the low-key melancholy of “Time”, with something of the Irish traditional song “From Clare to here” about it too, while I hear snatches of “Soldier's things” in the sprinkly piano that drives “Little man”, though in fairness it's a far different song, just the initial feel I get from it. Jazzy piano and smoky sax run “It's over”, one of the most downbeat ballads here, again reminding me of material from One from the heart, particularly “Old boyfriends”, “The wages of love” and “Picking up after you”. It's no surprise that “If I have to go” sounds very Franks Wild Years, as it was originally in the play but never made it onto the album, which is a pity as it's a really nice soft piano ballad. Another of Leadbelly's next in “Goodnight Irene”. I don't know the original so can't say how well he covers the song but I like this crazy, drunken rendition a lot. An acoustic, mournful ballad, “The fall of Troy” is a fine example of Waits's flair for storytelling in a song, though it ends too abruptly, while funeral jazz mixes with slow gospel for “Take care of all my children” and a slow hobo ballad follows in the shape of “Down there by the train”. One original song remains on this disc then, sandwiched in between two covers, the first being a return to The Ramones for “Danny says”, nice slow acoustic, very simple, then the last of his own songs is “Jayne's blue wish”, and the classic “Young at heart” wraps up the second disc, rather appropriately, given that Waits never seems to show his age (he was sixty-seven at the time this was released, so seventy-six now) and it also features some of that whistling I've missed so much. Disc three: “Bastards” This is the one that features mostly experimental music, more in the vein of recent albums as well as some spoken-word pieces. It opens on “What keeps mankind alive”, with a very carnival Franks Wild Years/Black Rider feel, staccato accordion and organ in a kind of slow tango rhythm with some nice mandolin too. It's followed by the bleak “Children's story”, which I've focussed on already in “The Word according to Waits” section earlier, and that's followed by the weirdest version of “Heigh ho” you have ever heard! Yeah, the one from Snow White! Another spoken one is “Army ants”, where Waits informs us about the insects as if he were narrating a National Geographic special or something, then a cover of Skip Spence's “Book of Moses” before he scat-sings his way through “Bone chain”, and then tackles the traditional song “Two sisters” almost acapella with only a fiddle for accompaniment. A mix of Franks Wild Years and Heartattack and Vine for “First kiss”, touch of “Goin' out west” on “Dog door”, and then four short songs one after the other. First up is “Redrum”, which is just ... weird. Like some mad feedback over some guitar chords and maybe organ? Short though and it leads into “Nirvana”, a spoken-word effort using the words of Bukowski against accordion and then it's Jack Kerouac who provides the lyrical content of “Home I'll never be” on solo piano, until Waits teams up with William J. Kennedy for “Poor little lamb” with a very Franks Wild Years feel. “Altar boy” looks back to Small change and songs like “Bad liver and a broken heart”, then he talks about his cars in “The Pontiac”, no instrumentation at all, then more scat singing and boombox for “Spidey's wild ride”. That brings us almost to the end, as he wraps up with a cover of Daniel Johnston's “King Kong” before finally paying one more tribute to Kerouac on, what else, “On the road”. And that's it. A staggering fifty-two songs later, one for every week in the year, we've come to the end of this amazing compilation, and indeed to the end of the discography of Tom Waits. So far. TRACKLISTING Disc one: “Brawlers” 1. Lie to me 2. Lowdown 3. 2:19 4. Fish in the jailhouse 5. Bottom of the world 6. Lucinda 7. Ain't going down to the well 8. Lord I've been changed 9. Puttin' on the dog 10. Road to peace 11. All the time 12. The return of Jackie and Judy 13. Walk away 14. Sea of love 15. Buzz Fledderjohn 16. Rains on me Disc two: “Bawlers” 1. Bend down the brances 2. You can never hold back spring 3. Long way home 4. Widow's grove 5. Little drop of poison 6. Shiny things 7. World keeps turning 8. Tell it to me 9. Never let go 10. Fannin Street 11. Little man 12. It's over 13. If I have to go 14. Goodnight Irene 15. The fall of Troy 16. Take care of all my children 17. Down there by the train 18. Danny says 19. Jayne's blue wish 20. Young at heart Disc three: “Bastards” 1. What keeps mankind alive? 2. Children's story 3. Heigh ho 4. Army ants 5. Book of Moses 6. Bone chain 7. Two sisters 8. First kiss 9. Dog door 10. Redrum 11. Nirvana 12. Home I'll never be 13. Poor little lamb 14. Altar boy 15. The Pontiac 16. Spidey's wild ride 17. King Kong 18. On the road It would be dishonest of me to say I loved, or even liked, every track on this album --- there are some that are just too odd for me and some I simply don't like --- but given that there are so many tracks on it I find I like more than I don't, which is really a feat in itself. Somewhat like the two Early Years compilations of the 90s, this triple boxset gives a real insight into the sort of music Waits had been writing since about 1985 (the start point given for the songs here) and now, and shows that, far from my fear that he may have taken a divergent path to the one I've been used to seeing him follow and changing his musical direction entirely, he can still write songs that make me laugh, cry and think, and as long as he can do that, I guess I'll always be a fan. In closing, let me just say this did require, to be fair, quite an effort from me to complete. After all, we're talking about twenty-two albums here, even if I had reviewed three already, and as we saw, the further he got into his career the longer his albums got, with everything after Rain dogs clocking up at least fifteen tracks, and often a lot more. In total, excepting the ones I didn't listen to as I had already reviewed them, that's 239 tracks making up a total of 1,095 minutes or eighteen and a quarter hours. That, my friends, is a lot of Waits! While I've been doing this, and it was my own decision to do it this way, nothing else has been posted in this journal, which means that if you're not a Waits fan you've probably steered clear, so it's time to get back to other things. But when doing a discography in this much detail, I think it's important to clear the decks and not allow other things to intrude, at least in this journal. If I strung it out over my usual period of time, chances are I would not get to do the Genesis and Marillion ones before the end of the year (who cheered?) as is my intention. But it won't be for a few months yet that I get to the first of those two. Right now, I'm going to be posting other stuff, probably not that many album reviews. I'm a bit burned out to be honest, and I'll shortly be beginning research for Metal Month III, so will be concentating a lot on that. At any rate, if you read the reviews I hope you enjoyed them, if not, well it's over now and we're moving on. For myself I'm glad I did this: it was a pretty huge undertaking but then I'm a pretty huge fan of Waits, and to review even the albums of his I didn't and don't like was something of an experience for me. At least nobody can say I wasn't thorough! So, time to pack the banjo away, collect those chair legs and close down the piano lid, and head off in search of a bar that's still open. Reviewing a discography is thirsty work, you know! |
Thank you so much for your dedication to this discographic review. I'm a Waits fan with a near-complete collection of his original pressing LPs, but I've not given each individual disc the undivided attention they deserve. Your album-by-album guide will be a welcome accompaniment to my exploration for the weeks ahead.
Thanks! |
Ì thought you might enjoy it as a Waits fan. Glad you did. It certainly took a lot of time and work but I think it was worth it in the end; even gave me in some cases an appreciation for albums I had not been impressed with previously.
And welcome to my journal! TH |
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They're a band who get a lot of hate from a lot of different quarters, possibly because people keep putting them into what I feel is the wrong boxes. I mean, a heavy metal band? Surely not. A pop band? No. I think the only proper label that fits Journey is AOR, and in that sphere they have flourished and grown to be one of the biggest stadium-fillers in the US, perhaps the world, over a career spanning forty years, but really only beginning in earnest in 1981, with the release of this, their most successful and best known album. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...albumcover.jpg Escape --- Journey --- 1981 (Columbia) With the arrival of keyboard whizz Jonathan Cain from The Babys (which had also featured John Waite, a relationship they would renew when they and most of the rest of Journey would form Bad English in 1987), the scene was set for a cosmic shift in the fortunes, and indeed the music of Journey. While they had had six albums previous to this, none had really done much, although Departure and the two previous albums had made some inroads on the charts and given them some hit singles. However Journey, generally, were still a well-kept secret for the most part. They had their fans, sure, every band does, and they had their hits, but their albums only began shifting massive units after this behemoth hit. Straight into songwriting went Cain, with Neal Schon and Steve Perry, and together they crafted not one but four huge hit singles, two of which were to go on to become total rock classics, and the stuff of many a drunken karaoke night. The album became their breakthrough in a commercial sense, putting them firmly on the map. People like Unknown Soldier will probably argue that Journey were already well on the map, and they were, but if you like, this album put them in the sat-nav rather than just being a place on a printed map. In other words, though Journey had had hits in the US before, it was only after this album that people all over the world suddenly began to know who they were. And so the hate began. But I love Journey, though many of their albums I feel struggle by on some incredible tracks paired with some pretty poor ones, of which perhaps more later. If any of their albums can be said to be a classic though, it has to be this, and it would lead to other gems like Frontiers and Raised on radio, as what was almost the perfect AOR band lineup took shape. What I said above does not however holds true for this album: there's hardly a sub-par track to be found among these nine perfectly-crafted songs? And what else would you expect of an album that was voted as number one AOR album ever by the readers of that venerated metal mag, “Kerrang!” indeed? Not bad. If there's anyone alive who does not know “Don't stop believin'” then I have yet to meet them. If only through the latter efforts of “Glee”, the song has become a standard even if some people don't realise who wrote it. With a haunting piano line that immediately lays down Cain's marker as the new guy taking control it features a bluesy vocal from Steve Perry, arguably the best ever Journey vocalist, before Neal Schon's searing guitar line bursts through and the song takes off. “Don't stop believin'” is somewhat of an oddity in Journey's catalogue, as it really doesn't feature a chorus, or indeed the title, until the last minute or so, with the verses all played one after another. The end result is a buildup that just makes you want to punch the air in exhilaration when Schon's guitar solo peters out and ushers in Perry's hopeful, defiant vocal ”Don't stop believin'/ Hold on to the feelin'!" Classic, and a a great way to open the album. A loud, raucous staggered guitar riff takes in “Stone in love”, Steve Smith's thumping percussion merging with Ross Valory's powerful basslines and Perry's vocal coming in with a raunchy, sleazy delivery quite different to the song he's just finished. Great vocal harmonies, another hallmark of Journey's music, and very much more guitar-driven this time, as Schon gets given his head, Cain tailing back into the background and waiting for a chance to shine, as he does in the buildup to the instrumental section, where he puts a Yes-like spin on the music. He leads in the second hit single, “Who's crying now?” as his soon-to-be familiar piano notes lay down the background for one of rock's most powerful ballads. Again, there may be few among you who don't know this song. A passionate vocal from Steve Perry and just the right amount of punch from Smith takes the song along in a perfect path. Those vocal harmonies are back and so very sweet, Valory putting a superb little twist on the bassline that forever marks the song with his unique signature. This is only one of two tracks on which Perry and Cain collaborate without Schon, but the sublime breakaway guitar solo that ends the song leaves you in no doubt that he has more than contributed to it. Journey would get a lot of stick --- still do --- for the amount of “soppy rock ballads” they write, and indeed this album has three, but if you thought they were not a rock band then “Keep on runnin'” should show you the error of your ways. Not the best of Journey songs certainly, but it has a real punch and drive about it, and Schon goes particularly crazy on it. Perry sings his heart out and again Cain takes something of a backseat to the guitar man, but as ever he's only waiting, gathering his strength and his energy for the lush ballad to come. “Still they ride” begins on soft acoustic guitar and will always be recognised for Perry's first two words, ”Jessie rides” before Cain builds the soundscape with sonorous organ and powerful piano, Perry wringing every ounce of emotion out of the song. It's devoid of the usual vocal harmonies this time, but rather than suffer for it their absence seems to make it better, almost as if they would be superfluous here. A soaring guitar solo screams off Schon's fretboard, climbing to the Heavens as the song reaches its climax, Cain adding piano flourishes and synth flair as they take the track home and into the title track. A big snarly guitar with piano glissando and “Escape” gets underway, rocking along nicely with a bouncy beat, Cain emulating Jerry Lee Lewis almost on the ivories. He also must have given Geoff Downes some ideas and borrowed from Tony Banks, as I hear a sequence that would crop up on Asia's first album and had been used by Genesis earlier. A real stadium rock anthem, “Escape” brings the harmonies back in and they work brilliantly. There's even a shot of soul and gospel in the vocals. “Lay it down” is down-and-dirty straightahead rock and roll, not a wimp in sight as Schon cuts loose and Perry gives it all he's got. I'm not sure whether the presence of ex-Lynyrd Skynyrd soundman Kevin Elson, who co-produces, has anything to do with this but it definitely has a certain southern rock feel about it. And things keep rockin' for “Dead or alive”, this time driven on the manic rock piano of Mr. Cain, a song just to have fun to really. A rapid-fire vocal delivery from Steve Perry as he grins ”Wanted dead or alive” five years before Jon Bon Jovi took that to the charts and reinvented cowboy rock for a while. Powerful work on the frets from Schon, a great almost metalworthy solo (shut up) and we're into the longest track on the album. “Mother, father” runs for just a second short of five and a half minutes, and almost closes the album with a classical piano intro by Cain, a strong and determined vocal from Perry which quickly changes what seemed to be a ballad into a dramatic, yearning power anthem and would have made a great closer by itself. This is the only track on the album on which Matt Schon lends a hand to the songwriting team. I don't know if he is Neal's brother, but I assume he's related in some ways. This is probably the closest Journey come to returning, if briefly, to their earlier progressive rock roots, and it really gets you in the heart, especially with the harmonies. But it's not quite over. The final track is not only another single, but their biggest hit in the US, stopping just one short of the number one slot. This confounds me a little. I love “Open arms”, and it's an amazing song, but I can't believe people liked it better than “Don't stop believin'” or “Who's crying now.” It's a showcase for Jonathan Cain as he drives the closing ballad on gentle piano, Perry's voice soft and wistful initially until the chorus when he punches it up into an emotional crescendo, and you can almost hear the passion leaking from his pores as he croons ”Now I come to you/ With open arms/ Nothing to hide/ Believe what I say.” Which kind of brings everything full circle in terms of lyrical content. I don't see an orchestra credited, but if not then Cain certainly makes his synth sound like one, and for once Schon lets him do his thing and stays somewhat in the shadows, allowing the song to bring a gentle and triumphant close to a true classic of AOR. TRACKLISTING 1. Don't stop believin' 2. Stone in love 3. Who's crying now 4. Keep on runnin' 5. Still they ride 6. Escape 7. Lay it down 8. Dead or alive 9. Mother, father 10. Open arms Listen, all you guys and girls who hate and laugh at Journey don't bother me. I listen to music because I like it, not because I'm told to or I think I should or someone says I should, and equally, I refuse to put down a band just because they're not popular or deemed worthy. This album is a true classic, and would spawn some amazing followups, cementing the name of Journey not only in rock's annals but also in the derision and sneers of those who judged them by their hit singles and probably never bothered to listen to a full album. Some people just like to feel superior --- as Jimbo Jones once put it in The Simpsons: “It makes me feel like a big man!” And that's fine. You go ahead: haters are gonna hate. But you won't turn me off Journey. And if you listened to this album maybe your opinion would change. But even if not, nothing stops Escape being a classic of eighties AOR, and the yardstick that so many new and young bands still aspire to, over thirty years since it was released. If songs like “Don't stop believin'” can still inspire artistes to cover them and make them famous and popular all over again, then that has to say something about the album's longevity, doesn't it? You might prefer Husker Du, or Kendrick Lamaar, or even The Flatfish from Outer Space, who knows? And if you do, fair play to you and I hope you enjoy them. This is what I enjoy. Classic, timeless rock that speaks down the years and still seems as fresh today as when it was penned back at the start of the 1980s. And I will go on enjoying it. And Journey will go on releasing great albums. And you will continue to hate them. Probably. And the world will continue to turn. But with four hit singles and over twelve million units sold, and nary a bad track on it, there's no escaping (sorry) the fact that this is, and always will be, a great example of a classic AOR album. |
Are you going to review the soundtrack for Big Time, TH? Or the work Waits did with Gavin Bryars?
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Gavin Bryars I know nothing of, but if I went into collabs I'd have been here a whole lot longer, and you really want to read my Genesis and Marillion discogs, don't you? :laughing: |
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I'll cast another vote for Big Time. The mixes on the LP differ from that of the VHS (or of the bootleg DVD) but both are absolutely essential.
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Did you notice your journal has gone over 200,000 views?
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http://sospc.name/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/200000.jpg Another unbelievable milestone! I'd just like to take the time to thank everyone who stops by, reads regularly, or comments here and who has taken the time to read what I write. Your continued interest has allowed me to reach the incredible milestone of Two Hundred Thousand Views a feat, so far as I can see, never equalled in the annals of Music Banter journals. In fact, from what I can see, this journal has now received more views than all of the other journals in the first two pages added together! That's nothing short of amazing. However, it's quite clear that I would never have reached this staggering total if people were not interested in what I am writing, so my eternal gratitude goes to you all for keeping my belief alive that what I write is being read, and in turn keeping me interested in continuing to write. I don't want to make a big song and dance about this (two hundred thousand balloons? Yeah, just put the boxes over there please mate. Sign here? Sure. Thanks) but I think it's important to mark the occasion, as it's a massive vindication for me as a writer and probably a searing indictment that a lot of us need to get out more! ;) When I started this journal all I wanted was somewhere I could write about my favourite music, and maybe share it with like-minded people. Though many of you hate my music taste, I think a large percentage of you recognise and respect the passion with which I write, whether I like something or hate it, it will get a fair and (ahem) thorough review here, and I in turn respect and am grateful for that acceptance. Now I have NINE journals, and even the least popular of them still gets respectable views, so some of you out there are reading most, if not all, of what I write, and again for that you have my thanks. I have great things planned for the coming year, but as ever if there is something you would like to see, something that you think I'm not doing right or at all, or some way you feel I could improve this, or any other of my journals, please let me know. Comments are always welcome. In addition, let me just thank the mods who tirelessly approve my many entries: Janszoon, Urban, Goofle, Vanilla, Pete, Burning Down, Pedestrian and anyone else who may be, or have been in the past, a mod, and whom I have either forgotten or missed out. My journals would be empty without your work, and it is appreciated. I hope I don't drive you all too mad! :shycouch: So thank you once again and I hope I can keep writing the stuff that keeps bringing you back here. Cheers, and thanks to you all! :beer: http://images.sodahead.com/polls/000..._1_xlarge.jpeg |
Your modesty rivals even my own.
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Congratulations almost 207,000 views, but it's such a shame that nobody can find anything in it. Maybe you should get Batfink to do an index for you. ;)
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Yeah, index would be wonderful, but I had a little trouble keeping it up for my last journal, which only had like 28 entries.
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And now it's done! :)
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You have to hand it to them. Would anyone have bought a record called “Scottish boy” sung by a woman with a deep Glaswegian accent? Unlikely. But “Japanese boy”? Now that's a whole different kettle of sushi! Take one lady who lives across the northern border and give her a song about a Japanese girl desperately seeking her lost lover, and what have you got? Surprisingly, and perhaps to our collective shame, you have a number one single and the end of what could have been a promising career for Mary Sandeman. I mean, with a name like that she should have gone places on her own merits, but no: this song was presented to her and she gamely donned the kimono and knitting-needles-in-the-hair (why do they do that?) and began warbling in what could only be described as a really bad Japanese accent to accompanying cliched oriental keyboard music, and a legend was not born. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...panese_Boy.png Japanese boy --- Aneka --- 1981 Written by Bob Heatlie, himself a Scot and most famed for his collaborations with Shakin' Stevens, notably the trembling one's Christmas song, “Merry Christmas Everyone”, the song tells the sad tale of a lady who goes to a passerby in the street (maybe a policeman; would make sense but then what about this song and its popularity makes sense?) and explains she has lost her lover and wishes to find him. Description miss? A Japanese boy. Yeah, I didn't ask for his nationality miss. Any distinguishing characteristics? Birthmarks? Hair colour? Eyes? Name even? A Japanese boy. Yes, you said miss. I understand he's Japanese. But you must understand, there are probably in excess of a million resident Japanese in London alone. How can I find one unnamed member of their nationality in a city this size? Surely you have more I can go on? No? A Japanese boy you say. Again. Fine miss, I'll take a note and if I see any Japanese boys I'll tell them you're looking for them. Name? Aneka. Very good miss. (Don't blame him if he did run off on her. Loony cow.) :rolleyes: What is it about this song? It's a throwaway, below-par pop song that even the famed Stock, Aitken and Waterman would blush at having written, and yet it got to number bloody one. Well I'll tell you what it is about it, what got it there: the hook. If this had just been a song about someone losing their boyfriend in a strange city then nobody would have been very interested. Well okay, there was Bonnie Tyler's "Lost in France", but that's a little different. But make it all exotic, as the Vapors once remarked, turn it Japanese, and suddenly everyone's dancing making slanty eyes and making praying motions with their hands, and the cause of East/West relations has been set back decades. Funny thing is, they wouldn't play this in Japan because it sounded too Chinese! :laughing: After the smash hit that was “Japanese boy”, Aneka, or Mary Sandeman, found it difficult, even impossible to ditch the image and was unable to be taken seriously as a singer again. Well, you wouldn't, would you? She only released the one album under that name before retiring, probably richer but somehow in a real way poorer for the experience. Thing is, nobody --- including me at the time, who of course hated the thing --- had any idea she wasn't really Japanese or that her name was not Aneka, but Mary. Still, maybe she should have asked them to write a followup called “Scottish girl”, wherein the Japanese boy seeks his Scottish .... no? Ach, see you Jimmy! http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZyPevne1b5Q/hqdefault.jpg |
As we approach the fourth anniversary of this journal, I'd like to return to a section I have not run for some time, and which was my first dedicated section not to specifically deal with album reviews. Technically, it does, in a way, and the very first section was “Spinning the wheel”, but that essentially was just an excuse to review a random album, so I wouldn't see that as having been much different from my normal reviews. This, however, was the first time I had what I considered a really different idea, half-robbed from a TV programme of similar title, but still all my own work. I haven't been back to it since October 2012, so it's probably high time we had another look at
http://www.trollheart.com/secretlife.jpg This is by no means an easy choice. I have of course thousands of albums, but many of the sleeves of them, while good enough, don't have enough of that artistic flair to allow me to extemporise about them at length, as I like to do. I usually for this section have tried to select an album that either has a lot of components parts to its artwork (Marillion's Fugazi, ELO's Face the music and Gary Moore's Still got the blues) or which tells a very definite story, hopefully linked to the album or at least the artiste (Supertramp's Famous last words). The one I've chosen this time around fits, I believe, into the latter category. No. 8: “Rising” by Rainbow http://trollheart.com/rainbow-rising.jpg Yes, I know it's sometimes called Rainbow Rising but that's mostly due to the way the album title is set out on the cover. It is, though, just called Rising and was in fact one of the first albums reviewed by me in the early days of this journal, so that all ties in well with the anniversary. This was of course pretty much Ronnie James Dio's finest hour, I think most people will agree, when he brought Rainbow to the notice of the world with this powerful classic album that just drips with fantasy and mythological imagery, both in the music and on the cover. But it is the latter with which we are concerned of course, and that iconic cover was in fact created by Ken Kelly. Here's a little about him. Being the nephew of Frank Frazetta's wife, he was able to study under the great man himself, whose rather nubile young ladies and muscled heroes appeared on many a fantasy/sword-and-sorcery book of my youth, to say nothing of calendars and posters of same. Ken has worked with bands such as Kiss, Manowar and Coheed and Cambria. He also illustrated many many books, of which his Conan the Barbarian series are perhaps the most well known, and has also been very active illustrating in the toy industry. This album cover was of course completed in 1975, forty years ago now, but on his website he still retains a glowing sense of pride in his achievement for it, and so he should. Somewhat a little like Roger Dean, who made a name for himself illustrating the album covers of Yes and later Asia, Kelly's style is deeply rooted in fantasy themes, and this shines through very strongly on the album cover here. If we look at it, there are quite a few elements to take in. The first, and most overriding impression is of course strength and power, as we see a fist punch defiantly up out of the lake and grasp the rainbow. Whether it's using it as a weapon or trying to destroy it is possible open to interpretation, but given that the band's name is Rainbow I would assume it's grasping it to show how powerful the rainbow is. After all, it contains all the colours of the spectrum (rather like Floyd's equally iconic album cover) and is something you literally cannot touch, as it's basically an optical illusion created by the reflection of raindops off the sun. But as an image it has a power all of its own: you only have to look at one in the sky to realise how beautiful it is and to be struck by its awe-inspiring wonder. The second impression I get is of discovery. If you look to the bottom left of the cover (fig 1) you can see a small knight, warrior or soldier of some sort standing on the cliff, staring at the rainbow, or at least across the lake. His cloak is billowing in the wind, so we can assume he's at some height, though even if we didn't know that the artwork gives that idea anyway. So it looks to me as if he's come across this massive fist rising out of the water, almost like a sign to him. Who is he? Where is he going? There's no way to know, and yet he seems to me like someone on a journey, perhaps a quest, and this appearance of the mighty fist clutching the rainbow must seem to him to be a sign. There's a feeling of vastness, of space, and of how big the world is and how small you are, as the knight (let's call him a knight) stares out across the lake with the high cliffs towering above him all around, the fist more than huge enough to crush him should it wish to, the lake itself wide and rolling. The sky above him is red and sullen, a warning perhaps, or another portent he must interpret. For me, the red sky presages the birth and arrival of a true force in heavy metal --- although this is not Rainbow's debut it's a giant step from the first album and really established them as a band to watch, and to follow. I could be wrong, or imagining it, but to me the shapes in the waves (fig 2) thrown up by the emergence of the fist can be seen to be leaping wolves, tying in to the second track on the album, “Run with the wolf”. Indeed, other songs on it can be referenced from the cover: “Starstruck” and “Stargazer” of course, and even “A light in the black”, with the blinding, brilliant light of the rainbow (more solid and clear than any rainbow I've ever seen in reality) bursting through the darkness and illuminating the brick-red sky above the lake and the cliffs. If you look to the right then, about halfway up there's even a castle (fig 3), half-lost in shadow, which resembles the one off the cover of the debut album, created out of Ritchie Blackmore's guitar. So this album sleeve not only speaks of great power and force, the birth of a phenomenon and perhaps the fulfilment of a prophecy, but lays down a marker for all other metal bands to follow in the coming years. Like the iconic album sleeves of Hipgnosis, this was destined to appear on posters, badges, T-shirts and magazine covers, and although no singles or hits came from Rising and Rainbow commercially are remembered for lesser hits such as “Since you been gone” or “All night long”, this was Rainbow at their quintessentially best, a snapshot in time of a force (ahem) rising, against which there would be no standing, no defence and no possible resistance. |
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http://www.trollheart.com/gonesolo.jpg After merging two of my sections last week I thought this might work a second time. Thing is, I was torn between who to feature on this slot and in the end thought maybe I could do both, as there are some striking similarities between their careers, both before and after they left their parent bands. So although it’s not quite a case of “Two sides of the same coin”, it’s close enough. http://www.trollheart.com/progbrosth.png Both were born in the fifties in Great Britain, although Fish would never forgive me for describing him as English I’m sure. He was born in Midlothian in Scotland, about as far north and as far away from the birthplace of Peter Gabriel as you can get. The ex-Genesis frontman was born in Surrey, he attending a public school while Fish went to the usual sort of one. Gabriel began playing in bands from the time he was at Charterhouse, whereas Fish bummed around at various jobs until joining Marillion circa 1981. Although a decade separates the two men in terms of their musical output --- Gabriel formed Genesis in 1967 and they released their first album in 1969 whereas Fish did not form, but joined Marillion in 1981, the band having been together for two years prior --- the times of their departure from their parent bands and their subsequent solo career timeline exhibits some interesting similarities, which is why I’m bringing in the “Two sides of the same coin” idea. The interrelations between the two, and indeed where their career paths diverge, is something I’ll be remarking on as I go. For now, as Peter Gabriel was the first of the two to make it big, and the one had a profound influence on the other, despite there only being eight years between their ages, it is with the Genesis founder that I will begin, cataloguing his career briefly with Genesis and then more in-depth after his split with the band. As I mentioned, in 1967 Gabriel formed Genesis with his three schoolfriends at Charterhouse, Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford. Two years later, having been discovered by impresario Jonathan King, they released their first album and were soon in demand. But by the time of their fifth album, the concept “The lamb lies down on Broadway”, relations were being strained and Gabriel decided to strike out on his own, leaving the band under fairly amicable circumstances. However it wasn't all roses and "Good luck Peter, we wish you well": in addition to tensions within the band and his not being satisfied at the direction they were going, he had chosen to stay by his pregnant wife’s side while she gave birth to their first daughter, rather than make himself available for touring or recording. Perhaps unreasonably, this rankled with the other band members and soon a parting of the ways was in the cards. In 1977 Gabriel released his first solo album. This, and the three that followed, would be characterised by all being called “Peter Gabriel”. People would differentiate between them either by referring to the year they were released (“Peter Gabriel 1977”, “Peter Gabriel 1980” etc) or by the artwork (“Car,” “Scratch”, and so on). Whether this was meant to allow him to distance himself from the tag of having been a Genesis bandmember and try to mystify his new solo music, or whether he was trying to say the artist is nowhere near as important as the music, I don’t know. He would later abandon the concept, particularly in the face of opposition from his American label, who demanded a title for his fourth album --- although it remained simply “Peter Gabriel” over this side of the pond --- and subsequent ones would all have titles, albeit short, one-word ones. Fish, for his part, would have elaborate, interesting titles for all of his albums. But that’s to come. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ver_art%29.jpg Peter Gabriel 1977/”Car” --- Peter Gabriel --- 1977 (Charisma) The album starts off on a song with a typical Gabriel title, which could have come from the writing sessions for “The lamb”, and “Moribund the burgermeister” starts with an echoey, Tom Waitsesque drum then some accordion and popping noises, again like something off the last Genesis album he made before leaving. His voice is quite sparse and echoing too, harsh and powerful yet restrained. Powerful synth then cuts in and more or less drives the track with a very Genesis-like sound. The similarities to “The lamb”, particularly “The colony of Slippermen” cannot be overstated here. It’s almost like Gabriel stepped from one room having written the music and lyrics for “The lamb” and into another, sat down and continued writing in the very same vein. It’s not the greatest start to be fair, but it’s followed by a song which would become a hit for him --- his first of many --- and for a while be identified with him. In a cross between a retelling of Jesus’ ascension into Heaven after the crucifixion and his own experiences on departing Genesis, “Solsbury Hill” is a much more accessible song, with a driving upbeat tempo, jangly guitar and a nice line in flute melody, this played by Gabriel himself. His voice too is more distinctive, less dark and it’s not really a surprise that this became the hit single from the album. If there was going to be one --- and considering who he was, chances were high there would be --- this was going to be it. In lines like ”My friends would think I was a nut/ Turning water into wine” he certainly references, if only obliquely, the miracles performed by Jesus, and his delighted declaration at the end of the chorus, ”He said grab your things/ I’ve come to take you home” has always, to me at any rate, indicated Jesus being taken back up into Heaven after the resurrection. Whatever the truth, it’s a great song and provided him a platform to build on, a platform that would sadly fail to extend for another five years. We then get what would become known (to me anyway) as the “Gabriel screech”, where he would sound just a little unhinged sometimes when he sang, and on “Modern love” there’s some great hard guitar courtesy of King Crimson legend Robert Fripp, with a solid organ line coming from Larry Fast. It keeps the tempo high and it’s almost an AOR style song with a lot of balls. “Excuse me” uses, of all things, Barbershop, showing that even at this early stage Peter was more than ready to look to the past to make the music of the future, and had no problem integrating odd styles and structures into his songs. It’s a weird song, as you’d expect, with nothing but acapella singing until Fripp comes in with banjo (yeah!) and Tony Levin with tuba (er, yeah…) giving the whole thing of course a very twenties aspect. Gabriel sings a little like McCartney at times here, and certainly sounds like he’s enjoying himself, not so much a man with anything to prove as a man who is glad to be free of the restrictions of his band and able to flex his musical muscle and creativity in any way he feels like doing. “Humdrum” brings everything back down to earth with a low, muttered vocal and dark piano and organ, but it picks up after about a minute, taking on a very recognisable Genesis look, then throwing in some latin percussion themes. Classical guitar, rippling piano and some lush keyboard work then take the song as it slips along on a very stately, sedate rhythm. It’s one of my favourite tracks on the album. If “Slowburn” starts as anything it’s a Genesis song but then Fripp cuts in with some tough electric guitar and the drums get going as Gabriel returns to the somewhat manic tone of “Modern love” and the whole thing rocks out nicely. In fact it’s probably the most rocky track on the album, with bouncy piano joining the party, then “Waiting for the big one” is another standout, with a thick blues riff and another muttered vocal from Gabriel, the star of the show though the piano work which drives the tune, and the false endings (about three), not to mention Gabriel’s witty lyrics: ”Once I was a credit/ To my credit card/ Spent what I hadn’t got/ Wasn’t hard.” A full orchestra (the London Symphony) lends a touch of majesty and class to “Down the Dolce Vita”, and perhaps set a very early marker for Gabriel who would work with orchestras again, most famously in the twenty-first century as they helped him reinterpret his hits on the “New blood” and “Scratch my back” collections. It’s an odd little song, sort of a combination of an almost funky, dance-ish number with a big brassy effort from the LSO, and I find it hard to get too excited about it, a little too confusing for me with all the styles meshing: it’s a song I never remember no matter how many times I play this album. The closer is the one I do remember, my top favourite on it. Accusations of overproduction and bombast have been levelled at “Here comes the flood”, and I’ve heard stripped-down versions of it, mostly with Gabriel accompanying himself on piano, but for me this is the definitive version. Starting off very low-key with soft, almost otherworldly flute, piano and a gentle, almost whispered vocal it builds to a powerful crescendo in the chorus, a real sense of desperation and passion in the lyric as Gabriel sings “Here comes the flood/ We’ll say goodbye to flesh and blood.” In fairness, the first two minutes or so remain the same in the sparser versions, the song just doesn’t explode on them as it does here. Heavy punchy percussion, strong piano and lush organ mesh with Gabriel’s howling vocal, the despair evident in it. There’s a great guitar almost-outro too, courtesy of Fripp, though the song actually ends on a few piano notes and Gabriel’s falsetto. TRACKLISTING 1. Moribund the Burgermeister 2. Solsbury Hill 3. Modern love 4. Excuse me 5. Humdrum 6. Slowburn 7. Waiting for the big one 8. Down the Dolce Vita 9. Here comes the flood Even despite the big hit single, I find this a low-key affair to announce the solo career of the ex-Genesis frontman, with little in the way of fanfare (though of course I would have been too young to have noticed if there had been any when it was released, but I somehow doubt it) and a real pot-pourri of styles and songs. As I said earlier, it does betray a sense of freedom, in a way something similar to how I described the feeling I got from Roger Hodgson's debut album after leaving Supertramp. It's like suddenly Gabriel can explore all these weird themes and ideas without Mike or Phil going, "I don't know, Peter. Do you think the fans will like it?" That's the intrinsic dichotomy of which I've spoken in this section before: a solo artist, leaving his band or just taking time off to create a solo project, is free from the expectations of the band's fans. If people don't like it, it's most likely going to be with the complaint (in this case) "But it's not like Genesis!" to which Gabriel would archly reply "But I'm not in Genesis any more." So now the fans have a choice: write Gabriel off as a lost cause, a man who has abandoned the principles and tenets of Genesis, or jump on board with him for the ride and see where it took them. As his millions of fans worldwide, and the respect he earned not only in the music business but further afield, in the area of humanitarian relations, politics, justice and reform as well as ecological responsibility attest to, most chose the latter. |
Flash forward four years and a young man called Derek William Dick joins a struggling progressive rock band who are trying to revive interest in the whole idea of prog rock. But it’s seen mostly as a dated phenomenon, with bands like Yes, Rush, Genesis and ELP all consigned to the status of “seventies bands”, even though most are still performing and releasing albums, and will for some time. But the times they are a-changing, as someone --- can’t quite remember who ---- ;) once said, and the abovementioned bands, and more like them, have mostly moved on, changing their sound and their approach to their music and their fans.
By the early 1980s, Genesis had pretty much released their last proper prog album in “Duke” and followed it up with the godawful “Abacab” (shut up Neapolitan! ;)), a nadir in their musical career that would lead them down dark paths towards their eventual breakup in 1997, while Rush had already gone for the more commercial/AOR sound a while ago. Yes had reinvented themselves with albums like “Drama” and were about to go on to record “90125”, which while a great great album is pretty far from anyone’s idea of progressive rock, and ELP had never really recovered after the terrible “Love beach”, and would take another fourteen years to knock out their penultimate album, far from the heights of prog gods they had scaled in the seventies. Yeah, progressive rock as a genre was, to most people’s minds, a thing of the past, dead and gone and good riddance. Marillion aimed to change that, along with bands like IQ and Pallas. This was to be the rebirth of progressive rock, or neo-progressive rock as it would come to be known. Joining the band in 1981 Fish cut an imposing figure, over six feet tall with a thick Scottish accent and affecting costumes and wearing greasepaint on his face, rather like his role model Peter Gabriel had during his time with Genesis. But it takes more than a gimmick and looking good to cut it in the technically superior world of progressive rock, and though Fish did not play any instrument he was and is a master wordsmith, and like Gabriel was the principle songwriter as well as the sole vocalist for the band. There’s anecdotal evidence from the time to suggest Fish was approached by a label to sign for them as a solo artist but turned it down. If this is true it’s not surprising, but does a disservice to the other members of the band, who all put in a massive amount of work into their music. Also, let’s not forget Fish was not in Marillion when they were formed. But it’s ever the case: the man up front gets all the press. And Fish garnered some press. His habit of using an imaginary machinegun to “cut down” the audience at the climax of “Forgotten sons” made him something of a star and showed the world this was a talent worth watching. Like Gabriel, Fish used a theatrical style onstage, with costumes and narrations, and his lyrics explored subjects from the human condition to mythological creatures. You know: prog rock! He was also a very vocal person, speaking about a range of subjects and making it clear he was not, unlike the Moody Blues claimed, “just a singer in a rock and roll band”. But as time wore on and Marillion began to make their mark, scoring hit singles from the Misplaced childhood and Fugazi albums, the stress began to tell on Fish and he reached a decision. Having looked over the figures for the tour to support their fourth album, the appropriately-titled Clutching at straws, he realised that the band were becoming indebted to and dependent on EMI, their label. In his own words, "By 1987 we were over-playing live because the manager was on 20 per cent of the gross. He was making a fantastic amount of money while we were working our asses off. Then I found a bit of paper proposing an American tour. At the end of the day the band would have needed a £14,000 loan from EMI as tour support to do it. That was when I knew that, if I stayed with the band, I'd probably end up a raging alcoholic and be found overdosed and dying in a big house in Oxford with Irish wolfhounds at the bottom of my bed." Fish gave the band an ultimatum: dump the manager or he would walk. Inevitably the other members of Marillion let him go, and so in 1988 he set off on a solo career path, taking with him his lyrics and ideas which were supposed to have appeared on the fifth Marillion album, and also artist Mark Wilkinson, who had created the cover of every Marillion album up to then, and would continue to work with Fish on his solo material. Two years later his first solo album hit the shelves, with a typically Marillion/Fishlike title. (Note: for any of you who may have read my thread “The Marillion story”, much of what follows will be recognisable to you, as I am basically pulling most of it wholesale for this review. There’s no point in my writing two reviews, which would say basically the same thing, or letting all that work go to waste. However, I will not be just repeating what I said in that thread verbatim, but will be adding to it and importing it into this review.) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-FishVigil.jpg Vigil in a wilderness of mirrors --- Fish --- 1990 (EMI) It must, in fairness, have been a pretty daunting task, going it alone, even given the fact that he really had no choice, as he said himself above. In the band Fish may have written all the lyrics but he had the other guys to bounce ideas off, and besides that, he wrote lyrics, not music. Marillion as a unit took care of that. After all, let's not forget that great singer and composer though he is, Fish didn't play any instrument in the band. He was purely, first and foremost, a vocalist. So he had to turn to some of his famous mates for help, and his first solo album contains contributions from, among others, Mickey Simmonds and Iron Maiden's Janick Gers. He also used a wealth of talent from uileann pipes expert Davy Spillane to bassist John Giblin and drummer Mark Brzezicki, best known for his work with Big Country. The album opens on the title track, and it's interesting that his first words as a solo artist are "Listen to me, just hear me out: if I could have your attention?" almost as if he's pleading with that section of Marillion fandom who have cursed his name. Probably not, but it's still a good idea. Although this is a long song (the longest on the album) it would seem Fish had taken some lessons away from his time with Marillion, one of these being that songs that are too long get no radio airplay, and as a solo artist you want as much exposure as you can get. Fish knew, or hoped, that many Marillion and ex-Marillion fans would buy his music, if only to hear the difference to what he had been doing with the band, but he knew too that he could not rely only on the "old guard", and must write songs with one eye fixed on if not the charts then at least radio time. So as an introductory song this is necessarily long, almost an old Marillion song that could have worked on "Script", but most of the rest of the songs are relatively short. As there was no acrimonious split with Marillion there's no need for an angry, "Assassing"-style opening shot at the band, and Fish instead blasts consumerism as he pictures himself lost in a "wilderness of mirrors". The song opens on atmospheric keyboard but soon kicks up on the basis of thick percussion and when it really gets going it takes on something of a celtic feel, reflecting of course his Scottish roots. He talks about learning that all his childhood beliefs were wrong --- "When I was young my father told me just bad guys died, at the time just a little white lie. It was one of the first but it hurt me the most and the truth stung like tears in my eyes that even the good guys must die. There's no reason, no rhyme and I never knew why: even now it still makes me cry." Further celtic inspiration is supplied by the appearance of the great Davy Spillane on pipes and whistle, and great guitar screams courtesy of ex-Dire Straits man Hal Lindes as Fish is back to the angry man we knew on albums like Fugazi and Script. The feeling of loss and helplessness runs through the album, and the idea of "the Hill" is first broached here. This is a metaphor for the accumulation of wealth and power, the idea that if you're on "the Hill" you can look down on your neighbours and feel that you're better than they are. There’s a lot of anger in the song, but hope too, that someone somewhere will hear his “voice crying in the wilderness” --- ”If there’s somebody out there/ Will they throw me down a line/ Just a little helping hand/ Just a little understanding” --- and at the end as everything winds down and the song more or less returns to the musical theme of its opening, Fish sighs ”When I can’t scream no more/ And I need reassurance/ I listen to the crowd.” This may reference society, or it may be talking about his audience, now or before; Fish may be saying that when he needs to be reassured he has done the right thing he remembers the crowds shouting and cheering and applauding Marillion. That’s the last of the “epics” for a while, as Fish kicks things off with the lead single from the album, “Big wedge”. An obvious push for the charts, this single was never going to do much in the USA --- truth be told it didn't exactly shake up the charts here either --- as Fish decries the idea of capitalism and specifically American capitalism. It's upbeat and rocky as Fish sings "A priest got in a Cadillac,/The shoe-shine boy sang gospel/ As God and His accountant drove away!" Showing he was determined also to move a step away from the Marillion music, Fish calls in the talents of a brass section which really "souls" up this track. If there was any doubt about his views on the US of A they're dispelled as he roars "America! America the big wedge! /Am I buying your tomorrow out today?" No US stadium shows for you, Mr. Dick! Weirdly, although “Big wedge” was the lead single from the album, “State of mind” was released months before the album hit the shelves. Seems EMI were afraid of pulling too much attention away from the “relaunch” of Marillion, whose first album sans Fish was due out in 1989, and so they threw out this single as a taster in October 1989, one month after Seasons end hit, but held back the actual release of the full album until the following January. Although also politically motivated lyrically, this is far more restrained and more in the Marillion mode, as Fish fumes about the grip of Thatcher's government over Britain, and foresees a revolution. Driven on a thick bassline from Giblin the vocal is downbeat and restrained, menacing and somewhat paranoid, rising to a hopeful rallying call as he sings "We the people are gettin' tired of your lies/ We the people believe that it's time. /We're demanding our right to the answers: /We'll elect a president to a state of mind." Another example of Fish's talent in making a phrase mean two things, or changing the meaning of a word to fit in with his vision. The title of the album is also mentioned here for the second time. Great crashing guitar and what could be sitar but probably is not. Perhaps a slight throwback to Clutching at straws, “The Company” is is a folky tune that sways along with the happy abandon of the drunk but soon turns angry as Fish snarls "You buy me a drink then you think/ That you've got the right to crawl into my head/ And rifle my soul." In fact, this could even go back further, to where on Misplaced Childhood he's singing about a journalist bothering him during the "Mylo" section of "Blind curve". Again "the Hill" is mentioned, quite a lot actually as he says "Here on the Hill, halfway up, halfway down." Nice bit of celtic violin and flute with an almost orchestral keyboard passage. The first ever Fish ballad comes in the form of “A gentleman’s excuse-me”, and I have to say it’s right up there with the likes of "Lavender" and "Sugar mice". The imagery goes right back to "Chelsea Monday" as Fish asks, against a lone piano melody, "Do you still keep paper flowers/ In the bottom drawer with your Belgian lace, /Taking them out every year /To watch the colours fade away?" It's an inspired and effective depiction of a life, and the chance of a relationship, wasting away, the more so when he sneers "Do you still believe in Santa Claus?/ There's a millionaire looking for your front door/ With the keys to a life that you'd never understand" but then admits "All I have to offer is /The love I have, it's freely given." Sumptuous orchestral arrangements lift this song right up to the status of instant classic, and if there was a time when you realised Fish --- the solo artist, not Fish the ex-Marillion singer or even Fish the Marillion singer --- had arrived, this is it. All through the song Fish tries to compare his real charms, his true love to the fantasies and dreams of the girl, who is waiting for a white knight to sweep her off her feet, and can't see what's under her nose. But in the end, frustration gives way to cold anger and then resignation and acceptance as he tells the object of affection "Can't you get it inside your head/ I'm tired of dancin'? /We're finished dancing." Probably one of the most uptempo tracks on the album is “The voyeur (I like to watch)”, with a very Europop feel, almost Madonna's "True blue"! Not the most original of lyrics I have to say, with the television and particularly the news seen as a voyeuristic activity as Fish declares gleefully "I like to watch plausible pledges of black politicians" (almost twenty years before Obama!) and then references shows like Jerry Springer: "Private lives are up for auction/ And a cupboard full of skeletons/ Are coming out to play!" Again, not one of my favourite songs, though there is a nice Marillion-style keyboard passage in the middle eighth. This was not included on the original vinyl album and to be honest, I wouldn't have missed it on the CD. Oh well, not a terrible song but I guess you can't have a flawless solo debut. “Family business” is much more like it. As already mentioned in other posts I’ve made about Marillion, and particularly in one of my “Run for cover!” features, the actual lyric for this was used on a song to have been recorded by Marillion for their then fifth album, which was of course never recorded, Seasons end being released instead after Fish's departure. The lyric was in the song then called "Story from a thin wall" and used as "Berlin", but here it has different music, the story of domestic violence, as Fish listens to the nightly goings-on next door and wishes he could help. "Every night when I hear you/ I dream of breaking down your door, /An avenging knight in shining armour". It's a slow, plodding song with crying violin and stark piano, bitter and recriminatory. It ramps up for the bridge as the unnamed husband warns his battered wife "If anyone from the Social asks, you fell down the stairs!" It's a shocking indictment not only of domestic and family abuse, but of how it's tacitly accepted, mostly because people just don't want to get involved, or are afraid of being pulled into what's seen as "family business". The same reason cops don't intervene in domestic disputes. The pathetic figure of the wife as "She's waiting at a bus stop at the bottom of the hill. /She knows she'll never catch it" is heart-rending, and so typical of women who fail to break out of their abusive relationships. But something will have to be done, she realises; her own fear will have to be faced or placed on hold for the good of her children "Cause when daddy tucks the kids in /It's taking longer every night." The Hill finally comes into view, as Fish teams up with Maiden's Janick Gers for a searing look at the things people will do to get to the top in “View from the Hill”. Fish snarls "They sold you the view from the Hill, /They told you the view from the Hill would be further /Than you had ever seen before!" It's the old story of the grass being greener on the other side, and the song could be misinterpreted to mean that Fish was regretting his solo move, but that's not the case at all. Gers himself guests on guitar and really rocks the track up, Fish's vocal burning with anger and accusation, almost as if the impotent rage of "Family business" has exploded out of him in a towering wave, directed at those who sell unattainable dreams. Of course there's a great solo from Gers, and the song is definitely the heaviest on the album, not quite metal but coming reasonably close. It fades out on single chords from Gers and takes us to the closer. Starting out pretty much like the opener did, “Cliche” is the second ballad, though it ramps up near the end. It's carried mostly on piano and synth, with Fish wrestling with how to get across how he loves his lady without resorting to hackneyed lines and methods. With perhaps a lack of humility he declares "I've got a reputation of being /A man with the gift of words: /Romantic, poetic type, or so they say." The fact that it's true makes it a little easier to take, and the guitar moaning in the background adds a sense of power to the song, with backing vocals from among others, Heaven 17's Carol Kenyon giving it a feel of Pink Floyd. A slick bass line from Giblin runs throughout the tune, and a fiery guitar solo from Frank Usher lays the final polish on a great closer. As I say, a ballad but a song that changes as it goes along and ends up being quite a punchy, emotional and stirring final track. TRACKLISTING 1. Vigil 2. Big wedge 3. State of mind 4. The Company 5. A gentleman's excuse-me 6. The voyeur (I like to watch) 7. Family business 8. View from the the Hill 9. Cliche As a debut solo album, even for someone already well known in progressive rock circles, this stands as one of the best, and certainly among Fish's catalogue I'd rank it among the big three, with "Raingods and Zippos" and the followup to this, "Internal exile". If nothing else, it did partially exorcise the ghost of Marillion and the breakup, and showed that Fish was able to stand unaided as a performer in his own right. Of course, that same ghost was not completely gone, and in the subject matter and Mark Wilkinson's Marillionesque album covers, the Jester was always looking over Fish's shoulder. |
As we head closer to the fourth anniversary of the rebirth of this journal, I've been looking at some of the older sections I started way back in 2011, and one that jumped out at me, and allows me to review an album I've been meaning to take a look at for some time, is this:
http://www.trollheart.com/Gobsmacked.jpg The story is told of how one day I was out and about with my Zen X-Fi and wondering what to listen to as I stood waiting on the bus, as those of us without cars or the money to buy them are forced to do. It just so happened that I had listened to most of what was at the time on the unit, and I came across this album and, having failed to even remember when or why I downloaded it, thought well why not? Give it a spin. I was very glad that I did. http://www.progarchives.com/progress...12462011_r.jpg War and peace and other short stories --- Sean Filkins --- 2011 (F2 Records) Those of you in the know who move in progressive rock circles will know of this man. He was with Big Big Train for six years, but only featured on two of their albums, 2009's incredible The Underfall Yard being released after his departure. This is, to date, his only solo album but on the strength of what's here I'd be willing to lay down serious money it is not his last. Working with friends and fellow musicians Lee Abrahams from Galahad, John Mitchell from Arena and It Bites, Dave Meros and Gary Chandler, Filkins has come up here with an album that will, in fairness, take some beating when he gets around to writing a follow-up. In typically English eccentric style (presaging the second track indeed) the album opens with “Are you sitting comfortably?”, which is basically an organ rendition of “Jerusalem” played against the sounds of someone making a cup of tea and settling down. The perfect way to set the scene I guess, and it quickly moves into the first “proper” track, which as I mentioned above is called “The English eccentric”. It kicks off with a big squealy keyboard intro with hammering drums and then settles down into a song that reminds me of very early Supertramp, especially the Indelibly stamped album. It's not my favourite on the album to be honest, and made me reserve judgement until I got past it, but on repeated listenings I've come to quite like it. Still, everything else on the album was a hit with me first time around, so that says something in itself. Filkins' voice will be familiar to anyone who's heard Gathering speed or The Difference Machine; strong, clear with a definite English tinge that marks him as from the same vocal school as the likes of Gabriel and Hammill, but he has his own style and identity. Most of the keyboard parts are played by John Sammes, who also helped flesh out some of the musical ideas Filkins presented him with, but the man whose name the album bears is no slouch when it comes to playing instruments either, adding guitars, blues harp, even didgeridoo at one point! “The English eccentric” (surely a coincidence that BBT's last two al bums were called “English Electric?” ;)) is a long enough song, about eight and a half minutes, but that pales when compared to “Prisoner of conscience”, which is divided into two parts and runs to an immense thirty minutes between them. Yeah, I said thirty. Part one, which is subtitled “The soldier”, begins with effects: a man walking through a forest, bird singing, then the sound of a jet aircraft flying overhead. Some dark synth and flute merge with a fast guitar, almost Classical guitar with what also sounds like sitar to create a very eastern feel as the soldier awakes in a hospital, voices mentioning “Oh good, he's coming around”. Mind you, it's almost four minutes into the track before that happens. Then we're off on some very Yes-style guitar as Filkins confirms he has amnesia: ”Please don't ask me who I am/ As I for one just don't understand.” The Yes comparisons grow even stronger when a lush keyboard backs him and he really channels Anderson as he moans ”I'm haunted by the ghosts / Of all the innocents/ That I betrayed along the way.” Cue a flurry of keyboard madness taking us into the seventh minute with bombastic drumming from Meros. It's hard to figure out precisely what this song is about, but I feel it's the tale of a soldier, possibly a pilot shot down over the country he was about to bomb, recovering from his wounds after being taken care by the very people he had intended to destroy, and realising the country (unnamed) is a beautiful place he had never dreamed of it being before. From being just a target it has become so much more, and he is now questioning his orders, his career, the very reasons for whatever war he is engaged in. He seems also to fall in love with one of the natives. That's what I get from it anyway. Some superb guitar playing fleshes part one out, with a grinding fretworkout that just leaves me stunned, Filkins executing a buildup vocal that rises to a tortured crescendo as he realises ”I don't want this/ I don't need this/ I can't have this”... Suddenly, in the twelfth minute, the unnerving, eerie sound of the voices of all the people he has killed in his role as pilot (let's say) come crashing like waves against the cliffs of his head and he yells out, unable to face the truth they batter him with. The music gets heavier and more frenetic as he wrestles with this knowledge, that he may have --- probably has --- killed so many innocents whose names he did not even know. Everything flows then back into the guitar motif that runs through this part and into a soaring solo that puts me in mind of John Mitchell, though details on who plays what and where are almost impossible to come by. A Spanish Flamenco style passage then gets underway as part one moves towards its conclusion, sliding into another emotional guitar solo, some lovely bright piano and pealing bells with choral voices before it ends on a very Gilmouresque solo, taking us into part two. “The Ordinary Man” opens then on soft organ, a much gentler vocal which again betrays traces of Anderson, bringing in some really nice vocal harmonies too. A rippling keyboard passage takes the third minute with choral vocals in attendance, into the fourth with a swaying rock rhythm bringing in Genesis influences, then another extended keyboard romp takes the tune, almost an Irish reel at times. In the sixth it changes to a rolling soft piano and oddly enough reminds me of The Beautiful South on Blue is the colour, then back to Yes for some really superb vocal harmonies and another rising guitar solo as we move into the eighth minute. The triumphant resolution of the song (both parts) is really moving and attended by one more expressive guitar solo before we exit. And yet, this massive epic is not the standout. That's to come, and is up next, in the slightly shorter but somehow even better “Epitaph for a mariner”, which opens on Abigail Filkins singing the old hymn “Eternal father, strong to save” with only church organ as accompaniment. The piece is broken into five sections, the first of which, “Sailor's hymn”, has just been sung, the second, “Siren's song” is characterised by a long piano and synth instrumental with effects and moaning guitars and a rising, mournful chant from Abigail Filkins that follows the music perfectly and does indeed make her sound like a siren luring sailors to their doom. Who could not follow that seductive voice? A sort of electronica piece next takes over, as the music gets faster and more urgent, guitar breaking through with a powerful voice, percussion hammering away like the wind battering a ship at sea. In the middle of this compelling instrumental we suddenly hear a voice muttering about his wife and child, and part three, “Maelstrom” has begun, as a sailor, who has chosen to stay on land while his wife gives birth, worries about his comrades fighting for their lives on the harsh seas, as he accepts ”The sea's no friend to man.” We're now almost halfway through the piece and things begin to calm down (calmer seas?) as “Ode to William Pull” brings back in Filkins' vocal against a gentle, pastoral background of organ and guitar. A dreamy, drifting keyboard line takes the song as the vocal swells then descends and we pass into part five, “Epitaph”, the vocal continuing on as the keyboards get harder and more insistent, the piece building towards its climax now with guitar sailing in majestically, joining the measured drumbeats of Meros. The vocal fades out in the seventeenth minute, ts work almostdone, and a superb guitar and keyboard ending brings this amazing epic to its final conclusion, as the vocal comes in once more to repeat the word "Oceana", leaving me breathless. A final slow passage on the piano sets the final seal on the song. And yet there's one more track to go before the album wraps up. It's pretty amazing to think that in reality we've only had four actual tracks so far, it sounds like about ten, but the closer is a short (in comparison) little gentle ballad, as “Learn how to learn” is about as simple as they come. And yet it carries the full authority of what we have come to see as Sean Filkins' worldview in its seven-minute-plus length. Another very Yes-like song, it rides on gentle piano and acoustic guitar with a soft vocal, as if Filkins is reinforcing the lessons he has learned, and in turn passed on to us, through the run of this wonderful debut album. TRACKLISTING 1. Are you sitting comfortably? 2. The English eccentric 3. Prisoner of conscience part 1: The Soldier 4. Prisoner of conscience part 2: The Ordinary Man 5. Epitaph for a mariner (i) Sailor's hymn (ii) Siren's song (iii)Maelstrom (iv) Ode to William Pull (v) Epitaph 6. Learn how to learn To think I might never have heard this album! I should have been alerted to how good it is by the fact that it was placed high on Prog Archives' top albums for 2011, but so often these lists turn out to be just one person's choice and don't chime with what I believe are the pick of the bunch. Here though I definitely have to agree with them. As I said, I did not even know who Sean Filkins was, and had to check his pedigree to get an idea of what kind of music (I didn't even know it was prog) I might be listening to. Now, all I can do is hope that he doesn't leave it too long before gracing us with his next composition. I'll be waiting. |
The moral of this story?
The moral of this story - stop what you're doing right now and buy a Creative Zen X-Fi media player.
I was excited to find another person on the planet with one of these glorious devices, bringing the grand total to date to a staggering THREE people.) For those of us still holding fast to our truly-unlimited data plans, a cell phone and an external DAC / headphone amp is sufficient for portable playback. Most of us have a dedicated media server and unlimited data plans permit FLAC streaming for an average of 100-120GB of data per month. But I understand not all are that fortunate, and the majority of smartphone users have a crippling data cap prohibiting such freedoms. This is where the Zen rides in on a white horse. 32GB of internal flash storage and an SD expansion slot provides sufficient storage for several hundred hours of FLAC (or even more for 320CBR v0 audio) requiring only the occasional reloading of content perhaps once or twice each week. And remember - that's non-volatile FLASH storage. Drop your Zen on the pavement? No problem - there are no moving parts to damage. Sure, the X-Fi audio enhancement technology is a little silly, but the sheer convenience factor here outshines its faults. Just don't try to use the Wireless LAN function... we prefer not to talk about that. The bottom line is, the Zen has largest flash storage capacity of any video/mp3 player on the market. It's expandable, durable, has an OUTSTANDING battery life, and if paired with the right portable DAC will provide you with countless hours of listening pleasure. God, I love this thing. |
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Totally agree. If I had one reservation/annoyance about it, it's that even Creative make their docks and speakers for the fucking ipod! They make one of the best media players (it also does VERY good video, people!) and they don't make a standalone dock you can plug it into if you want to listen to it at home?? I tried several speakers, and every one of them sucked. Then I bought this http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41U-mDXStBL.jpg which works like what it says it is (Pure-Fi Dream). But of course, it's exclusively for ipod. You CAN plug in the X-Fi, but not dock it. You have to go "around the tradesman's entrance" and plug it in via a crappy 3.5 jack. You get none of the features of the Pure-Fi Dream: no scrolling titles, no remote control, no nothing.You can't even see it in the dock because it has to sit at the side like some poor distant cousin who isn't really liked and who nobody wants to talk to. Goddamn it! When are these people going to realise that the only thing really holding them back is that their customers --- their customers --- are being forced to buy ipods in order to use something like this, which I had to do. And I don't use the ipod anymore. I bloody hate itunes! :mad: |
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Dateline: 2008. I'm looking for somewhere to shop my stupid game where you guess the song intros, and after a search come acoss Music Banter. After having been given the by-now-familiar “don't advertise your crap here” I settle in to explore, and on finding the Journals Section think: this is great. I've been a frustrated writer for so long, and love my music, wanting to share my appreciation of it with others. This is perfect for me. And I set up house. The Playlist of Life is born. But it is not a happy childhood. I fail to realise that people here have much more eclectic taste in music than I do, and that about 99% of what they listen to is music I have never even heard of or knew existed. After some initial derision and what I see as music elitism concerning my mainstream musical tastes, I get annoyed and close up shop, giving everyone a piece of my mind on the way out, a piece they surely ignore and laugh at. http://www.anthonyjgarcia.com/wp-con...w-you-guys.jpg Flash forward to 2011. Having taken voluntary redundancy and with a lot more time on my hands, I wonder if I should give this Music Banter thing another go? I set up my journal again and take the attitude that if nobody reads or if anyone slags me off, fuck them: I like my music and will continue to write about it. Over the course of time I come to realise that, though this is indeed the right way to approach things, it might be interesting and helpful to explore this music they're all talking about. Some of it works, some does not, but at least I get a little more accepted now, and people are certainly reading my journal. It's now four years on, I have a total of ten journals ranging from TV and movies to mythology and from comics to classic albums, and have become a (hopefully) valued member of the forum. My original journal (this one) has over 200,000 views, the most of any journal by a country mile, and special events like Metal Month have made it reasonably popular. I've essentially taken over the running of the Journals Section, encouraging people who think they might like to start but don't know how or are nervous about it, updating everyone each Sunday on what's happening in all the journals, and generally trying to raise awareness of and interest in the section to a level it had not been anywhere close to when I arrived. http://roselawgroupreporter.com/wp-c...he-rooftop.jpg I guess it's really nothing special, not a landmark to be shouted from the rooftops, but I just wanted to note it anyway and say thanks to everyone who made me welcome here (Jackhammer, Janszoon, NonSubmissiveWife, Unknown Soldier, Anteater, Batlord and others) in the initial stages and who helped keep me here (too late to change your minds now!) :laughing: and to all the many many friends I have made here, whether you read my journals or not. And a big thank you to the mods who tirelessly approved my many entries (sometimes four or more a day, every day, way back when!) and who gave me invaluable advice as well as a little abuse when deserved. Here's to another four years! http://weknowmemes.com/generator/upl...5671066863.jpg Thanks Trollheart |
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Oh dear God I hate Adam Sandler! Yeah, you may be a fan of his but I fucking can't stand him. Every movie I've seen him in he's been the same smug bastard with zero acting talent, and along with Stiller he just angers me to the point where I hate even seeing his smirking face on the television. Which is all by way of introducing our next movie, in which Sandler gets his hands on a magic remote control that can let him fast forward through “the boring bits in life”, but he soon finds that when you rush past things and don't take the time to smell the roses you miss the most vital and important parts of yadda yadda yadda. Bor-ing and highly unoriginal. Which makes it a perfect Sandler movie --- he's never been linked with anything groundbreaking or cutting edge after all --- but odd that luminaries from Kate Beckinsale to Christopher Walken and even “The Fonz” himself, Henry Winkler, deigned to take part in this train wreck. But look, if you like him and thought this was a great movie then good for you. This slot is not to necessarily trash the movie but to point out where such a, shall we say, below-par film has nevertheless a great soundtrack. And this one does. No, it really does. The cream of pop and rock are featured on it, and it's a long one too: twenty-five tracks. A case could I suppose be made for the soundtrack having to compensate for the dire movie, but then again, what do I know? Anyhoo, as I say we're not here to see the movie but to listen to the music, and it is absolutely legendary. http://mediamass.net/jdd/public/docu...ntries/410.jpg Click OST --- Various Artists --- 2006 And now I have a reason to hate him even more, as by looking for a picture of the soundtrack album I have the very unwelcome words “Adam Sandler” in my internet browsing history and on Google. Honestly! It was research, I swear! Gaahhh! There's a score for the movie too --- somehow they got Zimmer: must have driven a truck full of cash up to his door --- but that's not what we're concerned with here. The soundtrack consists of songs many of you will know, and certainly artistes that will be, mostly, familiar to you. It kicks off with The Cars' superb “Magic”, where the rising keyboard line and the driving, staccato guitars form a perfect backdrop to Ric Ocasek's unmistakable voice, and given that the film features a “magic” remote control, it's quite appropriate. Next up we have the Kinks, never a favourite band of mine and I only know the odd song, and “Do it again” is not one of them. It's a reasonably restrained song with touches of The Who's “Won't get fooled again”, though it rocks pretty hard for them. I know nothing by The Offspring, not even what sort of a band they are, so “Come out and play” comes as something of a surprise with its mixture of punk, new wave and quasi-indie feel. Not bad, singer reminds me of Paul Weller, but not really. Maybe. Nice sort of Arabic melody in the guitar. Oh, they're a punk band. Yeah, not bad really. Gwen Stefani of course is known to me but not her music very much, so this is the first time I've heard “Cool”, and it has a nice dreamy opening with a rather long orchestral intro, then develops into a half-decent pop song, reminds me of something though, and I know I haven't heard it before. So is she ripping someone off? Quite probably. Oddly, while listening to this I got the line ”I took you to an intimate restaurant” in my head, though it's nothing to do with the melody, and I couldn't remember what song it was from. For those interested, I'll tell you at the end. Next up is the superb Carole King with one of her big hits, “I feel the Earth move”, and then an oldie in Irving Gordon's “Be anything (but be mine)”. Not my sort of thing I must admit, and I move swiftly on to a somewhat more contemporary tune. Parliament's “Give up the funk” is also not the sort of music I'm into but it's enjoyable, good seventies soul vibe to it and one thing you can always say about soul is that it's generally uptempo and cheerful. Plenty of brass of course. It's Benny Hill time then (appropriate for a Sandler movie; one of the unfunniest and coarsest comedy sketch shows of the seventies) with “Yakety Sax” before we get to the first instrumental, and it's like something you'd hear in a lift, honestly. Not too enamoured of Walter Wanderley's “Summer samba”, must say. It's okay I guess but real wallpaper music. Two classics then in Frampton's “Show me the way” (love that talk box) and then Captain and Tennile's other big hit, “Love will keep us together”. Very fond of that. Toto's superb “Hold the line” is next, ramping up the pressure and kicking in a bit of much-needed rock, even if it is soft rock: “Hold the line” was one of their heavier hits, as the boys will no doubt confirm in their Toto journal, if they haven't already. And the hits just keep coming! They've really pulled the stops out here, as I said probably to deflect attention from how much the movie sucks. T-Rex with “Twentieth century boy”, Tears For Fears' “Everybody wants to rule the world” and Nazareth's excellent cover of “Love hurts”, a great power ballad. “More more more” from the Andrea True Connection takes us back to 1975, but I'm always going to hear Mo singing “Mo Mo Mo! How do you like me! Mo Mo Mo! Why don't you like me?” on the Simpsons. Some more great American AOR then as Loverboy are “Working for the weekend”, a film song if ever there was one, great beat and super solo. An Irish flavour next with “Linger” by The Cranberries, followed by ol' Blue Eyes with “I'm gonna live till I die” then we're a little more up to date with The Strokes. “Someday” has a nice jaunty indie feel about it, very feelgood, then there's a return to the Cars connection as Ric's solo album Quick change world gives us the tremendous “Feelings got to stay”, which is pretty close to the standout, and among all these classics that's really saying something. Just amazing. This guy is a genius. Another oldie then in the shape of “Call me irresponsible” by Jimmy Van Heusen, a further Irish link as U2 gives us “Ultraviolet (Light my way)”, a song I've not heard before but which is a pretty typical U2 song, not too much to write home about but not terrible (not “Bad” though! ;)) then Jim Steinman hooks up with Air Supply for their heartstring-tugging power ballad “Making love out of nothing at all” leaving us with The New Radicals to close proceedings with “You get what you give”, which I realise I know. Good closer to a fantastic soundtrack. TRACKLISTING 1. Magic (The Cars) 2. Do it again (The Kinks) 3. Come out and play (The Offspring) 4. Cool (Gwen Stefani) 5. I feel the earth move (Carole King) 6. Be anything (but be mine) (Irving Gordon) 7. Give up the funk (Tear the roof off this sucker) Parliament 8. Yakety sax (Boots Randolph) 9. Summer samba (Walter Wanderley) 10. Show me the way (Peter Frampton) 11. Love will keep us together (Captain and Tennille) 12. Hold the line (Toto) 13. 20th century boy (T-Rex) 14. Everybody wants to rule the world (Tears For Fears) 15. Love hurts (Nazareth) 16. More, more, more (The Andrea True Collection) 17. Working for the weekend (Loverboy) 18. Linger (The Cranberries) 19. I'm gonna live till I die (Frank Sinatra) 20. Someday (The Strokes) 21. Feelings got to stay (Ric Ocasek) 22. Call me irresponsible (Jimmy Van Huysen) 23. Ultraviolet (Light my way) (U2) 24. Making love out of nothing at all (Air Supply) 25. You get what you give (The New Radicals) There is the odd duff track here, or more accurately, one or two I don't particularly like, but considering the amount of tracks and the bad-to-good ratio, this is a phenomenal soundtrack, perhaps the best I've yet reviewed from a questionable film. True, most of us will have or will know the majority of these songs already, but if you want a cross-section of classic rock and pop from the seventies and eighties you would go far to find such a selection on any other album, never mind soundtrack. So you don't have to see the movie. Never mind the terrible Click: just relax with the soundtrack and enjoy the great music it has to offer as an apology for the film. Oh, and if you really want to see a story about a man watching the consequences of how his life changed, settle down with the classic It's a wonderful life: it's uplifting, you can get the entire thing for free on Youtube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eS6eQjaRlQ, and best of all, there's no Adam Sandler. Everybody wins! Oh, and that song I was trying to think of with the lyric? Olivia Newton-John, “Let's get physical.” Just in case you were wondering. |
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You know how they often say “let the music do the talking”? Well, at the moment there's been a song in my head for about three days and, though I like it a lot, I feel it's trying to tell me something. So maybe I should write about it. Good idea. But where, in all the many many sections I cover music in my journal, should I put it? Under which heading? Or should I make a new one up? No: we had “The Daily Earworm” years ago, and I got fed up with that. Not going there again. So, an existing section then. But which one? Well, it's a slow, sentimental ballad, so where better than
http://www.trollheart.com/mush3.png A song that probably a lot of people will know, this one had its beginnings all the way back in the 1930s, when Harry Warren and Al Dubin got together to write it for a movie, and since then it's been covered by people such as Peggy Lee, The Flamingos, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Jolson, Mel C (what?), Better Midler and Cliff Richard, and about a hundred others. Right up to last year there was a cover version of it, and there'll be probably more as the years go on, because it's one of those timeless lovesongs that never grows old or goes out of fashion. It was also, perhaps most famously, covered by this guy. http://www.pophistorydig.com/wp-cont...rfunkel-50.jpg “I only have eyes for you” Art Garfunkel 1975 from the album “Breakaway” After one of the most successful singer/songwriter partnerships ever in the history of music split up in 1970 following the release of their final album, Bridge over troubled water, each treated their new solo career in different ways. Paul Simon begun a deeper exploration of the African and World Music that had always intrigued him, hooking up later with Peter Gabriel and becoming one of the biggest ambassadors for World Music, bringing the likes of Yossou N'Dour and Ladysmith Black Mazamba to the attention of the world, while Art Garfunkel kept in more or less the same musical vein he had shared with Simon, also diversifying into the world of film with such efforts as Bad timing, Catch-22 and Carnal knowledge, but music was and is his first love and that was where he concentrated his energies. His first solo album did well but had no hits. It was not until the release of his second that this cover version of the classic lovesong took him right to number one both in the UK and the USA. I have not heard the other versions but have always loved this one (originally thinking that it was he who wrote it: thank you Wiki for destroying yet another long-held misconception!) due to its overall gentleness and the slow, almost lazy pace of it. It opens with a slowly strummed and seeming phased guitar as Art sings the intro, which isn't really a verse or a chorus, but a sort of precursor to the song proper. The measured drumbeat kicks in about thirty seconds later and some organ joins the guitar and the verse gets going. Garfunkel sings it with the sort of swaying abandon of a man who is truly in love: when he sings ”The moon may be high/ But I can't see a thing in the sky” you can really get the idea of him just looking in his lover's eyes and everything else just fading away. And we've all been there, haven't we? Well, not me, of course, but you know what he's talking about. When we get into the main --- what is it, bridge? It's not a verse really and it's not the chorus --- the song really gets going, with swelling orchestra and backing vocals filling out the sound and giving it a real sense of passion and emotion as he sings ”I don't know if we're in a garden/ Or on a crowded avenue” and after the chorus there's a lovely guitar passage to take the song out to its fade. It's a short one --- has to be, to be a single I guess --- but every second is used to its utmost and the song is a great ballad with power and smouldering passion, as well as almost literally blind love. No wonder they loved it on both sides of the pond. ”My love must be some kind of blind love: I can't see nobody but you... Are the stars out tonight? I don't know if it's cloudy or bright: I only have eyes for you, dear. The moon may be high But I can't see a thing in the sky: I only have eyes for you. I don't know if we're in a garden Or on a crowded avenue. You are here, so am I, Maybe millions of people go by But they all disappear from view. And I'll only have eyes for you.” |
When I saw Billy Joel last year, he told an anecdote about cancelling his last Toronto show because of the SARS outbreak. Then he performed a snippet of that tune, as "I Only Have SARS For You". You had to be there. Anyway, it's always nice to see Art making an appearance in your journal. :thumb:
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I've been ranting a lot in the Lounge recently, as some/most of you will be aware, but a lot of that has translated into bad feeling and I think I'd rather go on at length in here about the things that really bug me. Haven't tackled this in a while, so here are some of my current
http://www.trollheart.com/pethates.jpg https://t2.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/27/02/63...TUbtZUcI68.jpg “Search online for..?” This really annoys me. If you want someone to buy your products, use your service or support your cause, the least you can do surely is to direct them to your website. How hard can it be? In the old days, like when I rode my dinosaur to hedge school, internet addresses were complicated. There was no such thing as .com really, or if there was you couldn't just set up a domain as one. At least here in Ireland and the UK, the procedure was you signed up with an ISP and they provided you with a spot on their domain, so you would usually get something like interneteireann.ie/hosts/users/members/~Trollheart/index.html. Now that's a lot harder to guess at than trollheart.com, so yeah, you can guess what the address for the RAF or Sight Savers or whatever is, but why should you? It still bugs me when huge global conglomerates like Sky or Coca-Cola end ads with “Search online for new Coke flavour!” or “Search online for Sky boxsets.” Why? Why the lantering FUCK should I, your potential customer, be left to search, blunder around with Google looking for the site YOU want ME to find and use? Why don't YOU give ME the address? This is surely similar to someone knocking on your door, and saying “You must visit my new restaurant. We're looking for new business.” And you say “Okay, maybe I will. Where is it?” only to be told “Sorry, can't tell you that. But here's a map and an A-Z. You can find it if you look.” Fuck right off, right? That would be your reaction to such arrogance and such an unhelpful attitude. So why not the same for these cunts who exhort you to “search online”? Are you really telling me the British Navy, Sky, Skoda and all these huge corporate giants and national institutions can't give you the URL of their website? Is there something stopping them, some law, some legal technicality? Well not in the case of Sky, as I go there regularly and get directed there for most of their products. But not for box sets. Oh no. Why not just say “go to www.sky.com/boxsets”? Are they trying to increase their rankings with Google by having as many searches as possible? Unlikely: Sky TV (at least in Europe) would come first in any rankings you care to mention. They're already top of the tree; they don't need help. Is it a deal with the search engine giant, to drive traffic to their site? Let's face it: the days of Alta Vista, Lycos or any other search engine being used are gone: now, Google is so fully integrated into the human consciousness that it's become a verb. People don't say “search for it” anymore, they say “Google it”. So no matter what you're searching for, the chances are about 99.999999% that you will be using Google. So why this “search online for...?” I take it personally, and as a great insult. My time is valuable. If I am interested in your products I expect to be able to go directly to your website, not faff about on Google looking for it, and if you want me there, then start putting up your address. Because now, as a point of principle, I refuse to obey any requests to “search online for” and will actively stay away from the site, even if I know how to get there. Yeah, I'm that touchy! But that is mild compared to how much I hate http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...posite-006.jpg “Payday Loans” Jesus Christ in a fucking zeppelin going over Mount Etna at sunset! I fucking hate, loathe, despise and curse these bastards. You know them, yes? Little institutions that aren't banks and aren't building societies, but privately-owned and operated companies who loan smaller amounts but for much much much higher repayment rates. They're aimed at the desperate, the people who just need a short loan to tide them over. But what nobody seems to realise --- and I only saw this when I happened to catch the quickly spooled-off quote about one of their APRs and had to do a double-take, run it back and confirm that what I heard was true --- is that you will be paying this small loan back for the rest of your life, probably. Examples range from 100% to ... wait for it ... almost 1,200%! That's right: one thousand, two hundred percent! And I put it in red, so that you could be sure I hadn't made a mistype! So if you borrow a small loan, say £500, on the lowest rate I've seen (100%) you can expect to pay back £1000, and on the highest, the abovementioned 1200%, a whopping £6000! And if you go for a larger loan, you're going to have an even bigger repayment! There's a reason of course why these scum don't loan any more than £5000, and that is probably because the crippling effect of paying back, say on a loan of £20,000, a total figure of almost a quarter of a million pounds is bound to get some press coverage and notice, and bring their extremely shady dealings into sharp focus. People like these don't like the light of publicity: they lurk in the shadows, waiting to snare the unwary, running their “We like to help!” (bastards) ads, pretending they can't WAIT to ease your financial suffering, when all they want to do is get their hooks into you and make you pay for the rest of your days. Now you may say, so what? Banks essentially do the same thing: a mortage can take you the rest of your life to pay off, and that's true, but there are some very important differences. Firstly, a mortgage (or any bank loan) has a set APR that is usually more in the range of maybe 4-6% (been a long time since I got a bank loan, and I never will again, but I can't imagine it goes above 10%), and you're told this at the start. Also, you expect to be paying your mortgage for most of your life --- it's half of the word: mort being French for death. As well as that, you know that the bank, while they may not be happy if you miss payments and may send letters and make phone calls, are unlikely to send the heavies around, which some of these Payday fuckers are known to do. In the small print on one of them (not sure which) they warn something like “Serious difficulties can arise from failure to pay”. The threat is veiled just enough not to be explicit, but we know what they're saying. So why does the government allow this? Basically, these arseholes are loan sharks condoned by, or even authorised and sanctioned by the government. How can they let them carry on such reprehensible business practice, and why do these loan companies need to do this anyway? Who ever dreams of making a thousand percent or more profit? Why should they be allowed to? Why is there no legislation governing these institutions, capping their APR at the very least? Why are they not required to make it very clear --- not in the small print that nobody but me reads or in a quick, happy announcement that most people will miss anyway --- that once you sign up with them and get the money from them you will be paying it back at least twice over? I thought the Mafia were the only ones who did that, you know, two points on the dollar per day, sort of thing. Jesus wept. Even Tony Soprano's rates seem reasonable and manageable compared to these moneygrabbing fuckheads. I honestly could not believe it the first time I saw the rates being flashed on screen, and ever since then I've watched a growing gang of glorified loan sharks witter on about how great it is to have cash in your pocket, and how they can help you pay your bills or meet your commitments. Yeah, well be very careful, because you may meet your current bill but if you take money from any of these lowlife scum, the next ones are going to mount up and you'll end up in the dark when that heavy knock comes on the door and you realise time has run out for you to repay this unrepayable loan. Surely nobody could be that desperate? And yet, there are so many of these and they can afford to pay for primetime TV ads and have huge offices and websites, so I guess there are people that gullible, afraid, destitute or desperate. They used to say money was the root of all evil, but if so, it's grown some very ugly and twisted branches recently, and these trees are threatening to block out all the sunlight. They're choking the forest and making what was once a place you really didn't want to pass through but could do so, into an area to be avoided and feared. A dark, dismal place where not even the strongest shafts of bright sunlight can get through to. What's needed now is a few good lumberjacks to cut back these hulks and let the forest breathe, before everything in it is choked and dies. In simpler terms, get some fucking legislation in to regulate these fuckers, before it's too late. |
Yeah, payday lending is terrible. Really doesn't get enough attention so thanks for talking about it. It's worth noting that (at least in the States) postal banking has been gaining some traction, and it's both independently good policy and something that would hurt payday lenders.
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I've made no secret of my love of the music of Vangelis, and yet, though I have all of his albums I've only listened to a select few. The ones I have though, usually stay with me and tend to get played quite regularly. Though this is one of his earlier efforts (recorded while he was still a member of Aphrodite's Child with the late Demis Roussos), and one of his shortest with a total running time of thirty-five minutes, it's nevertheless among my favourites from him.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...maux_cover.jpg L'apocalypse des animaux --- Vangelis --- 1973 (Polydor) Given that it's the soundtrack to the documentary of the same name, the actual film contains a lot more music so I kind of tend to treat it more as an album than a soundtrack. I assume it translates to “apocalypse of the animals” and all the titles are in French, since it was a French documentary. Some of them I can guess at the meanings of, others not so much. It's not really that important though, as it's the music that concerns us, not the titles. It's a mid-tempo percussive piece with marimbas and vibraphone that gets us underway, a short segment which is basically the title track, with some choral vocals added in before we get to the first real track (this one is less than two minutes long), with “La petite fille de la mer” (The small daughter of the ocean), as dreamy piano backed up by surf sounds and low, lush synth slows everything down to a crawl, the tempo much of this album will take. It's a great one for just closing your eyes and drifting off to. Some gentle acoustic guitar comes in now, but the piano (sounds digital; maybe Fender Rhodes?) holds court over the music, as soft swirling keys now flow in like the waves lapping at the shore, advancing, retreating, advancing, retreating, as timeless as the ocean itself, as unhurried as nature. Sounds like some strings now, but I know Vangelis creates all these instruments himself on his banks of synthesisers. Still, it's very effective. “Le singe blue” (Blue something, obviously) keeps the soft echoing piano line but marries it to a bit of echo and also introduces sax, low and smoky, which gives the composition a slightly jazzy effect. There's a very late evening feel to it, and if possible it's slower than its predecessor. The sax fades out now and leaves rippling keys to take the tune alone before it slips back in like the ghost of a voice almost forgotten but carries on almost solo, its mournful tone carrying the piece towards its end, rising and falling, crests and troughs. A nice sprinkly effect from the piano falls in a cascade of notes as the sax pulls the melody along, then “Le mort du loup” (Death of the wolf) is driven on the soft piano with shimmering rivers of low synth behind it, while “L'ours musicien” has a deep, brassy synth with the first I've heard of any percussion, if low and muted, and at just over a minute long it doesn't have long to establish itself before it's gone and we're into the epic, a ten-minute “Creation du monde” (Creation of the world) with a low, rising, buzzing synth allied to shimmering, wavering organ and dark bassy keys too. A high guitar comes through, synthesised of course, joining in the melody as the synth continues to growl and hum as a backdrop, the whole thing taking on quite a spacey, atmospheric air, and now high, rising synth climbs over the darker one, like a dolphin jumping out of the water. A deep bass note adds a sense of portent to the piece, then fades out as quickly as it came in. A sound not completely unlike whalesong drifts over the composition, then some piano notes are sprinkled like fairy dust or pattering rain over the music, bubbling synths adding to the melody. You can get the sense of wonder and awe as the Earth cools and forms from the gases expelled by its parent star, and begins to rotate, creating gravity and an atmosphere, and taking its place in the solar system. Now the tone changes to very much darker, broodier as the low synth that has been the canvas against which this mutli-textured composition has been created comes more to the fore, booming out and then receding back, more little sprinkly synth noises echoing as they fly off in the distance like passing comets or asteroids. That dark bass piano line returns, staying this time as it brings with it more guitar and the tone rises as the piece nears completion, fading slowly down on that dark piano and the slowly receding synth line. Which leaves us with just one track before we close, and it's called “La mer recommencee”, which I think means the sea comes back, or the sea is reborn, something like that anyway. It opens on a high synth line, almost like a siren or a factory horn, then a lower, brooding synth before soft piano comes in, the original synth fading away but then coming back with renewed strength. A rising, falling melody now takes the tune, then a roll of muted percussion before cymbals crash and if that doesn't represent the waves rolling on the ocean then my name's not Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. Which it isn't. Everything seems to be slowly winding down now as the album comes to a close and the sea takes over, rippling, sprinkling piano and little flashes of percussion dripping over the music like spring rain as it all slowly fades down and away, leaving you with a powerful sense of the infinite, the power of the ocean and the vastness of time. TRACKLISTING 1. Apocalypse des animaux --- Generique 2. La petite fille de la mer 3. Le singe bleu 4. Mort de la loup 5. L'Ours musicien 6. Creation du monde 7. La mer recommencee Yes it's a short album, very short, but it's also very effective. It's possibly an early example of what would go on to become known as ambient music: at times, it's almost abstract. Vangelis has a great way of creating landscapes, stories and vistas with only his synthesisers, and here, even though he had yet to embark on a proper solo career and win the many plaudits he would go on to garner for his work, especially in movies, he has produced an album that takes your breath away, both with its simplicity and its depth. As I said in the review of Oceanic, years ago, Vangelis has the power to take you on a journey with his music, and no matter where you go, or how far, you always feel safe, and know that he will return you to your home, usually richer, at least in a musical sense, for the journey. |
It's fair to say that really, there are few albums that really changed my life. You may be the same. Some albums speak to me more than others, and some got me into a certain band I ended up loving, or a genre perhaps, but I can probably count the ones that I could say actually changed my life on one hand: Maiden's The number of the Beast, Floyd's The Wall, Jeff Wayne's Musical version of the War of the Worlds and of course Script for a jester's tear by Marillion. Most of these I have already reviewed, and there may occur to me at some point others that fall into this category that I have not yet expounded upon, and if so I'll write about them. But although this did not change my life, per se, I can say without any fear of contradiction that it definitely changed my mind about a certain genre, and so in one sense could be said to be one of the
http://www.trollheart.com/albumslife.jpg Up until I heard this, I had generally dismissed pretty much all Country music as generic, laughable trash. Cowboys sung about lost loves and getting drunk, railroads and tractors were in a lot of the lyrics, and every single Country song had to have a steel guitar and a harmonica in it. So thought I, naively. Then, one night while doing my usual stint on the local radio back in the late eighties I was lefing through what was laughably called our record library when I came across this album. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tateofMind.jpg Lone Star State of Mind --- Nanci Griffith --- 1987 (MCA) Nothing attracted me to it: it's just that it was about the best out of a bunch of really bad local Irish artists, old fifties songs and some albums by bands I had never heard of, so in total boredom I decided to give a track a spin. I was rather surprised, to say the least, by how much I liked it and whether my two listeners thought the same or not, I was impressed and decided to borrow it so I could listen to it through at home. Having done so, I had to admit that it was time to re-evaluate my view of Country Music, and I began collecting the rest of her albums. Most were as good, some even better, the odd one didn't chime but I can't really say that I bought a Nanci Griffith album that I did not like, or regretted buying. When she came to town I made sure to buy a ticket and it was a great gig, even if the announcer did tell us at the intermission (yeah we had intermissions back them; it was an indoor concert, very swish) that we should move back to our seats as “Nanci Griffin” was about to return to the stage. It's a mispronounciation of her name I've seen extended over the years to “Nanci Griffiths” and even “Nanci Griffins”. But I'm sure she doesn't care. This is her fifth album, but the one to break her commercially. Oddly enough, though it contains what would become her best-known and most-often-played song, it was not a hit for her as it was only released as a promotional single, and therefore did not qualify for chart placement. But more of that later. The album opens with the title track, a bouncy, Country rock number that concerns reflections on times gone and loves lost. There's some great banjo and fiddle that really helps the song trip along, even a nice short guitar solo. I love the double meaning in the title too, and Nanci's voice really sounds quite young, although she was thirty-four at the time (fun fact: she was born on the same day as me, ten years earlier); you really would think you were listening to a teenager. The youthful exuberance, the excitement, the starry-eyed optimism that shines through her music even if the lyrics are downbeat and even defeatist at times, all speak to a much younger soul in perhaps a slightly older body. There's a sort of false ending before it kicks off on a really cool guitar-and-banjo finish with her crooning the last lines, then “Cold hearts/closed minds” is certainly morose, slowing everything down as she prepares to leave her lover, bringing in cello and viola, and yes, there's pedal steel, but you would expect that and it fits in really nicely. It's not to be fair my favourite on the album and something of a comedown after the title, but it's an example of how she can write bitter ballads with the best of them as she sings ”Came by here just to tell you goodbye/ But I can see it in your face/ You don't wanna know why.” That song of which I spoke, which should have been a massive worldwide hit for her but never made it into the charts via a technicality is the gorgeous “From a distance”. Written by Julie Gold, it's been covered plenty of times, and no wonder. Driven mostly on piano with cello accompaniment it's a superb little prayer to peace as she sings "From a distance you look like my friend/ Even though we are at war/ From a distance I can't comprehend/ What all this war is for.” Not an original sentiment, certainly, but a valid one, and the idea of everything looking different “from a distance” is telling. A beautiful piano solo, understated but firm, just makes this song better somehow. It's a mid-paced acoustic then for “Beacon Street”, with a sort of handclap beat driving the percussion, orchestral accompaniment provided by cello, violin and viola. It's a nice song but a little light, then “Nickel dreams” is a real standout with its Country waltz, swaying along with a lovely dreamy feel, some sweet pedal steel and violin, with a sad, bitter idea in the lyric: ”It's a dollar a wrinkle/ And less than a nickel a dream.” The album is full of reflections on a life, real or imagined, semiautobiographical or not, and it is crammed with regrets of chances not taken, lives not lived, bridges not crossed. There is also time however for a good old-fashioned hoe-down, like when she tackles Robert Earl Keen Jr's “Sing one for sister”. It's a pretty much shit-on-your-boots Country song and a real generic one I guess but it's okay. Again, not my favourite. But then we hit a real rich vein of form, in fact paydirt as the rest of the album absolutely blows it out of the water. Kicking off on “Ford Econoline”, a fast-paced song of freedom and escape, driven on a pounding guitar rhythm, a life-affirming, female-empowering ode to the open road as Nanci sings ”She's salt of the earth/ Straight from the bosom of the Mormon churches/ A voice like wine” and archly observes of the woman's drinkin' gamblin' husband that ”His big mistake was in buyin' her/ That Ford Econline!” A great song that just gets your heart pumping, and cheering on the escaping wife, until we slow right down with one of her Dust Bowl tales, telling the story of the famine in midwestern America in the '30s in “Trouble in the fields”. With a slow violin and guitar line, it's a song of despair but also hope as she declares ”If we sell that new John Deere/ And we work these crops with sweat and tears/ You'll be the mule/ I'll be the plough/ Come harvest time we'll work it out.” Very moving, and a great steel guitar solo too. The mood stays slow and bleak for “Love in a memory”, with one of my favourite instruments driving the song, a gorgeous turn on the mandolin from Mark O'Connor in a song that speaks of more cheating men as she sings ”The ring on his finger/ Grows cold to the bone/ His sons are young dreamers/ Who cheat on their own wives/ He still dreams of St. Paul/ When he's cheatin' alone.” Great piano line too, superb song. Another standout. And a fiddle solo to die for, taking us into a faster “Let it shine on me”, driving along at a fine lick. Sort of starts off a little like “Lone Star State of mind”, but it's slightly slower and then develops its own identity on the back of pedal steel and electric guitar. There's a suggestion of gospel in the lyric and the melody, and we end on the reflective “There's a light beyond these woods, Mary Margaret”, which I have to admit would not have been my choice for a closer, but it's a decent enough song and holds its end up enough not to ruin this good feeling I've been getting from the last few tracks. I guess in some ways it bookends the album by starting with a fast track and ending with a slow one, both featuring memories and a sense of innocence lost, this one actually encapsulating an entire life from childhood to full grown and older woman. TRACKLISTING 1. Lone star state of mind 2. Cold hearts/closed minds 3. From a distance 4. Beacon Street 5. Nickel dreams 6. Sing one for sister 7. Ford Econoline 8. Trouble in the fields 9. Love in a memory 10. Let it shine on me 11. There's a light beyond these woods (Mary Margaret) Sure, it's not an album that is going to shatter anyone's worldview or make them suddenly become a fan of Country music, and it has its flaws, but for me it was quite a revelation, and as I said I made a point of collecting all the albums of an artiste I had never to that point even heard of, much less dreamed of becoming a fan of. In recent times, Griffith's output stalled a little for me, and her last three albums did not impress me the way those she put out in the eighties and nineties did. But I still remain a fan, and it's all thanks to that one night when I had nothing to play on my radio show, took a chance and thought “what the hell”? What, indeed? |
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I was just heading off to bed one night last week when I happened to catch a recording of the Sonisphere 2014 festival, and while some of the acts were meh, there was one that stood out to me, the more because it surprised me how impressed I was. That was the single song performed by Gary Numan, darling of the eighties new-wave scene and best known of course for his number one hit with Tubeway Army, “Are friends electric?” It was in fact this song that he played, but it was the way he “rocked it up” that truly staggered me. Known as one of the best examples of what would be seen as emotionless pop music of the time, it's hard to imagine this rocking at all, but he did a great job on it. Now of course I guess anything can be made tougher and harder and more rocky if you have the talent, but for me the awe was that this was not a cover by some rock band who would be used to such music, but the artiste himself, famous for his pasty-faced makeup, emotionless drone and unblinking stare, and to see him with long(ish) unkempt hair, smiling and dancing around, well it was quite a revelation. The crowd certainly seemed to love it (most would have known or known of it I guess, even if they would pretend never to have heard it or enjoyed it) and Numan himself seemed to be having a blast. The keyboards were there, sure, but cut right back and the electric guitars drove the song, giving it much more of a bite, adding a real punch and injecting a lot of emotion into a song that originally would have made the likes of Kraftwerk proud. I of course don't know how Numan performs these days, and his last album seems to be mostly still rooted in the new-wave/industrial style of music, but it's good to know that almost thirty years later he's discovered how to kick back, let his hair down, smile and not take everything so deadly serious. Are friends electric? This song certainly was, in a live setting. |
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