Log #109 - The Cacophonous Glory of Caribous On Mars

Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (CD 1)

Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (CD 2)

Brian Eno - Music For Airports

Manitoba - Start Breaking My Heart

Jan Jelinek - Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records

Mouse on Mars - Autoditacker

With its reedy horns, jazzy keyboards and cymbal laden break beats Manitoba's classy 2001 album Start Breaking My Heart feels like St Germain's Tourist's (a very popular album in jazz lounges and student bedsits from the year before) baby brother. An obvious reference point is Four Tet but it also reminds me a lot of the early Efterklang albums when they were experimenting with clicks and glitches, and Penguin Cafe Orchestra particularly on tracks like People Eating Fruit with its gentle slightly off key organ refrain and choral singing and Children Play Well Together which sounds like the noise a telephone makes when left off the hook (something the PCO were prone to do).

What of the Caribou name? Manitoba musician Dan Snaith works under several monikers and this exact same album was re-released in 2006 under the name Caribou (the cover is the same except for the tiny type in the top left corner) after he was threatened with legal action over the Manitoba name by singer Richard Manitoba (yes, exactly... who?). Snaith quite reasonably suggested this was akin to The Smiths being sued by John Smith.

Dan Snaith as Caribou (always sensible to put your name on your school equipment)

Although Snaith plays live as part of a band this album is a solo produced affair. This is surprising as the music sounds very authentic and organic. It is verging upon the laid back easy listening end of the electronica spectrum but the music contains enough unusual turns, weird sounds and random rhythms to be both a pleasant listen and an interesting one. As such it has a soul which you don't always get in the mathematically perfect synthesizer music of a band like Kraftwerk for instance, or the aforementioned Tourist come to that.

I love the modern art cover too, which heads up this post. I can't quite make out whether it is a painting or a photo.

Brimming with fragmented melodies, spacey dissonances, edgy breaks, strange streams of sonic particles, and chaotic overlays.

Falling into the trap of comparisons again, German DJ duo Mouse On Mars remind me of U-ziq with their attractive melodies over energetic beats and deep bass. It's a lot heavier and faster than Manitoba. It's definitely dance heavy and doesn't take itself too seriously with a smattering of silly noises and twee tunes.

Many tracks have intriguing high pitched squeaks in the background which sound like er hem, mice! Mice trapped inside one of the Boards of Canada laptops. I like that, let's use that. Ed.

These mice sound not so much from Mars, but more like mice trapped deep inside one of the Boards of Canada laptops. 

Nice. Ed.

Maybe it's a trademark sound they use on all their albums. But there's a lot more than trapped mice beneath the grooves - the boys have thrown everything at the mix to produce a dense multi layered record within which I expect to hear new things on each listen. Is it 'Techno' perhaps? Not sure. But it is a bit like Autechre although an easier listen than that. Released as long ago as 1997 it is not surprising there are elements of drum 'n' bass on Autoditacker (how do you pronounce that?) too.

Despite this vintage I was tempted to say the music is ahead of its time or perhaps timeless. I'm not sure if that's truly the case. It is indeed more than 20 years old which seems incredible. But that's not due to the revolutionary electronic sounds necessarily (the likes of countrymen Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk began mining their seams of electronic music in the early 70s of course). It's more a sobering admission on my part of the passing of time and a realisation that there is a wealth of music out there I've never heard which has been around donkeys years.

20 years ago - this was in a pre-9/11 world (I know that's not relevant to music particularly but do you, like me, divide the past into pre and post 2001 sometimes? I remember imagining where I would be and how old I'd be in the year 2000. Jeez.

Anyway the technology may not have been that revolutionary by 1997 but 'MoM' are a fascinating and original addition to the electronic music scene. Formed in that hotbed of musical innovation Dusseldorf in 1993 micey duo Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma have produced 11 studio albums right up to this year's Dimensional People (Autoditacker was their third) and have collaborated with artists as diverse as Stereolab and The Fall.

Mice on Mars contemplate their leads

The Mouse On Mars website has an impenetrably long bio employing an academic English I feel a native speaker would rarely use:

A disorientating mix of pop and experimentation running from noise to strange beauty, their music is at the same time resolutely avant-garde and playful, though always charged with a destructive compulsion. Brimming with fragmented melodies, spacey dissonances, edgy breaks, strange streams of sonic particles, and chaotic overlays, Mouse On Mars' fluid sound aesthetic reflects their general mutability, which is deeply rooted in their restless ingenuity, quirky sense of humour, and fearless non-conformism.

There's much more but perhaps worth noting...

Multiplicity and diversity, in all of their cacophonous glory (including failure), form the crux of Mouse On Mars’ artistic agenda. Imprecision, noise, dissonance, intuition, speculation, spontaneity, improvisation, imagination, connectivity, loss of control, and overload constitute some of their many vehicles. Mouse On Mars’ musical and artistic universe thus emerges only through a holistic consideration of their extended constellation of collaborations, projects, and references.

Jan Rohlf

Sounds interesting doesn't it? Have a listen to their cacophonous glory (including failure?).

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Log #108 - Lifting the Lid on Some Ambient Classics

Following a couple of weeks of tentative excursions into the world of IDM, electronica and ambient, I've gone full steam ahead this week and embraced 6 albums across the genres:

Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (CD 1)

Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (CD 2)

Brian Eno - Music For Airports

Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here

Jan Jelinek - Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records

Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher

When reviewing music that is off the mainstream it is sometimes difficult not to compare such artists with more well known equivalents. Perhaps it's a lazy method but nevertheless it does quickly convey an impression.

So here we have the following impressions -

Stars of the Lid  bring ambient lushness that recalls Brian Eno and the quiet bits of Godspeed You Black Emperor. To me this music also seems to provide a bridge between electronic ambient and classical minimalism with the slow droney strings in keeping with composers like Arvo Part, Gorecki and Philip Glass. The cheery track titles include the following - Requiem for Dying Mothers, The Lonely People are Getting Lonelier, and Austin Texas Mental Hospital. The band hail from Texas which seems unlikely but for no good reason. Why would a couple of electronic music innovators necessarily need to come from New York or Berlin? This 2001 album (their sixth) consists of lengthy pieces of 2 or 3 parts each, spread across a double CD (or triple vinyl) which clocks in at a total of over 2 hours. It's pure atmosphere music which gradually creeps up on you enveloping you in a cathartic reverie before bringing you to an unexpected and sudden orgasmic climax with a perfectly placed unexpected key change.

I'm at mind to recall a sample from the Orb's groundbreaking Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld album - I've been waiting for music like this all of my life (which I read came from a Sex Pistols interview).

Aren't the covers of these classy bands, classy too? This one graces the head of the post.

Brian Eno requires no equivalency. Rightly or wrongly Eno was credited with "inventing" ambient music. I don't know how true that is in reality - we even had an ambient record last week which predates this one as does the work of the classical minimalists, but Music For Airports from 1978 is perhaps the first to coin the term being actually subtitled Ambient 1. The concept derived from Eno waiting in an airport terminal and coming up with the idea for a background sound that could meet a range of  different attentions spans and "induce calm and a space to think".

Emeralds  with their gated pulses, looped keyboards and mixed low guitar, are the band in this selection that sound the most like Tangerine Dream (particularly around their late 70s/early 80s time - think Force Majeure). They also remind me of Terry Riley and Philip Glass. The music is dense and loud creating an immersive soundscape.

Jan Jelinek  offers lots of clicks, glitches and vinyl static most similar to Boards of Canada and early Efterklang. The album is particularly satisfying as a whole with a thread of similarity across it's 10 tracks of lo-fi beats and understated jazz samples. The homely crackle gives the record an authenticity and warmth like an open fire at Christmas (crikey, I received my first Christmas newsletter last week!).

Prefuse73 is the nomenclature for US DJ/Producer Scott Herren. This album is the most genre busting one in the selection touching on hip hop, electronica, dance, IDM, rap and even grime. The record sounds like a mash up of DJ Shadow and The Beastie Boys with lashings of Daft Punk too. It's the most upbeat album of the six and possesses some infectious hooks and melodies. My only criticism could be that the "funky drummer rhythm" which was innovative in the early 90s (including the 1991 Orb release mentioned above) is done to death throughout this 2003 release.

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Log #107 - The Beauty Of Simplicity

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew CD2

Air - Moon Safari

Tangerine Dream - Zeit CD2

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

Granados - Goyescas

William Ackerman - Past Light

Here we have another lovely piano CD in the shape of Granados courtesy of the excellent Naxos label. Naxos do a very comprehensive series of budget classical CDs which are a great way to get into the world of classical music.

Enrique Granados's music, like his Spanish compatriot Isaac Albeniz, is more well known in its classical guitar form than the original piano versions. Indeed the Spanish flavour of many of these pieces works brilliantly for Spanish guitar and pieces by both composers have formed the set lists of the best classical guitar players throughout the 20th century, initially through Segovia who initiated many of the guitar transcriptions from such heavyweight composers, through Williams and Bream and others in his footsteps. Hence you are generally much more likely to have heard Asturias or Sevilla or Oriental on guitar than piano.

I'm not sure Segovia's approach was right. In an almost single handed effort to get the classical elite to take his instrument seriously he personally transcribed many pieces originally written for piano, or other classical instruments like the violin, for guitar. He also commissioned established composers from the classical world to write for the guitar. The results of both approaches are mixed. For one thing the versions for guitar are fiendishly difficult which stands to reason when you consider the differences between the instruments. Some things possible on a piano are physically not possible on a guitar. Similarly the sustain possible on a violin is likewise not possible on a guitar. Segovia was also too hasty in dismissing wonderful music written by composers who wrote exclusively for guitar - composers who understood the unique characteristics of the instrument most notably a lot of the South American composers such as Barrios and Lauro who did not come up to Segovia's snobbish standards. So generally I steer clear of guitar transcriptions of classical pieces. Despite some exceptions like a lot of these Spanish pieces (and Bach interestingly) they are usually better in their original forms.

While on the subject of guitarists we have our first sighting of Will Ackerman. Continuing the snobby theme there are many classical guitarists (Segovia would definitely be one) who wouldn't give someone like Will Ackerman the time of day. They would consider his playing and his music beneath them as it is relatively simple and played on a steel string acoustic guitar rather than a "proper" classical.

The Beatles are very nice young men, no doubt, but their music is horrible.

Segovia on hearing George Harrison describe him as the "Father of us all".

I'm pleased I've grown out of that attitude both as a listener and a player. We should all appreciate that the simplicity/complexity scale is no yardstick by which to measure the greatness of music. Furthermore as a player it is much better to master a simpler piece well with musicality and feeling, than to struggle through a car crash of a complicated piece. The great King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp was classically trained but said hearing one Jimi Hendrix chord meant more to him than the whole classical repertoire. For me seeing Tommy Emmanuel (an acoustic guitarist who doesn't even read music) live for the first time about ten years ago absolutely blew my mind (he was so good it made me want to throw my guitar away forever). Will Ackerman is not in the same league as Tommy Emmanuel but I have very much enjoyed both playing and listening to his beautiful music. In fact I play his albums much more than Tommy Emmanuel's who is more of a live showman than a recording artist and his compositions don't quite come across the same way on record. That's interesting isn't it? You need the spectacle as the music itself is not enough. It's a case of seeing someone do something in the flesh and thinking "wow, how did he do that?". This becomes meaningless on a recording. I've been playing a lot of ambient and DJ/electronic music recently. It is lovely to listen to, but as a live spectacle does it have the same effect? No, it's completely different. [Btw, don't you get tired seeing those best guitarist of all time posts on facebook groups? It's so boring and predictable. The answer btw is Tommy Emmanuel (not Jimmy Page, or David Gilmour].

Guitarists mentioned here:from top to bottom, left to right, Lauro, Hendrix, Emmanuel, Barrios, Williams, Bream, Segovia, Fripp, Ackerman (and no Page or Gilmour)

So back on message - Will Ackerman has recorded many a solo guitar album for the Windham Hill new age label which he co-founded. This album Past Light is a collaboration with other musicians including labelmates Mark Isham and Michael Hedges, who flesh the sound out with guitar, synthesizer, piano, cello and fretless bass. The Kronos Quartet also guest on one track. It's gorgeous relaxing music. Not particularly earth shattering or memorable, but lovely to listen to when in the mood.

A very small point for Will Ackerman obsessives (if indeed there are any out there). On my album cover the word Visiting is very faintly visible after Past Light. With a keen eye you can just about make it out on the picture above. Visiting is the opening track on the album but the album itself is definitely called Past Light and not Past Light Visiting.

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Log #106 - So Much Good Music Under The Sun

I'm excited about this week's listening. Sometimes it's hard to think of 6 albums to listen to, but this week the CDs were positively jumping off the shelf like those springy sticky toys we used to have.

This was because my interest in ambient minimalist electronica was re-ignited and this opened up a wealth of potential listening from the likes of Tangerine Dream, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Four Tet, and Brian Eno.

Debussy - Preludes Books I and II

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Union Cafe

Tangerine Dream - Zeit

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

Fripp and Eno - No Pussyfooting

Blue States - Nothing Changes Under The Sun

Take Tangerine Dream for example. Last year, or maybe the year before, through this blog I became reacquainted with the band mainly via their classic mid 70s albums like Phaedra and Force Majeure.  Checkout a track like Cloudburst Flight if you aren't convinced. But I hadn't ventured deeper into history to hear much of their early 70s work which was much more ambient before they started introducing pulsed rhythms.

Zeit seemed to be the go-to album for most fans of early period Tan Dream. I bought the new remastered double album version containing the original double album plus a live disc. I haven't even got on to the live disc yet. The original album is gorgeous. It's just what I want from an ambient piece of music. Consisting of just 4 "side-long" tracks of chilling dark drone music - you can safely stick it on repeat all day, and go about your business. It's great to listen to passively, as background music.

It's very unobtrusive and as such creeps up on you very subtly. You pick up different things each time you walk past your speaker, things you haven't noticed before.

Contrary to what you may expect I actually find incredible depth and interest in this sort of music. Because it is so subtle there is a lot to discover that isn't immediately obvious. New sounds and textures reveal themselves gradually over repeated plays. It really challenges conventional understandings of what music is.

In comparison The Penguin Cafe Orchestra are relatively mainstream. This album is also a "double" in old money. I think it suffers slightly from covering too many different styles across it's 16 tracks. There are straight forward classical like pieces (these are the most successful), ambient sound effects, and whimsical throwaways. As such, as a whole it does not convey the mood or continuous aesthetic of a piece like Zeit. My favourite PCO album is their debut, Music From...

Fans of instrumental electronic music are in safe hands with the assured Boards of Canada. With only 4 full length albums over a 20 year career (Geogaddi from 2002 is officially their second not counting the excellent extended EP Twoism with which they announced themselves in 1995) they practise quality over quantity.

Spoken word samples are backed by ghostly synth melodies over down tempo hip hop beats. I always think their particular type of analogue synth music sounds vaguely out of tune with it's variations, clicks, flutters, crackles and bends; this makes it all the more organic and earthy.

When I first bought Fripp and Eno's No Pussyfooting (1973) I remember whizzing through the two side long tracks in double quick time trying to find where they changed (I had it on cassette tape). Of course they didn't change and I was left confused for a long time before realising the point of this classic ambient collaboration. Ironically later releases of the album included a half speed/double length version of one side of the album - The Heavenly Music Corporation (as well as a recording of the entire album in reverse!). I'm not sure how I feel about this. To me it devalues the original, making it seem even more random and thrown together than it did already.

Urban myth says that on release the album was accidentally played on BBC radio backwards (I have no idea how this happened, it sounds very unlikely, but I'm not surprised that the only one who noticed was apparently Brian Eno himself who phoned in to complain). 

Nevertheless with it's epic distorted Frippertronic guitar improvisations over Eno's loops and phased drones it remains an early classic of the ambient genre and entirely unexpected coming from two artists respectively members of the bands King Crimson and Roxy Music at the time. Great cover too.

Fripp and Eno recorded a second album Evening Star (1975). When later asked about a promised third album that had never materialised Fripp sarcastically replied it had already been done in the form of Eno's celebrated collaboration with David Byrne - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts which appeared in 1981 (Fripp did receive a writing credit).

Cover album this week is Nothing Changes Under The Sun by Blue States which is the stage name (or more fittingly the studio name) for producer Andy Dragazis. The music is less ambient and more chilled down tempo electronica along the lines of Zero 7, Kruder and Dorfmeister, and most of all Air. If you like Air's Moon Safari you'll love this too.

As I've said before this sort of music can run the risk of becoming wallpaper or elevator fodder. It's a fine line but the right side of the line is maintained when the melodies are as consistently good as they are here on beautiful tracks like Diamente or Trainer Shuffle or Heroes' Elegy

Hear Diamente below (with apologies to email readers for whom I don't think videos render - please click into the source blog or try this link >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC6fD_j0Cqw ):

Finally, just occasionally you just need some classical music on a dull Sunday morning, and when you need some classical, you can't get better than Debussy. I'm no expert on classical music but for me he seems to bridge the gap between traditional melodic classical music and more modern discordant 20th Century "classical" music. So you get beautiful melodies, but with originality and a modern edge. It's a win win.

Also there's not much of him as I understand (willing to be contradicted by any Debussy experts out there?). This is a big advantage in any music, but particularly classical where you have not only 400 years worth of history but also multiple copies of the same pieces. Debussy didn't write any symphonies and all his orchestral works can be entirely found on one classic double album, the famous Phillips edition:

https://amzn.to/2J2xmKX

This is so worth getting. Even if you don't think you've heard any Debussy before you will recognise some of the tracks on here. It's a beautiful record that will reward repeated listens. It's your duty to try it even if you are an outright punk rocker! It might just change your life.

[..actually classical is a definition oft misused in classical music. It refers to a particular era in music, rather than a style. So classical is a term equivalent to baroque, or romantic, or renaissance for example. But for the purposes of this blog, and most people's understanding, classical stands for all music that people generally understand and accept as "classical", ie. stuff that uses traditional acoustic wooden and brass instruments like violins and oboes and stuff and is often performed in chambers, quartets and orchestras and... you know what I mean] ... I'm glad you've cleared that up. Ed.

The album in the slot this week isn't actually this one. We have here Debussy's books of solo piano preludes. These are mostly short tracks - mostly very pleasing, although as I mention above, with an edge. It's not pure easy listening that's for sure. Some of these tracks have been made famous in ads and films like The Usual Suspects.

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Log #105 - New Reggae Old Dub

Today I read this in one of those excellent 33 1/3 album books. This from author Alan Warner writing on Can's Tago Mago album:

It is inevitable for writers writing about music that we must resort to image, simile, and metaphor. So you are going to get guitars playing on balconies across a mountain valley, and you are going to get keyboard solos compared to a killer whale rodeo. It is not something I am proud of, it is a tradition, a trope, a linguistic attempt to seize the myriad impressions and sensations which affecting music can throw at us. We resort to common poetry to describe the impossible, the same way scientists and physicists must when attempting to explain their most recondite flights. These images are variations of the pathetic fallacy but there is a tradition to it and sometimes the metaphors are apt. I like to avoid this plump fancifying but I cannot.

Musicians (and artists of all kinds in the public eye) are understandably dismissive of music writers generally and especially critics. Frank Zappa described music journalists as:

People who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

Perhaps Neil Young summed it up best with these cutting words from Ambulance Blues:

So all you critics sit alone
You're no better than me
for what you've shown

I'm not sure about killer whale rodeo keyboard solos but Alan Warner is right - writing about music is very flawed. Is there a point at all? Are one's views so personal it renders any opinion irrelevant? Surely it is just better to hear for yourselves without any pre-judgment inflicted by a writer?

Do writers have any right to pass judgement on artists?

But there remains so much of it about. Even more so these days with the internet and the prevalence of review sites like Amazon where anyone can leave their opinion. And I use those opinions when deciding on a purchase - the wisdom of the crowd is often correct even though all public review sites tend towards the positive.

Most of my 33 1/3 collection

So I'll continue, but not without a feeling that my writing might be arrogant or self-important, or read by no-one and meaningless. Where I think the 33 1/3 books succeed is that they are for the most part written by fans describing their own personal feelings about a record - what it meant to them when they heard it growing up - rather than an opinionated critique. That's the approach I should stick to.

On to my personal selection this week then. I've gone for some reggae which was inspired by my daughter actually, who showed me some clips of new new kid on the block Protoje from a festival. I misheard this as Prodigy at first of course! My go to reggae album Catch A Fire follows and then a CD from one of the excellent Trojan box set series, which moves us, by way of Austrian DJs Kruder and Dorfmeister, into "dub". Dub I understand as meaning deep bass, not necessarily reggae although the two are often synonymous. We have a leftover from the Bob Dylan weeks with his beautiful Blood On The Tracks album and then bringing up the rear a set from the prolific Cornwall DJ (no, not Aphex Twin - the other one) Luke Vibert.

Protoje - A Matter Of Time

Bob Marley - Catch A Fire

Trojan Dub Box Set - CD 2

Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions

Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks

Luke Vibert - Musipal

What strikes me about the Bob Marley is the lack of what I'd call reggae in it! It's actually just great pop/rock music with great rhythms and some beautiful guitar playing (I don't know if this is Bob himself - I suspect not - from the films I've seen of him he seems to be the one either just singing with his guitar slung over his shoulder or he's doing the reggae chug chug chug strum strum). Who is on lead guitar? Is it Peter Tosh?

That reggae chug chug chug strum strum.

Lots of reggae chug chug on the Protoje album. It's much faster and poppier and the singer sings in a rap style. There are some great pop singles on here. It's immediately accessible to almost anyone which does worry me a little as I wonder if it has much staying power - that is one of the most fascinating things about discovering new music - how your opinion changes over the coming weeks, months, and even years (one of the original reasons I started this log actually).

Who is he anyway? Well from Wiki I learn that he is a contemporary reggae artist from Jamaica. That's an obvious description but an important distinction as I still think of most reggae (probably solely due to Bob Marley) as 70s music. Furthermore most the Dub stuff from Trojan is from even earlier.  

Real name Oje Ken Ollivierre, Protoje started recording proper albums in 2011 and this one A Matter Of Time is his fifth.

One of my favourite tracks is No Guarantee which has this slickly produced video below (and also a catchy downward guitar riff):

Protoje himself has commented on the video:

This video is shot exclusively in Port Royal and shows bits and pieces of everyday life. Moments that often go unappreciated even unnoticed but are essentially all that we have. 

Tell me are there things you take for granted too often?

I've never visited Jamaica. I'm sure there's lots of what we would describe as poverty but that sea (and dare I say the way of life?) looks beautiful. Port Royal is a suburb of Kingston.

The Kruder and Dorfmeister double CD Sessions is a superb piece of music. For a brief moment in time it was actually my favourite album. The album consists of heavily dubbed out remixes of tunes by artists like David Holmes, Depeche Mode, Roni Size, Lamb, Count Basic and Bomb The Bass. CD number 1 is slightly more upbeat with CD 2 a touch more chilled. Sometimes this blissed out down tempo trip hop type music can become a bit too much like elevator music - a criticism K & D masterfully avoid (although you would have almost certainly heard some of their tracks before, even unknowingly, via TV background music). The other thing about this duo is they actually really do improve the originals - a case in point with the Depeche Mode remix below:

I had a look for the Luke Vibert album on Spotify and it wasn't listed. I then realised Luke goes under the name of Wagon Christ for this 2001 release. That's not his only pseudonym. He can also be found under the following names: Plug, Kerrier District, Amen Andrews, and the Ace of Clubs, although his own name plus Wagon Christ are the ones he uses most often. I believe each nomenclature indicates a different style of music whether it be trip hop, acid or drum 'n' bass, but I'm not enough of an expert to distinguish. What I can tell though is Vibert has a unique sound in the IDM (intelligent dance music) field identifiable across all his releases. This one starts off with the following sample and Luke always delivers. 

The premise of this album is very very simple - to listen to messages of soul with a solid beat.

For new listeners I'd also recommend Stop The Panic as a good starting point - available super cheap from amazon at the moment. This album expertly melds Luke's solid beats with slide guitar by BJ Cole creating a unique experience:

All for now, have a good week of musipal discovery!

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Log #104 - Sweet Hard Angry Rain

Log #104 means I've reached the 2 year point in my weekly log of album listening. That's a year on than the original plan. At the one year point I wrote a review of the first year. It now makes sense to do that at the end of the calendar year so I'll do one in December from now on. Having said that it's always interesting to take a quick snapshot of where we've got to. Here is the top of the leader board as of today (by number of appearances in the weekly log):

So this means that Neil Young is out in front: Statistically in the 104 weeks I've been logging my listening, at least one Neil Young album has appeared in 15 of those weeks (14%).

Now without further ado here is the listing for this week:

Bob Dylan - Hard Rain

Bob Dylan - New Morning

Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy

Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks

Bob Dylan - Slow Train Coming

Uriah Heep - Sweet Freedom

So I continue on my Dylan journey this week. He nearly achieves a clean sweep throughout the full magazine but is just pipped for slot 6 by an unlikely usurper in the form of the 70s British rock band Uriah Heep. Why? Well two things this week. One was there was a discussion about Uriah Heep on a facebook group I follow, more specifically a discussion about their singer David Byron. The second was the track Easy Livin' which was used in one of the episodes of the now showing excellent TV drama Trust about the Getty family. The drama is set in 1973 and has a superb soundtrack of rock music from those days.

David Byron

David Byron was the angelic looking lead singer of Uriah Heep from their "ever so 'umble" beginnings" in 1969 through ten albums before being dismissed in 1976. With his flamboyant charisma and operatic vocal range he was the focal point of the band but as keyboardist Ken Hensley put it "when the show started to come second [to the drinking] the problems began":

Stood on a ridge and shunned religion, thinking the world was mine
I made my break and a big mistake, stealin' when I should have been buyin'
All that fightin', killin', wine and those women gonna put me to an early grave
Runnin', hidin', losin', cryin', nothing left to save
But my life

(from Stealin')

After leaving Heep, Byron went on to a solo career before reaching that early grave succumbing to an alcohol related death in 1985 at the age of only 38.

Uriah Heep - Byron centre

David Byron also appeared on the cover of the band's debut album, his face unrecognisable under cobwebs:

Sweet Freedom from 1973 was the (prolific) band's 6th album:

The album is characteristic of Hensley's heavy organ but also note the melodic bass playing from the late Gary Thain (heroin overdose 1975).

Uriah Heep are still going and have actually just released a new album Living The Dream this month although guitarist Mick Box is the only founding member remaining. Their trajectory was typical with a gradual watering down of their rock (and sometimes goblins and wizards flavoured prog) towards the late 70s before a brief revival in the early 80s when heavy metal became popular. They then drifted on in relative obscurity, and through the usual personnel changes, while continuing to appear at festivals and play numerous shows to a loyal fan base each year. Tracks like Easy Livin' and Stealin' continue to receive air time in both the UK and US.

A Hard Rain Fell

Hard Rain is a live album taken from Dylan's celebrated Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975/76. It's very rough and on initial listening one may be forgiven for wondering why it was released in such a state. But over the years it has become an important document (along with a film) of this mythical tour.

A masked Bob Dylan with Mick Ronson (centre)

Dylan was at the time going through some personal issues most significantly the break up of his marriage which he had written extensively about on two powerful albums of the period - Blood On The Tracks (1975) and Desire (1976). Touring with a ramshackle and varied collective of musicians from these album sessions, including the amazing gypsy violinist Scarlet Rivera, and various guest appearances from the likes of Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg and even more surprisingly Mick Ronson from Bowie's Spiders From Mars, Dylan had a wealth of current material to draw upon. But don't expect polished renditions of the album tracks - here Dylan is angry, the band are jamming, and the versions are fast and furious.

Once you appreciate the circumstances and accept the roughness of the sound you can enjoy the pure energy and passion in these performances.

The guitars are loud ((and sound out of tune in places (as are the backing singers) - you can hear the musicians tuning between tracks)). The pace is breakneck from the off with a rollicking Maggie's Farm, and Dylan, sometimes made up with a whited out face and dark eye liner (checkout the haunted look on the cover), sometimes wearing a hanky over his head, sometimes his flowered-up Desire stetson, barks his anger.

Always one to alter songs live Dylan provides some shambolic yet exhilarating electric versions of One Too Many Mornings (unrecognisable from the gentle solo version on The Times They Are a-Changin'), the brilliant Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (one of my favourite ever Dylan songs), and especially Shelter From The Storm which is given new momentum with Dylan's screeching slide guitar over a grinding guitar riff. Highlight is a vitriolic Idiot Wind directed towards his soon to be ex-wife apparently standing side stage (Bob and Sara Dylan divorced in 1977 after 12 years of marriage):

Idiot wind
Blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind
Blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots, babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves

It was hurricane season on the Gulf Coast leg of the tour and many concerts were rained out giving the album it's name:

Everybody's soaked, the canopy's leaking, the musicians are getting shocks from the water onstage. The instruments are going out of tune... everybody is playing and singing for their lives, and that is the spirit you hear on that record.

Bassist Rob Stoner

So not the purest Dylan album and likewise not one for the purists who prefer their Dylan in the form of the contemporary Blood On The Tracks album. Also not one for a new fan or one to play in a room of listeners unaccustomed to the ways of Bob Dylan. But for the established fan Hard Rain offers something new and exciting and I would not be surprised if I return to it more often than some of his more celebrated albums.

You can now view the tour film here:

The track listing from the film which differs from the album is:

Hard Rain
Blowin' in the Wind
Railroad Boy
Deportee (Guthrie)
Pity the Poor Immigrant
Shelter from the Storm
Maggie's Farm
One Too Many Mornings
Mozambique
Idiot Wind
Knockin' on Heaven's Door

The album track listing is:

Maggie's Farm
One Too Many Mornings
Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
Oh, Sister
Lay Lady Lay
Shelter from the Storm
You're a Big Girl Now
I Threw It All Away
Idiot Wind

Interesting Rock Trivia Fact: Scarlet Rivera was married to Sensational Alex Harvey Band keyboardist Tommy Eyre.

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Log #103 - Don't Write Off All of Bob Dylan's Post 70s Output

You (old time music listeners that is) can't really argue with this week's selection - we have a couple of "mid" period Dylan albums, the last Doors album, and some JJ Cale, plus another Bob who surprisingly sounds like Dylan, and a classic from Dylan's sometime backing band, the Band.

The Doors - American Prayer

Bob Geldof - The Happy Club

Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy

Bob Dylan - Time Out Of Mind

JJ Cale - Naturally

The Band - Music From Big Pink

American Prayer is surprisingly a really good record. It is a pot pourri of live performances, parts of existing recordings, and "new" Jim Morrison poems set to music. It shouldn't work, but it does, very well.

Morrison's spoken words are on the verge of being sung and don't sound much different to some regular Doors tracks. The accompanying music is chilled - funky and jazzy. The music fits perfectly and if you didn't know you probably would never guess that the vocal tracks were recorded separately (apparently by Morrison in 1969 and 1970). The editing is top class and the tracks merge with each other producing a coherent album which is greater than the sum of its parts and one that should really be listened to in one sitting from start to finish. 

American Prayer earns its right to be considered a genuine part of the Doors discography.

We have two what I've called "mid" period albums from Bob Dylan although really you could argue they are "late" period considering his output slowed a lot from the 90s. These two albums featured here are separated by 8 years and only one intervening (originals) album (Under The Red Sky).

Like many artists who made their name in the 60s and 70s, the 80s was a tough decade for Dylan who was struggling to find his way in the new musical environment. For many his last great album from his hey day would have been Street Legal (1978), or my personal favourite Desire (1976), or even the one before that, the classic Blood On The Tracks (1975).

He had a brief dally with religion as the 70s turned - a trilogy of gospel celebrations of his new found christianity beginning with Slow Train Coming and following up with Saved and Shot of Love.

The 'born again' trilogy

Moving into the general musical wasteland of the 80s Dylan bounced back somewhat with Infidels which is pretty alright but then fell victim of the musical fashions of the day with some bland over produced albums like Empire Burlesque and Knocked Out Loaded supplemented by some uninspiring live albums.

Dylan sits under the red sky and surveys the wasteland of most of his 80s work

But then, mirroring similar trajectories of singer-songwriter contemporaries Van Morrison (Avalon Sunset) and Neil Young (Freedom), Dylan pulled one out the bag right at the end of the decade with Oh Mercy released in 1989.

The album was hailed as a return to form on its release and this wasn't merely due to comparison with the preceding string of disappointing efforts. The production by Daniel Lanois is smooth and positively lush like on the gorgeous Most Of The Time. The sound is polished but the balance is right and the laid back introspective music flows assuredly behind Dylan's nasal outpourings (thankfully the 80s drum slap has been left behind). Man In The Long Black Coat and What Good Am I? are beautiful / Ring Them Bells could be an outtake from 1970's New Morning and I really like the blues chug of Everything is Broken which foreshadows the tracks on Time Out Of Mind:

Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds,
Ain't no use jiving,
Ain't no use joking,
Everything is broken.

There is some gorgeous languid guitar on this album. I have a feeling it could be Lanois's playing? Almost certainly it won't be Dylan. Let's check...

Oh yes, it is (Lanois) at least on some of the tracks like the aforementioned Most Of The Time and the brilliant What Was It You Wanted which also features some of the best ever Dylan harmonica blowing:

Daniel Lanois also produces Time Out Of Mind but with quite a different approach. The production here is stripped right back to a raw blues and rock sound which ideally suits Dylan's new found gravelly growl and the backing band's bar room aesthetic. With plentiful gutsy guitar riffs on tracks like Can't Wait and Cold Irons Bound (below) this is one of Dylan's heaviest albums despite one or two down tempo ballads like Make You Feel My Love.

What a great looking band too.

The album finishes on the Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands like Highlands - at 16 minutes Dylan's longest ever recorded song. It's no symphonic epic - the track just repeats a hypnotic blues guitar round over and over and Dylan sings long verses of stream of consciousness lyrics (just like the old days!):

I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always yellin' "Turn it down."

When asked for a short version of the song by one of the recording engineers Dylan replied: "That was the short version."

You just never know what you're going to get. He's an eccentric man.

Daniel Lanois on Bob Dylan

It seems odd to talk about an artist finding himself (or more to the point re-finding himself) after 30 years or so but both these albums and in particular Time Out Of Mind sounds like an artist who has come to terms with a new style and is at home in his own skin. The voice is now a gruff growl but this is Bob Dylan sounding like his real self in 1997.

It is often easy to write off post 70s output of many artists especially singer song writers like Bob Dylan. These two albums demonstrate that can be a short sighted view - a view I must admit having assumed too. I'm mighty pleased to have rediscovered these two albums which have given me a new found respect for latter period Bob Dylan which opens up a whole new catalogue of listening I had assumed was unworthy of examination. Standby for some further excursions into post 1978 Bob Dylan!

It is however a shame that for the most part Dylan isn't able to reproduce the quality of the production on these two albums live. I've seen him a few times since the 80s and his live voice leaves plenty to be desired (unlike the aforementioned Young and Morrison who are still great singers). In my experience it is even difficult to recognise some Dylan songs live and you sometimes wonder if he has even met his backing band let alone rehearsed with them!

As for the other Bob - I heard this song in a shop and thought it was Dylan:

Pretty good eh? Not what I expected from Bob Geldof.

No time left this week to give the Band's record a thorough review but checkout this post for some background reading on the making of "Big Pink".

Cover art this post: The Oh Mercy cover is a picture by street artist "Trotsky" Dylan found on a wall in New York.

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Log #102 - 4 Doors Albums

Were The Doors just a phase one went through when growing up, like the recently discussed Rush? Or did they really have depth and staying power? They aren't a band I return to very often (and in fact this is their first appearance in the log in 2 years and nearly 250 artists!). This is surprising really as the music is actually excellent and the band should really be viewed as much more than a mere Jim Morrison vehicle. But has the cult of their revered and charismatic singer over shadowed their actual music? Read on as I replay four of their (only six *) studio albums.

Aimee Mann - Whatever

Nightmares on Wax - Late Night Tales

The Doors - Morrison Hotel

The Doors - Strange Days

The Doors - The Doors

The Doors - L.A. Woman

* There were six proper original Jim Morrison Doors studio albums plus a live album although a couple of albums were recorded after his death and some previously unreleased recordings and live albums surfaced later.

The complete studio discography is:

The Doors (1967)

Strange Days (1967)

Waiting for the Sun (1968)

The Soft Parade (1969)

Morrison Hotel (1970)

L.A. Woman (1971)

Other Voices (1971)

Full Circle (1972)

An American Prayer (1978)

The Doors

The Doors The Doors arrived in 1967 (the same year as Sgt. Pepper and the Velvet Underground debut). It was quite a debut and very unique. There weren't many bands with such an emphasis on the organ - Ray Manzarek's carnival thrustings on his Vox Continental and Fender Rhodes Bass gave the Doors a 60s vaudeville like sound. They wrote brilliantly catchy pop tunes, but could really rock too - witness the malevolent The End - the debut's brooding menacing 12 minute epic in which Morrison would famously ad-lib the spoken word section during live performance. Quite a shock for both live audiences and bedroom listeners alike. The song was also made famous as the opening credits to Apocalypse Now:

The other big track on the album is, of course, Light My Fire. Possibly a bit spoilt by over exposure these days it is nevertheless objectively a brilliant track with a keyboard and guitar instrumental section which was cut for the single release.

Right down The Doors' alley we have the Brecht and Weill cover Whisky Bar perfectly suited to Manzarek's fairground organ grinding and Morrison's baritone. There is a blues cover (The Doors would return more and more to their blues roots in later albums); Willie Dixon's Back Door Man. Take It As It Comes and Twentieth Century Fox are great rock pieces and the psychedelic End Of The Night is similar to Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd.

It's difficult to argue that this is not the greatest Doors album. Consistent and original. Their subsequent albums largely repeated the formula albeit becoming slightly more blues and rock based. They were never quite as original again.

Strange Days

Perhaps the band's second album Strange Days suffers from comparison as it is pretty much a carbon copy of the first album but by then without the "surprise" of course. So we have an abundance of consummate pop singles like Love Me Two Times and People Are Strange and another 12 minute epic closer When The Music's Over.  Structurally this track it's pretty identical to The End with guitarist Robbie Krieger using some Robert Fripp type distortion, and a slowed down middle section. These extended builders gave the band, and Morrison especially, plenty of scope for live improvisation and extension:

Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection
Send my credentials to the House of Detention
I got some friends inside 

I imagine at many live performances there was a dread of what Morrison was going to sing or say every time he went off script (rather like Donald Trump today!).

One departure on this album which I can safely say is no-one's favourite Doors track is the Horse Latitudes poem set to avant-garde noises. Some recordings of Jim Morrison's poems were later released on American Prayer which I actually think works really well and is an excellent album in it's own right.

My copy comes in a lovely LP style miniature cardboard case with a £3 sticker. What a bargain. See if you can spot the album cover in my Album Cover Challenge. The location was a residential alley in Manhattan, New York.

Rock Trivia Fact Question: Which Doors album cover does not feature a picture of the band or Jim Morrison?

Morrison Hotel

The band's 5th album Morrison Hotel kicks off with the much covered Roadhouse Blues which sets the tone for the album with its honky tonk piano and harmonica (John Sebastian) enhanced Rolling Stones Exile On Main Street vibe.

Woke up this morning, I got myself a beer.

The only shame is this studio version is curtailed in comparison to the extended live versions (one of which appears on the underestimated American Prayer). 

There's more blues on You Make Me Real and the excellent grind of Maggie M'Gill:

I've been singing the blues ever since the world began.

The Spy is an intriguing slow blues. One of the joys of reassessing a band like The Doors is uncovering some hidden gems like this, and Queen of The Highway with it's nice electric wurlitzer.

On the down tempo Blue Sunday and Indian Summer Morrison sounds like a Ratpack crooner; the modern day equivalent would be Nick Cave or Stuart Staples. Then on Ship of Fools the circus organ recalls the debut album sound.

Peace Frog is my favourite Doors track. I heard this recently in a pub and felt sure it must have been a remix with it being so funky. But it's not, it is the original. Great guitar chops, driving bass and honky organ, slapping drums and fills and a superb guitar break. The lyrics are n't bad either:

Blood in the streets in the town of Newhaven. 

This always means something extra to me as we have a 'town of Newhaven' just a few miles from us in Brighton!

Morrison Hotel is a strong coherent album with only one or two weak tunes - maybe Land Ho! was lucky to make the cut - a fairly lacklustre sea shanty where the vocals even sound like someone else at the end of the song (I've never heard the post Morrison Doors albums - apparently they aren't much cop apart from, ironically, American Prayer which uses Morrison's vocal posthumously).  Although the album lacks the hit singles of earlier releases the overall cohesion demonstrates a work which is greater than the sum of it's parts and as such presents a good case for being the second best Doors album.

The album shoot was taken in and around an old long gone hotel in downtown L.A. The band were refused entry to the hotel to take the photo but apparently jumped in quickly when no one was looking.

L.A. Woman

L.A. Woman was The Doors' last Jim Morrison album, released in April 1971 three months before Morrison's death.

The band had moved further from their original vaudeville type roots (although perfect pop singles like Love Her Madly would have been entirely at home on the debut album). The guitar (and bass) is more prominent and there is less organ generally although the extended keyboard instrumental on the classic Riders On The Storm is possibly Ray Manzarek's finest moment.

The album is more basic rock and blues based as best displayed on the slow crawling blues of Cars Hiss By My Window and Crawling King Snake, but did this demonstrate the band were running dry of original ideas?

L'America is a bit naff but Hyacinth House is a pleasant enough tune:

I need a brand new friend who does n't bother me.

 ... and The Wasp rocks.

What About The Bass?

Did The Doors have a bass player? Well, yes and no. They didn't have one, but also had a lot. The unusual thing about The Doors was that they did employ some session bass players for the studio albums but never, as far as I have discovered, used one for live performances. I'm sure this is the opposite to many bands who have a core group of musicians who may double up their tracked instruments on record, but unable to do so live, employ extra touring musicians to reproduce the records on stage.

So live it was only keyboard guru Ray Manzarek (left) playing bass on the organ which is incredible when you think about it and listen to the fullness of the sound (there is a surprising amount of excellent live footage of The Doors on youtube) (the other musician I'm aware of who does this live is Steve Winwood). However in the studio the tracks were laid down with Manzarek's bass playing but some (not all) were enhanced with electric bass guitar. None of the following bass players were part of the band and most went uncredited.

So on the debut record, you have Manzarek's organ bass, but underneath it you also have Larry Knechtel on bass mirroring his lines.

On the second album Doug Lubahn played electric bass particularly on the more bouncy driving tracks. Lubahn is also the bassist on the next album Waiting for the Sun although a couple of other session players were also used. He went on to play on three tracks from The Soft Parade although the majority of bass was played by Harvey Brooks. 

Main bass stay for the more rock orientated Morrison Hotel was Ray Neopolitan although two of the most bluesy tracks Roadhouse Blues and Maggie M'Gill were handled by Lonnie Mack.

Finally on L.A.Woman bass duties were passed to Elvis bass player Jerry Scheff who remained post Morrison appearing on Other Voices and American Prayer.

Rock Trivia Answer: Many would answer Strange Days but the actual answer is Full Circle. On the Strange Days cover there is a poster of the band on the wall.

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