Log #153 - Large Clusters

Cluster I / 71

Cluster  II

Cluster Grosses Wasser

Cluster Cluster and Eno
Beatles Magical Mystery Tour

Beatles Revolver

Grosses Wasser (translated as "large water") was Cluster's 7th (not counting the two albums recorded as Kluster) album released in 1979. Produced by Tangerine Dream's Peter Baumann the music takes a significant turn towards a Tangerine Dream sound with some sequencer loops and percussive pulses.

A long time before that duo Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius debuted with Cluster I (later rebranded as Cluster 71) and a year later Cluster II, two classic albums of early experimental electronics. Then came the more famous and accessible Zuckerzeit and Sowiesoso albums before two collaborations with Brian Eno that foretold his "Ambient" series, the first Cluster and Eno featured here with it's marvellous cover (mind you, the Grossses Wasser cover is pretty cool too - is it a diving board or an aeroplane?).

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Log #152 - Experiments In Surround Sound

I'm reading a 33 1/3 book on The Flaming Lips. It's about their album Zaireeka. Now this is interesting for several reasons. For one I did not know the Flaming Lips had been around for so long (since the early 80s); I first heard of them around the time of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and the accompanying hit single Do You Realise?? but that was 2002, their 10th album, and leader Wayne Coyne was already over 40 by then.

The other reason is Zaireeka itself sounds like a very left field art rock statement which I would not have given the Flaming Lips credit for believing they were a fairly average middle of the road sort of indie band (notwithstanding their amazing live shows). I had heard they had done something a bit experimental more recently, after their commercial breakthrough with Yoshimi, and had assumed this must be the Zaireeka album on picking up the book, but no, that was 1997 (before commercial success had really reached the band so not an album you could really say was a career suicide). A quick scan through post 2002 albums does not readily reveal which one I was thinking about but it could have been Embryonic or The Terror? [It's Embryonic, Ed.]

Full Lips Discography:

Hear It Is (1986)

Oh My Gawd!!! (1987)

Telepathic Surgery (1989)

In a Priest Driven Ambulance (1990)

Hit to Death in the Future Head (1992)

Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (1993)

Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)

Zaireeka (1997)

The Soft Bulletin (1999)

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)

At War with the Mystics (2006)

Embryonic (2009)

The Terror (2013)

Oczy Mlody (2017)

King's Mouth (2019)

So what about Zaireeka? Well I haven't heard it and as you will read shortly I'm not likely to either. Infamously given a rating of 0.0 by Pitchfork (the follow up Soft Bulletin scored 10.0 from the same reviewer!) the album comes on 4 CDs each containing a quarter of the whole! Wtf? The concept was that four friends would have listening parties where they would each bring their CD player and play one of their CDs in synchronicity with the other 3 thus hearing the whole as it was intended. As it was rare for different players to run at exactly the same speed or even for the operators to start the process at exactly the right moment interesting phasing and echo effects would ensue, and no two "performances" would be exactly the same. It sounds similar to some avant garde experiments going on in the minimalist classical world by composers like Cage, Reich and Riley.

The zero Pitchfork review (since deleted although there is an archive link below) was based on the impracticality of the concept rather than the music. In fact the reviewer had not actually heard the 4 parts in unison admitting he'd "never know because I don't have the proper amount of stereo equipment" concluding that the product was "completely useless".

   
Later Pitchfork published a more favourable response from the 33 1/3 author Mark Richardson that praised the album for being...transient, variable and social.

The 33 1/3 book is honest. It says The Flaming Lips weren't very good and Wayne Coyne has a weak voice that could not even hold a tune for the first few albums.  

Coyne's voice can be good when he finds the right setting, but can also seem frail and thin, and on early records he almost never sang in tune.

Mark Richardson

This isn't news to me as they've always struck me as a high profile band without much substance, relying hugely on their original stage performances which involve amazing props, animal costumes, confetti guns, lazers, blow up balls and balloons (the arena carnage the morning after a headlining gig at Green Man Festival back in 2010 was something to see). 

The Flaming Lips @Green Man Festival, Wales, 2010

Fair enough, they started out like many high school bands without any pretensions and band members picked from friends and family dependent on whether they possessed any equipment (let alone if they could play it at all). Coyne kept his regular job in a restaurant for many years after the The Flaming Lips' formation. 

We will need you and your car, and your tape deck, and your co-operation for about 2 hours.

But in 1996 the ever creative Coyne decided to try something different. The band convened a series of interactive concerts or events dubbed parking-lot and boom-box experiments. Concert goers or "volunteers" would convene at a space and "lend" the band their car or boom-box cassette decks and would orchestrate the simultaneous mass playing of pre-recorded tapes to provide an immersive surround sound experience.

It sounds like a recipe for chaos and understandably concert flyers would warn: "we are sceptical about the entertainment value," but herein was the genesis of the Zaireeka idea. 

At roughly the same time as Zaireeka the band recorded the more conventional The Soft Bulletin album which (as the only Flaming Lips album I own) does gain a place in the magazine this week.

Although it was already their 9th album it represented a leap forward in quality to what had come before and for many fans was their masterpiece. 

There are some epic string drenched songs with multiple parts / some pleasant acoustic guitar fronted sing-a-longs / interesting electronic effects / thumping drums perhaps veering off into out of context funky drummer territory in places / and some fluttery synths which match Coyne's fluttery voice. 

It's an ambitious project and does sound a bit like everyone is playing different tunes sometimes and... that voice: High, weak and reedy but without the emotion of Neil Young. It's hard to hear past it actually and I do wonder what sort of band they may have been with a better singer. It's a wonder they've survived so long and Wayne Coyne is such a confident front man. Granted the instrumentation is excellent, the lyrics are good, and the melodies lovely (especially on regular set opener Race For The Prize, Waitin' For a Superman, What Is The Light? and Suddenly Everything Has Changed), but can Coyne carry them..?

... sometimes, but his singing sounds so much on the edge of breaking down most the time especially on the high notes it makes for an uneasy listen. A difficult song like A Spoonful Weighs A Ton is an example - such a vocal performance on X-factor would ensue an early red buzzer. I wonder whether he has ever considered just singing in a lower register like Lou Reed, Nick Cave, or the Geddy Lee of latter years?

No surprise then that some of the instrumentals are the most pleasing tracks with The Observer for example worthy of Kid A era Radiohead.

Having said that he's the maverick leader, the songwriter, the creative genius, so notwithstanding these shortcomings, The Flaming Lips would not exist without him.

John Martyn Glorious Fool

Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin

The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Jayhawks Smile
Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

Emeralds Does It Look Like I'm Here

The 0.0 review in Pitchfork
Mark Richardson's Response
The 10.0 review in Pitchfork

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The White Album

After the show came the reality. Fractured, dislocated and expansive, The Beatles otherwise commonly known as The White Album – housed in its legendary plain white, subtly embossed sleeve – came out in November 1968. It arrived at a time when both the group and the world had changed irrevocably: the former since their first forays into fame and fortune, the latter scarred by the ongoing war in Vietnam and the assassination of Martin Luther King, to touch upon the tip of the iceberg.

From the inside looking out, maybe everything wasn't going to be alright, despite John Lennon’s assurances on the rousing Revolution 1, just one of many highlights on what is perhaps The Beatles’ most ambitious studio album.

After writing dozens of songs while meditating in India in the spring, the group returned to Abbey Road – and Trident, in Soho – to record over 30 tracks of new material up until the summer. When you think of how unrest had started to simmer within the group's ranks – Yoko Ono arriving in the studio; Apple forming; Ringo leaving and then returning – and how broad the album's palette of sounds (blue beat, heavy metal, folk and doo-wop, to name a few), The Beatles still manages to hang together like few other works.

The Lennon and Paul McCartney stereotypes are at once reinforced, yet also dismissed – few would have thought Good Night was the product of Lennon’s pen, and likewise Helter Skelter didn’t immediately scream McCartney. Away from such showpieces, it's the doodles that delight – George Harrison's Savoy Truffle is a fine counterweight to While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey balances the gravitas of Revolution 1.

Given that it also contains Lennon, Ono and Harrison's nine-minute noise collage Revolution 9 and McCartney's genuinely pointless Wild Honey Pie, it’s little wonder that producer George Martin always opined that The Beatles could have made a splendid single album. That said, without such variety on offer, the compiling of one’s own version wouldn’t be the national pastime it is today.

Shared under Creative Commons via http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/4b8c/

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Log #151 - Glorious Pepper

John Martyn Glorious Fool

Truckstop Honeymoon Big Things And Little Things

The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Harmonia Deluxe
Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

The Black Keys El Camino

Still enjoying the John Martyn album - it's one of his best actually. Possibly his last great album but considering it's his 11th studio album that represents a remarkable longevity of critical success.

Some of the slower drawn out tracks like Hearts and Keys and Please Fall In Love With Me recall the epic Small Hours from One World.

Ever revered by contemporaries that enjoyed greater commercial success, guests include fans Eric Clapton and Phil Collins.

I continue a Beatles retrospective with Sgt. Pepper. You can't really argue against this being their best album, and possibly the best album by anyone ever. The songs are magnificent and furthermore the sum is even greater than the considerable parts (the album being almost a concept with tracks running into each other, bookended by versions of the title track, plus the grand finale A Day In The Life which I think is The Beatles' greatest song)...

... when I was young my favourite album for ages was ELO's Out Of The Blue and when my father used to overhear me playing that album he'd always tell me that there was something on there that was exactly the same as on Sgt. Pepper - it took me a while to realise what he meant - at first I thought it was Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! - but eventually I realised he meant the coda to Mr Blue Sky being very similar to the "woke up, dragged a comb across my head" section of A Day In The Life - of course ELO were huge Beatles copyists and many of their songs were similar.

Everything they did in their previous 7 albums led to this. The follow ups Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be, each represented incremental retreats from this peak.

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Log #150 - From Barroom To Stadium - The Black Keys Go Large

I've come late to the Black Keys. Shame actually as this album sounds tremendous - heavy, exciting and melodic. Even my house mates love it. Of course they compare with other 2 bit bands, The White Stripes and Royal Blood for instance, but I think I prefer this; I love the grungy dirty bluesy emphasis and Dan Auerbach's distorted vocals. They seem to have translated well from barroom to stadium without selling out (can the same be said for Kings Of Leon for instance?).

John Martyn Glorious Fool

Truckstop Honeymoon Big Things And Little Things

The Beatles Rubber Soul

The Beatles Abbey Road
Tord Gustavsen Trio The Other Side

The Black Keys El Camino

The Tord Gustavsen album is gorgeous. Previously featured here it will remain one that I return to often. His playing is spare and spacey verging upon classical at many points through The Other Side. I will check out some of his earlier recordings and hope he turns up at Love Supreme one year.

I'm going through a John Martyn retrospective. Log #142 examined Martyn's first 6 albums. I've decided to extend this examination and revisit all of them. Glorious Fool is a "mid-period" Martyn album. I say mid period but, as is the case with all artists who started in the late 60s or early 70s, 1981 (when this came out) is actually chronologically still relatively early period of course, but thematically artists seem to go through a series of eras musically and these eras were stacked up closer to each other in the "olden days". So for young John he went through relatively short eras of folk, folk/acid, trip hop, jazz, and then a long period in the wilderness from the 80s onwards which you'd have to describe as easy listening. I'd say this was his last great album from his heyday before the decline set in. Anyway as I say a retrospective is on its way and there are some latter period surprises.

Finally a word on The Truckstop Honeymoon who are Americana/bluegrass duo Mike and Katie West. They've been knocking around for years and occasionally rock up at my local to play a set here in Brighton. If you ever get a chance to see them live go for it as they put on a blinding show and are hilarious entertainers to boot (think The Handsome Family on speed). Such a live experience rarely translates to a recording of course but their musicianship and songwriting skills are such that the albums don't suffer in comparison. Always on the money with politics and the current climate check out Got No Use (for a Gun) from their latest album:

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Log #149 - Where The Rubber Soul Meets The Abbey Road

When you've been playing weird music for weeks you just want to hear some songs after a while. Hence dipping back in time to the ultimate song-writing of The Beatles this week with a spin of Rubber Soul and Abbey Road.

William Basinski Disintegration Tapes III

Nils Frahm All Melody

The Beatles Rubber Soul

The Beatles Abbey Road
Metallica St. Anger

The Black Keys El Camino

For me, particularly where The Beatles' single hits and compilations have become ubiquitous (and now on Spotify too), an actual review of their proper original chronological album discography and each album's contents is enlightening:

Please Please Me (1963)

With the Beatles (1963)

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

Beatles for Sale (1964)

Help! (1965)

Rubber Soul (1965)

Revolver (1966)

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

The White Album (1968)

Yellow Submarine (1969)

Abbey Road (1969)

Let It Be (1970) 

And as for these two records, their track listings were:

RUBBER SOUL 

Drive My Car

Norwegian Wood

You Won't See Me

Nowhere Man

Think for Yourself (Harrison)

The Word

Michelle

What Goes On (Lennon–McCartney–Richard Starkey)

Girl

I'm Looking Through You

In My Life

Wait

If I Needed Someone (Harrison)

Run for Your Life

ABBEY ROAD 

Come Together

Something (Harrison)

Maxwell's Silver Hammer

Oh! Darling

Octopus's Garden (Starr)

I Want You (She's So Heavy)

Here Comes the Sun (Harrison)

Because

You Never Give Me Your Money

Sun King

Mean Mr. Mustard

Polythene Pam

She Came In Through the Bathroom Window

Golden Slumbers

Carry That Weight

The End

Her Majesty

All songs Lennon-McCartney except as marked.

Rubber Soul is the more straight forward album packed full of hits. There is already a maturity to the songs despite this album (albeit already their 6th studio production) coming only 2 years after their debut. In My Life sometimes tops polls of the greatest Beatles song of all but to be honest there are 100s that could claim that accolade - their consistency was astonishing.

Abbey Road is more experimental and heavier moving on from the previous year's The White Album and side two even branches off into concept with mixed results. Perhaps the best songs are actually George Harrison's Something and Here Comes The Sun.

Oddly Abbey Road was actually the true Beatles swansong being recorded after Let It Be which had a delayed release.

Interesting to note that both album covers did not display the name of the group such was the fame of the fab four - a concept of self sabotage that was unheard of in those days and  rarely adopted even later (with the notable exception of Led Zeppelin). There are also some fascinating conspiracy theories all over The Beatles myth but many originating from outlandish interpretations of the covers especially Abbey Road. Most of these centre around the rumour that Paul McCartney had actually been killed in a road accident and replaced by a look-a-like. Note the following from an over analysis of the Abbey Road cover:

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A funeral procession
Lennon wears white, Ringo black and Harrison denim. All colours associated with mourning in some countries. Other interpretations say that Lennon represents the preacher, Ringo Starr is the mourner and George Harrison is the grave-digger. 

McCartney holds a cigarette in his "wrong hand"
Paul held his cigarette in his right hand, even though he is left handed. A cigarette was also known as a coffin nail in slang. [This is ridiculous Ed.]

McCartney is bare footed.
In some cultures the dead are buried without their shoes but:
 

I was walking barefoot because it was a hot day

McCartney is out of step with the others
Oh yes.

The car license plate
In the background we see a Volkswagen Beetle with the plate "LMW 28IF" Conspiracists claim this to mean that McCartney would be 28 if he were still alive, oh and LMW stands for "Linda McCartney Weeps".

The police van
Parked on the side of the road is a black police van, which is said to symbolize authorities who kept silent about McCartney's fatal crash. This shot was a thank you from the Beatle's manager Brian Epstein who bought their silence [he died 2 years earlier so not sure this one adds up. Ed] 

The girl in the blue dress
On the night of McCartney’s supposed car accident, he was believed to have been driving with a fan named Rita. Theorists say the girl in the dress featured on the back cover was meant to be her, fleeing from the car crash.

Connect the dots
Also on the back cover are a series of dots. Join some of them together and you can make the number three — the number of surviving Beatles [please stop, Ed.]

Broken Beatles sign
On the back cover the band’s name is written in tiles on a wall and there’s a crack running through it. This was to symbolise the imminent break up of the band.

The onlookers
In the background, a small group of people dressed in white stand on one side of the road, while a lone person (Paul) stands in black on the other. 

The line of cars
A line can be traced from the VW Beetle to the three cars in front of it. If it is drawn connecting their right wheels it runs straight through Paul's head, with theorists suggesting that means Paul sustained a head injury in the car crash.

The bloodstain
On the Australian version (only?) of the album, the cover showed what could be a bloodstain splattered on the road just behind Ringo and John, supposedly backing claims of a road accident. 

Grim Reaper
If the back cover is turned 45 degrees anticlockwise a crude image of the Grim Reaper appears, from his skull to his black gown. 

Paul's final resting place
If the writing on the wall is split into sections, it conveys the cryptic message, 'Be at Les Abbey'. In numerology the following two letters, R and O, are the 18th and 15th letters in the alphabet. By adding these together (33) and multiplying by the number of letters (2), we get 66, the year Paul is supposed to have died.
On the other hand 3 also represents the letter C so 33 could also stand for CC. Cece is short for Cecilia, with theorists claiming Paul final resting place was St Cecilia's Abbey in Ryde, Isle of Wight. [Didn't the Beatles also pen a song Ticket to Ryde and sing about being on the Isle of Wight when they were 66, or was it 64? Ed.]

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Paul McCartney parodied the cover for his 1993 Paul Is Live album

The location continues to draw fans. You can even view a live webcam which shows traffic waiting as tourists try to snap a shot while crossing the zebra. This was much the case for the real shoot back in 1969. Six hasty shots were snapped in between the traffic. The Beatles chose the one where all their legs were astride and that was it. Imagine arranging all the above too!

Abbey Road right this second

Incidentally I did enjoy the new Danny Boyle rom-com film Yesterday although I'd been playing these albums before seeing it to be fair. There are many amusing scenes including the record companies disdain at the lead artist suggesting his debut album of "unknown" Beatles songs be called a very politically incorrect The White Album, or perhaps even Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for some reason, and a hapless Ed Sheeran suggesting Hey Jude should be retitled Hey Dude.

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Log #43 - Inform, Educate and Entertain

1. Ravi Shankar - Towards the Rising Sun
2. Jill Scott - Who is Jill Scott?
3. The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams
4. Public Service Broadcasting - Inform, Educate, Entertain
5. Funk Soul Brothers - Compilation
6. Beatles - The Red Album

Just the one new entry this week, at No. 4, with the unique and eccentric Public Service Broadcasting and their full length debut album Inform, Educate and Entertain - the mission of both the band no doubt, and the original "public service broadcasting" introduced by the publicly funded BBC in the 50s. To gain the full value of the PSB tracks I urge you to check out their Youtube videos which often feature original black and white footage and plumby voiceovers. Here's a great one from this album>> https://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?/topic/271039-public-service-broadcasting/

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Log #42 - Who is Jill Scott, Anyway?

...an American singer-songwriter, model, poet and actress. Her Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1 was her debut album released in 2000.

1. Ravi Shankar - Towards the Rising Sun
2. Jill Scott - Who is Jill Scott?
3. The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams
4. Radiohead - Best Of
5. Funk Soul Brothers - Compilation
6. Beatles - The Red Album

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Log #41 - Funk Soul Brothers

1. Ravi Shankar & Friends - Towards the Rising Sun
2. David Bowie - Black Star
3. The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams
4. Radiohead - Best Of
5. Funk Soul Brothers - Compilation
6. Beatles - The Red Album

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40 Years Old and I've Never Heard Rumours

Everyone has heard Rumours haven't they?

I saw something last night I'd never seen before - the film Titanic. I enjoyed it. It was one of those films I sort of felt like I had seen before but I actually hadn't, only the famous snippets. The same probably goes for films like Sound of Music and The Matrix. 

Surely everyone has seen these three films? 

I remember my Dad used to watch a film on TV and at the end declare "I think I've seen that before." I could never understand how it was possible to forget if you had seen a film before, especially during watching it a second time. But now I realise! Films like the three above are so ubiquitous in our consciousness that you feel like you've seen them even if you haven't. 

Then I got one of those random facebook invites to an event celebrating 40 years of the album "Rumours" which was released on 4th February 1977. Of course its one of those albums that many households have at least one of, if not two copies (as both partners had one when they got together). I realised I not only didn't have a single copy, I hadn't even heard it in its entirety. But I feel like I have due to the famous samples one hears quite often (like The Chain and Go Your Own Way) - even if people were unaware of the artist they would probably be familiar with these tracks. I don't actually feel the need to hear it any time soon but am prepared to be pleasantly surprised when I finally do. Like Titanic was though, it's not on my immediate radar as I feel it will always be there, I already have a strong flavour of it,  and I've got plenty of time to hear it in the future.

What other very famous albums are out there that I've never actually heard? Or what would be on the list of those standard albums that every household has? Please leave any suggestions in the comments below. I am of course speaking from the perspective of someone who grew up with albums in the 70s and 80s and the fame of an album like Rumours will mean a lot less to the younger generation and such a list's relevance will fade as my generation ages.

A typical middle England record collection? I actually only have 4 of these.

There used to be bbc radio programme on hosted by Marcus Brigstocke called I've Never Seen Star Wars where they get celebs to do or try (usually common or famous) things they've never experienced before and mark them out of 10. This usually includes a famous album or book but I remember they found it hard to do this for guest Suggs from Madness as he was so incredibly well read they couldn't find anything he hadn't read already!

By the way I'd give Titanic a pleasantly surprising 8 out of 10.

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