Bob Dylan's Modern Times

Those not totally au fait with the arc of Mr Zimmerman's recent career may be a little non-plussed by Modern Times. For starters there's that title. What exactly is modern about 10 songs whose lineage resides in pre-rock 'n' roll, country blues and swingtime jazz? The key, naturally, is irony. Dylan's creative renaissance (beginning with 1997's bleak, Time Out Of Mind and continued with the jauntier, rockabilly inflected, Love And Theft, has seen him delve deeper and deeper into his roots until he's indivisible from his influences. Backed with verve by his current touring band and beautifully self-produced (under the pseudonym Jack Frost); Modern Times is the exception that proves Bob's recent assertion that most modern music is poorly-recorded pap. It's a warm and utterly engaging album.

Filled with wittily self-depreciative asides...

My mind tied up in knots 
I keep recycling the same old thoughts 

... heartfelt love poems and (most surprising of all) harsh political critique (couched as ever in Biblical terminology) on the grand finale, Ain't Talkin' - Dylan's 44th album is more than we could have expected from this 65-year old enigma. The worrying musings on mortality have given way to a frankly peppy acceptance of his place in the world. He even name-checks Alicia Keys!

It's as though Dylan's worried, worked and rubbed away at these genres, smoothing his muse to the same archetypal condition of the originals he loves so much by Woody Guthrie, Big Joe Turner and Merle Haggard. He's sacrificed artifice (and fashionability) for the real deal. It really doesn't matter that his sound is almost inseparable from the original templates (Rollin' And Tumblin' doesn't even get a name change while Beyond The Horizon is basically Red Sails In the Sunset with new lyrics); Dylan's now lived and experienced enough of this stuff to really inhabit such genuine Americana. As he says on the opening track, Thunder On The Mountain:

Gonna sleep over there 
That's where the music's coming from
I don't need any guide 
I already know the way

An album of the year, in any century...



A review by Chris Jones licensed under Creative Commons http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/xqbd/

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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 #28 - Lost and Found, the Unusual Career Trajectory of The Sugarman

Like many I discovered Rodriguez through the superb Searching for Sugarman film. My partner wanted to go to the cinema and I'd read rave reviews about the film Argo which was also showing (also a brilliant film incidentally). I wasn't fussed about seeing the Sugarman film but I was wrong and it was fascinating. I knew nothing about him apart from through the track Sugarman which appeared on a David Holmes DJ mix album in 2002 entitled Come Get It I Got It.  And as I knew nothing and indeed had no idea if he was still alive the suspense in the film during "the search" was tangible. I'm sure the story of a poor manual labourer from Detroit achieving overdue fame and fortune in South Africa unbeknownst to himself was somewhat romanticised but still a great one.

*spoiler alert* I don't think there are many music fans left with an interest in his music who would not know the outcome of the film so it is ok for me to say that a still living Rodriguez was tracked down and by coincidence he appeared at Brighton Dome just two weeks after I saw the film in November 2012.

It was a superb concert where a fragile but strong voiced Rodriguez played most of the tracks from his only two albums Cold Fact and Coming From Reality plus a storming encore of Blowin' in the Wind (Rodriguez was yet another artist originally hailed as the new Dylan or could have been as good as...). The former album is the more famous and includes the Sugarman track but I actually think the Coming From Reality album is stronger. This edition includes a couple of new outtakes and B sides.

As a tragic aside the Oscar winning director of the Searching for Sugarman film shockingly took his own life in 2014: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/searching-sugarman-director-dead-thr-710882

1. Rodriguez - Coming From Reality
2. Bob Dylan - Desire
3. Iron and Wine - Around the Well CD 1
4. Neil Young - After the Goldrush
5. Calexico - Garden Ruin
6. Van Morrison - Moondance/St. Dominic's Preview*

A bit of a cheat on the whole selection this week as I was on holiday and away from the CD magazine. These are the CDs I had with me and was able to play in a hire car. Amazingly I really was on the way to some Aztec ruins in Mexico when I heard Bob Dylan sing: "Past the Aztec ruins and the ghosts of our people" from Romance in Durango off of my favourite Dylan album Desire. #evocative

Durango is a real place in Northern Mexico

*The last CD in the list is a home made compilation of two of Van Morrison's greatest albums (sometimes fun to do this when you can fit two on the same CD) - a combination not officially available.

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Log #22 - Grumpy Old Men - Tom Waits and Van Morrison

There is really nothing better than a Van Morrison album on a lazy Saturday morning. Smoothie done, coffee on, Brighton Festival brochure open across a sunny kitchen table, blooming orchids left by a dear friend. Almost any album that is, but the vibe is particularly enhanced by these easy going bluesy mid Van period outtakes compiled on the brilliant The Philosopher's Stone double album. Outtakes I say! These previously unreleased tracks demonstrate the quality of Morrison's general output, being of a standard most artists could only dream of! The album contains new tracks, rarities and alternative versions, spanning his whole career to date - 1968 to 1988. Infamous for the strict demands he placed on his bands it is no surprise that the music is perfectly played and recorded as demonstrated on Naked in the Jungle.

Stenness standing stones, Orkney - a suitably Celtic location

I've seen Van a few times live and his difficult reputation precedes him and can lead to some fairly bad tempered appearances. Often a musician in his band will feel the force of his displeasure where a cue for a solo is missed. At a gig at Brighton Dome a few years ago he turned to cue his choir of backing singers who had actually exited the stage -

Where's the f*****' choir?!

Sitting to the side of the stage I also had view of his countdown timer displayed in huge red LED lights. Van was not going to play a minute longer than agreed, and never does encores. Having said all that his voice remains as strong as ever and there was a period from the late 60s through to the mid 70s where he produced six or seven of the greatest albums ever made. The first of these Astral Weeks is my favourite album of all time. He can also still turn it on live when he wants to; headlining the Love Supreme Festival in 2015 he turned in a storming set of 70s classics finishing with an extended Gloria.


1. Crosby Stills and Nash - CSN
2. Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones
3. Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
4. Bob Dylan - New Morning
5. Van Morrison - The Philospher's Stone CD 1
6. Grateful Dead - From the Mars Hotel


Tom Waits was the subject of a BBC retrospective last weekend. This naturally drew me to select a couple of his CDs. Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs were consecutive albums recorded in the early 80s. Although he always had his famous gravel and whiskey voice these albums represented quite a departure from the sound of his 70s output which was more conventionally song based. Here he employed a much more aggressive "industrial" sound of clanky rhythms, marimbas, brass and double bass, with cabaret like narratives recalling the songwriting of Kurt Weill.

The captain is a one-armed dwarf

He's throwing dice along the wharf

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King

So take this ring

We sail tonight for Singapore

We're all as mad as hatters here

I've fallen for a tawny moor

took off to the Land of Nod

Drank with all the Chinamen

Walked the sewers of Paris

I danced along a colored wind

Dangled from a rope of sand

You must say goodbye to me

Tom Waits from Singapore

I really like Dylan's New Morning album. It's very understated with gentle piano based songs. I enjoy hearing the less celebrated songs of such an artist like Father of Night.

Dapper Dylan from the New Morning shoot

Grateful Dead were famous for their extended live performances captured on many bootlegs which the band, unlike most, actually encouraged and sanctioned. Their studio albums don't always capture the full atmosphere of the live experience although I think From the Mars Hotel is the best I have heard and contains my favourite Dead track Unbroken Chain which showcases Jerry Garcia's fluid jazz twinged soloing pretty well.

Liquid gold - the acid fretwork of Dead legend Jerry Garcia 1942 - 1995

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Log #19 - Have a flutter with purveyors of out of tune electronica Boards of Canada

1. Neu! - Neu!
2. Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right to Children
3. Boards of Canada - Twoism
4. Bob Dylan - Desire
5. Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions CD 2
6. Mo Wax - Headz Volume 1


Boards of Canada are two Scottish brothers who make electronic music. Their music is weird and strangely appealing. I think this is just as it is so unusual - it therefore does different things inside your brain than most music and hence stands out and becomes memorable. The effect is rather like hearing the minimalism composers Part, Glass or Reich for the first time, or music from a different culture (eg. Indian, or Chinese, or South East Asian) that sounds alien to our western ears.

We believe that there are powers in music that are almost supernatural.

Unlike most electronic contemporaries the Boards of Canada make wide use of vintage and analogue equipment including tapes. This gives their music an authenticity and warmth rarely present in the more mathematically perfect music of other electronic pioneers like Kraftwerk. On casual listening a lot of their music sounds "out of tune" but stick with it and literally "tune-in" and it becomes beguiling and hypnotic.

The reclusive Boards of Canada, unmasked

Debut album Twoism (1995) was a home recorded affair and was a real mind bender like a Chris Nolan film - but one of his earlier low budget ones. Like my favourite film of all time Memento Twoism sounds like it was recorded backwards. Follow up Music Has The Right To Children (1998) was a studio album recorded for Warp Records but is barely more "commercial".

Both records make liberal use of samples over a characteristic mix of loops, flutters, drone, squeaks, pips and wobbles, pinned by primitive drum machine beats. Aquarius from the latter album is a very accessible start point for new listeners. Things get a lot weirder than this lovely "counting" song (but checkout how the sequential count in the "lyrics" goes awry after 36 - I wonder if there is any pattern or coded meaning to this? - I expect a BoC geek, of whom there are many apparently, has investigated).

Someone even plotted the lyrics to Aquarius!

The boys' apparent love of codes, hidden meanings, fractals, subliminal messages, numerology and cults, allied with the paucity of their releases and live appearances, has added suitably to their mythical status over their 20 year career. Hashtag cool!

Similar but not really at all is the compilation release from the Mo Wax label Headz. This sort of bland sampled jazzy looped trip hop may have been cutting edge at the time (1994!) but now sounds frankly a bit lazy and soulless despite containing cuts by Autechre and DJ Shadow. It always fascinates me how music of very similar styles can either leave you inspired or cold. To describe the difference between say Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron and Wine, The National, Fleet Foxes, Mumford and Sons, Bears Den and The Felice Brothers, may be quite difficult in words but you'll rarely find someone who likes all those bands, and one is fairly universally disliked for whatever reason (any guesses?)! I also have this debate with my teenage son who loves "his" music and "hates" my music although on the face of it there is barely any difference.

Fancy a flutter on Boards of Canada? No better place to start than here >>

 

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Log #18 - Dylan and German

Desire is my favourite Dylan album. The experience of listening attentively to the nine songs on this album is like reading nine short stories, actually not even short stories, there is such depth and character in these atmospheric songs it feels more like reading nine novels.

One of Dylan's most celebrated songs on Desire, or from his whole canon actually, is Hurricane which tells the story of Ruben "Hurricane" Carter, the heavyweight boxer who was framed for a murder "he never done... the one time he could have been the champion of the world."

It is argued that some liberties have been taken with the historical accuracy of some of Dylan's accounts particularly on Hurricane and the 11 minute epic Joey chronicling the life story of gangster Joe Gallo. Some of his subjects were no doubt romanticised in song but it remains a fact that Carter wrongfully served 19 years in jail from 1966 until his pardon in 1985.

Dylan's writing was in a rich vein of form in the mid 70s and prior to Desire he had released another fan favourite, Blood on the Tracks. It is easy to forget that Dylan had been around a long time and by 1975, when equivalent singer song writers of the era were maybe on to the their sixth album or so, he had already recorded fourteen. Blood on the Tracks was his cathartic "break-up" album featuring heartbreaking odes to his ex-wife Sara, and some anger too such as Idiot Wind.

Of course Dylan's song writing genius is much celebrated, and he has recently been honoured by the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first time the award has gone to a song writer. This is not the place to offer any lyrical analysis or interpretation from such a vast body of work as I could choose practically any verse from practically any song so where could one possibly start? Suffice to say he often surprises with wit and humour as with this simple stream of consciousness dialogue between a husband and wife in Isis:

She said "Where you been ?" I said "No place special?"
She said "You look different" I said "Well I guess"
She said "You been gone"
I said "That's only natural"
She said "You gonna stay?"
I said "If you want me to, Yeah."

Then there's always this sort of wit and devastating commentary, this time from Joey:

The police department hounded him, they called him Mr. Smith
They got him on conspiracy, they were never sure who with
"What time is it?" said the judge to Joey when they met
"Five to ten," said Joey, the judge says, "that's exactly what you get!"

Dylan is an artist I return to again and again. Always offering something new or something reassuringly familiar.

This week's magazine then:

1. Can - Tago Mago
2. Can - Anthology
3. Neu! - Neu!
4. Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
5. Bob Dylan - Desire
6. Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions CD 1

The Tago Mago speaking alien brain man - usually in orange    

Another group who have stood the test of time is Can. Indeed their 70s music really was ahead of its time. Of all the "Krautrock" bands Can are probably the most revered and influential. In a genre that had a relatively short heyday Can had the greatest longevity. Tago Mago is an amazing piece of work - probably in my Top Ten albums of all time (now, what would they be I ask myself?). Originally a double LP the album consists of only 7 tracks. Two of the more lengthy numbers are Aumgn and Peking O which are both mind-blowing sonic soundscapes of random avant garde experimentation. Good for them putting these tracks to record. It took me a while to fully appreciate these tracks when I first had the album - in fact I bought the vinyl album second hand from an old record shop in the bus terminal at Chichester (a great shop that introduced me to many unusual bands - oh the excitement of thumbing through racks of old records!) and one of these side long tracks was marred by a nasty scratch that was possibly a blessing in disguise. Thankfully the absolutely amazing Hallelujah was unaffected and remains arguably the greatest Can track of all time. At 18 minutes long it gives full reign to drummer Jaki Liebezeit's hypnotic patterns and Holger Czukay's funky bass, over which eccentric singer Damo Suzuki repetively shouts what sounds like "I'm searching for my brother, yes I am!" It was for many years my go to track when I wanted to impress and astound a new friend.

Irmin Schmidt's sythesizer has been likened to the sound of a UFO taking off.

There is a brief respite during Hallelujah around the five or six minute point which is where the edit is made for the Anthology compilation. I'm normally not a fan of anthologies or greatest hits packages but despite one or two such edits (Can are rather like Pink Floyd in that it is quite difficult to create a greatest hits summary without trimming the length of the tracks) it's a very good career retrospective - unnecessary for completists like me but a good primer for less religious Can fans.

Kruder and Dorfmeister are also German (or Austrian rather I think?) but of a much more recent vintage. The Sessions album is lovely. It is remixes of various pop and jazz tunes mostly in the dub vein but these talented DJs really make the music their own. Who would have thought Depeche Mode could ever sound this good. Highly recommended and also one of my favourite records certainly a decade or so ago.

Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister - master DJ mixers

Actually it is so odd how your mind plays tricks on you. I was convinced someone introduced me to this music in 1992 (I remember as it was a certain time and place that was particularly memorable as I was travelling on a year out in Asia). I even remember the name of the person, who was called Dave Person and came from San Francisco! I then shared notes with an old muso friend of mine that I hooked up with when I moved to Brighton in 1997. But blow me down, both these memories are fundamentally flawed - I've checked and the album was released in 1998. I just can't understand how that is possible!

Last up this week in this German flavoured listing is Neu!

Please note that Neu! are the only band permitted to use punctuation in their name without being mercilessly ridiculed.

Tim Sommer 

Neu! - Sound like more than a 2-piece

Their music is quintessential Krautrock - mostly instrumental with the basic 4/4 rock "motorik" beat and very effective. Certainly not as groundbreaking or prolific as Can but very similar and this, their debut, is many people's favourite album of the whole genre, and the opening track Hallagallo is frequently proffered as the krautrock track.

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Album Cover Friday Fun Challenge! (Difficult) - ANSWERS REVEALED

Here again are the pictures for my earlier Album Cover location challenge. The initial collage below shows the locations as they are today where the original famous (or not so famous in some cases) album photos were shot.

A hover over will reveal the actual album covers.

Admittedly some of these pictures were obscure or just plain difficult unless you happened to have had the particular albums. Some of the albums are not even that famous and may not even be recognisable from the hover over! For example how many people had the Blue Oyster Cult live double album On Your Feet or On Your Knees with it's very spooky gothic church cover (2,2) actually located in up town New York? I was a great fan of their brand of sci-fi rock and in particular Buck Dharma's excellent guitar evident in extended glory on this album, but I don't think many of my contemporaries, even my rock fan friends, ever shared my enthusiasm, which is a shame as some of their early albums in particular are quite unique.

Speaking of gothic churches the San Franciscan turquoise church door was the backdrop for Van Morrison's split trouser shot for his St. Dominic's Preview album (1,3), an album that I personally think is right up there with his magnificent Astral Weeks.

The location for Black Sabbath's debut album cover shoot was not a gothic church but actually a water mill on the Thames in Oxfordshire (4,3). Of course the mysterious black figure adds some sabbath menace to this otherwise idealic country setting. Urban myths abound that the figure was an apparition that only appeared when the film was developed! Bassist Geezer Butler said such a dressed figure attended a gig many years later claiming to be the girl on the cover.

Who but the most avid and observant Mike Oldfield fans would get the aerial shot of the Welsh/English border especially without the glider (1,2)? Oldfield had retreated to the Hertfordshire region, known as Hergest Ridge, to live and record an album of the same name following the success of Tubular Bells.

Famous music locations, hover over to reveal the albums

Some of the remaining pictures are more famous and I was surprised no one got Pink Floyd's Hollywood studios Wish You Were Here shot (4,2), or Led Zeppelin's New York apartment block featured on Physical Graffitti (with actual cut out windows in the sleeve)(1,4).The other Led Zeppelin shot at (3,2) is a bit of a cheat as it is actually the back portion of the Led Zep IV cover which was shot across a park in Birmingham - quite a drab location relative to the Lord of the Rings flavoured delights inside.

The Who's obelisk from Who's Next (2,3) was taken at Easington Colliery, a former mine in County Durham in the North of England, and both the Oasis cover for What’s The Story (Morning Glory)? (1,4) and David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust cover (1,3) come from London's Soho. The famous K.West sign in the latter belonged to a long gone fur clothing company and is absolutely nothing to do with a premonition Bowie had about Kanye West. Another London shop long gone is Axfords Clothing in Vauxhall, South East London, as pictured on the Ian Dury album New Boots and Panties!! (3,4). If you look closely at the album cover you can also see the reflection of the Woolworths shop front across the street, another British institution no longer with us. Moving north of the river again you can find the less than exotic tower block in Islington which provided the night shot for The Streets' Original Pirate Material album.

Across the pond we have three New York street scenes used respectively for Bob Dylan's Freewheelin' (1,1), Neil Young's After the Goldrush (2,4) and the Doors' Strange Days (4,4), and finally Eric Clapton's 461 Ocean Boulevard (3,3) which is literally a shot of his home of that very address, Miami, in 1974.

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