Log #56 - 3 Miles Out - a Classic, a Not Sure, and a Duffer

1. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
2. Miles Davis - Bitches Brew CD1
3. Miles Davis - Bitches Brew CD2
4. Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain
5. Tangerine Dream - The Essential
6. Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

Miles Davis was a notable absentee from last year's logs. In fact he won top prize for most notable absentee in last year's awards. But he makes an overdue comeback in this log with 3 classic albums.

Actually what alerted me this weekend was watching the brilliant (albeit shocking) Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary currently airing on BBC. Aside from the amazing photographs and footage there is also a superb soundtrack - Miles Davis's Kind of Blue beginning episode 2.

I would say (on current listening, and of course tastes can change especially with familiarity) Kind of Blue is the best of this selection, and for many not only his best ever album, but one of the best ever jazz albums from anyone.

It's difficult to compare of course. Davis's career spanned multiple decades and styles. Kind of Blue (1959) is melodic old style easy listening jazz, languid trumpet and lounge piano, immediately accessible.  It is very interesting how the first two tracks start out with the same refrain, and when I play this album I often wonder why they were separated.

I suspect jazz traditionalists were probably pretty miffed with this new direction rather as Dylan's fans were when he went electric a few year's earlier.

Bitches Brew (1970) on the other hand is not easy listening. It is jazz/rock/fusion consisting of extended jams featuring jazz rock guitarist John McLauglin - in fact it does sound a lot like McLauglin's Mahavishnu Orchestra. It's pretty random. There are grooves but Davis honks a lot of avant garde noises over the top. But it is a classic and was revolutionary in its time so I'm sure I need to play it a lot more to fully appreciate, and I will. The most demanding music is often the most satisfying in the long run. I suspect jazz traditionalists were probably pretty miffed with this new direction rather as Dylan's fans were when he went electric a few years earlier. Keeping up with the times or shaping the times?

Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain just doesn't work.

As for Sketches of Spain (1960) I must say I'm not a fan. The centre piece is an interpretation of the orchestral piece Concierto de Aranjuez - an established classic in the guitar repertoire. I just don't think it works. The original (which I'm very familiar with) is much better. If this wasn't Miles Davis it would probably be dismissed as commercial pap.

Miles Davis fronting his fusion band in the early 70s

My excellent affair with Tangerine Dream continues this week. If you want a good compilation to cover many of the best bases go for The Essential collection. If you want to dive straight into getting one or two original albums there is no better place to start than Phaedra.

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Log #54 - A Tangerine Dream 70s Retrospective

Following the new Tan Dream Essential entry last week I've gone for a near clean sweep this week. Odd one out is one of Klaus Schulze's early solo albums Picture Music (he went on to record over 50 and this was just his 4th). Schulze was originally part of Tangerine Dream but was actually only present for their first album Electronic Meditation.

1. Tangerine Dream - The Essential
2. Tangerine Dream - Force Majeure
3. Tangerine Dream - Cyclone
4. Tangerine Dream - Phaedra
5. Tangerine Dream - Encore
6. Klaus Schulze - Picture Music

The Tan Dream debut album is a curious affair. Basically it sounds nothing like Tangerine Dream and nothing like Klaus Schulze either. Despite the album title the electronics are relatively minimal with the musicians using traditional instruments - Schulze on drums - but there is nothing traditional about their use. The music is avant garde and experimental more akin to the experimental pieces of early Pink Floyd and Can and heavily influenced by Stockhausen. It may have been an important recording in the gestation of "Krautrock" and "The Berlin School" but deserves only passing attention these days as an actual listening experience.

Ignoring a recently released "lost" tape Green Desert allegedly from their early period (although  sounding suspiciously much more modern) Tangerine Dream followed up with three ambient albums championed by John Peel amongst others: Alpha Centauri, Zeit and Atem, the latter being one of Peel's albums of the year in 1973. Although still using some traditional instruments such as flute, organ and percussion, they were now very much an electronic band.

It's electronic for sure, but these early analogue recordings with their flutters and imperfections, their swirls and waves, sound organic and very real.

Trivia Fact no. 1: Edgar Froese's baby son Jerome featured on many of the early album covers. 

In 1974 they moved to the Virgin label and released Phaedra which many regard as their best. Here they began to develop more hypnotic pulsed music particularly on the powerful title track and Movements of a Visionary. These two tracks are separated by the gorgeous lush mellotron "strings" of Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares. 

I remember falling asleep listening to Phaedra, a little stoned and being completely blown away by the adventure of it. It was taking me to places I had never been before. This album is the reason I’m obsessed with synthesisers. 

 Anthony Gonzalez

Rubycon followed - just two tracks - a side one and a side two. Ricochet was their first live recording - again just two tracks (there would be many more live recordings that would be released as albums - most live performances consisted of new material interspersed with improvisations based on existing tracks). Stratosfear indicated a move towards more accessible melodic compositions that would be developed through the 80s. Parts of the title track from Stratosfear would surface again in the double live album Encore (four 20 minute tracks).

Not surprisingly Tangerine Dream's music made excellent movie soundtrack material and in 1977 they scored William Friedkin's Sorcerer film. Although a departure from their epic side long compositions the album is actually a very coherent work.

Trivia Fact no.2: Sorcerer is Stephen King's favourite film.

By the end of the 70s Tangerine Dream were venturing towards a more expansive progressive rock direction. The drums and guitars returned for two of my favourite albums - Cyclone and Force Majeure - but in a much more conventional rock style. The former even featuring lyrics and vocals to mixed reviews. Each album consisted of just three tracks of epic proportions with titles like Thru' Metamophic Rocks and Rising Runner Missed by Endless Sender.

Tangerine Dream 1978, Steve Jolliffe far right

Trivia Fact no.3: Much maligned singer Steve Jolliffe from the 1978 Cyclone album was actually briefly in Tangerine Dream with Klaus Schulze in 1969 on saxophone, flute and keyboards.

And there my Tangerine Dream exploration pretty much ends as they entered a more melodic commercial synthesizer era through the 80s and who knows what since. 50 years since their formation and literally 100s of albums later, they are still going in some form despite the death of Edgar Froese in 2015 - a new album Quantum Gate was released last month with writing credits to Froese and good reviews. Maybe time to give their post 1980 output a listen starting with this one!

Trivia Fact no.4: Baby Jerome Froese actually joined Tangerine Dream in 1989 and stayed with the band until 2006.

3 of the best from the 70s:

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Log #20 - The Jethro Oyster Harvest - Underachievers in Rock

1. Randy Newman - Lonely at the Top
2. Nitin Sawhney - Beyond Skin
3. Blue Oyster Cult - Spectres
4. Barclay James Harvest - Gone to Earth
5. Jethro Tull - Aqualung
6. Paolo Nutini - Sunny Side Up

A quick word on a super local band who have been doing the rounds for a while - I had the pleasure of seeing The Mountain Firework Company at the Wellington pub in Shoreham the other night. If you get a chance catch them live and enjoy their effortlessly great swamp folk Americana. Lovely harmonies, sensitive brush stick rhythms, and a fiddle sound to die for. Bands like this should be huge but they probably don't want to be.

Barclay James Harvest eh, or BJH for short. That’s a strange one as is their name. Apparently this was decided by drawing random slips of paper from a hat and the word Harvest came before the subsequently named fledgling label they were signed to.

I first heard them at a school friend’s house one evening – I’d just broken up with my girlfriend. A girl named Penny who had decided to go out with my sister’s boyfriend, but that’s off the point! Their music is pretty sad but it was a small consolation to discover them that evening as I’d spent some time looking for other bands that sounded like King Crimson who I adored at the time, and with their prog rock mellotron strings they fitted the bill pretty well.

[They were].. everything that identified progrock then: vaulting themes, orchestra, wailing guitar riding heaving swells of tempestuous music like a doomed ship out of Coleridge, lyrics arising from areas other than the crotch, and a dexterity that would turn most composers and players on their heads.

Marc S. Tucker

Discovering new music and subsequently lending it around school was a constant excitement in those years (something I feel must be lacking in today’s digital world). I had an album called New Morning or something – an early compilation and amongst the odd mix of acoustic Simon and Garfunkel type tunes and rather portentous classical rock there was a tremendous rocker called Taking Some Time On. This tune (albeit not really representative) really turned me on to BJH and plenty of my friends too.

Progressing through the 70s their writing became more expansive and ambitious but their bloated live performances with full orchestra, allied with poor record sales, almost bankrupted the group before they underwent a renaissance with an enforced change of record label and a rebirth as a (relatively) stripped back four piece.

For a short time I bought everything they did. Personally I think they peaked with Octoberon (1976). By then they had mellowed somewhat and were writing largely radio friendly soft rock - songs like Rock N Roll Star should have been massive. After that they began that all too familiar terminal decline into 80s synthesizer irrelevance - an affliction of many 70s rock bands.

Despite playing some massive concerts (famously a 1980 live album was recorded in front of 200,000 in Berlin) they were always on the fringe of success. Bassist and singer Les Holroyd recently theorised that this had something to do with them refusing to join the London scene and remaining a "northern band". Maybe their music was just a little bit too twee – much more Moody Blues than King Crimson in hindsight - there is even a track called Poor Man's Moody Blues on the 1977 album Gone to Earth. It also sounds quite religious – something that I hadn’t really clocked at all before playing this album again this weekend.

The classic line up Wolstenholme, Lees, Pritchard, Holroyd

I saw a Holroyd incarnation of them relatively recently in Hove where they hesitatingly played to only about 300 people – what a fall from grace (albeit a relatively short-lived grace you could say). The persistent downbeat vibes surrounding this underachieving/underrated band were heightened poignantly with the suicide of keyboardist Woolly Wolstenholme in 2010.

While we are on underachievers let's talk about The Blue Oyster Cult. As I mentioned in an earlier post somewhere their early albums like their eponymous debut, Secret Treaties, and Tyranny and Mutation, are tight rock albums with an original twist. They then had their big hit Don't Fear the Reaper and like a lot of rock bands of the time drifted into a slightly more poppy sound on Spectres and Mirrors. Then possibly continuing to chase commercial success they went heavy metal with a sci-fi bent in the early 80s even recruiting sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock to pen some lyrics (as he had done for Hawkwind). Incidentally if you aren't familiar with the writings of Moorcock checkout his brilliant novella Behold the Man about a time traveller who returns to the time of Christ with blasphemous consequences.

BOC - ELO in leathers (plus Saturday Night Fever)

I picked up Spectres on the strength of the literally spooky cover! I don't remember many specific album purchases but I do this one, a single LP purchase one afternoon from an old record shop in Havant. The whole album doesn't particularly gel what with it's mix of rock tunes and ballads (indeed the picture above may suggest some degree of identity crisis although their mysterious mason like symbolism and umlauted "O" were always cool and consistent). Aside from the straight rockers like the catchy Godzilla there are beautiful tunes like Fireworks and I Love The Night, some super tight pop like Searchin for Celine and Goin' Through the Motions, and some epic prog like Golden Age of Leather and Nosferatu (lyrical extract below). 

This ship pulled in without a sound
The faithful captain long since cold
He kept his log till the bloody end
Last entry read "Rats in the hold.
My crew is dead, I fear the plague."

Da da da da daaaa da! In case you didn't recognise it, that's the riff from the title track to Jethro Tull's Aqualung - one of the most famous guitar riffs ever. It's a very strong album and probably the "go to" one for new Tull fans. Apparently there is debate about whether it was meant as a concept album - the first side about a tramp like character called Aqualung, and the second side a commentary on organised religion (actually isn't all religion "organised"?). But Tull leader Ian Anderson dismissed this:

Aqualung was just a bunch of songs.

And a mighty fine bunch of songs it is including heavy rockers like Cross Eyed Mary, Hymn 43, and Locomotive Breath and acoustic gems like Cheap Day Return and Mother Goose.

Anderson was reportedly not best pleased with the similarity between the painted Aqualung figure on the album cover and himself!

The fictitious Aqualung and the real Ian Anderson

Just a quick word this week on slots 1 and 2. Multi instrumentalist and composer Nitin Sawhney shot to fame when his album Beyond Skin was released in 1999. It is a slickly produced affair melding indian influences with electronica and jazz plus some beautiful piano pieces like Tides.

Singer-songwriter-pianist Randy Newman eschewed the Hollywood/Laurel Canyon/Troubadour scene of his native LA in the late 60s and early 70s when contemporaries like Neil Young, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell were seeking fame and fortune. This didn't stop him producing some critically acclaimed albums like Sail Away and Good Old Boys full of political satire and irony, and well represented on this 1987 compilation album. Now he has fully embraced Hollywood gaining a wealth of grammys and oscars for his film compositions especially the tunes for Toy Story.

Randy Newman - We Talk Real Funny Down Here

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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 #14 - David Bowie's Black Star a Year On

2016 began with the death of David Bowie in January and then continued with Prince and Leonard Cohen. The end of the year brought more musician deaths with the premature passing of George Michael and Rick Parfitt. These were the most famous names but of course there were other less mainstream losses in the music world which registered less comment, for example both Greg Lake and Keith Emerson from the fabled Emerson, Lake and Palmer prog rock pioneers.

Deaths are of course sad particularly so when premature - George Michael was only 53, Prince 57, and both David Bowie and Rick Parfitt were in their sixties. This sadness should really be irrespective of the fame of the person, our personal tastes in music, or our opinion of their importance or legacy, which is why it was a bit clumsy of radio personality Andy Kershaw to pour scorn upon George Michael mourners for elevating him to "greatness" when he was, in his opinion, nothing more than a lightweight and fleeting pop star...

Please spare me the predictable onion-from-pocket outpourings, claiming he was 'one of the greats'. No, he was not. (Really? Up there with Louis Armstrong, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, Hank Williams, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, Van Morrison? I could go on…)

On one hand he probably had a point urging us to keep a sense of perspective (the Princess Diana phenomenon of massive public grief for someone very famous who we felt like we knew?) but whereas our perspective is often directed by the media (George Michael died the same Christmas Day a Russian plane went down with 92 on board - terrorist deaths in Paris are given infinitely more coverage than far greater numbers dying daily in the Middle East) I think Kershaw is missing the point here. I haven't actually got any George Michael albums in my collection and personally agree that the music of Van Morrison or Jimi Hendrix is "greater". But personally is the key word here that just defines my taste. Without being a fan I can still appreciate the sense of public shock and the connection many people of my generation had with those Wham! songs which were ubiquitous growing up in the 80s. George Michael, like Prince and Bowie, sold a lot more records, and was a lot more famous, than Van Morrison for whatever reasons, and when Van passes on one day I don't expect to see much news about it as he is more a niche artist outside the mainstream who has never had massive public or commercial appeal.

David Bowie was one of those unique artists who enjoyed both commercial appeal and critical acclaim across most of a career that included many twists and turns, retirements and rebirths. Much has been written about his death and the release of the Black Star album. The two famously coincided within a couple of days of each other and were accompanied by some extremely disturbing and challenging videos. The events seemed part of an orchestrated master plan - and we shouldn't be surprised as he has done this sort of thing before in a way with the staged "artistic" deaths of his various 70s personas including "Ziggy Stardust" and "Aladdin Sane". Rarely has an artist been so in control of his marketing and image, right up to and including the end. A true shape shifting chameleon - sometimes adapting to the surroundings, but more often than not actually making them!

David Bowie through the ages - the ultimate pop chameleon

Nearly a year on from its release I was interested to hear the Black Star music with some (that word again) perspective. This is quite hard to do with some objectivity but the album is certainly interesting and unusual with strident rhythms, driving bass and modern jazz horns, combining in a wall of sound. It feels like one of those atmosphere albums without particularly memorable melodies or catchy singles - a far cry from his classic pop of the early 70s albeit with some resemblance to his later work with the likes of Fripp and Eno and Tin Machine. This is certainly the feeling with the "first side" of the album which includes the title track and Lazarus, the two tracks released with those videos, and with the much analysed lyrics (incidentally the CD album comes in a beautifully packaged cardboard housing but the black on black lyric insert is quite hard to read!).

Look up here, I’m in heaven
I’ve got scars that can’t be seen
I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen
Everybody knows me now. 

The whole album only clocks in at around an old school 35 minutes (which is great by the way) with seven tracks - the last couple being quite easy listening relatively including Dollar Days with lovely sax solo - and Bowie is in strong voice throughout. Whether this album will stand the test of time like my favourite all time Bowie album Hunky Dory remains to be seen but I am confident it will be one I'll return to.

You know,
I'll be free,
Just like that bluebird,
Now ain't that just like me. 

Bluebirds are thought to represent angels from heaven spreading joy and peace

Incidentally I also viewed an intriguing film recently - Velvet Goldmine starring Ewan MacGregor, Christian Bale and Jonathan Rhys Meyer. The film starts with Rhys Meyer's character, a glam pop star named Brian Slade, faking his own death on stage, disappearing into obscurity before making a comeback a decade later. I was at least half way through before I realised this was the David Bowie story, with supporting cast including Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume.

The above caption appears in the opening credits of the film, perhaps a witty slight of Bowie himself who reportedly refused to sanction the movie.

Brian Slade fakes his own death in Velvet Goldmine

A couple of new albums procured this Christmas - the other Whitest Boy Alive album Rules and JJ Cale's Naturally. Both sound as expected - no surprises. I also span Jurassic 5's LP album which has the amazingly catchy Schoolyard Concrete track. I guess this may be their most famous tune, if not it should be!

1. The Whitest Boy Alive - Rules
2. David Bowie - Black Star
3. Jurassic 5 - LP
4. JJ Cale - Naturally
5. Thievery Corporation - DJ Kicks
6. Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas

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Log #11 - Who Were Those Roxy Music Cover Girls?

Back to some basics this week with some (mostly) unplugged Americana albums from The Felice Brothers and the incomparable Bonnie "Prince" Billy, plus a unique fusion of country and acid (yes, you read right) from Brixton's Alabama 3, and a look at the 70s album covers of a classic glam rock band.

Last week I mentioned The Felice Brothers in the same breath as Wilco, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. Since listening some more and reading a bit more about them I revise that to stand in agreement with the frequent comparisons with The Band (Music From The Big Pink era), Neil Young (Tonight's the Night era), and yes, Bob Dylan (Basement Tapes era). You couldn't ask for more really could you? Lead singer Ian Felice name checks Tonight's the Night in an interview about their new album, Life in the Dark (straight on the Christmas list), and his singing and lyrics are both very Dylanesque (in reference to the extended narrative songs and punchy nasal delivery of Dylan's early years, more than the inaudible bark of now).

It's nice when an album grows on you. I've had The Felice Brothers for a few years but hadn't played it more than half a dozen times up until last week. Playing it more and sampling the new album the decision to get a ticket for next month's show became an absolute no brainer. It's gonna be a real stormer. The songs are naked and authentic with super melodies and devastating lyrics of sex, booze and guns.

The Brothers then - in The Band gear

The Brothers now - more rock indie

1. Arbouretum - The Gathering
2. The Felice Brothers - The Felice Brothers
3. Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
4. Alabama 3 - Exile on Coldharbor Lane
5. Steely  Dan - Aja
6. Bonnie Prince Billy - Beware

The Alabama 3 album is absolutely brilliant. Great songs, great grooves, and oodles of humour. I saw them at a festival once and assumed they were a genuine American gospel band from the deep south. They are actually from the deep south... of London... and the preaching, Texas drool and stage names are all in parody. They actually started out under the name of The First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Divine with an ambition to fuse country music with acid! And it works with great melodies and pulsating electronic gated rhythms. This album should have been massive but it's little known and the band have pretty much sunk without trace despite some commercial fame when their Woke Up This Morning featured on The Sorpranos credits.

Please be upstanding for Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love and his Alabama 3

After hearing them at the festival and buying the album I went to see them a second time at our local Concorde2. This time around they were a disappointment with a chaotic set hampered by technical problems and bad tempers - The Very Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love (front left) inviting a heckler outside for a fight! You never really know what you are going to get live especially with bands like this infamous for outrageous performances.

The Arbouretum album was a favourite of mine for a period of time when it came out in 2011. Their music is slow and heavy grunge with distorted guitars reminding me most of The Foo Fighters or Neil Young. Most of their tracks are quite lengthy with thick guitar melody lines. They can also do sweet and lovely as heard on the gorgeous cover of Jimmy Webb's The Highwayman. I haven't heard many versions of this famous song but this has to be the best cover out there and jumps straight on to my playlist. Great lyrics too:

I was a highwayman
Along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five
But I am still alive

I was a sailor
I was born upon the tide
And with the sea I did abide
I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed
But I am living still

I was a dam builder
Across the river deep and wide
Where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound
But I am still around
I'll always be around, and around and around and around and around...

I'll fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again...

Bonnie "Prince" Billy, real name Will Oldham, is the embodiment of laid back, low-fi, americana/country. I don't know this 2009 album too well in comparison with some of his earlier Palace Brothers music and solo albums. This one seems more country than usual with plenty of pedal steel. I love his fragile voice and gentle guitar strumming and he is top of my gig wish list (he played a small church in Brighton a few years ago but the gig was sold out immediately before I heard). Much more on Will will follow.

Girls Girls Girls... Those Roxy Music Cover Girls

Even after listening to music for 40 years there are still new "old" bands to discover. When I say "new" I actually mean new to me as obviously Roxy Music are a very old band, but one I've never listened to before. I knew a bit about singer Bryan Ferry of course, and quite alot about knob twiddler Brian Eno, but had dismissed them as one of those throwaway glam rock pop bands of the early 70s like T-Rex or Slade. Then I got talking to someone in a pub about music (I can't even remember who now) and he recommended I take a listen to them, and to this album in particular.

There is some great rock on For Your Pleasure (their second album) and some interesting extended electronics which I feel is foreshadowing Eno's Berlin work with David Bowie moreso than his ambient solo albums. Probably only Do The Strand is a well known single, certainly the only one I recognise and as often the case that's probably a strength of the album.

Like a number of bands, including Little Feat mentioned in an earlier log, Roxy Music were famous for their album covers which featured various glamour models, some of whom were Bryan Ferry's girlfriends.

The artwork for their early albums imitated the visual style of classic "girlie" and fashion magazines of the time, featuring high-fashion shots of scantily-clad models.

The model for the debut album was Kari-Ann Muller who was reportedly paid £20 for the assignment. She also appeared in the Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service and is now a yoga teacher living in London with husband Chris Jagger, brother of Mick.

It was very ... ice-creamy, in a way. The colours remind me of a marshmallow, like something really delicious.

Amanda Lear appeared on the cover of our featured album walking a blank panther and is perhaps the most mysterious of Bryan Ferry's muses. She was reportedly a mistress of Salvador Dali and Rolling Stone Brian Jones before having affairs with both Ferry and David Bowie. Bizarrely there were also persistent rumours that she was actually a transsexual man!

But what of those rumours?

Hah hah! That was bullshit, a phony publicity stunt in order to sell records. No-one wanted a boring girl like any other. But it was the time of the Rocky Horror Show, and I was around, looking glamorous, and people always dream, don't they? The lady is a girl, and that's it.

To read more about her fascinating life (you couldn't make this stuff up) please have a look at https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2000/dec/24/focus.news

Marilyn Cole was the girl on the album Stranded. She was a Playboy model and eventually married Victor Lownes, president of Playboy Enterprises, after a brief involvement with Ferry.

Perhaps many people's favourite (certainly of teenage boys) is the Country Life cover which features two random German fans the band met in a bar in Portugal, (l to r) Eveline Grunwald and Constanze Karoli. I don't know how rare a name Karoli is in Germany but it always surprises me how often a common name does indicate a blood relationship and in this case Constanze was Can guitarist Michael Karoli's cousin, and Eveline was his girlfriend. It continues to be a small somewhat incestuous world.

Roxy fans Eveline and Constanze looking surprised on the cover of Country Life

Without looking too closely I always thought this was a shot of the girls lying flat on the grass but they are actually standing against a pine tree and posing as if suddenly caught in the glare of car headlights.

We just had to look weird and surprised.

Some album covers of the 70s (particularly of heavy rock or metal bands - Blind Faith, Whitesnake, The Scorpions etc) were pushing the sexual boundaries and this cover was banned in many countries on release which was actually saying something in those days. Incidentally does anyone remember those truly awful Top of the Pops compilation albums our parents used to buy?

Where have the girls gone? The censored version of Country Life.

I often think it must be strange to be remembered for one tiny (insignificant at the time) thing in life that happened forty years ago – literally a "15 minutes of fame".  Neither Country Life girl went on to become models. Eveline became an art teacher and Constanze is a practising psychotherapist. Rather cool to have such a dinner party subject to bring up though. Imagine flicking through a host’s CD collection and chancing across Country Life and revealing your secret!

Without doubt Jerry Hall is the most famous of the Roxy models and appeared on the Siren cover literally as a siren washed up on some rocks in Anglesey, North Wales. One of the original, if not the original, super models, Texan Hall dated Bryan Ferry for some time before meeting Mick Jagger. Her recent marriage to Rupert Murdoch was a surprise to many.

Love on the Rocks - Hall and Ferry in Anglesey

Again not looking closely enough I thought the model on the front of Flesh and Blood was one person but it actually shows Aimee Stephenson and Shelley Man casting javelins. Aimee Stephenson (the nearest to the camera) later worked in film (script writing and production). She tragically died in 2001 from burn injuries sustained from exploding fireworks on a bus in Peru (I know, it sounds so unlikely but when your time is up, your time is up, and as I said above you couldn't make this up - the bizarre and random twists of life). As for Shelley Man she is literally residing in the "where are they now" file, gone and forgotten at least as far as the internet is concerned - hopefully this indicates she is enjoying a quiet happy family life somewhere in the Cotswolds, free from controversy, rumour or tragedy.

Once more initial appearances can be deceptive with the realistic dancing "models" on the front of Manifesto actually being mannequins.

Having spent the 70s enjoying many a tryst with his band’s cover stars, Bryan Ferry finally made a long-term commitment to one of them in 1982, when he married model Lucy Helmore who starred (albeit anonymously with back to camera and wearing a medieval helmet) on the front of the Avalon album.

Ferry with Avalon lady Lucy Helmore

The above owes a debt to an interesting article on the subject from https://threeinacrowd.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/roxy-music-cover-model/

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Log #3 - Who's That Girl?

A few new entries in the box this week. First a word on a great young band I saw in Brighton last night. Sam Jordan and the Dead Buoys (nautical spelling deliberate after a clash with a US band of the same name). I told them afterwards they sounded like Bear's Den which they took as a compliment, hence the new entry in the player. Both bands specialise in beautiful sensitive acoustic melodies and gorgeous vocal harmonies, the right side of the Mumfords.

1. Bear's Den - Islands
2. Various - Trojan Dub 3 CD Box Set - CD no. 1
3. Matthew E. White - Fresh Blood
4. Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
5. Wilco - Being There
6. Afro Celt Sound System - Anatomic (vol. 5)

Matthew E. White I first heard on seeing his stunning Rock and Roll is Cold video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co4krl2xge0

The Wilco album I once saw in one of those Top 50 lists. It sounds a bit dated now, and the vocal delivery is rather relentlessly depressing. I think the later Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is probably the better album. But its a double CD with alot of material so probably requires some more listening.

Cover art this week is from the lovely Kings of Convenience album. I have always been fascinated by album cover art - how a design captures an imaginary world or a grainy photo a moment in time. I love the retro feel of this cover with the brown shades, the turntable, the intellectual chess playing boys and the beautiful bookish girl with the mysterious glance. The boys are band members Erlend Øye (left) and Eirik Glambek Bøe (right). But who is that girl? Is she a model, or a real person, or possibly the guest singer Feist?

So I googled "who is the girl on the cover of riot on an empty street" and would you believe it google knew!

The following article by Clarissa Oon is reproduced from the band's website via my google search http://www.kingsofconvenience.org/strait.html :

Boe's Liv Tyler-lookalike girlfriend is on the cover of Riot On An Empty Street, the recent sophomore major-label release from him and bandmate Erlend Oye [I look forward to spinning a Whitest Boy Alive CD I've just ordered - Oye's side project - hopefully in issue #4 if it arrives in time].

Boe gazes at the camera, looking slightly grim as she and geeky bespectacled Oye eye each other suggestively. She was also with them on the cover of their 2001 breakthrough album Quiet Is The New Loud, says 28-year-old Boe, whose stubbled good looks remind one of a younger Viggo Mortensen. Speaking via a temperamental mobile-phone connection from Palermo, Italy, where the duo is playing a gig, Boe says his medical student girlfriend - whose name he mumbles and is lost in waves of static - was initially not meant to be in the picture. Recalling the day they shot the Quiet album cover four years ago back home in Bergen, Norway, psychology student and part-time musician Boe said he and Oye had been driving around getting lots of photos taken.

For the last picture of the day, we said to my girlfriend: 'Come on, you be in the picture with us to remember this day.' 

The shot ended up on the album cover 'because it reminded us of a series of paintings by Norwegian painter Munch, with one person in the foreground and a couple in the background, called Jealousy'.

The reference to Edvard Munch's paintings tells you two things about the Kings of Convenience, whose pensive acoustic harmonies and intelligently laconic lyrics earned them the label 'the thinking girl's boyband' from a Guardian reviewer: One is that Boe, who reads psychoanalyst Carl Jung's writings for work and semiotician Umberto Eco's essays for fun, thinks really deep thoughts. The other, that he and his songwriting band mate - who have been compared to a hip, latter-day version of 1960s troubadours Simon & Garfunkel - lead separate and somewhat competitive lives.

Friends of 12 years who played together in a now-defunct rock band Skog (Norwegian for 'forest'), they called themselves Kings of Convenience as a shorthand for 'the convenience of two people playing guitars together, instead of all the hassle travelling around with a big band'.

They have lived in different countries for the past six years: Boe in their rainy coastal hometown of Bergen, and Oye as a deejay in Berlin. The latter released his solo dance album Unrest early last year. Suggest that it might be more convenient for the two to live in the same country, and Boe explains, in his low gentle voice that 'my life choice and his life choice are different'.

The band is not the reason we live in different countries. The band still exists in spite of the fact that we live in different countries.

Recorded early this year over a six-month period in Bergen, with periodic visits from Oye, Riot has a more evolved sound than its predecessor album, with a few whimsical, dancy tracks amid slow, autumnal numbers. Boe says they take turns to sing lead, and argue a lot. 'We each think each one's voice is better,' he adds, followed by a rustle like a smile at the other end of the line. Still, they are committed to writing songs together, frequently exchanging ideas over the phone.

'Maybe every second month, I'll go to Berlin, or he comes to Norway.'

Sounds like a long-distance relationship. 'Exactly.'

Album of the Week: A toss up between Riot and Islands

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