Category: Music

This morning, John Scalzi announced that he was Taking the Weekend Off From the Internet, and embedded a video clip:

I’m ashamed surprised that I had never seen – or heard – the song before. Of course the artist was instantly recognizable, and as soon as the song finished I’d started a download of the complete album from the Amazon MP3 store.
What a beautiful song. Thank you John.

2007 turned out to be a very good year for new music – new to me, at any rate. I discovered several artists that I had inexplicably overlooked, picked up excellent new albums from some of my long-time favourites, and encountered some great new talent. So let’s take a look.
The year started and ended with offerings from one of my greatest favourites, Faithless. In January there was a new album, “To All New Arrivals”, and in December an excellent single, “A Kind of Peace”. Along the way I bought the “Renaissance DJ Set”, a triple CD of early works and influential sources. (Among the latter was a track by LSK, which prompted me to seek out their – one and only – eponymous CD.)
Steven Wilson’s Porcupine Tree is right up there with Faithless, and this year we got the outstanding “Fear of a Blank Planet” and an outtakes collection “Nil Recurring”. I added several items from Wilson’s circle of friends: “Blackfield II”, a live collection by John Wesley (who plays second guitar with PT on tour), and “My Hotel Year” by Tim Bowness. Next year we’re promised a new no-man album, which I’m awaiting eagerly.
I’ve got to stop comparing every Radiohead album with “OK Computer”, although I guess that’s the price they have to pay for coming up with one of the greatest recordings of all time. “In Rainbows” is really, really good, and I was happy to pay $10 for the “name your price” download.
The rediscovery of the year was street pianist Jonny Hahn, whom I blogged about in March. I bought several of his CDs, including “Collage” and “Lost in the Inzone”. His music reminds me of the soundtrack to the movie “Once”, which was also a great discovery.
I filled in gaps in my collection with music from the 60s to the 90s. Neil Young‘s “Live at Massey Hall”, The Who‘s “Endless Wire”, “Jupiter’s Darling” by Heart, the Oasis collection “Stop the Clocks”, “London Calling” by the Clash, The Cure‘s “Mixed Up”, “Blues” by Jimi Hendrix, and “The Blue Thumb Recordings” by Arthur Lee’s Love. iTunes came up trumps by unearthing “New Dark Times”, the 1996 album by Sunscreem. Some deep web spelunking yielded a copy of Robert Hunter‘s “Flight of the Marie Helena”. And I almost forgot the first acquisition of the New Year: U2‘s “U218”.
But as I mentioned, 2007 was a great year for discovering new music. Four women head the list: Regina Spektor, with her inspirational “Begin To Hope”, Kate Nash with the brutally honest punk poetry on “Made of Bricks”, Joanna Newson‘s indescribable “Ys”, and the comfortable intimacy of “One Cell in the Sea” by A Fine Frenzy (Alison Sudol). I also enjoyed “Songs From The Deep Forest” by Duke Special, and “Live at SoHo: The Good, The Bad & The Queen EP” by the unnamed band that Damon Albam of Blur has put together.
Then there were the artists that I had somehow overlooked. How about the Mekons? They’ve been around forever! How could I not know the Mekons? After seeing them in concert, I bought their latest CD, “Natural”, as well as the retrospective “Heaven and Hell.” Two other omissions that were finally corrected: the Polyphonic Spree, with “The Fragile Army”, and “Hats” by The Blue Nile.
And finally, the album of the year has to be “Arzachel: Collectors Edition” by Uriel. This will only make sense to a handful of people who appreciate the glorious insanity that was the English psychedelic music scene in 1969. I owned the original LP, then the Demon CD, and now this. Excuse me while I light a few joss sticks, put on the headphones, and turn out the lights….
No, really. The real album of the year is the glorious, bizarre, ethereal “The Butcher’s Ballroom” by the Swedish group Diablo Swing Orchestra. Wikipedia tries to pigeon-hole them as “avant-garde metal” or “symphonic metal”; perhaps “operatic jazz metal” will do. (And I do mean “operatic”.) Paul kept nagging me, and eventually I listened to all of the samples on the Amazon MP3 store and saw what he meant. Thanks, old friend. (And when are you going to finish writing that review?)

From (ironically) the BBC NEWS:

BBC Radio 1 has said it will stand by its ban on the word “faggot” from the Pogues’ 1987 Christmas hit Fairytale of New York to avoid offence.
The word, sung by the late Kirsty MacColl as she trades insults with Shane MacGowan, has been dubbed out… Another line, where MacGowan calls MacColl “an old slut on junk”, has also been edited.

The strange thing is that this bowdlerization only applies to Radio 1. Radio 2 will be playing the original version. When I lived in England, Radio 1 was the cutting edge, while Radio 2 was Jimmy Young and Max Bygraves territory; no bad language allowed. How times change.
The only thing this story needs is an announcement by the Beeb that the decision was made on “health and safety” grounds; that seems to be the standard excuse for institutional stupidity these days.
Anyway, here’s the original version, with Kirsty. (Sigh… why did you have to go and die like that?)

UPDATE: Sanity has prevailed!

I was listening to a shuffle mix of tracks by a long-time favourite of mine, the composer and percussionist, David van Tieghem. As “Particle Ballet” was playing, I decided to Google him, and found an unreconstructed late 20th century website, with a video embedded. Here it is. Enjoy.

I’ve been sitting in my apartment this afternoon, restructuring several gigabytes of archived email on my PowerBook, playing Civ4: Beyond The Sword on my Windows box, and watching the snow fall. When at last the mail was done, and the CPU that had been pegged at 100% for the last hour dropped to idle, I fired up iTunes and put on the headphones. And this was what the “random 10” playlist delivered to me:

• “Animal Ghost” by No-Man (from Flowermouth)
• “Comes A Time” by Neil Young (from Live Rust)
• “Shintaro” by Men at Work (from Men at Work ’81-’85)
• “No Man’s Land” by Fairport Convention (from What We Did On Our Holidays)
• “Cherish” by Madonna (from Like a Prayer)
• “Alone” by Heart (from Alive In Seattle)
• “The Coldest Winter In Memory” by Al Stewart (from Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time)
• “Dhanno Ki Aankhon (In Dhanno’s Eyes)” by Asha Bhosle & Kronos Quartet (from You’ve Stolen My Heart – Songs from R.D. Burman’s Bollywood)
• “For A Thousand Mothers” by Jethro Tull (from Stand Up)
• “Gorecki” by Lamb (from Back To Mine: Dave Seaman)

Random enough for you?! As I finish this posting, I’m listening to Heart’s “Alone“. I’ve always thought that this was a remarkable expression of the raw hunger of unrequited love, and the live version sounds incredibly vulnerable.

It’s the intermission… I’m at the 5th Avenue Theatre, attending a sparkling performance of Sondheim’s “Into The Woods”. It’s been years since I last saw a musical, and I can’t imagine a better choice to break the drought. It’s simply wonderful.
Almost time for the second half. What if “happily ever after” isn’t the end…? 🙂
[Later]
That was a really wonderful performance. It’s a local production, not touring, and it’s only running for one more week so if you’re in the Seattle area you owe it to yourself to go. Seattlechannel.org has posted a nice video clip about the production.

Just got back from seeing the Mekons at the Town Hall Seattle. Fabulous show, but in completely the wrong setting. There were about 150 people, in the centre of a much larger auditorium, with no beer. The members of the band sipped their bottles of Red Stripe and taunted us! And it was billed as a quiet acoustic set, but they still rocked out! We should have been packed into a smoky club with benches, sawdust on the floor, and pints of bitter, singing along with them…
Oh well, never mind. It was still one of the most enjoyable shows I’ve been to. Even though I’ve never heard them live or owned any of their recordings, it all felt oddly, comfortably familiar – from the angry numbers about Maggie Thatcher (“TINA”) and the Miners’ Strike, to their alt-country material, to their newest songs. To hell with categories. Quirky personalities, great musicianship, memorable songs. We all had a wonderful time.

“Mass Destruction” by Faithless.

I now understand why so many reviewers have said that Hats by The Blue Nile is such a perfect album to listen to through really good headphones, at night, with the lights out, with no distractions and no pressure of time. The only puzzle is how I managed to miss this since its release in 1989. (I only found it now because I was fooling around with liveplasma while checking out iWOW, and I decided to plug Prefab Sprout into both liveplasma and iTunes. Several clicks later, I landed on Blue Nile, and the rest is between me, the iTMS, and my credit card provider.)

Amazing. Hat tip to Paul.