Category: Music

Instead of my regular occasional “Random 10” list, here’s one of my favourite iTunes playlists. I call it “Blow Your Speakers Out”, and it’s a collection of tracks by various artists over the last 40 years that sound best when played unusually loud.

• “Jesus Built My Hotrod (Redline/Whiteline Version)” by Ministry (from the Jesus Built My Hotrod single) If you only buy one thing, etc. Simply wonderful.
• “Cowgirl (Album version)” by Underworld (from Dirty Epic/Cowgirl) “Everything, everything” – Underworld at their best. The break at 5:56 into the track cranks up the nervous energy beautifully for the head-snapping moment at 6:25…
• “Dime-a-Dance Romance” by the Steve Miller Band (from Sailor) The intensity builds over the last three tracks on this album: “You’re So Fine/Overdrive/Dime-a-Dance Romance”. I wish I’d heard them in concert: the only live track in my collection that comes close to capturing the heavier side of Steve Miller is “My Dark Hour” on disc 1 of the King Biscuit Flower Hour collection.
• “I Keep Singing That Same Old Song” by Heavy Jelly (from Psychedelic Years: Back In The British Isles) If there’s one track here that NOBODY will remember, this is it. Of course Heavy Jelly was really Skip Bifferty. As one reviewer put it: “Very L-O-N-G cut. First an unsure and plaintive vocal and a repetitive acoustic piano. Some aimless guitar. Then it gradually builds up (everybody having a rave up as the good ole Yardbirds would say!) to a bit of a mess: Tons of guitars, Creamish riff fragments, relentless staccato drums. Too much of everything. At the end it sounds as if it’s all going to explode.”
• “Shallow” by Porcupine Tree (from Deadwing)
• “Last Train To Trancentral (LP Mix)” by the KLF (from The White Room) This is about as far from the KLF of Chill Out as it’s possible to get.
• “America (Second Amendment)” by the Nice (from Here Come The Nice) “America is pregnant with promises and anticipation, but is murdered by the hand of the inevitable.”
• “Leg” by Arzachel (from Arzachel) Arzachel were actually Uriel, a short-lived project by Steve Hillage and Dave Stewart. Their eponymous LP is reckoned to be one of the best psychedelic albums of all time.
• “Sister Ray” by the Velvet Underground (from The Best of the Velvet Underground)
• “Kandy Korn” by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band (from Strictly Personal) Yes, I know the Captain hated this album. And yes, there are several live recordings that are more ferocious – but none of them capture the sonic layering that defines this track.

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(These were the 24 most important albums to me when I was an undergraduate.)

I really did intend to make this a weekly thing, but… oh, well. Try this little lot for size:

• “Grown So Ugly” by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band (from Safe As Milk)
• “The Price” by DJ Madson (from The God Who Wasn’t There)
• “Doubleminded” by the Dream Academy (from Remembrance Days)
• “Dark Angel” by Electronic (from Raise The Pressure)
• “The Man In You” by Faithless (from To All New Arrivals)
• “I’m A King Bee” by the Grateful Dead (from Fillmore West 1969)
• “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” by Johnny Cash (from American IV: The Man Comes Around)
• “Relax” by Keoki (from Jealousy)
• “Shallow (Radio edit)“ by Porcupine Tree (from Shallow – Single)
• “Happy Jack” by the Who (from Live At Leeds – Deluxe Edition)

Some household names (Captain Beefheart, Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, the Who), two contemporary stars (Faithless, Porcupine Tree), a couple of fond memories from the 80s (the Dream Academy, Electronic), and two DJs (Keoki, DJ Madson). A nice mix.

What happens when you search YouTube with the names of two of your favourite bands? If you’re lucky, you find something like this:

Edward KaSpel from the Legendary Pink Dots, on stage with the Dresden Dolls. Twisted Brecht. Excellent.

The Divine Comedy: Guantanamo:

[Via Alec.]

I just got back from seeing Porcupine Tree at a downtown club. This is the first gig in a US tour promoting their new album, Fear of a Blank Planet. The band were a bit jet-lagged, and ran into some problems with the computer that sequences the video clips on the projector; while the drummer was rebooting the computer, Steven launched into a wonderful, unscheduled performance of Trains from In Absentia. More hardware problems, please! They actually played two other tracks from that album – Blackest Eyes and Gravity Eyelids – and it seemed as if they were carefully including a few familiar, heavy pieces to balance the relatively mellow sounds of the new songs.
So how did the new album go over? They played all six tracks, accompanied by powerful – but occasionally repetitive – video sequences. (I actually expect Steven Wilson to turn his hand to film direction before too long.) I really like the album – I’ve been listening to it a lot over the last week, and I don’t think there’s a single weak track. However, not everything that sounds good on CD translates well to a concert setting, and neither Anesthetize nor Sentimental worked as well as I’d hoped, for quite different reasons. Anesthetize is really a 17:42 suite, and while the recorded version flows nicely from segment to segment, the live performance sounded somewhat disorganized. More seriously, the subtle vocals for Sentimental were lost in the live mix, and it’s not clear how to retrieve them.
Apart from these two issues, it was a great concert. The other new songs were really strong, and they were accompanied by a good mix of older numbers, some obscure (Half-Light, from the Lazarus single), and some instantly recognized (Lightbulb Sun, Sever and Open Car, for instance). The crowd was appreciative, patient during the technical glitches, and seemed to have a good time.
The opening act was 3, a new band to me. The first few tracks left me cold (terribly derivative – Tool does this stuff so much better), but later on they seemed to find their groove and displayed some impressive musicianship.

Spent yesterday evening at the Montlake Ale House, where I met up with Jon and Laura. We were there to hear Mudcat, the band in which my friend Eve Maler plays. I had a very good time, kicking back to… well, I guess the current term for the style is “roots rock”, but to me it drew upon the rock, R&B, jazz, bluegrass, and blues that I associate with folks like the Jerry Garcia Band, Bill Withers, and Neil Young. For me, the three stand-out performances of the evening were “Deal”, “Use me”, and “Down by the river” (by the three aforementioned artists respectively). Good times, good beer, and good company.
Of course, all of this came about because I’d emailed Eve to see if we could get together to discuss work matters. Obviously last night wasn’t the right time to discuss the finer points of XML and JSON, so we still need to schedule that meeting….
P.S. Oddly enough, I don’t own a recording of “Down by the river”. In fact I only have one Neil Young album in my collection: the powerful, though flawed “Live Rust”, and that doesn’t include “Down by the river” or “Cowgirl in the sand”, or “Ohio”…. I think I’m going to wander across to Starbucks to get my usual quad espresso macchiato, and while I’m there I’ll pick up the new “Live at Massey Hall 1971” CD. It’s all your fault, Mudcat!
P.P.S. I’m back home, listening to “Live at Massey Hall 1971”. What a wonderful recording. With the simplicity of these stripped-down arrangements – solo piano on “A Man Needs A Maid/Heart Of Gold Suite”, acoustic guitar on “Cowgirl In The Sand” – it’s like hearing the songs for the first time. (And it’s been 36 years…..)

OK, GoodMathBadMath shamed me into doing my duty. Hello, iTunes, whatcha got for me today?

• “Voodoo City” by Black 47 (from Home of the Brave)
• “Had to Cry Today” by Blind Faith (from Blind Faith)
• “The Test That Stumped Them All” by Dream Theater (from Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence)
• “If You Leave” by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (from The Best Of O.M.D.)
• “KDX 125” by the Pet Shop Boys (from Relentless)
• “Begonia Seduction Scene” by Porcupine Tree (from On the Sunday of Life)
• “Melatonin” by Radiohead (from Airbag/How Am I Driving?)
• “A good thing” by Saint Etienne (from Tales From Turnpike House)
• “Baby’s Callin’ Me Home” by the Steve Miller Band (from Children of the Future)
• “Beyond the Invisible” by Enigma (from Love, Sensuality, Devotion)

The buzz around Porcupine Tree’s Fear of a Blank Planet is amazing. The critics are certainly impressed: my old school friend Paul Smith sent me an early draft of his review in which he talks about the challenging nature of the music:

It’s official: I love this album – but it’s taken three weeks of my life to let it weave its special charm. Whether it is the best thing the band has recorded is still very much open for debate, but it is a very special release from a very special British band.

Then on Monday I was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, browsing the latest Sound&Vision magazine, and they were waxing lyrical about the album. And after praising the 5.1 version (which I have on order) they go on to tease…

You can get that mix right now in DTS 5.1 on a limited Special Edition CD+DVD of Planet that also includes a 40-page booklet. But fans of high-resolution sound will want to know that a DVD-Audio edition (with extras) is due in September. S&V acquired an early copy, and the sound is superb…. Porcupine Tree’s music has simply outgrown two-channel stereo.

Sigh. Where’s my credit card?
PT will be touring the US to promote the album starting next month. In fact the first show is on May 8, right here in Seattle at the Showbox. It’s going to be a busy few days: I fly down to San Francisco on Friday May 4th, so that I can go to Steve and Wendy’s wedding on the 5th. On the 7th I’m going to visit my colleagues at A9 in Palo Alto, then I’ll fly home and get psyched up for Porcupine Tree on the 8th. Mmmmm….

Earlier today, I was returning from a grocery shopping trip, and I had to change buses outside the Benaroya Hall, the home of the Seattle Symphony. A poster caught my eye, and on a whim I went inside to the box office. $52 dollars later, I had a ticket for this evening’s concert:

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 22, K. 482
Schubert: Deutsche Tanze (piano solo)
Schubert, arr. Webern: Deutsche Tanze
Mozart: Symphony No. 36, K. 425, “Linz”

The Seattle Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Christian Zacharias, who also played the piano in the first two pieces.
I’d been to the hall once, for an Amazon.com company all-hands, but this was the first concert that I’d attended there. So how was it? Read on for my review… Continue reading “Seattle Symphony”