Category: Music

Chris blogged that he’s going to see the Tallis Scholars tonight, and mentioned that they’re going to be playing here in Seattle tomorrow, Saturday, at the Town Hall. True, but that’s not the whole story. It turns out that they’re appearing at 8pm on both Saturday and Sunday! On Saturday they’re performing “Renaissance Masterpieces”, and on Sunday “Music from the Sistine Chapel”. What on earth shall I do? Go on Saturday? Sunday? Both?!

As I was walking home in the rain from tonight’s Pet Shop Boys show, I found myself thinking about all of the acts I’ve seen over the last 40 years. It’s an interesting mix, from Pink Floyd, King Crimson, and the original Genesis, through Depeche Mode and OMD, to October Project and Porcupine Tree, with repeat performaces by Al Stewart, the Grateful Dead, and the Legendary Pink Dots sprinkled across the years.
But tonight was, without doubt, the best show I’ve ever been to, the one that brought me the greatest delight. It was simply splendid.
It was also the first time in their 21 year career that the Pet Shop Boys have played in Seattle, and there were a lot of people who were clearly experiencing that “they’re playing our song” feeling. Listening to the HNRG of songs like Suburbia, Opportunities, and Shopping it’s strange to realize that they were hits in the mid-80s.
The production was excellent: singers, dancers, constumes, staging, and so forth. But it was the songs that we were there for. Seven cuts from the latest album, “Fundamental”, several of the early hits, and three of the big anthems: Always On My Mind (Maybe I Didn’t Love You), Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You), and the grand finale Go West. I’m reluctant to pick any favourites, but I particularly liked the understated presentation of Rent and the relentless power of Integral.
The setlist:
Psychological
Left To My Own Devices
I’m with Stupid
Suburbia
Can You Forgive Her?
Minimal
Shopping
Rent
Dreaming of the Queen
Heart
Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)
Integral
Interval
Numb
Se A Vida É (Thats The Way Life Is)/Domino dancing
Flamboyant
Home and dry
Always On My Mind
Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)
West End Girls
The Sodom And Gomorrah Show
Encore
So hard
It’s a Sin
Go west
Whew! The PSB always did give good value for money, didn’t they?

So I’m at the theatre for the Pet Shop Boys show, starting in 12 minutes. I’ve bought my t-shirts, found my seat…. And I’ve managed to navigate my blog menu in this weird little BlackBerry browser. More after the show

I’m not sure what rock I’ve been living under, but it took Andrew Sullivan’s poignant review of the Pet Shop Boys’ American tour to get me out from under it. Fortunately the PSB don’t hit Seattle until November 5, so I was able to score a ticket (MEZ15, H9). Now all I have to do is find the Paramount Theatre…. (OK, that was easy.)

[I’ve noticed that most US tours by European artists progress from east to west. I figure that if I watch for reviews in Boston and New York, I should still be able to buy tickets in time for Seattle shows.]

Over the years, I’ve tried to find the best record store wherever I happen to be living. The place to go to browse, discover long-lost musical friends, or find the obscure CD reissue of an equally obscure LP. Yes, I know that I have access to vast online resources, but there’s still a place for physical browsing. When I lived in the Boston area, the best spots were on Newbury Street and places like Mystery Train on Mass Ave in Cambridge.
Today I found what must be the best place in the Pacific Northwest: Silver Platters. I was driving up I-5 to the Northgate Mall, and as I slowed to leave the freeway I noticed a small strip mall close to the highway. I went to check it out, and found Silver Platters.
They have a good stock of all kinds of music and DVDs, but the heart of the store is the section labelled, innocuously, “Popular”.
I started with the A’s. By the time I reached the Zs I had an armful of CDs, and I realized that I’d been there more than two hours! I reluctantly decided to put most of the CDs back; after all, I know that I’ll be back there again. And again. And again….
Life is good.
Just for the record, the CDs I bought were the legendary “Oar” by Skip Spence, “The Best of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band” (so nice to hear “Davy’s On The Road Again” for the first time in about ten years), and “Smiling Phases”, a double-CD “best-of” compilation by Traffic.

Sitting back, sipping my first gin and tonic in the new apartment, I realize that it’s been a long time since I posted a Random 10. I roll the dice, and the new iTunes 7 is kind; it serves up a couple of the best of Brit-pop, together with several newer gems and a couple of classics:

• “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis (from (What’s The Story) Morning Glory)
• “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” by Culture Club (from Billboard Top Hits – 1983)
• “Everybody’s Selling Something” by Men Without Hats (from …In The 21st Century)
• “Everything Will Be Alright Tomorrow” by Faithless (from No Roots)
• “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” by Ian Drury and the Blockheads (from Fantastic 70’s)
• “Long Way Home” by Enter The Haggis (from Soapbox Heroes)
• “Mother And Child Reunion” by Paul Simon (from Negotiations And Love Songs)
• “Peach” by Blur (from Modern Life Is Rubbish)
• “The Bad Photographer (Radio Mix)” by Saint Etienne (from The Bad Photographer)
• “The Nostalgia Factory” by Porcupine Tree (from On The Sunday Of Life)

Brief and to the point:

• Soapbox Heroes by Enter The Haggis
• Extended Play by Ladytron
• All The Roadrunning by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris
• Dragonfly by Mae Moore

For some reason, the comments on yesterday’s piece about Procol Harum triggered a paroxysm of nostalgia. I decided to put together an iTunes playlist of my favourite 45s from my last year at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. That would be September 1967 to June 1968. The charts are online at Everyhit.com which made it easy. Most of the tracks that I wanted were either in my iTunes collection already* or available from the iTunes Music Store. The only real frustrations were that I couldn’t find anything by the Herd or the Honeybus. (No, you won’t have heard of either group.)
The result – 21 tracks – fits nicely on a CD-R. Here’s the playlist. It wasn’t a bad year, was it? Of course I had to slide over such chart-topping marvels as Richard Harris’s “Macarthur Park” and Pigmeat Markham’s “Here Come De Judge”!

1. Flowers In The Rain / The Move 2:25
2. Homburg / Procol Harum 3:56
3. San Franciscan Nights / Eric Burdon & The Animals 3:24
4. Kites / Simon Dupree And The Big Sound 3:50
5. Hello, Goodbye / The Beatles 3:29
6. The Mighty Quinn / Manfred Mann 2:53
7. Nights in White Satin / The Moody Blues 4:26
8. Pictures of Matchstick Men / Status Quo 3:11
9. Green Tambourine / The Lemon Pipers 2:27
10. (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay / Otis Redding 2:39
11. Lady Madonna / The Beatles 2:18
12. Lazy Sunday / The Small Faces 3:06
13. Mony Mony / Tommy James & The Shondells 2:53
14. This Wheel’s On Fire / Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity 3:31
15. Lovin’ Things / Marmalade 3:10
16. Baby Come Back / The Equals 2:30
17. Hurdy Gurdy Man / Donovan 3:18
18. Jumpin’ Jack Flash / The Rolling Stones 3:43
19. Fire! / Crazy World Of Arthur Brown 2:59
20. Mrs. Robinson / Simon & Garfunkel 4:04
21. On The Road Again / Canned Heat 3:26

(And why did I include “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers? Am I just a sucker for phasing**? I actually have a soft spot for them: they produced what I consider to be one of the finest rock-raga hybrids ever, a 9 minute 10 second opus entitled “Through With You”.)
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* Often as part of a compilation CD. I don’t think I’d actually buy anything by the Marmalade these days (Although I did back in 1968.)
** Actually I am. You’ll notice that quite a few of these songs use, or abuse, what was undoubtedly the sound effect du jour. Check out “This Wheel’s On Fire”, for instance.

Instead of my regular “random 10” posting, I decided to pick ten of my favourite long tracks – no more than one per artist. It’s easy to do this in iTunes – simply sort by playing time – but it’s also misleading. For example, one of my favourite long tracks is the 25 minute 22 second “Who Do You Love” by Quicksilver Messenger Service, from Happy Trails, but for some reason the producer elected to carve this continuous piece of music into six tracks. Oh, well. Check out this little lot:

• “Kincajou (Duck! Asteroid)” by Banco de Gaia (from Last Train To Lhasa) [36:09]
• “The Sky Moves Sideways (Alternate Version)” by Porcupine Tree (from The Sky Moves Sideways) [34:42]
• “Dark Star/The Other One” by Henry Kaiser (from Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It) [30:56]
• “The Great Wheel” by James Asher (from The Great Wheel) [30:31]
• “Dazed And Confused” by Led Zeppelin (from How The West Was Won) [25:25]
• “Andromeda Suite” by the Legendary Pink Dots (from Chemical Playschool Volume 8) [25:08]
• “Dark Star” by the Grateful Dead (from Live/Dead) [23:07]
• “Bare Wires Suite” by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (from Bare Wires) [22:59]
• “Heaven Taste” by No-Man (from Heaven Taste) [22:30]
• “Tarotplane” by Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band (from Mirror Man) [19:09]

Several hours of blissful stuff there. It’s particularly interesting to compare the original 1968 version of “Dark Star” with Henry Kaiser’s re-interpretation* from 1988.
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* If you don’t know Kaiser’s album Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It, I can heartily recommend it. He tackles classic tracks by the Dead, Captain Beefheart, and Country Joe and the Fish, as well as unexpected fragments of pop history like “Ode To Billy Joe”, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, and “The Fishin’ Hole” – yes, the Andy Griffith Show theme!

Syd Barrett dies.

ASTRONOMY DOMINE
Lime and limpid green, a second scene
A fight between the blue you once knew.
Floating down, the sound resounds
Around the icy waters underground.
Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania.
Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten.
Blinding signs flap
Flicker, flicker, flicker blam. Pow, pow.
Stairway scare, Dan Dare who’s there?
Lime and limpid green, the sounds around the icy waters under
Lime and limpid green, the sounds around the icy waters underground