Category: Music

Here’s the mix for this week (un-manipulated!). Some Hi-NRG stuff, and then there’s the crystalline elegance of Eddie Jobson’s Theme Of Secrets:

• “Who Do You Think You Are (Saturday Night Fever Dub)” by Saint Etienne (from Who Do You Think You Are)
• “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing (Wild Pitch Mix)” by the Pet Shop Boys (from I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing (Dance Mixes))
• “The Pirate Of Penance” by Joni Mitchell (from Song To A Seagull)
• “Inner Secrets” by Eddie Jobson (from Theme Of Secrets)
• “Amor Amor” by Nino (from Buddha Bar 2)
• “Vertigo” by U2 (from How to dismantle an atomic bomb)
• “Betty Boop’s Birthday” by Al Stewart (from Between The Wars)
• “Love Puppets” by the Legendary Pink Dots (from Curse)
• “Sam Hall” by Johnny Cash (from American IV: The Man Comes Around)
• “Encore Une Fois [Dancing Divaz Club Mix]” by Sash! (from Encore Une Fois)

I must confess that I made iTunes “re-roll the dice” today. I use a “smart playlist” to generate these Random 10 selections, and today it came up with a list that included five tracks by one artist and two “anonymous” tracks (from CDs that I’ve ripped but haven’t entered the tracklists for). So I kept my favourite track from the first artist and tried again….

• “Jumbo” by Underworld (from Underworld Live: Everything, Everything)
• “Isis Veiled” by the Tear Garden (from The Last Man To Fly)
• “London” by the Pet Shop Boys (from Release)
• “She Moves Through The Fair” by Fairport Convention (from What We Did On Our Holidays)
• “Love Child” by the Supremes (from The Ultimate Collection)
• “Things I Want To Tell You” by No-Man (from Together We’re Stranger)
• “Fadeaway” by Porcupine Tree (from Up The Downstair)
• “Rope Ladder To The Moon (live)” by Colosseum (from Anthology)
• “Underground” by Men At Work (from Men At Work ’81-’85)
• “Funeral In His Heart” by October Project (from the Rochester, NY CD-R)

That’s better.

I guess I missed last week, but never mind; it’s not as though I’m on deadline or anything. iTunes came up with a lovely mix this week:

• “The Loner” by Neil Young (from Live Rust)
• “The Bear Farmers Of Birnam” by Al Stewart (from Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time)
• “Gravity Eyelids” by Porcupine Tree (from an unauthorized concert recording made by a friend of mine)
• “Nevertheless” by Eclection (from Eclection)
• “Face In The Cloud” by Family (from Music In A Doll’s House/Family Entertainment)
• “Out Of This World” by Marillion (from anorak in the uk live)
• “Hotel Noir” by the Legendary Pink Dots (from The Golden Age)
• “Annie, Roll Down Your Window” by Mary Fahl (ex-October Project) (from The Other Side Of Time)
• “…And The Gods Made Love” by Jimi Hendrix (from Electric Ladyland)
• “Dada Was Here” by The Soft Machine (from The Soft Machine Volumes One and Two)

Speaking of Electric Ladyland, I was disappointed that the Hendrix permanent exhibition at the EMP in Seattle seems to downplay what I’ve always thought of as his finest album. (And I’m not alone – the special Mojo Magazine Psychedelic issue rated Electric Ladyland as the #1 psychedelic album of all time.) Of course it’s too much to expect a museum in straitlaced, uptight America to display the original album sleeve, but the EMP exhibit hardly even acknowledges the existence of the album. Curious…..

Since my copy of the new Pet Shop Boys album Fundamental arrived from amazon.co.uk, I’ve been listening to nothing else. It’s easily the best work they’ve done in the last ten years. If you buy a copy, be sure to get the de luxe version with the bonus CD, Fundamentalism. In addition to different mixes of some tracks from Fundamental, this includes a couple of original gems. Check out this video for “Flamboyant”. It reminds me of watching TV at 4am in a Japanese hotel, unable to sleep because of jet lag and completely incapable of understanding what’s the TV program is all about…. (“Lost In Translation” got it exactly right.)
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[I wish the “blog video” feature of YouTube understood WordPress….]

It’s Sunday morning, and the British Grand Prix finished a little while ago. However here in the USA it’s being televised tape-delayed on one of the major networks at 1pm EDT, so I’m trying to avoid all sources of news. Let’s see what iTunes has for us:

• “Alone Again With The Dawn Coming Up” by the KLF (from Chill Out)
• “Astrid + Rope And Glory” by the Legendary Pink Dots (from The Tower)
• “Back Side Of The Moon” by the Orb (from Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld)
• “Falling Farther In” by October Project (from Falling Farther In)
• “Five A.M. in the Pinewoods”, a poem by Mary Oliver (from At Blackwater Pond)
• “Genie On A Table Top” by Al Stewart (from Famous Last Words)
• “Good Times Bad Times” by Led Zeppelin (from Led Zeppelin Remasters)
• “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Johnny Cash (from American IV: The Man Comes Around)
• “In My Dreams” by Crosby, Stills & Nash (from The Greatest Hits)
• “Overture” by The Who (from Live At Leeds – Deluxe Edition)

I just noticed that Susie’s sunday morning shuffle includes “When Fall Comes to New England” by Cheryl Wheeler. I haven’t got around to ripping any of our Cheryl Wheeler collection – what an omission!

A really nice collection this week. See what you think.

• “After The Fall” by October Project (from Falling Farther In)
• “Easy” by Groove Armada (from The Best Of….)
• “Gleaming Auction” by Snow Patrol (from Final Straw)
• “Hey Jude” by the Beatles (from 1967-1970)
• “Juanita/Kiteless” by Underworld (from Underworld Live: Everything, Everything)
• “Lady With The Braid” by Dory Previn (from In Search Of Mythical Kings)
• “Messiahs Die Young” by Men Without Hats (from Rhythm Of Youth/Folk Of The 80s)
• “Telegraph Road” by Dire Straits (from Love Over Gold)
• “What Time Is Love? (Techno Scam Mix)” by the KLF (from Ultra Rare Trax)
• “The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores” by Morrissey (from You Are The Quarry)

(N.b. I’m going to start annotating my particular favourites with this little GIF: Hope this isn’t too distracting. Feel free to suggest an alternative graphic…)

Is it really 22 years since the Pet Shop Boys released “West End Girls”? Wow. Anyway, I’ve just been reading an interesting interview with Neil Tennant about their new album Fundamental. I just picked up an imported copy (made in Argentina), and it’s both great music and politically provocative. The title reflects the theme of the album: the rise of religious fundamentalism.

“I’m against fundamentalism of any sort; I think we all are, aren’t we? We don’t want to go back to the seventh century, thank you. I think we take religion too seriously,” Neil explains.
“As a society, here in the UK, we don’t really respect our state religion as it is, whether it’s the Church Of England or Christianity, sure we pay a bit of lip service, for example, we might like the music and the incense and all the rest of it, but we can laugh at it nowadays and we can mock it pretty much with no threat,” he continues.
“So I resent the fact that we are meant to take other religions so seriously and I think we have a right to mock other religions but that unfortunately is a dangerous thing to say nowadays, though it shouldn’t be.”

Not unexpectedly, the flash-point is the intersection of politics, religion, and sexuality.

“‘Fundamental’ is deliberately provocative. The album is dedicated to those two Iranian teenagers who were hung recently for being homosexual.”

And you’ve got to fight for what you believe in. It’s easy to get complacent, to assume that things will work out over time:

“[…] I find the whole gay issue a bore really, I’ve always said it is a political issue. The whole idea of gays was created in the 1970s as a political reaction against oppression and as the oppression fades away, so the idea of ‘gay’ will fade away and we will lose our obsession with someone’s sexuality[…]
Then suddenly religion comes along and you suddenly realize, I think we all have to realize, that liberal rights, dear old dreary liberal rights, have got to be continually fought for. It’s like anything else in life, you don’t climb up to a plateau where the sun always shines, you are always marching on relentlessly. Nothing stands still and liberal rights, which are the easiest thing in the world to sneer at, have in fact taken a long time to create, particularly in the United Kingdom. We really have to fight to make sure we keep them.”

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[Via Sully]

Several excellent tracks here, and one that’s not so great.

• “Bhinna Abhinna” by Sheila Chandra (from The History of Indipop)
• “Bird on the Wire” by Leonard Cohen (from The Best of…)
• “Donegan’s Gone” by Mark Knopfler (from Shangri-La)
• “Evelyn (The Song Of Slurs)” by No-Man (from Dry Cleaning Ray)
• “Insomnia” by Faithless (from Reverence)
• “Last orders for Gary Stead” by Saint Etienne (from Tales from Turnpike House)
• “Nine Shades To The Circle” by the Legendary Pink Dots (from 9 Lives To Wonder)
• “Somebody To Love” by Queen (from Fantasic 70s)
• “Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues” by Tom Paxton (from The Best of…)
• “Ways & Means” by Snow Patrol (from Final Straw)

There’s a lot of really great stuff here. If you’ve never heard “Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues”, nag your friends until you can find a copy. Tracks like “Bird on the Wire” and “Somebody to Love” are classics, and deservedly so. “Insomnia” is one of the best by Faithless: Maxi Jazz’s quietly insistent rapping pulls you into his sweaty nightmare. And I love everything by No-Man (what Steven Wilson does when he’s not leading Porcupine Tree).
And then there’s the track from that Mark Knopfler album, Shangri-La. I bought it from iTMS without previewing all of the tracks: I was hoping for something as good as Golden Heart or Sailing To Philadelphia. Unfortunately it really didn’t work for me. Shucks.
But this leads me to a question. Suppose you buy an album via download from iTMS or some other service, and then you decide that you don’t really like it after all. With a physical CD (complete with jewel case) you can sell it, or pass it on. But with a download, what do you do? Delete it? But do you back it up first? In which case, have you really got rid of it…?
Odd, innit?

This feels like a nice mix, ranging from the mid-60s to the late 90s:

• “A Stone’s Throw Away” by Style Council (from The Collection…)
• “A Woman Like You” by Bert Jansch (from The Pentangle Family)
• “Feels Like” by Al Stewart (from Famous Last Words)
• “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” by the Rolling Stones (from Hot Rocks, 1964-1971)
• “Just Like A Woman” by Bob Dylan (from The Essential Bob Dylan)
• “Out Of Body (Logical Mix)” by the Orb (from Auntie Aubrey’s Excursions Beyond The Call Of Duty: The Orb Remix Project)
• “Pass It On [Dstilld Remix]” by Keoki (from Jealousy)
• “Saucers Over Chicago” by the Legendary Pink Dots (from Live At The Metro)
• “Sick Of You” by Lou Reed (from New York)
• “Flowers In The Rain” by the Move (from Psychedelic Years #2: Great Britain)

In a couple of earlier blog entries, I’d mentioned my interest in The Divine Comedy. and my puzzlement as to how I’d missed this wonderful music for so long. I’ve now managed to acquire all of the currently-available Divine Comedy albums. Absent Friends came from Apple’s iTMS, a local store yielded a CD of the Secret History “best of” collection, Amazon.co.uk supplied Fin de Siecle and Regeneration on CD, and I bought downloads of A Short Album About Love, Casanova, Liberation and Promenade from the group’s web site. (Purists will note that I don’t have Fanfare for the Common Muse or Rarities. Maybe one day.)

Among all these albums, one really stands out for me: Regeneration, released in 2001.

Half a dozen times over the last 25 years I’ve heard a new album which I immediately knew was different, special, something that was going to be part of my life going forward. Scritti Politti’s Cupid & Psyche 85, the Orb’s Ultraworld, The Seduction of Claude Debussy by the Art of Noise, the first October Project album, the LPD’s Maria Dimension, and Lightbulb Sun by Porcupine Tree.

The Divine Comedy’s Regeneration feels like one of these. It’s quite a bit heavier and more cynical than their other albums, and, as a couple of reviewers pointed out, there’s a hint of Radiohead in there. (But you’ll notice that OK Computer isn’t on my list: it’s outstanding stuff, but it doesn’t really touch me.) Songs like “Dumb It Down”, “Mastermind” and “Eye Of The Needle” really skewer their targets, and “Note To Self” makes you think….

Of course it isn’t all dark. “Perfect Lovesong” is just what the name implies:
Give me your love
And I’ll give you the perfect lovesong
With a divine Beatles bassline
And a big old Beach Boys sound
I’ll match you pound for pound
Like heavy-weights in the final round
We’ll hold on to each other
So we don’t fall down

And “Lost Property” is sheer fun – and, incidentally, the first Divine Comedy I ever heard (on a Back To Mine compilation).

Anyway, there it is. Regeneration. Wonderful stuff. Enjoy.