Blogging on and off since 2003
Didn’t want to try doing this through my Treo….
A really nice (and very representative) collection this time.
There’s a bias in these lists towards stuff I haven’t played in recent weeks. For example, I just picked up the Arctic Monkeys’ excellent new album, and since that’s currently in heavy rotation, it won’t show up here for a while. With that said, here’s today’s random 10 from iTunes:
I’ve encountered the “Random 10” meme* on various blogs that I read, and I think I’m going to join in. This is what iTunes pulled out of my collection:
“Mass Destruction” by Faithless
“Little By Little” by Groove Armada
“Catch A Match” by The Legendary Pink Dots
“Scene Through The Eye Of A Lens” by Family
“Hour Of Need” by Faithless
“Nostradamus” by Al Stewart
“Absolutely Fabulous (Rollo Our Tribe Tongue In Cheek Mix)“ by the Pet Shop Boys with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley
“Space Manoeuvres” by Stage One (from John Digweed’s Northern Exposure III)
“The White Room” by The KLF
“Looking At You (Jimmy Gomez 6 A.M. Dub)“ by Sunscreem
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* And similar things, like Suburban Guerilla’s Sunday Morning Shuffle.
Chris went to see Saint Etienne last night. I’m really glad he had the chance, but… GRRRRRRRR!
Posted while watching the F.A.Cup tie between Newcastle and Southampton on FSC.
Over the last few months I’ve been collecting a series of CDs called Back to Mine. The idea is that musicians – especially those known for their skills in remixing material – are asked to put together a “personal collection for after hours grooving”. So far I’ve acquired the results from Faithless, the Pet Shop Boys (two CDs – one by Neil, the other by Chris), Underworld, and (today) Orbital. The collections are all excellent, and very diverse.
What next? I hear that the Orb‘s Back to Mine is outstanding. (I’ve also been warned off the Groove Armada collection.)
This week I’ve been listening to Jump In by Sylvia Tosun. She’s a New York singer-songwriter, who had a couple of locally well-received recordings a few years ago. She’s now teamed up with the folks from October Project to produce this new album. (I heard about this from a recent OP newsletter.) Most of the songs are co-written with Emil and Julie, and they have that indefinable OP feel to them. However Sylvia has her own strong style and a great voice.
The album is not in stores, AFAIK: you’ll have to order it from her website. Highly recommended.
Like many of my generation, I was a Dead-Head. I bought all the albums, saw them live on a number of occasions (the first being in Wembley on the 1972 European tour), and followed their chequered (but always interesting) journey to its conclusion. Since Jerry’s death there has been a veritable torrent of live concert releases, which I’ve mostly ignored: I don’t mind the survivors making an honest buck, but when we get to “Dick’s Picks Volume 35” things are getting seriously out of control!
When it came to their recordings, one LP defined the Dead: their 1969 double album “Live/Dead”. I bought it on vinyl when it came out, and almost wore it out; later I got a cassette copy; still later, a CD. I knew it note-perfect: in the days before Walkmen and iPods I could “play” the entire thing in my head – even the glorious drum duet in “Lovelight”. It’s one of the three greatest live rock recordings in my collection. The other two are the live disc of Pink Floyd’s Umma-Gumma” and Dire Straits’ “Alchemy”. It’s my musical Mona Lisa: quirky, but perfect.
A few days ago, I received an email from my friend Paul Smith in England. Paul’s the only fellow-student from RGS High Wycombe that I’m really in touch with, and our relationship has always revolved around music. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s we used to share our stash of imported American LPs, marvelling at the work of bands like Mad River, H.P.Lovecraft, and Captain Beefheart. Since we re-established contact a few years ago, we’ve traded info on progressive and metal music. (I wish Paul would write a blog, but he’s too busy doing “real” rock journalism. Oh, well.)
Paul’s email was very simple: did I still listen to “Live/Dead”, and if so was I aware of Fillmore West 1969, a triple CD from the same set of shows that yielded the material for “Live/Dead”?
I wasn’t. I bought it. And I was blown away. It was as if I had suddenly found that Leonardo had painted not just Mona Lisa, but a whole set of portraits of Mona and her sisters.
As for the music, I can’t do better than quote Thomas Ryan’s review at Amazon.com:
During a four-night run from February 27- March 2, 1969, in San Francisco, the Grateful Dead were the perfect band in the perfect place at the perfect time.
The `Live/Dead” album was a two disk set, approximately eighty minutes in length. At the time, this was fairly lavish, but by necessity, it represented only a fraction of the music from this historic stand. “Fillmore West” is compiled from the best parts of those shows that did not `make the cut’ for “Live Dead”. The 3-CD package generously triples the playing time of the original album, and structures itself as if it were one incredibly long, exhaustive set. A 20-minute version of “Dark Star” is the centerpiece, and segues beautifully into “St. Stephen,” followed by “The Eleven,” all of which capture the rich, exploratory nature of a band that was at the nascent crest of its powers. A near-perfect 23-minute version of “That’s It For the Other One” precedes a 25-minute track simply entitled “Jam”.
I’ll never know these newly-discovered performances note-for-note, as I do “Live/Dead”, but that’s OK. In fact the intense familiarity with the original work makes it even more startling to listen to this new collection. One of my favourite classical works is Handel’s “Chaconne and 21 variations” for harpsichord; the same kind of exploration comes through in the way the Dead’s treatment of these pieces evolved. (Intelligent design? Hmmm.)
Anyway, if you’ve become jaded by the constant release of live recordings by the Dead, check this one out. It’s the real thing.
The anniversary of John Lennon’s death leads Andrew to remind us of an excellent – and lengthy – 2001 piece from Reason magazine: Still Fab by Charles Paul Freund. Of course I gre up with the Beatles and experienced them as a purely British English phenomenon. As a result, I’ve never had any reason to doubt the standard account of how the Beatles conquered America and revolutionized rock’n’roll. My mistake.
“But there’s another nagging question raised by the new Beatlemania. Not just who are the Beatles now, but who were they then? New fans may be using the group for their own purposes, but then so did the original generation of fans. The years since the group’s breakup have seen a lot of myth-making and obscuring, in order to fit them better into a pliable narrative of the era and its aftermath. It is worth pausing to listen to the group anew in the context of their own time, because there are some lost chords in their music waiting to sound again.”
Back in the early 1990s I was a huge fan of Saint Etienne. Their first two albums Foxbase Alpha and So Tough showed up regularly in my car cassette player; songs like “You’re in a bad way” and “Kiss and make up” had an infectious appeal. (And of course there was their wonderful version of Neil Young’s “Only love can break your heart”.) There were four main influences – Style Council’s jazzy cool pop, Brian Wilson’s songwriting, 1960’s Brit-girl pop such as that of Sandy Shaw and Cilla Black, and South London – woven together by Wiggs’ effortless electronica and Sarah Cracknell’s girl-next-door voice. (Their work remixed really well – check out Casino Classics, with remixes by all the big names of the late 90s.)
I bought almost all of their work (I was a completist – remember?), including the highs (“He’s on the phone“) and the lows (Good Humor), until a few years ago when I thought that they’d lost their way. Now comes Tales from Turnpike House, a lovely concept album about suburban London that makes me want to jump on a plane to Heathrow Gatwick. Gorgeous songs, from the very first tracks “Sun in my morning” and “Milk bottle symphony”. And then track 11, the outstanding “Teenage winter”, which is possibly the best thing they’ve ever done. (See this Stylus review for more thoughts on this.)
(N.b. For some reason, this hasn’t been released in the US; my copy is an imported “Special Edition” from the UK that I found at Tower Records. I’ve been enjoying the album itself so much that I haven’t even had a chance to listen to the bonus disc, Up the Wooden Hill.)
The first thing to say was that the Boulder Philharmonic were excellent throughout. The “mixed bag” refers to the choice of pieces, not the quality of the playing. And the guest conductor (and candidate director), Leslie Dunner did a very nice job. So let’s look at the music.