About 43 minutes into the end-of-year Mike Harding show, he plays Roaring Jelly’s ‘Valerie Wilkins’. Great, but not their best — BedBug, Babylon, and Christmas In Australia are all superior. I saw them once, and taped their last ever session (with Stuart Hall of all people) off Radio 2 sometime in the 80’s and STUPIDLY taped an episode of My Music over it several years later. My mother sold both my Roaring Jelly records which I never managed to put on tape, and anyway I now have no way to play vinyl. How does one lobby to get a CD of their work brought out?
From the category archives:
Music
Sad to see that Renata Tebaldi, Callas’s great rival, has died. There are obituaries in the Telegraph , Times , Guardian , and New York Times , the NYT also links to a slideshow and some audio content. Listening to her singing (and Callas’s for that matter) has an instantly soothing effect on me, it seems as if all the world has become still. A marvellous singer.
UPDATE: Anna in Cairo, in comments below, mentions this post by Arthur Silber at The Light of Reason.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Wilhelm Furtwängler and the BBC are remembering with a special programme devoted to his conducting on Radio 3 this evening. It starts at 19.30 UK time, so adjust for other time zones.
This may simply be a sign that I’m past 30 and culturally marooned, but most of my favourite bands haven’t done anything good since 1994.
Which is not to say popular music in general has been rubbish since then – it hasn’t – just that if I was completely honest about it, I’d rather some acts stopped putting out records that I feel compelled to buy out nostalgia, consistency, and a slight feeling of guilt that I’ve moved on and they clearly haven’t.
I’m tired of going into record shops and coming out with mediocre albums of artists who were once truly or almost great. So, reluctantly, I’ve recently compiled my list of bands/artists whose work I will now stop buying just because they were good ten years ago.
I should’ve posted about this earlier, but it’s not too late for those in New York, Milwaukee, Chicago and St.Paul/Minneapolis. The Australian singer Kasey Chambers is touring the U.S. I’ve seen her in concert twice already and it’s an experience not to be missed.
There is nothing obvious about my interest in her music. Less than two years ago a friend of mine asked whether I’d go with her to a concert. I asked her what type of music and when she mentioned “country” in her response (that included references to some other genres as well) I just said “no thanks”. My friend persisted and lent me the CD Captain. I liked it enough to ask for more and then listened to Barricades and Brickwalls. I was sold.
We saw Kasey in Philly in 2003, but she was coming down with the flu so she couldn’t sing all the songs she’d planned. Right after she stopped her tour. As unfortunate as this may seem, we were lucky because this meant that she resumed her tour a few months later in New York. So I got to see her again. And had my dissertation defense not conflicted with another one of her concerts, I would’ve gone to see her one more time.
Luckily, she’s visiting Chicagoland this time around. I’ve even managed to convince five friends to come with me (it actually didn’t take that much convincing). I just bought her Wayward Angels CD so I’m ready for all the new songs as well. Apparently she’s quite a big hit in Australia (others here are better positioned to address that), but her popularity in the U.S. still seems limited. Oh well, that just means better seats for those of us who’re in the know.:)
With kids being questioned by the Secret Service over Bob Dylan songs, probably better enjoy this one while’ it’s still legal. It’s a version of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” by Oui 3, the only good British hip-hop band ever[1], a track that I’ve been looking for for about five years and finally found on the Splendid website. “A Break From the Old Routine” is actually their best track, but I haven’t found that.
Footnote:
[1]That is, unless someone on the Lazyweb can point me in the direction of a copy of “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” by Definition of Sound
I spent yesterday afternoon and evening watching the third part of Phyllida Lloyd’s new production of the Ring for ENO. (See also my reactions to The Rhinegold and The Valkyrie ). Siegfried has to be my least favourite of the Ring operas, but that didn’t stop me from having a thoroughly good time. The reason it’s my least favourite is that this part of the Ring is a very unsatisfactory piece of work. For one thing, the eponymous “hero” (sung by Richard Berkeley-Steele) is an unattractive oaf, and for another, the villain of the first two acts is an anti-semitic caricature. Finally, the music undergoes a massive shift in quality and tone between Act 2 and Act 3, as a result of Wagner having developed a new musical language during the twelve years he put the work aside. But, but …
John Peel is dead at only 65. I can’t believe it. He’s been a part of my life since I was a teenager and used to listen to his late-night show. He’s been responsible for introducing so much music to a British audience (he did much for punk and reggae), he’s been consistently funny in his distinctive dry way, and, of course, he was just about the world’s no. 1 Liverpool fan. Terrible news. More from the BBC .
In the Guardian, Daniel Barenboim remembers Edward Said .
For your tireless service on behalf of good, you have been given the power to replace the weak link in any band, past or present.
You need not be bound by practical considerations; you’re free to ignore the fact that (say) Peter Criss was the only one who could properly apply the KISS makeup. For example, you can replace Liz Phair (the singer) while keeping Liz Phair (the songwriter). How do you use this power, and why?
My answers under the fold.
I’d just like to point out that the best album of 2002, The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, is fully audible on the band’s homepage. (Click ‘music’, then ‘album audio player’.) This is particularly notable in light of the recent inclusion of a bonus track, “Thank You Jack White”. I would also like to mention that the artwork for the album is lovely, and the videos are all worth watching. And all good Christians, I trust, trust that 2005 will be the year “Christmas On Mars” finally enoys some sort of cinematic release, so we can stop just watching the trailer.
An old Buffalo Daughter album, “New Rock”, has recently conquered my iPod. Quirkier-than-thou Japanese post-rock something or other. Shonen Knife able to play their instruments meets Sonic Youth, produced by Brian Eno. For the youth of today. You think it’s pastiche, then listen again and it’s not. I must get their new album, “Pshychic”. Says Cornelius: “What I feel from Buffalo Daughter’s music is; although it’s connected to all music, it’s not like any music at all. It’s white that is almost transparent. A very graceful sound. I wish I can make music like that.”
If that reminds you of the scene in which Bill Murray is being told how to drink his whiskey, if you liked Lost in Translation – I certainly did – you will want to watch the video for “Cyclic” on the band’s site; also, the streaming audio for “303 Live” is good.
You can download a free track and listen to a couple more here. Long live The Emperor Norton.
Yusuf Islam — the former singer once known as Cat Stevens — has been banned from the United States . And not just banned, they actually diverted the plane 600 miles to Maine to remove him from it. He’s made some equivocal statements in the past, but more recently has been forthright in his condemnation of terrorism . Perhaps there’s something we don’t know, but, on the surface, this looks like a bad mistake. Ordinary Muslims will be bound to see this as hostility to their religion as such rather than just to extremists and terrorists.
Johnny Ramone died in his sleep last night. Ben Weasel, one of my favorite punk rockers, has a tribute to the late, great pioneer.
Johnny Ramone was never recognized as a revolutionary guitarist. Chuck Berry gave us rock and roll guitar playing. Hendrix showed us what the instrument was capable of in the hands of somebody with the ambition, vision and tenacity to bend it to his will. But what Johnny Ramone contributed to rock and roll guitar playing was just as important – maybe even more important – because he took the instrument away from the rock gods and handed it back to the rest of us. Johnny turned the guitar back into a brutal, primal, stunningly effective tool. He proved that you didn’t need to be a virtuoso to be a great guitarist. He reminded the world that rock and roll was supposed to be fun.
Matt Weiner over at Opiniatrety puts a musical spin on the question of favorite opening hooks by exploring “the greatest first lines of record albums”. Songs usually either grab me in their entirety or they don’t speak to me much at all so although there are lines I really like, they are rarely first lines. I guess by the time you realize whether you like the first line of a song you are half way through the entire piece so perhaps the effect of that first segment is not as important as it may be for a book. In any case, there seem to be lots of music aficionados around here so I thought you might enjoy heading over to Matt’s blog and discussing favorite first lines of songs. There are also a couple of people who comment about first lines of movies in response to the book post. Oh, the possibilities…:)