Having made a quirky name in electronica for their inventive and often intriguing soundworlds sampled from the most unlikliest musical sources – including body parts, fetish clothing and liposuction surgery - Matmos are back with an album this time created entirely by using synthesisers.
Not your sleek stealth-technology looking consoles mind you, but the big old analogue systems, brimming with patch-bays, ancient oscillators, and the kind of blipping oscilloscopes that set the hearts of all space cadets aflutter.
By running all kinds of splurts, squirts gurgles and gargling noises over filtered bangs and bongs, the emphasis here is on fun and novelty. But after four tracks made up from manically cheery toy-town beats and making Moogs sound like a distended sequence of particularly fruity farts, the fun begins to get a bit thin. Think "Popcorn" by 70s one-hit wonders, Hot Butter, but without the sure-fire real drum shuffle and you’re in the right territory.
The mood goes baroque with a rendition of Couperin’s "Les Follies Francaises." Traipsing after the coattails of Wendy Carlos’ Switched On Bach 40 years after the fact may well be fun to do if you’re the one fiddling with your calibrated knob but when its as limply obvious as this one wonders if MC Schmidt and Drew Daniel shouldn’t just stick to their samplers in future.
The centrepiece of the album is the 24 minute title track in which various trills and frills are sent hither and thither over an undulating landscape of sine waves and sharp-suited edits. It’s as though they’re trying to recreate one of those corny demo discs companies used to put out to showcase kind of far-out sounds these new-fangled synths can create.
Terry Riley, Tangerine Dream, and Tonto’s Expanding Headband are all reverently referenced but it doesn’t add up to much more than wallpaper. Of course, knowing the kind of clever, post-modern, ironic, wry funsters these boys are, the wallpaper in question will be the gaudy big-patterned 70s variety, but wallpaper nevertheless.
Reducing synthesisers to little more than electronic whoopee cushions may be a laugh but having to listen to it is another matter altogether.
Yuri Gagarin. The first name any aspiring space cadet learned, the first man to slip from the albumen of atmosphere surrounding our blue white egg. His funeral on television, grainy black and white footage at the best of times, made more abrasive; broken lines of sound and vision relaying the texture of distance and myth.
Box of delights… Strange Pleasures Various Artists UMC As the beat and pop boom of the mid-60s morphed into something flamboyant, multi-coloured and faddishly esoteric, the Decca label was quick to jump on the bandwagon, hoovering up just about anyone sporting long hair, loon pants and a guitar. The first wave of this shift from blues-based rock to something more experimental was admirably documented on Legend Of A Mind (2003). Strange Pleasures continues to chronicle Decca’s almost heroic headlong plunge into the Underground scene.
No band it seemed was too obscure to escape the bleary eyes and ears of the A&R teams. Indeed both the Legend and Strange Pleasure sets provide an insight into the label’s scattergun psyche when it came to acquiring acts. Determined not to make the mistake of not signing up the next Beatles when you look at the roster of signings spread between the two box sets, it’s clear they decided they’d take a punt on just about anything.
Having got the group they very often didn’t have a clue what to do with them. Despite the creation of specific brand identities (Deram and Nova), promotion and consequent sales was very much a hit and miss affair. Thus, a band might get signed only to be unceremoniously dropped or even worse – in Egg’s case the ignominy of having a second album in the can but Decca initially refusing to release it.
With music arriving on the label in so many different and diverse formats The sheer breadth and range of their output in the late 60s and early 70s was bewildering both then and now. Frustratingly for some acts, the label did put out Wowie Zowie – The World Of Progressive Music – a sampler of new rock, jazz and blues which enjoyed respectable sales. Yet when it came to many of the individual acts getting punters to part with their cash it was more often than not an uphill task.
As a result, though some names are familiar, many – such as World of Oz, Touch, Ashkan, Zakarrias, Galliard, Satisfaction and many more – are not. As with any movement, the underground scene was anything but homogeneous. However, the range, pace of change, and vaulting ambition that’s spread across each of the three CDs makes for fascinating and very often surprisingly exciting listening.
I discovered jazz and Jack Kerouac at roughly the same time in my teens back in the early 1970s, when his seminal novel, On The Road, hooked me into the bohemian world of jazz clubs, intense friendships and the never ending highway under wide open skies described in its pages.
It spoke directly to that nagging sense that there had to be more to life than what was currently on offer, the need to take off and see what was out beyond the horizon of the everyday.
It barely mattered that the quick fluid prose in which this hedonistic manifesto was rolled up in didn't always make sense—it was all about feeling something rather than necessarily understanding it. “You dig?” wasn't a question as much as a state of mind and the same principles appeared to apply to jazz. The attraction in the voracious energetic bebop of Charlie Parker or the splintered harmonics of Thelonius Monk lay in their very exoticism, their innate difference and abrasion to the mainstream.
Thus, Kerouac, the Beats and jazz were inseparable, one egging the other on to greater acts of cultural exploration. Therefore when it came to Jack reading and / or improvising his words with jazz musicians it would obviously be a match made in heaven. Well, as this release demonstrates, there’s often quite a gulf between theory and practice.
He’d already begun his somewhat unsteady collision course with celebrity when Jack wound up in a recording studio in 1958 with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. With producer Bob Theile staring out through the glass, the trio laid down American Haikus.
Originally released in 1959, it followed on from his previous collaboration with Theile and pianist and TV presenter, Steve Allen on Poetry of the Beat Generation. Whereas that largely consisted of Kerouac reading novel extracts over a polite jazz backing, this attempted to connect the words directly with his music of choice. What this amounted to was Jack reading or riffing quick bursts of bop-prose followed by some skirmishing from the boys behind him.
As might be expected, Cohn and Sims offer up some rousing, often piquant responses to his words and Kerouac can often be heard giggling off-mic like a fan boy in response, as though he can hardly believe his luck at being in studio with them. It’s all amiable enough though the playing has the air of waiting to be ignited rather than actually being on fire.
“Hard Hearted Old Farmer” has Al Cohn switch to piano to back Kerouac’s liquor-lubed sprechtgersang with a tentative blues. The hesitant delivery from both and doesn’t improve until Sims eventually pitches in with a few well chosen licks.
Ironically when Kerouac does find his rhythm much later, midway through “Poems from the Unpublished Book of Blues,” spitting out a slew of percussive vowels, the saxes are reduced to meandering ineffectually in the background.
“On Old Western Movies” (one of the two bonus outtakes from the original sessions), as Kerouac is browsing through his poems trying to figure out what to do next, Bob Theile is heard in the room commenting “It’s one of the best jazz dates I’ve heard in years,” the howl of incredulous laughter from the guys in the next room can be clearly heard.
Although the words themselves explode and fly with his trademark wildcat imagery, Kerouac's delivery is leaden and flat. Rather than dance with music, more often than not he stands squarely on its toes. Sad but true.
Sometimes things come easily to you and on other occasions they don’t and you have to work for every inch. This morning I found getting into this particular piece was like trying to find a meagre foothold on the north face of the Eiger: bloody hard work.
Too hard as it turned out, so I gave up and directed my attention to Howlin Rain’s wonderful Magnificent Fiend (which is starting to get the good press it deserves) and No-Man’s Schoolyard Ghost’s which continues to work its magic upon me. Two records that will almost certainly be in my top ten at the end of the year.
Then it was for a lunchtime date with my sister, Lesley. We headed out towards Heaton. This is not exactly local or on the doorstep but I wanted to visit a cafe called Heaton Perk after reading about it on this blog.
After this, I took a look in Heaton Grove where I used to live in early 80s.
I've not been here since that time and I swear the paint on the windows hasn't been touched since then. I used to share the middle floor and then the penthouse suite. A great place for sure if you liked cockroaches, damp and well-dodgy landlords.
Sometimes you get a run of really poor albums crossing the desk and sometimes the wind changes, and what arrives is engaging, engrossing and excellent. Whether good or poor, there are times when it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day to take it all in, never mind actually write about any of it.
On the blower in the morning: Dave Stewart – catching up on a couple of in-the-pipeline items. Neither of us has heard of Julian Jay Savarin or Julian’s Treatment, who I’m currently writing about. I speculate he may be one of the great lost keyboard greats such as Eric McWhirter.
At lunchtime Bernard popped around to try and advance our graphic novel project. A combination of work and my chronic indecision about approaches to storyline have prevented me feeding scripts to Bernard for him to work on. Whilst he is of course busy with lots of other things, without my pages on his desk there’s no way of him moving things onwards. Today, Bernard left with three separate storylines that had been languishing as a fretted and worried about them.
On the blower in the afternoon: Jakko and a truncated catch-up.
The pace at which the music scene was changing in 1968 was, even when viewed from the luxurious hindsight of 40 years, a breath-taking explosion of creative intent that was as unpredictable as it was exciting. As the Summer of Love’s psychedelic foppery gave way to something altogether harder and darker in both style and content, out of the ashes of the John Evan band, Jethro Tull emerged with their dead men’s coats to heavy-up their act with a bite of blues rock and a precocious twist of jazz.
In this respect they were like many of the bands with whom they shared the bill all over the UK and abroad. However, what made Tull stand out from the great-coated crowd was the high-visibility of frontman Ian Anderson’s on-stage Tourette’s-inspired hyper-gurning and Mick Abraham’s ferocious fretwork.
It’s easy to forget that in its earliest incarnation Tull was not yet then Anderson’s personal fiefdom, with Abrahams exercising just as much influence as his flute-playing pal. This is especially apparent on Disc One’s BBC radio sessions where his blues roots are at their most pronounced. His playing throughout the record is superb though is heard to best effect on the rocking “Dharma For One”, and the Clapton-influenced “Cat’s Squirrel.” It’s no surprise that when the split with Anderson forced him into a solo career with Blodwyn Pig that their debut (Ahead Rings Out) rivalled the top ten sales of Tull’s 1969 follow-up, Stand Up.
Anderson’s presence though is of course undeniable and extensive. Though his vocals are often delivered in an idiosyncratic pastiche of a grizzled blues veteran (especially on “A Song For Jeffrey”), the phrasing of his nimble flute adds a busy, waspish internal commentary within the songs. Sometimes however their reach exceeds their grasp. The cover of Roland Kirk’s “Serenade To A Cuckoo” is a kind of bluffer’s jazz that would give them a momentary exotic shift of gear in a live set dominated by their tumbling rock. It’s a rather stilted execution here although one can’t help but admire their chutzpah in attempting it.
As well the original mono version and some radio sessions, this anniversary edition is expanded to take a new stereo mix, and contemporary single A-sides (including their first single “Sunshine Day” for the MGM label where they were erroneously called Jethro Toe) and B-sides on Disc Two. Having already been given a remastering back in 2003, the new mix yields little surprises although a bit of 21st Century digital space allows a wider aural view of tracks such as “Beggar’s Farm,” “You’re Breaking Me Up,” and Mick Abraham’s wistful “Move On Alone.”
Embracing the broader vocabularies of progressive and folk styles was a brave move considering the Top Ten success of this debut release. By the time it came out they’d already moved on. “This is how we played then – but things change” Anderson wrote on the original liner notes in ‘68. Far-sighted words as it turned out.
We’d hooked up via the blog a few weeks ago and so when the opportunity arose to meet up in person, with a bit of diary tweaking, we managed it today. As we browsed around the fare exchanging notes about our addictive personalities when it came to collecting things, I bumped into Pete Swann who I’d not seen since the early 80s.
I had a lovely day; book buying/browsing, cuppa, chinwagging, nostalgia - what's not to like?
John Betjeman’s poetry is like a big cosy old armchair that you used to crawl into when you were a child. It’s safe, traditional proportions cradle you in a world that has long since gone, and keeps you safe and warm from the winds of modernity. There’s a slightly fusty smell in the chintzy upholstery that makes your nose wrinkle though it’s not entirely unpleasant.
When I was on the train today going into town to meet Debbie returning from Birmingham, I picked up a copy of The Times and saw splashed across its front page the news that Joan Hunter Dunn had died. The subject of one of my favourite Betjemen poems, A Subaltern’s Love Song, I’d always assumed she was a fictional representation of the genteel middle class existence which Betjemen documented so well. So, to find out she was a real person after all these years came as quite a shock.
Today I was off to meet up with Chris Wilson in his penthouse suite of offices overlooking WhitleyBay’s Station Road.
We were there to begin the process of mapping out some design ideas for the revised, revamped and revisited Toxic Tome II or to give it its current working title King Crimson: 40 years Frame By Frame. The bulk of our deliberations centred on the size and format of the book. There’s an extra timeline dimension to each page in order to provide contextual information about King Crimson’s contemporaries without breaking the flow of the KC-centric narrative.
The timeline will enable me to explore the development of the prog rock genre (and beyond) as well as address the work of ex-Crim's in a way that connects them to the main action. Of course, it'll be tricky to pull off but as ever Chris had a couple of ideas about how this might be done and we’ll meet up again soon to thrash it out. Chris will also be coming up with a few ideas for the book’s supporting website.
We noted the passing of drummer Brian Davidson. I had seen him when he played with Gong and in more recent years with the reformed Nice when they played Newcastle a few years ago. Davidson looked pretty ill even back then and there were times when I thought he was struggling in the rhythm department. Nevertheless, his contribution to those albums by The Nice was vital and often exhilarating stuff.
Cookin’ With Mike… All Night Long Mike Osborne Trio Ogun
First issued in 1976 and now making its CD debut with a sumptuous 26 extra minutes, what hits you from the opening moments of this live album is the full-blooded passion and commitment to every single note.
That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given that Mike Osborne was undoubtedly one of the most formidable sax players to emerge from the fertile grounds of British jazz in the late 1950s and 1960s.
A glance at many of the key groupings of those periods shows just how close he was to the pulse, appearing in musically diverse settings such as Mike Westbrook's bands in the fifties and beyond, Humphrey Littleton, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, Kenny Wheeler, John Warren, and bassist Harry Miller's Isipingo.
As distinctive as he was in the multitudinous troupes on the scene, it was in the smaller settings such as the glittering duets with pianist Stan Tracey, SOS (the inspired venture with John Surman and Alan Skidmore), and in his own trio, formed in 1969 with Harry Miller and drummer Louis Moholo, where the sheer mobility and restlessness of his playing really took off.
Freed of the discipline of ensemble horn charts Osborne roamed wherever the inclination took him, and in Miller and Moholo he had the perfect accomplices who not only followed, but also pushed and pointed to pastures new at every other beat of the bar.
All three blaze their individual trails around the mixture of original compositions, improvisations and standards with the acceleration and exhilaration that makes the car chase sequence from The French Connection look like a drive out on a sunny Sunday.
Osborne's reputation as a soloist has occasionally jousted with that of Ornette Coleman's, an understandable comparison given the unswerving intensity and close-knit group work that characterizes their respective approaches. However, the rasping fluidity showcased in traditional folk-influenced tracks such as “Scotch Pearl” is every bit his own, scorching the audience in Switzerland's Willisau with an all-out assault of dazzling boldness and quirky adventurousness.
Moholo's quicksilver reflexes (particularly on “Round Midnight”) are a constant delight, and for every swirling chorus or break of fiendish intricacy Osborne dispatches, Miller's muscular runs meet them head-on, offering harmonic and rhythmic contrast.
Alternating between a focused and precise articulation on the one hand and a furious abandon on the other, Osborne's outpouring is truly astonishing in its fervour and melodic reach. Constantly on the boil, All Night Long is a high point in a career that was sadly only occasionally captured for posterity.
The mental illness that prematurely silenced Osborne's uniquely savage delivery in the 1980s, and his eventual death from lung cancer in 2007, makes this set especially poignant and wholly compelling.
It's always struck me as odd that Nick Fury, agent of SHIELD, has never been transferred to film like many of the other Marvel heroes. As a kid I was buying up everything that had Nick Fury on the cover that I could get my hands on. Initially a wise crackin', cigar-chompin' commando from WW2, Marvel rebranded him as a hi-tech super agent tackling the hordes of HYDRA (amongst others ). These comics never used to appear in order and so one month Nick was battling the Third Reich and the next he was all Pop Art and espionage. And I lapped it up without batting an eyelid.
This isn't the first time I've featured on the powerful, psychedelic-tinged artwork of Jim Steranko that graced these little hummers. A great sense of style that plugged in the wider culture of the times. Mary Quant, poetry, Beatles albums, Bridget Riley, Nick Fury. It all seemed to fit together easily.
I don't think there was a day last month when I didn't play this stunning track. I love the dissonances and tensions created by David Rawling's guitar in this beautiful song from Gillian Welch's 2003 album, The Revelator. Simple but highly effective in pushing the song into "out there" territory. It sure gives me the shivers.
The revelatory heights of homage or the predictable pitfalls of parody are just two possible outcomes awaiting the artist undertaking a cover version. For every transcendent Hendrix-channelled “All Along The Watchtower” success there are the frankly execrable failures: Michael Bolton nose-diving into “Dock Of The Bay” anyone? A whole album can therefore be a fraught affair where judgement against the high-watermark of the original is inevitable.
New-country star (and wife of Steve Earle), Moorer, has declared this album a celebration of the strength of female songwriters and performers who've exerted a benign influence upon her career. Without wanting to appear churlish, that claim might come as something of a surprise to the likes of Ivan Kraal, Bill Botrell, and Merle Kilgore and David Rawlings – each having had a hand in “Dancing Barefoot,” “She Knows Where She Goes,” “Ring of Fire,” and “Time – The Revelator,” respectively.
The safe pair of hands of veteran Buddy Miller works the controls over a cautious choice that fleetingly touches blues, soft rock harmonising and a liberal sprinkling of the new country slow-burning balladeering on which Moorer's reputation has been built. The psych-tinged mellotron flutes, trip-hop affectations, and cold-water nu-folk austerity all show an admirable commitment to putting old wine into new bottles but the mixture is often fussy and lugubrious.
Although the old-time sonics of a vintage blues recording are wryly recreated for Ma Rainey's foot-stomping “Daddy, Goodbye,” Moorer's disciplined reading rarely goes beyond the obvious, and the lack of libidinous innuendo normally found in “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl” is simply found wanting.
Joni Mitchell's “Both Side Now” has been parcelled up so many times into anodyne MOR-friendly chunks, the old-before-her-time pathos of the original is often lost. Whilst Moorer's attempt doesn’t quite fall into that category, her vocal here is curiously anonymous in its delivery, robbing any personal insight gained from her own personal journey through loss and redemption.
This is not a bad album by any means – her cover of sister Shelby Lynne's “She Knows Where She Goes” demonstrates Moorer's emotive appeal. Yet one can't help feeling that this is a stop-gap affair on her way to somewhere else.
And just what is it with today's directors who insist on giving us an ending, and then another ending and then, just because they couldn't quite make their mind up if they liked this one or that one, serve up...another poignant end scene.
From Gateshead we headed back to Newcastle to meet Alys off the Metro and to go and see...
at Northern Stage. Based upon Edward Gorey's wonderful tale of things that go bump morning, noon and night, we spent an hour or so in the company of five actors who spent about twenty minutes explaining how theatre worked, and how they were going to bring to life the tale of a strange creature who bowled into the lives of a staid Victorian family and sent them all into a spin.
Afterwards we retired to the bar and enjoyed a pint and post-match analysis...
Having been fans of the Gorey poem upon which it was based we reckoned it was good clean fun but suffered from too much padding. Nevertheless, an enjoyable day/evening out with the family.
An Evening Of Yes Music Plus Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman & Howe Voiceprint
Whilst Chris Squire and Trevor Rabin were doing their AOR-thing, Jon Anderson sought to reclaim what he regarded as the soaring spirit of classic Yes by reuniting with some of his old team players.
Ostensibly supporting their eponymous debut of 1989, the new material by the ABWH conglomerate was a ragbag of mixed and variable results and as such, was always going to play second fiddle to the vintage material occupying the bulk of their backwards-looking set. Not that the ecstatic crowds who greeted them were complaining.
Despite having to endure over 20 minutes of solo-spot teasing before the concert proper got underway, the baying of the crowds leave no one in any doubt that it's the old Yes warhorses that get the juice pumping.
Slightly marred by a perfunctory mix for television (this is the audio companion to the recently reissued concert DVD), all the principal players are on good form, which is fine as far as it goes. Although Jeff Berlin (here depping at the last minute for an ill Tony Levin) puts in a creditable performance, you get the sense that had Squire’s exhilarating bass work been thundering beneath it all, things could’ve been so much better.
Debra is off work for the half-term holidays and thus was a frequent visitor to the Yellow Room yesterday. Whilst this is of course welcome, it kind of plays with my sense of time as I only usually see her in here over the weekend. So, as with Mary Poppins, it’s a jolly holiday with Debbie!
Also yesterday, though later in the day, Voiceprint supremo, Rob Ayling stopped by for a cuppa and catch-up. Rob was picking up a bunch of Bruford band live recordings he’d kindly loaned me for reference a while back. A few weeks ago I chatted on the blower with Bruford keyboard player and all-round Canterbury legend, Dave Stewart, who spoke with great affection of his time in the group.
One of the limitations with the original version of the toxic tome was that I wasn’t able to do much of anything about the solo work of various Crim members. This will be corrected in the new edition of the book – hence the immersion into the world of the very groovy Bruford band.
I’m not certain but I think the first I heard about the shooting of Martin Luther King would have been in the pages of my parent’s newspaper. Largely unaware of King and his work, the event of his death held a special ghoulish resonance with me because of my mounting fixation with political assassinations.
Lots of time was spent at Wallsend library trawling through those large-format year in review reference books gazing at the entries for JKF, and then becoming interested to learn that there had been other similar slayings of leaders.
I’m not saying this was healthy but I think it helped spark my interest in politics. Who would have thought sunny afternoons in a library finding out about Spencer Perceval, Abraham Lincoln and Franz Ferdinand could be so much fun!
The aftermath of King’s death is hard-wired into my memory with footage of rioting and very unpleasant comments about the rioters coming from the direction of my parents and their friends. Without exactly knowing why I felt some kind of empathy with those taking to the streets instead of falling into line with the prevailing view inside our house.
Once again, this event is significant as another increment in the distance that was developing between my parents and my (up to then) unquestioning acceptance of their worldview.
I'm really not sure that I would have heard it at the time, but I think one of the most moving speeches given by a politician is Robert Kennedy's eulogy to King and his plea for calm.
Out on the stump, news of the assassination of Martin Luther King had come through to the campaign team and Kennedy steps up to the microphone to break the news to his supporters. It's difficult to imagine any of the current candidates for the office of President coming up with something as dignified and as measured as this.
"I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.
In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black - considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization - black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.
Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favourite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.
So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."
Following the lives of three pals over the course of six tracks sounds simple enough but this being GG, nothing is ever quite straight forward. Though the stories are woven into their inscrutable and complex, episodic compositions, it’s a far more focussed affair than 1971’s Acquiring The Taste.
Both mood and musical meter demand attention – especially the ingeniously knotty Schooldays. Concessions to their notional rock roots are to be found via a gloriously wailing solo from guitarist Gary Green on Peel The Paint and title track, demonstrating that brawn and brain aren’t mutually exclusive.
Often overshadowed by the multi-disciplined, multi-tentacled, Octopus, (also released later in 1972), the music here is every bit as good. The rather lavish reproduction gatefold sleeve gives an added reason (were it needed) to make the acquaintance of an album filled with their trademark awkwardness and eclecticism.
There's changes afoot in the house. Verity, my niece, having relocated to the sunny north-east needs an office from which to hatch her plans for world domination.
As part of her irresistible rise in the world, today she annexed the guest room and made it into her very own wi-fi enabled office space with a little help from her father, Bernard.
Meanwhile, I was getting the grub ready for a bit of knees-up later tonight...
We were joined by Sam who'd called in from his bachelor pad in Heaton to help Debbie take a whole bunch of surplus stock to the recycling centre.
A nice evening with good company but we were all fairly tired and by 9.00 p.m. everyone was "'affy puggled"as Oor Wullie used to say.
Stand By Your Man - The Best of Tammy Wynette Sony BMG
It was 40 years ago today (well not really today but stay with me on this) that Tammy belted it out that women should stand by their men. First released in the tempestuous year of 1968 (along with “Take Me To Your World”, and “D.I.V.O.R.C.E” ) the sentiments expressed in these songs and others featured here, embodied a position that was wholly counter-intuitive to the counter-culture. It was the soundtrack for Richard Nixon’s “silent majority”, extolling Conservative virtues, syrupy romanticism, family values, homespun homilies and the importance of stoically enduring whatever adversity (or your husband) threw in your face.
And lets be honest, adversity is something that Wynette was intimately acquainted with from an early age. Her musician father dead whilst she was still a baby, raised by her grandparents, picking cotton as kid, married at 17, producing three children of her own in three years before becoming a divorcee in her early twenties. She embarked on her rags to riches trajectory by singing in clubs primarily as a way of paying medical bills incurred when one of her children contracted a life-threatening illness. Dogged by her own sporadic bouts of ill-health, and a poor choice in husbands who hit the bottle and her, it doesn’t get much more “country” than that.
Yet as Oscar Wilde might have quipped had he been around, it would require a heart of stone not to laugh at “Kids Say The Darndest Things”, “I Don’t Wanna Play House”, “My Elusive Dreams” (a truly toe-curling duet with journeyman David Houston), “My Man Understands”, “He Loves Me All The Way” or the leaden charms of “Golden Ring” (with troubled hubby George Jones)
Whatever doubts one may have about the saccharine-sweet sentimentality or the ladled-on lachrymose content, there’s no doubting Wynette’s remarkable voice and the depth of her technical abilities.
With a delivery riven with carefully measured choked-back hesitancies, (paradoxically lending a sense of truth which the mostly trite lyrics barely deserve), when she opens up the throttle to belt out those cheesy choruses, she transcends the white-trash, cheap scent surroundings, living up to the vanity publishing PR hype of being the First Lady of Country Music.
With lots of Tammy compilations to chose from (especially at the lower end of the market), it’s not immediately why this one should win your hard-earned cash given the notable omissions such as her debut single, “Apartment No.9” and her respect-laden series of duets on 1994’s Without Walls, where the likes of Sting, Elton John and other mega-popsters lined up to stand by their woman.
Her appearance on KLF’s “Justified And Ancient” was a rare wild card moment in an otherwise straight deck career, or as Bill Drummond succinctly put it “the young artist wanting to tap into the mythical status and credibility of the has-been, the has-been wanting some of that ‘I’m still contemporary, relevant (and will do anything to get back in the charts) stuff.”
More kitsch than cult she never quite gained the crossover credibility enjoyed by other country artists (i.e. Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris) working outside their immediate comfort zones.
None of that mattered particularly to Wynette who died at the shockingly young age of 55 in 1998. She probably took some comfort from the knowledge that her revered position in country music’s rhinestone-lined firmament didn’t depend on the vagaries of fashion and chart position.
...my renewed passport. Good for another ten years but especially good for the USA in August 2008 and a bunch of dates with King Crimson.
I spent part of yesterday mulling around trying to get the best flights and get some idea of accommodation costs for the duration. All told it's not far short of three weeks. If you have a spare room with wi-fi access and air con in Chicago, Philly or New York (or within easy travelling distance) and want a guest who will eat and drink you under the table then let me know!
Obviously I'm hoping to use the time out there to set up interviews for the revised, expanded and remixed KC biography, and by way of attempting to offset the costs I'm currently pitching an article on the tour with some publications.
Also in the post today...
Kirby by Mark Evanier. Jack Kirby's work has always been a passport of another kind altogether and this new biography and overview looks to be bee's knees, the mut's nuts and the very dab all rolled into one. So, no more work for me today. A pot of tea and a sit down with some very good company!
I’m a freelance writer from North East England living in Whitley Bay. As well as writing sleevenotes for independent and major record labels, web content management, and contributions to both regional and national press, I’m the author of a critically acclaimed rock biography, In The Court of King Crimson (2001), and Northstars (2005), Granada TV’s Royal Television Award-winning series profiling musicians from the North East region. I’ve been blogging since 1999, commenting on music in particular and the arts in general, as well as whatever takes my fancy.
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