Back Home

Home in Whitley Bay after an uneventful flight from Tenerife. Uneventful is good. Double-plus good in fact. Why so? Because after spending a portion of Thursday evening and Friday morning in a Spanish police station, I’d had enough of “eventful.”

I was in the police station not because of a long-term abiding interest in the Iberian law and order but because when we returned from our trip to see Mount Tiede, we discovered that we had been burgled. In amongst the haul of personal items such as jewellery, money, numerous cameras and the like were my laptop, and much more importantly, my Olympus digital voice recorder.

The last item contained all my interviews with various musicians and in particular, Mont Campbell and Dave Stewart of Egg. Every morning during the trip I’d been working on the arduous task of transcribing their interviews. I’d completed the article featuring Mont and had begun work on the one with Dave and Mont together. The laptop is just hardware and can be replaced. Those interviews were, for me at least, gold dust and irreplaceable.

Debbie is gutted for her father and his wife, Kath who had invested so much (both literally and metaphorically) in bringing everyone out to the apartment for a unique family occasion. For them, the memory of the trip is marred by the burglaries.

Whilst insurance will cover the cost of some of the items, the thieves took far more than they would ever realise.

Nomination For God XLIII

Terry-Thomas

Under The Volcano

Garcia Lorca In Whitley Bay

Here's another poem sent to me last week by Keith Armstrong. I like the way our heroes cast shadows from faraway.




GARCIA LORCA IN WHITLEY BAY
‘I’ve come to devour your mouth
and dry you off by the hair
into the seashells of daybreak.’
(Federico Garcia Lorca)

In the rotunda,
your voice lashes out at war.
You
sing
on the crests of the girls,
streaming up the Esplanade.
You
scream under a parasol of gulls,
skimming through the fairground,
on a mission to strangle
flying fish.
Haunting poetry
in the dead ghost train,
the palms of the fortune-tellers,
dust.

Lorca in a broken-down ghost town,
scattering your petals:
Garcia up against the wall
of last night,
eyes shot;
blood from the evening sky,
dripping down an ice cream cone,
down a sweet lass’s blouse.

Saw you on the Metro, Federico,
saw you in Woolworth’s.
Saw you in the crematorium,
on Feather’s caravan site.
Saw you drown
in a sea of lyrical beauty.

Lorca,
like Community,
you are gone;
ideals
torn into coastal shreds.

Still shells
glisten,
lips on the beach
ready
for kissing again
ready
for the re-launch
of childish dreams,
sticky
with candy floss
and cuckoo spit.

Keith Armstrong

Cath And Phil Tyler Dumb Supper

Supper's Ready...
Dumb Supper Cath & Phil Tyler
NO-FI

For as long as people have been singing the nuances and themes in traditional music have been subject to change as songs migrate across the land and sea. So it’s especially fitting that an Anglo-American couple have evolved a striking interpretation in which, as they say in their sparse liner notes, “we changed some of the words and wrote some of the tunes.”

There’s a mesmerising quality in Cath Tyler’s voice throughout. As Cath Oss she was a member of the Steve Albini-produced American folk-punksters, Cordelia’s Dad. This, and her investigations of the jarring but uplifting harmonies of America’s Sacred Harp vocal tradition (described as a cross between Gregorian Chanting and bluegrass), lends this record a certain harshness that you don’t often hear these days.

The cold-water wash of unadorned voices and instruments is both invigorating and oddly risky. At a time when so many vocalists are dressed up in soft-focus productions, the natural abrasiveness implicit in these tales of woe, devilry and all manner of enforced and unwanted departures makes for a bracing listening experience.

Almost monotone in their delivery, songs such as the sombre "Death of Queen Jane", "Farewell My Friends", and the moving "1000 Years" possess a powerful tension that never fails to maintain attention. Phil Tyler’s accomplished banjo work offers instrumental distraction on the cascading "Yellowhammer" and brilliantly counter-intuitive colour to "False True Love."

The growling fuzz guitar introduced to "Morning" is less of a surprise when you discover the duo supported psych-drone merchant Ben Chasney (better known as Six Organs of Admittance). As it the snarling modernity of this device bizarrely doesn’t sound to dissimilar to dissonant overtones of an overdriven hurdy-gurdy.

The success of Dumb Supper as a whole lies in its straight forward to telling tales without much in the way of extraneous embellishment or redundant, inappropriate shows of flashy technique. The simplicity of this approach is to imbue the music with a timeless feel that is astonishingly potent, raw and edgy.

Beach Head

The different parties have split off to do different things. Bill and Cath do some gentle shopping, Dude and Alys do some aggressive bargain-hunting of the clothes and shoe variety, whilst Maldi, Julia, Catherine, Sam and Deb have taken a day trip to a park cum zoo elsewhere on the island. I’ve opted to stay at home and work.

If this sounds a little too Stakhanovite of me please remember that my location is a balcony with a pleasant enough view, in balmy temperatures with occasional sea breezes. All in all, not a bad place to do some work.

I’ve been asked to supply a few words about the Rendezvous Café in Whitley Bay. The fact that I’m sitting in a foreign country waxing lyrical about a café back home strikes me as nicely surreal.

Places we visit as children can loom up at other points in our lives to take on a new significance. As a kid visiting Whitley Bay on day trips with my parents, the Rendezvous was a perfect stopping off point for the adults to sit down, enjoy a refreshing cuppa and for the children to eagerly devour a precariously piled-up ice cream cone. Growing up, whenever I visited the coast the Rendezvous would be part of the itinerary. Years later, and now a resident of Whitley Bay, I bought my own children to the place, only now it was me with the cuppa and them with the still-mountainous ice cream.

When I got married last year we held our wedding reception in the café. We hadn’t booked it and it wasn’t specially decorated for the occasion. We’d simply walked in off the seafront, put some tables together for our party and enjoyed a quiet half hour celebrating the occasion of our marriage in a place that was very special to us.

Little has changed about the Rendezvous since I was a kid. The formica-topped tables and the period 60s / 70s décor might be an interior designer’s retro-themed dream but at the Rendezvous, it’s the real deal. None of it has been placed there with a view to whipping up a bit of nostalgia along with the frothy coffee. This is how it has always been.

Long may it never be “improved” or “refurbished” – a dread word guaranteed to strike cold terror into the heart s of all right thinking tea drinking, coffee gulping, ice cream licking members of the public.

A flashback to June 30th 2007...

Random Penguin XXII

1964 cover drawing by John Ward

Life's A Beach...

I’ve established a punishing schedule here in Tenerife: up at my usual time, a shower, and then onto the veranda with a pot of tea, laptop and my book. It’s true what they say about a writer’s life being the hardest there is.

Meanwhile, yesterday…

Holiday reading.

As Deb and the gang head off in search of a market I stay back at the ranch and write. There’s something very conducive to writing here on the veranda in the warm air. The ferocity of the sun as the day moves into the afternoon is brutal. However, sat in the shade as I am tapping away on this laptop, with a glass of chilled mineral water, things are just about as perfect as they could be.

Later in the evening, Deb, Dude and I go for a stroll and find a perfect vantage point for the setting sun. A perfect end to a perfectly lovely day.

Testing For Buzz LXIV 1968 And All That XVIX

My rummaging around in Wallsend's library didn't confine itself to ghoulish accounts of assassination or stirring photographs of the space race. A different kind of space manifested itself in between my ears when I stumbled upon a copy of George Adamski's book. The proof of alien beings visiting our planet in their machines was offered up in a series of photographs. Though obvious fakes to adult eyes, to a kid with a febrile imagination, I was utterly hooked.

Instead of playing out with pals I spent evenings rabidly reading (and believing) Professor Adamski of Palomar observatory and his accounts of being whisked up in a spaceship to meet people from Mars, Venus, Saturn, etc.

Of course, It wasn't until quite a few years later that I discovered that the "professor" was in fact a short order cook at a concession stand near Palomar observatory. What I didn't know back then was that this kind of veracity was endemic to the field of Ufology as it was grandly called.

South You Are Here

It’s A Young Man’s Game…
You Are Here
South
Bluhammock

Drawing heavily upon a Beatles/ Badfinger zeitgeist in under a minute of the opening track “Wasted” of their second album could be considered either an act of foolishness or youthful chutzpah by this London trio currently trying to breakout in the States. But then if you’re in the business of making aspirational pop it’s perhaps inevitable such acts of homage will manifest here and there.

On the Kinks-like “The Pain” we get two hits for the price of one via the “Good Vibrations” slice-of-sunshine Hammond organ chords, whilst “She’s Half Crazy” scratches at the surface of Marquee Moon and 77-period Talking Heads. Despite such obvious acts of forelock tugging this is actually a great little pop album.

The boy-meets-girl oeuvre is nowadays peppered now with mucho self-analytical pondering but “Better Things,” the piano-driven “Every Light Has Blown” and the punchy “Lonely Highs” there’s still the requisite sulky nerve of three lads who want to tell the world about their problems in getting a decent shag. And that’s a good thing. Probably.

Once More Unto The Beach Dear Friends

Another lovely morning greets us here in Tenerife.

We’re here because Debbie’s father very generously paid for us to come out and join in a family gathering of the Welsh side of the clan. The villa we are in is commodious and very pleasant indeed, located within a gated enclave, our very own pool and two generous sized balconies overlooking the tennis courts which also come with the apartments. Bill (Debbie’s father) is a seasoned veteran when it comes to Tenerife, having spent many holidays here with his wife Cath.

Yesterday morning we wandered around down to the beach area where we were met with all kinds of hustlers recommending their restaurants or day trips or free draws with fabulous prizes. It seems as though every English tourist on the planet has been scooped up and relocated here. All the signage is in English (ditto menus) and it’s rare to hear anything other than an English accent. Consequently it’s impossible to walk more than a few yards without an extremely enthusiastic but very flaky looking character giving it the hard sell.

Having sat down whilst waiting for Deb and company to emerge from one of the shops, we were immediately caught in the charm offensive of one man determined to bring joy and happiness into our lives - whether we wanted it or not.

By peeling off the scratch cards he handed out to our party we might win something fabulous. I declined to do anything with mine and so the young man did it on my behalf. Lo and behold I had won! Yes, I had won at least €1200. All we had to do was to go to a hotel and watch a presentation and then pick up our amazing prizes. I declined the kind offer of €1200, giving the man my card and telling him he could pick up my prize and spend it on himself. For someone who had just been given €1200 he looked less than pleased. Perhaps he already owns his own fabulous timeshare?

The evening was spent in a local steak house of Bill’s choosing. With a total of 13 folks in our party there were lots of stories swapping back and forth across the two tables the restaurant had parked us on. A lovely evening in the bosom of someone else’s family.

Alison Burns & Martin Taylor 1 A.M

Late Night Forgetfulness...
1 A.M.
Alison Burns & Martin Taylor
P3 Music

Having received plaudits for his lyrical lead work over the years (not to mention a gong presented to him by Her Majesty for services rendered in 2002) Martin Taylor's silky, accessible tones are often employed as consummate accompanist. Here the clean, clear lines of his formidable technique are harnessed behind the voice of daughter-in-law, Alison Burns, in a slow mooch through a set of late-night standards.

As befits the wee small hours evoked in the album's title, nothing here gets remotely noisome or likely to stop the next door neighbours from getting their beauty sleep. Taylor and Burns elegantly rummage through a songbook that includes many of the usual sepulchral suspects singled out by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee and Julie London. The intimacy of the production suits Burns' languorous vocals which seem to be aimed at blending in with a low-lit lounge rather than standing out from the crowd.

"Because Of You", "The Man That Got Away", "Sophisticated Lady", "He's A Tramp" all have an agreeable well-worn, cosiness to them. Less appealing is "If It's Magic", Stevie Wonder's cheesy ballad from Songs In The Key Life. On this makeover she opts for a slightly nasal delivery reminding one of those X-Factor hopefuls with the volume turned down and 'mellow' setting turned up to 11.

Perhaps the best in terms of performance is her own composition, "True." Written about her brother who died a quarter of a century ago in the Falklands conflict, it's one of those bitter-sweet melodies that you'd swear has been around forever. Burns has said it took her a long time to write it and even longer before she could perform it. In a simple arrangement, Taylor's sure-handed picking graciously supports a heartfelt vocal.

Though Taylor's playing is highly accomplished throughout 1.A.M., it rarely cuts through the largely torpid atmosphere they've created for themselves. And with Burns' voice lacking a distinctive character with which she might stake her claim to some of those redoubtable standards, the overall result is something too smooth to be called truly memorable.

Street Life CXXIII

Nominations For God XLII

Rita Tushingham

Street Life CXXII (including Yellow Room Prelude V)

Street Life CXXI

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

My next door neighbour, John, has had a copy of this book for quite a while. I know this because he came and knocked on the door one day and asked if I had a copy of Larks Tongues In Aspic by King Crimson. Wondering why he wanted such an album – John’s tastes veer more toward modern electronica and dance material – he flashed the book in my direction and was said he was intrigued by the description therein.

Another pal in another conversation suggested that I probably had all the records listed and then as if by magic, I came upon a thread about this very tome over on the Progressive Ears website.

Not having the book in question I found a list of its contents here. I don’t know about you but I find it almost impossible to see a list like this and not start the process of mentally checking to see how many of the buggers listed I have.

Well, needless to say I spent more time than was good for me (it’s better than working) going through the albums. Dear reader I was shocked to discover that out of the 1001 titles listed I found I owned about 260. Shocked because I was surprised to have that many.

I haven’t counted up what I score in the way of ownership when it comes to Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 or the Mojo Collection but I’m guessing it’ll be proportionately about the same.

What is it about men and our need to categorise, list, order, calculate, assay and generally scrape up an inventory of things as absurd as my favourite Penguin book covers, revered movers and shakers and so on?

Like The Spanish City

For non-local visitors, the Spanish City was a fun fair established in the early part of the 20th Century but is now no longer with us, having been neglected over many years and is now part of the Whitley Bay regeneration scheme - ie it's all been torn down apart from the dome.

Here's a clip of the place from Youtube although I'd recommend that you nix the volume in order to avoid the cheesy stock music used to accompany the footage.


The following poem came via the comments facility from Keith Armstrong. Keith is a well known poet from around these parts and many, many moons ago he ran a writing workshop for an agency I used to work for.

I loved this poem - which gets bonus points from me because it connects Whitley Bay, lost love, memory and Barcelona all in one go - and so thought it should have a page of its own.

It's obligatory whenever the Spanish City is mentioned to cite Mark Knopfler's eulogy to the place in the Dire Straits song "Tunnel of Love. " I'm guessing that the Spanish City seen in that clip from the 60s was pretty much the place a young Keith Armstrong would have wandered around.

The rotunda briefly glimpsed in the above footage is all that remains of the site, and still manages to coax a poetic stirring in myself now and then - here's a picture I took of it last year from down on the beach.


Anyway, on with the main show and the verse that inspired this entire post. Thanks Keith!

LIKE THE SPANISH CITY

The days have gone;
the laughter and shrieks
blown away.
We have all grown up,
left old Catalonian dreams
and the blazing seaside bullfights.
We are dazed,
phased out.
Spaces where we courted
bulldozed
to make way
for the tack of tomorrow;
the hope in the sea breeze;
the distant echo of castanets
and voices scraping
in a dusty rotunda.
I remember where I kissed you,
where I lost you.
It was in Spain, wasn’t it?
Or was it down the Esplanade
on a wet Sunday in July?
Either way,
we are still
twinned with sunny Whitley Bay,
and flaming Barcelona too;
and our lives
will dance in fading photographs
from the pleasure dome,
whenever we leave home.

Keith Armstrong

Random Penguin XXI

1975

Front cover photograph by Humphrey Sutton

Testing For Buzz LXIII 1968 And All That XVIII

We only had one bookcase in my parents house. My father had made it sometime during the 1950s at his woodwork class. It was populated for the most part by various book club editions which included swashbuckling adventures by Dennis Wheatley, numerous crime fiction potboilers, a biography of Bing Crosby, the biography of the great classical composers (Beethoven and company) and, in 1968 the arrival of this handsome paperback title.

I can't tell you how many hours I spent gazing at this cover. I recall trying to read the contents but found it mostly rather dull. Yet the mere act of picking this particular book up and leafing through its pages (which smelt pungently of cigar smoke) felt dangerous and illicit.

The Web Theraphosa Blondi

Reissued Deram act lacks any real bite
Theraphosa Blondi
The Web
Esoteric

Third division contemporaries of Amen Corner and Marmalade at the pop proms of 1969, seven-piece MOR pop-soul combo, The Web, tried their hand at cashing in on the Underground scene with their second album. Sadly their stylistic compass spins so wildly they loose direction completely. Typical is "Like The Man Said," which has American vocalist, John L Watson channelling Sammy Davis Junior as lightweight brass bravado gives way to cod-jazz that swings about as easily as an anvil cased in concrete.

Add some limp, ersatz African percussion workouts, a risible rendition of "Sunshine Of Your Love," and Watson singing cheesily about his jet-setting life on "1,000 Miles Away From Home," and you’ve got something that would be hard pushed to liven up the Val Doonican show. Two BBC radio bonus tracks and a stab at an early Gilbert O’ Sullivan ballad only adds to the unbalanced feel throughout. Ultimately, this multi-racial Jack of all trades outfit fails to live up to the exemplary Esoteric packaging in which it’s housed.

Future Greenslade player Dave Lawson would join for their third and final album, and that’s really where proto-prog seekers should direct their attention.

Random Penguin XX

1973 cover illustration by Ken Sequin

Balloons

Last night Dave, Julie, Georgie and (later on) Suzy came around to sit around the table in the Orange room and blow up balloons. Don't ask! Needless to say I've discovered that I cannot blow the damn things up without causing my pea-sized brain to explode out of the back of my skull. Try as I might all I manage is a severe case of tunnel vision and a sense that my life is about to end.

Nominations For God XLI

Ray Brooks

Reliquaries IV

The floor of Jackson Pollock's studio

Street Life CXX

I woke up this morning from an awful nightmare involving a loss too terrible to bear. I tried to write about it but was too upset to get beyond these words:

Consider the finality of "gone,"
the endgame in the game of
going...

Chris Wilson Calls In

Chris Wilson called around today with a couple of copies of the Whitley Bay Guide fresh off the press, and rather splendid it looks too. There was a couple of my Street Life photographs utilised to good effect including one which I was sure wasn’t mine. Chris assures me it was although you can’t always tell when he’s pulling your leg. And this laddo is an inveterate leg-puller to be sure. This aspect of his personality may be surmised from this sequence of photographs I think you’ll agree.

We’ve been pondering the problem of the lay out of King Crimson: 40 Years Frame By Frame. The central core of the page is the Crimson story but the pages will also have to cope with timelines and contextual hot boxes wherein significant albums of the period (outside of Crimson but pertinent to them) are highlighted.

My worry is it could all look rather chaotic. “Neapolitan Ice Cream is the answer” says Chris with a confidence that brooks no disagreement or doubt. In a couple of weeks he’s going to let me have some visuals to gauge the success of the Neapolitan Ice Cream design solution approach!

Random Penguin XIX

1984 cover design by Carroll & Dempsey Ltd

Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago

Ice Cold In Wisconsin

For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver
4AD

“Getting it together” in the country has long been the prerogative of musicians. Back in the mists of time Bob Dylan did it, Traffic boogied on the lawn of their cottage and Led Zeppelin went off to Wales to get the whiff of Bron-Yr-Aur up their nostrils. It also proved to be something of a creative restorative for Justin Vernon, now trading under the name Bon Iver (a bastardised version of Bon Hiver, French for “good winter”) who retreated to a log cabin in Wisconsin after the break-up of his band, DeYarmond Edison in 2006.

Originally self-released in 2007, For Emma, Forever Ago, became a short-run sell out with the buzz spreading like wildfire. It’s easy to understand why. Acoustic-based songs are presented with a subtle though austere back-to-basics ambience, with a voice moving between a John Martyn-like tight-lipped mumble through to expressive and precocious declamations that wouldn’t sound out of place on an album by Prince or Antony and the Johnsons.

Not surprisingly for music that was formed and shaped by three months in a Wisconsin landscape gripped by winter, the prevalent mood is sombre and even spiritual in places, encoded into a series of oblique lyrics that read on the page like terse poetry. "Blindside" talks of human contact melting the metaphorical and literal ice, the heartbeat throbbing of "Lump Sum" holds back judgement until things get warm; "For Emma" sees “death on a sunny snow” and the simple meditation of re:stacks laments love frozen in the ground.

The sensitive production is a text-book case in getting the maximum from the most minimal materials. In the reflective pauses between chorus and verse of the opening track "Flume," there are tiny sparkling harmonics frostily twinkling so briefly you might miss them in amongst ghostly rattles of feedback that form the harmonic spine of the piece – just one of many hair-raising, glorious moments.

The strength of this set is found in the unflinching clarity of a musical vision that transcends styles to create something utterly enthralling from start to finish.

Brown Moments

It’s hardly surprising that following the worst election results for Labour in forty years that the party line is moving all over the place. Gordon Brown will not be helped by the payback poison from the likes of Lord Levy, Stephen Byers, Frank Field on the radio today or indeed John Prescott and Cherie Blair in their memoirs. Nor will this poll contain much to cheer up team Brown.

As bad as all these might appear to be what is really damaging to Brown's credibility are the parade of "helpful" and "supportive" comments from friends and colleagues, most notably from David Milliband. You know things are going from bad to worse when one of the heirs apparent are put on the stump to brief that "Gordon really is a nice man. Honest!"

Dark Magus Miles Davis

Wild Things Run Free...

Dark Magus
Miles Davis
Columbia

Built up from the mutant funk foundations consolidated on Big Fun, the Miles Davis band had evolved into a sprawling collective of wild and sometimes contrary talents by the time they appeared at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1974. Boasting a bassist, two sax players, three guitarists, and two percussionists as well as the mercurial trumpet player, their music rolled off the stage toward the audience like a lumbering tank crushing just about everything in its path. The subtlety and nuances of his pre-Bitches Brew period had long been given over to a more abstract expressionist approach where tunes played second fiddle to timbre.

There are times when this two CD set is almost too much to take in, often feeling like a musical Frankenstein monster, constructed from slabs of funk, rock, jazz and avant-garde scrawling stitched and welded together often in an ungainly and ugly fashion that borders on the brutal. This is particularly true of the unrelenting density of the furiously busy rhythm section which after a while begins to resemble a storm of white noise. Miles’ clarion call erupts through the metric haze from time to time on disc one though it’s Pete Cosey’s space-jazz runs and Dave Liebman’s razor-sharp soprano sax on “Willi Part 1” which really cut through the percussive barrage.

The second disc contains a more open atmosphere overall. On the 18 minute “Tatu” where the ride cymbals are held in check, sax and guitar emerge and co-mingle in a free jazz style that is almost European in its tone than funk-drive blizzard that preceded it. Those looking for Miles on soloist mode will probably be disappointed as this is more Miles the conductor, crouched over the keyboard, stabbing occasionally layers, signalling drop-outs and only occasionally does his trumpet manifest ghost-like, to drifti alarmingly across the pulsating, raw terrain.

Truly scary in places and a band that isn’t necessarily on its best form on the night in question, Dark Magus is nevertheless capable of delivering that hair-raising paydirt feeling which makes wading through the long sections of wah-wah incertitude more than worthwhile.

Nominations For God XL

Harold Pinter

Street Life CXIX (including Yellow Room Prelude IV)

Whilst Growing My Hair...

I was out and about with pal and neighbour Julie for an hour this morning.

We headed off in the direction of Newcastle but stopped short to visit Henderson Hall. Julie and I are the advance scouting party with responsibility for checking out the reception facilities. Our pals and neighbours-from-heaven, John and Jude, are getting married next month and will be having the post-ceremony celebration here.






After a pleasurable run-out with Julie it was back to the desk to attend to various matters. After some preparation, I rang Mont Campbell (Egg and National Health fame) regarding his thoughts and feelings on the recent Egg archive release, The Metronomical Society. Mont offered some interesting viewpoints on the underground scene of the time (we're talking 68/69 onwards) and his approach to composition.

As I said the other day, although several bands were utilising classical forms (notably The Nice), I can't think of any other band that did it as well as Egg. Maybe Gentle Giant (who Mont was very keen on) but they didn't have those amazing flights of pure noise terror which Egg were able to slip into or as Mont pointed out, a soloist of the calibre of Dave Stewart.

If string theory is a reality and there are many alternative universes existing parallel to our own, I like to think that in one of them, "Seven Is A Jolly Good Time" which Egg released as a single in 1969, was a best-seller that topped the charts for months at a time. If only.

Street Life CXVIII

Schoolyard Ghosts No-Man

A perfect post-rock manifestation…

Schoolyard Ghosts
No-Man
K-Scope

Whilst huge swathes of the prog-metal world has fallen at the feet of Porcupine Tree’s Steve Wilson, it’s always seemed that his most interesting work from a textural and melodic viewpoint has taken place within the more sepulchral confines of No-Man.

Alongside vocalist Tim Bowness, he’s been crafting delicately beguiling records since the late 80s. Their last album, aptly titled Together We’re Stranger (2003) showed their capacity for getting beyond obvious shoe-gazing introspection in favour of some really unsettling journeys into the interior.

Wilson’s impeccably marshalled arrangements glide through moments of down-strumming folk-like affirmation (“Beautiful Songs You Should Know”) to devastating blasts of prog-pomp ceremony (“Pigeon Drummer”) though after the blissful introductory track, “All Sweet Things,” the spiritual centre of the record is found on “Truenorth.” 12 epic minutes of cinematic proportions with an orchestra arranged and conducted by Canterbury Scene supremo, Dave Stewart (ex Hatfield And The North), a skittering flute solo by cult wind player, Theo Travis and kaleidoscopic guitar patterns make this an outstanding achievement on an album already brimming with ideas.

Bowness’ lyrics have a detached, documentary-like quality to them. Be it the most intimate flickers of emotion or a tangential, seemingly irrelevant detail, all are caught in his gaze and given equal weight in these stark accounts of heartbreak, abandonment and self-doubt. Yet there’s nothing removed or remote about his singing. His trademark existentialist croon smoulders with emotion and empathy for the hapless retinue of lost souls inhabiting No-Man’s carefully crafted world of late-night heartache, rain-swept affairs and bitter-sweet long-lost summer days

Yet darkness lurks below the glacial beauty of the surface. Perhaps the best example of this is found on the pensive and disconcerting closer, “Mixtaped” which offers an eerily absorbing glimpse into lives trying to cope with a lover’s rejection. Half-way between The Blue Nile’s soul-searching melancholy and the edgy menace of Laughing Stock-era Talk Talk, it’s an utterly compelling tour through the abyss of loss, loneliness and regret.

The sustained air of woebegone reverie with its masterful blend of voice, surges of orchestral strings and icy ripples of retro-sounding guitar suggests that Schoolyard Ghosts is not only No-Man’s finest album to date but is arguably the post-rock equivalent of Sinatra’s Only The Lonely. It really is that good.

Words And Music VIII

Bon Iver

"Flume" from the album For Emma, Forever Ago

Recharging The Batteries

There’s now an online guide to Whitley Bay and I feel flattered to have been asked to contribute a short piece, as well as provide a few photographs which are strategically placed about the website. There's a neat little history of the town and a slot reserved for a historical walk guide, though whether or not they will reveal that this car sales and the weightlifter's gym above it was the coastal branch of Newcastle's legendary Club A-Go-Go in the 1960s.

In addition to my own piece there's an adopted outsider's view of the place from local poet, playright and publisher of the legendary Iron magazine, Pete Mortimer. Back in the mists of time (that would be the mid-70s) I recall going to a party at Pete's house in Cullercoats and couldn't help but notice that the front door to his house had the screaming face from King Crimson's debut album on it. Walking into the house via that front door was like falling down a voracious throat!

Sometime in the early 80s, I submitted some of my dreadful poetry to Iron. Pete took the trouble to not only read the damn things but send me the loveliest rejection letter wherein he gently outlined the good and (mostly) bad points of my earnest musings. I was genuinely encouraged to continue writing after this thoughtful note from Pete. It was also Iron that introduced me to the splendidly surreal work of Loris Essary and for that I am more than grateful.

A lovely warm morning in Whitley Bay today. The shops were busy despite the early hour, as though folks wanted to make the most of the weather. My itinerary included a trip to Woolworths (taking in en route the above former venue) to buy a battery charger and four new batteries.

Mysteriously, all my rechargeable batteries have disappeared. Needless to say, when questioned about this all the suspects (sorry, I mean children) deny all knowledge of their whereabouts. Then the actual charger refused to do the task those boffins had designed it to do. So, accepting this prompting I beetled off to buy a new one.

Returning home, I settled down to prepare for my interview with Dave Stewart. Though not known for doing interviews of any kind, remarkably Dave had kindly consented to talk to me about the recently released archive album from Egg, The Metronomical Society. If you’ve not got it then make sure you rush out today and buy it today!

At the appointed hour, we chinwagged over the life and times of Egg with Dave providing a riveting account of the period during which Egg created their astonishing music. Progressive in the truest sense of the word, I can’t really think of another group to have so successfully integrated classical forms with pure noise terror and a belting great rock beat to boot. I’ll be talking to bassist and main writer of the group’s music, Mont Campbell later in the week.

What Goes Up...

Whilst not quite in the same league as Cornelia Parker's Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, Deb Lil and Cowgill completed their shed deconstruction this morning.



Cowgill departed for a date with several tinnies and a snooker tournament whilst Lil and Deb gave some order the rubble and debris.

An hour or so later, the sun having crossed the yardarm, a couple of cool beers ferried in for this very moment were cracked open and the new yard-in-progress was duly christened.

The Revolution Always Starts Here

Debbie’s commitment to permanent revolution continues unabated. No sooner is the last lick of paint dry on one household upgrade, she begins another.

Whereas a Bank Holiday weekend is grasped by a grateful UK populace as an opportunity to lounge about, go to the beach, undertake some particularly perilous extreme sport or whatever rings your bell, Debbie laughs contemptuously in the face of such leisure-orientated pastimes.

“Hahaha!” she roars as she starts taking a hammer to the lean-to shed that has nestled up to our house these past 14 years and more. Constructed by the previous owners, the shed – like most sheds –has covered a multitude of sins; a dumping ground for not-quite-yet-finished-with junk, a storage place for those items which are of no obvious use but fall within the might-come-in-useful-one-day category.

These, plus lawn mowers, barbeque sets, tacks, screws, nails, gardening tools, painting sheets, innumerable plant pots, paint brushes, rollers, and too many other household contents to name have to be first removed then relocated to other parts of our house before the deconstruction can begin.

That was how Debbie spent most of Friday evening and Saturday morning. Then, joined by chums Lil and Cowgill, the therapeutic side of the project began in earnest.

Sadly rain stopped play and robbed Debbie of her self-imposed target to have it all down by close of business. They're going to have another go at it today.

Elsewhere, I went to see my sister Lesley to drop off her birthday gift and to partake in some of their wonderful home-baked delights – including some truly angelic flapjack and more slices than is good for me of Bernard’s fabbo vanilla cake. As you can see from the photograph below, Lesley is someone who has fully grasped my preferred Bank Holiday modus operandi.

Neil Diamond Home Before Dark

The lights are on but nobody’s home…
Home Before Dark
Neil Diamond
Columbia

With age comes great wisdom and it so it seems for many an artist in their twilight years, Rick Rubin, the man whose no-nonsense, stripped-back methods have helped rehabilitate several artists - most memorably Johnny Cash).

The hushed intimacy of Rubin’s setting for Diamond is clearly designed to focus one’s attention upon the voice, the whole voice, and nothing but the voice. Diamond’s gravelly tones are so close to the microphone that every bump and loose stone encountered on his long career can be heard. Whilst one can admire the unflinching veracity of Rubin’s production technique, and indeed, the singer’s economically graceful performances, this is largely a triumph of style over content.

You can forgive the man who penned the classic “I’m Believer” for a lot of things. However, no matter how much Diamond is rebranded as some long-lost existentialist troubadour, or the subject of yet another “he was a genius all along” reappraisal in the fashionable parts of the music press, the material here is just the same old lightweight MOR pot-boiler, chicken-in-a-basket kitsch as it ever was, only minus the cheesy horn charts and crap-disco detail.

John G Perry Sunset Wading

Sparkling Perry Summer daze
Sunset Wading John G Perry
Esoteric Recordings

1976 was never going to be a good year to be releasing an album of contemplative, introspective songs and instrumentals especially if you were an ex-member of Canterbury scene stalwarts, Caravan. Having spent 18 months as bassist during their For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night renaissance, Perry had the misfortune to release his first solo album just as punk rock was firing its first salvos.

Produced by Rupert Hine (Perry’s partner in ace electro-rock hybrid, Quantum Leap), it boasts an impressive cast of players that includes King Crimson co-founder, drummer Michael Giles, Penguin Café supremo Simon Jeffes and even a brief cameo appearance by Purple’s Roger Glover, heard fleetingly on synthesiser.

With an overall pace equivalent to a sedate stroll, guitarist Carrado Rusticicci, from Italian band Nova, adds some welcome John McLaughlin-inspired fireworks on the more up-tempo fusion-based jam “Ah Well You Can Only Get Wet,” as well as “Morning Song” and “Etude”. Adding a lively counterpoint to the prettily pastoral but somewhat snoozy air pervading the record, it’s a shame such energetic interludes aren’t more substantial.

Nevertheless, thoughtful arrangements, Perry’s agreeably melodic bass work and reliable performances throughout offer a pleasant enough stopping-off point.

It’s Discipline Wot Won It For Boris

Labour’s cross-country meltdown reached its zenith when Boris Johnson took over as London Mayor today. This crowning really spells the end for the Labour government that has not only stupidly abandoned its core vote but has enthusiastically taken up the fiddle as all around starts to burn.

They’ll repeat the mantra of “learn and listen” - the political equivalent of sackcloth and ashes. Their problem is that when a party is in power for this length of time, electorates learn that such Governments don’t, by and large, listen.

The Tories are now where Blair’s New Labour project was prior to power in 1997.

As an increasingly desperate and burnt-out PM showers us confetti-style in all kinds of headline-catching initiatives over the next few months, all David Cameron and his pals need do is to maintain party discipline. Other than to sneer occasionally at the other fellow’s pathetic attempt to curry favour and look like they're in charge, their best bet is to keep schtum.

The clever thing in politics is to make a little go a long way.

As Cameron and Boris found out during the mayoral campaign, it’s better to keep quiet and let people think you’re a fool rather than say what you’re really thinking and remove all doubt.

Street Life CXVII

Nominations For God XXXVIX

Gregory Peck

Steve Winwood Nine Lives

Nice tunes, shame about the pace…

Nine Lives
Steve Winwood
Sony BMG

There’s some good news and some bad news about the new album from Steve Winwood. The sleek production, laid-back grooves, deep-vein bass lines, sinuous percussion, and instantly singable tunes that have hallmarked his output since Arc Of A Diver in 1981 are all in place here. That’s the good news. If you’d like to hear Winwood’s undoubted talent break sweat a little, then it’s also the bad news.

Since reaching the platinum-lined destination of 1986’s Back In The High Life there’s a sense in which Winwood has become something of a musical sleepwalker, content to languidly wander around his AOR / MOR surroundings rather than stretch and flex his muscles.

Of course his voice remains his greatest asset, possessing the apparent contradiction of being ostensibly thin and slight yet able to cut to the soul with telling effect. One thinks of exhilarating early years with the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic or the plaintive explorations of his debut self-titled solo of 1977 and it’s impossible not to be warmed by his quicksilver tones. Indeed, it’s this aspect of his work that has often carried material which would otherwise be anonymous and trivial in the hands of another artist.

“I’m Not Drowning”, a stripped-back blues shout limbers up nicely; Eric Clapton’s cameo kicks up the dust on “Dirty City”; “Raging Sea” (the second of three titles with aquatic allusions) surges with infectious licks, whilst “Fly” has a winsome charm that’s hard to resist.

Yet too often there’s a sense in which the individual components fail to connect effectively with each, separated in a cloying sheen of too-glossy production.

Perhaps the worst offender is “Other Shore.” A bedrock of bongos, supple interleaving guitar and bass, and a wash of keyboards sway prettily behind a lyric that speaks of being free and the exhilaration of life and love. At around three minutes a sax solo gets all smoochy but the backing remains conspicuously unmoved by its ardent overtures and advances. It should be moving but isn’t.

The trouble with all of this is the album as a whole is taken at the kind of velocity that makes the queue in the post office on pension day look positively racy. Whilst there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this record one can’t help feel that like so many recent Winwood albums that it could have been so much better.