Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence - ROBERT FRIPP.
Information is not knowledge;
knowledge is not wisdom;
wisdom is not truth;
truth is not beauty;
beauty is not love;
love is not music;
MUSIC IS THE BEST - FRANK ZAPPA.
I think we're a little happier when we have a little music in our lives - STEVE JOBS.
Music in the soul can be heard by the universe - LAO TZU.
Rock and Roll is fire, man. FIRE. - DAVID BRIGGS.
Music grips you, gets into your soul -
GEORGE MARTIN
StereophonicsWord Gets Around(CD - V2, 1997) *** StereophonicsPerformance and Cocktails(CD - V2, 1999) ** StereophonicsJust Enough Education To Perform(CD - V2, 2001) *** StereophonicsYou Gotta Go There To Come Back(CD - V2, 2003) *** Genre: Welsh pop/rock Places I remember: Record shop Central World Plaza in Bangkok, Fives (Leigh-on-sea)and HMV (Edinburgh and Oxford Street) Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles:Maybe Tomorrow
Gear costume:Traffic (Word Gets Around); Local Boy In The Photograph (WGA);
Active compensatory factors: We were living in Essex in 2004 and I had back catalogued from 2003's You Gotta Go There To Come Back, which I'd bought in Bangkok on the way to my first ever visit to the UK the year before. Which is why I've lumped the first four Stereophonics albums together. Keeping up in the back? At the time (2003), the title struck me as being particularly prescient, and I'd heard Local Boy In A Photograph on a compilation, and liked it a lot. So I took a punt. The song Maybe Tomorrow is responsible. I listened to YGGTTCB a lot on the plane ride from Bangkok to London to help quell my nerves. It had the right kind of melancholy longing and haunted wistfulness that matched my mood. In the end I was going home (to Rochdale) but that was fleeting and, as it turned out, unsustainable. Although it's not brilliant, when I got sorted in Leigh-on-sea I dug around and picked up the back catalogue. None are classics but there are enough individual brilliant songs scattered among each one to make me keep coming back for more.
While Word Gets Around is a really good debut, Performance and Cocktails, for me, suffers from classic second album syndrome (most of the time, Kelly Jones tries too hard). Third album Just Enough Education To Perform hits the mark with some classic pop and a more varied approach - Mr Writer and especially Have A Nice Day distinguish themselves. Which brings us back to where I started with Maybe Tomorrow. Where do they all belong? A swag of post YGGTTCB albums to come.
Arctic MonkeysFavourite Worst Nightmare(CD - Domino, 2007) *** Arctic MonkeysHumbug(CD - Domino, 2009) ** Genre: English pop/rock Places I remember: The Warehouse (New Plymouth) Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: This House is a Circus (FWN)
Gear costume: Fluorescent Adolescent/ Old Yellow Bricks (FWN), Fire and the Thud (Humbug)
Active compensatory factors: For me second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, is the band's high water mark, the fire. I like the guitar attack, the loudness which differentiated it from the debut, the melodic hooks, and the distinctiveness of the arrangements throughout the whole album. It's a winner all the way! Third album, Humbug, in comparison, was more about bass/drums thud, albeit with some interesting textures overlayed, and I stopped keeping up with the band from that point onwards. Where do they all belong? Even though Humbug changed the AM sound quite a bit, for me, the AM problem is how do they develop around those distinctive AM ticks (the Alex Turner vocals are so AM).
AC/DCIf You Want Blood You Got It(CD - Atlantic 1978) ***** Genre: Australian pop/rock Places I remember:Fives (Leigh-on-sea) Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: The 7.35 minutes of Bad Boy Boogie are tough to beat.
Gear costume:Riff Raff and Whole Lotta Rosie are larger than life! Active compensatory factors: A case can be made that Bon Scott is AC/DC. He's certainly my favourite AC/DC vocalist and this, my goo goo friends, is his finest hour. Live and strutting his stuff. Living it. Breathing it! But that would also be doing Angus Young a disservice. Along with Bon, Angus is the star attraction live. It's very hard to keep your eyes off him as he becomes Mr Perpetual Motion. His guitaring is feral wild and pure excitement. But that would also ignore the songs. On this set all the catchy riffs and vocals exist because the songs are great. Bottom line: my favourite AC/DC album. Full stop. Where do they all belong? Almost at the end of AC/DC mark 1 but fear not. There is more Bon Scott to come.
Mozart - BeethovenPiano Concertos #12 and 4(CD - Point Classics, 1994) *** Genre: Classical Places I remember:The Warehouse (Cambridge) Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles/Gear costume: Of the two I prefer the Mozart concerto, #12.
Active compensatory factors: Although I'm a complete philistine with classical music, I know what I like and I do prefer piano concertos to symphonies. I find them less bombastic, with less peaks and valleys and more pastorally prog rockish, I guess. Having said that, I do find the elaborate piano flourishes a little tough to take at times. Where do they all belong? In the small classical section. Next and last (I told you it was small) is some (tell) Tchaikovsky (the news).
Jesse CookNomad(CD - Norada/Virgin, 2003) *** Jesse CookFrontiers(CD - Virgin, 2007) *** Jesse CookThe Rumba Foundation(CD - EMI, 2009) *** Genre: World Places I remember: Virgin Megastores in Doha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai. Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: La Llorona (Frontiers)
Gear costume:Cecilia (The Rumba Foundation), It Ain't Me Babe (Frontiers).
Active compensatory factors: Canadian guitarist, Jesse Cook, is huge in the Middle East. His flamenco guitar has a number of Middle Eastern and European flavours and so I had no clue he was Canadian until I checked out his biography for this post. The tasteful Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel covers are the only nods to pop influences on these CDs - mostly some great Latin jazz style rhythms are the order of the day. Frontiers is the pick of the three studio albums featured here, in case you were wondering. Where do they all belong? He traverses a variety of genres - world, jazz, even pop at times but resides in the 'World' section of my collection.
Bob Marley and The WailersExodus(CD - Tuff Gong, 1977) ***** Genre: Reggae Places I remember: The Warehouse (Cambridge) Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles:Jammin'
Gear costume: Natural Mystic, Exodus, Three Little Birds Active compensatory factors: Why feature Jammin', you ask? The answer dates back to a performance by an Auckland reggae band at Mt Albert Grammar the year after I left school. A beautiful sunny day in 1977, and the school was having a gala. I went along, maybe with Greg? Not sure. We'd both had our final year at MAGS the year before and so, we'd been part of plans for the gala, or at least, the planning for it was in the air. What I am sure about is the brilliant song I heard that day from some anonymous band. I never found out their name but they did their version of Jammin' and it sounded amazing. Not only that, but seeing a joyful bunch of pacific island guys in dreads speaking of jah and other phrases foreign to my ears was something of an ear opener! Pretty sure this was my first experience of the cool reggae groove as well. I eventually found the source - Bob Marley and he's been soundtracking my summers ever since. For this album, Bob's singing sounds more mature, more confident to me. Where do they all belong? Next up, a clutch of live BM albums of variable quality.
George Bens0nBreezin'(CD - Warner Bros, 1976) *** Genre: Jazz Places I remember:The Warehouse, Hastings NZ Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles/ Gear costume:Breezin'
Active compensatory factors: When I was working for Marbecks Records during a 1981 University holiday, George Benson's double album The George Benson Collection came out. Oh my my! Did it go off!! We're talkin' mega!! I lifted a ton of those beasts onto the racks! At the time the smooth jazz guitar stylings were a bit too poppy for my tastes. Plus I had/have this thing about stuff that everybody is buying. Instead I picked up a compilation, in the Columbia Jazz Profiles series, that is much more to my taste, being pre-pop stardom Benson. Anyway. Breezin' had come out in the mid seventies and my old buddy (as in he's been a mate for yonks), Greg Knowles, taped a copy for me and I fell for the first few tracks, before the strings take over. It became a guilty pleasure of sorts. And now, here it is some 40 years later and I picked up a CD copy cheap from a clearance bin at a red shed. It still has that lovely glow of familiarity about it - a re-acquaintance with an old friend! Where do they all belong? George's pop/jazz niche is pretty much his own, so, kudos George. Next up it's back to Anouar Brahem in the jazz genre.
The song Maybe Tomorrow is responsible. I listened to YGGTTCB a lot on the plane ride from Bangkok to London to help quell my nerves.
