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
Cibo Matto Stereo ★ Type A (CD, 1999) ** Genre: Japanese/American pop/rock Places I remember:The Music Box in Hastings Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Spoon Gear costume:Blue Train
Active compensatory factors: Cibo Matto (means crazy food in Italian) are a band centred around two Japanese musicians - Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori. By the time of this record the band also included Sean Lennon. What we have here on their second album is some creative alt pop. Actually forget the alt bit - it's superior pop and rock music from some gifted multi-instrumentalists. I'll confess that I only bought the CD because of the Lennon association (he was dating Yuka Honda at the time), but I'm pleased to report that the quirkiness of the music continued to hold my attention, even if I have no idea what they on about!
Where do they all belong? They reformed in 2011 and created a third album before calling it a day.
Bob DylanHard Rain(Vinyl and CD, 1976) ***** Genre: American pop/rock Places I remember:Marbecks Records (Auckland) Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Shelter From The Storm
Gear costume: Everything else. Active compensatory factors: Hard Rain is from 1976's Rolling Thunder Revue. Compare this to the fuller Rolling Thunder Revue concert found on the Bootleg series Vol 5 (Live 1975) and experience the difference. The light and airy atmosphere from 1975 is replaced by brooding malevolence in Hard Rain. The face makeup, cool hat and feathers have been replaced by scraggy beard and gypsy scarf! Stripped back from the artiface, the single version is raw power (and that gets dissipated over a double CD anyway). The versions here are well chosen - there's a snarl, snap, crackle about Idiot Wind that is largely kept in check on the studio version from Blood on the Tracks. Each song has been deconstructed, rearranged and then punk'd up into a rolling thunder menace. This is the Dylan album I want! It sits alongside John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Neil Young's Tonight's the Night in the honest emotion charts. Where do they all belong? Less is more. We now have a multi CD pack with a variety of RTR concerts to experience, but I'll be sticking with the brutal Hard Rain.
LambchopThis (Is What I Wanted To Tell You)(Download, 2019) ** Genre: American pop/rock Places I remember: An MNAC selection by Mr Lewis Kirkham Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You) Gear costume:Crossroads, Or What This Says About You Active compensatory factors: I'm new to Lambchop. Although I have heard their songs on compilations over the years, this is the first time I've listened to a whole album. This means, unlike Lew who has grown up with this music since pre teenagerhood, I don't have a real context to appreciate their music. An important distinction to keep in mind: my music appreciation began in the late sixties and I rate the 1971 t0 1977 period as my formative years. the time when it's MY music! As a 60something I now have a lot of musical baggage. I know what I like, in other words. That said, I'm happy that Lew suggested this album. It was about time I listened to an album released in 2019. It must be said that this 2019 version of Lambchop is a long way from their early Alt Country style which must have initially hooked Lew back in the mid nineties. As he's grown and matured, so have Lambchop. Lambchop now sounds very grown up! For me, the often sparse/ floaty instrumentation is cool, as are the sophisticated rhythms, but the electronica... I'm not a huge fan of this aspect: the urban doh/veet's in Everything For You grated and the vocoder treatment on the vocals did nothing for me I'm afraid. In fact, it's the vocal embellishments that progressively annoyed me. I found myself really aching to hear the songs in a rawer state. For that reason the title song is my favourite track. The hint of some muted trumpet (a 'real' instrument, rather than the electronic drums and blips and beeps) was also a welcome point of difference.
Where do they all belong? Definitely a worthwhile experience but without the history (this isn't MY music), it left me wanting to listen to my Golden Smog CDs!
Anderson Bruford Wakeman HoweAnderson Bruford Wakeman Howe(CD - Arista, 1989) *** Anderson Bruford Wakeman HoweAn Evening Of Yes Music Plus(CD - Fragile Records, 1993) **** Genre: Prog rock Places I remember: The Warehouse stores when they were interested in selling CDs Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles:Long Distance Turnaround
Gear costume:Brother Of Mine, Close To The Edge
Active compensatory factors: A recent issue of Prog magazine reminded me of this old set by former members of Yes, before they regrouped for the much maligned (but not by me) Union album. The studio set is quite dated sounding now, mainly thanks to Bruford's electronic artificial sounding drums. Now Bill Bruford is a great great drummer but this eighties sound is not his finest hour.
Instead I often return to the live set. Even though it has a Roger Dean cover, it's shoddily packaged. Indeed when I first got it I thought it was a bootleg! Starting off with acoustic instruments (for most of the first volume of this two volume CD set), it is a warm and engaging sound with some welcome twists to my established favourites like Long Distance Turnaround. Rick Wakeman follows Steve Howe with some solo turns and almost steals the show! A great Gone But Not Forgotten and Catherine Parr! When the full band kicks in it is with power and prog depth. If I want to listen to Close To The Edge (and I do more often than you'd think), I go to this version. Where do they all belong? As a one off in the Yes canon but an exciting, worthwhile one off!
Mark HollisMark Hollis(1998) **** Genre: UK pop/rock Places I remember: MNAC selection from Tom Kirkham (yes: THAT Tom Kirkham) Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: The Colour Of Spring (love how it emerges out of silence)
Gear costume:Inside Looking Out, Watershed Active compensatory factors: An extraordinary album! I like Talk Talk (Mark Hollis was the front man (played guitar, piano and sang), but this isn't much like Talk Talk - great in a different way: full of delicate sound patterns, minimalist at times, discordant in patches (but that resolves into interesting textures), beautiful piano driven songs that sound like glimpses of other things (David Crosby, Keith Jarrett, Blue Nile) but end up being uniquely Mark Hollis. Where do they all belong? He was a complicated character by all accounts but he left us with this - a perfect final word, delivered some 20 years before his death this year. That sounds weird right? And so it is. he basically retired from music (but not life) after this one and only solo album!
