Geoff Arnold

Demythologizing the Beatles

The anniversary of John Lennon's death leads Andrew to remind us of an excellent - and lengthy - 2001 piece from Reason magazine: Still Fab by Charles Paul Freund. Of course I gre up with the Beatles and experienced them as a purely British English phenomenon. As a result, I've never had any reason to doubt the standard account of how the Beatles conquered America and revolutionized rock'n'roll. My mistake.

"But there's another nagging question raised by the new Beatlemania. Not just who are the Beatles now, but who were they then? New fans may be using the group for their own purposes, but then so did the original generation of fans. The years since the group's breakup have seen a lot of myth-making and obscuring, in order to fit them better into a pliable narrative of the era and its aftermath. It is worth pausing to listen to the group anew in the context of their own time, because there are some lost chords in their music waiting to sound again."

Essential reading on the Sony/BMG Rootkit fiasco

Here's a detailed account of the incompetence of Sony/BMG and First 4 Internet, the cowboys who wrote the brain-dead rootkit masquerading as DRM (digital rights management). From Mark's Sysinternals Blog, the bottom line: "Instead of admitting fault for installing a rootkit and installing it without proper disclosure, both Sony and First 4 Internet claim innocence. By not coming clean they are making clear to any potential customers that they are not only technically incompetent, but also dishonest."

And yes, they try the same trick on Macs too. Scumbags!

Random preparations

1. Rather than relying on phones while travelling, I hope to be using iChat AV a fair amount. I picked up an iSight camera for Merry to use with her iBook. Then yesterday and today I spent some time debugging video chat with Merry, Kate, and a colleague of mine who just happened to be in Singapore this weekend. Looks promising.

   (There was only one dumb ease-of-use issue: in order to video chat, it's necessary to open up five ports in the OS X firewall, and for some reason there's no preset configuration that you can simply check off. Instead you need to define a new profile associated with TCP ports 5060, 5190, 5297, 5298 and 5678. That didn't feel very Mac-like.)

2. On Friday I was talking with Jim Waldo (of Jini fame) and I mentioned an iTunes playlist of mine called Music to blow your speakers out. He dragged me back to his office and introduced me to Tool. I was blown away, in more senses than one: I've only known Jim as a jazz enthusiast, and Tool's Ænima was unexpected, to say the least. But I was intrigued, and this lunchtime, while running to the drug store to pick up a few items, I made a detour to Newbury Comics and picked up a copy of the CD. (Oddly it's not available through ITMS.) I've ripped it into iTunes and added it to my iPod; I'll listen to more of it over the Atlantic tonight.

3. Checking in. Well, trying to. I logged on to the British Airways website (after finally realizing which of the four or five ticket numbers and record locators to use), changed my seat on the BOM-LHR leg (no more 53J!), and then tried to check in. And tried. And waited, and tried again. After receiving a number of different error messages, I finally received a vaguely catatonic "Unfortunately our systems are not responding at this time." Oops.

4. In spite of my earlier intentions, I decided not to get up to watch the Chinese GP. I didn't even record it. (No, I don't have a TiVo.) A pity - it would have been interesting to see Montoya's car being ripped apart by a manhole cover (or grating, whatever), not to mention the delicious schadenfreude of watching Schumacher making a fool of himself twice in a single race (the first time before the race had even started!).

CD of the... oh, never mind: Tales from Turnpike House by Saint Etienne

Back in the early 1990s I was a huge fan of Saint Etienne. Their first two albums Foxbase Alpha and So Tough showed up regularly in my car cassette player; songs like "You're in a bad way" and "Kiss and make up" had an infectious appeal. (And of course there was their wonderful version of Neil Young's "Only love can break your heart".) There were four main influences - Style Council's jazzy cool pop, Brian Wilson's songwriting, 1960's Brit-girl pop such as that of Sandy Shaw and Cilla Black, and South London - woven together by Wiggs' effortless electronica and Sarah Cracknell's girl-next-door voice. (Their work remixed really well - check out Casino Classics, with remixes by all the big names of the late 90s.)

I bought almost all of their work (I was a completist - remember?), including the highs ("He's on the phone") and the lows (Good Humor), until a few years ago when I thought that they'd lost their way. Now comes Tales from Turnpike House, a lovely concept album about suburban London that makes me want to jump on a plane to Heathrow Gatwick. Gorgeous songs, from the very first tracks "Sun in my morning" and "Milk bottle symphony". And then track 11, the outstanding "Teenage winter", which is possibly the best thing they've ever done. (See this Stylus review for more thoughts on this.)

(N.b. For some reason, this hasn't been released in the US; my copy is an imported "Special Edition" from the UK that I found at Tower Records. I've been enjoying the album itself so much that I haven't even had a chance to listen to the bonus disc, Up the Wooden Hill.)

That concert: a gloriously mixed bag

The first thing to say was that the Boulder Philharmonic were excellent throughout. The "mixed bag" refers to the choice of pieces, not the quality of the playing. And the guest conductor (and candidate director), Leslie Dunner did a very nice job. So let's look at the music.

• Sibelius Andante Festivo
  I have to confess that for me Sibelius is something of a "two-hit wonder". Both Finlandia and the Karelia Suite are the kind of pieces where everything just works and the result is an instant classic. The Andante Festivo has many of Sibelius trademark elements, but although I enjoyed this performance I wasn't seized by it.
• Brahms Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, Op.77 (Corey Cerovsek, violin)
  WOW! Cerovsek was absolutely thrilling: infectious energy, dazzling technique, and complete command of the piece. I was trying to think of the last violinist who affected me in this way, but although I can see and hear her - a veteran of the English establishment, playing with the dash of someone half her age, we saw her with the BSO a few years ago - I can't remember her name at this moment. [UPDATE: Ida Haendel, of course!] Anyway, this was the most glorious classical performance I've been to in quite a few years. If you get a chance to see Corey Cerovsek, grab it!
• Nielsen Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, 'The Inextinguishable'
  How frustrating! There's a lovely symphony in here, trying to get out. (And as Rick pointed out, it almost succeeds in the last half of the third movement.) But back in 1916, when this appeared, Nielsen was clearly trying to make a political point, with the various themes competing with one another, interrupting, warping the tempo, and successfully (if heavy-handedly) conveying a world of conflict. Eighty-nine years ago it might have been shocking, but since then we've had everything from Shostakovich and Stockhausen to the Sex Pistols. Since the piece can no longer shock, it remains as a collection of unfinished gems without a setting (in Rick's nice image). Oh, well.

Euphoria

Back in the 1980s* there was an electronic composer called Larry Fast who performed under the name Synergy. Since few record labels were interested, he started his own, Audion. I bought a number of Audion recordings (on cassette), including some by Synergy and a couple by an English keyboard/programming wizard called Garry Hughes. The latter's work really grabbed me; it reminded my of one of my favorite American synth instrumentalists, David Van Tieghem (who was on Private Music).

Time passed, and Audion failed, as most independent labels are destined to do. In the late 1990s I looked around to see if Gary Hughes' and David Van Tieghem's work was still available. David showed up at MP3.COM (remember them?), and I bought all of his CDs. Garry Hughes... nothing. A few comments on music discussion lists about "whatever happened to...", but the trail was cold.

Last weekend I was going through a massive "media reorganization" at home: disposing of tons of books, moving CDs from racks to storage chests**, and so forth. At the bottom of a pile of forgotten stuff, I came across the Garry Hughes cassettes. I put them aside with the intention of eventually ripping them into iTunes, and that evening I decided to do a serious web search to find out what had happened to him. Fortunately the spelling of Garry with two r's is relatively rare, and I started to come across references to a producer by that name. Further searching revealed that he'd produced a group called Euphoria in 1999, and it then turned out that he was also a member of the group. Was it the same guy? According to Amazon.com, "Euphoria make slide-groove "guitronica," blending spacey beats with looping spoken word, breathy vocals, multilayered guitar wash, and intense yet playful drum and keyboard programming." A possible confirmation: one of my favorite Garry Hughes tracks was a piece called Inkstick, which features a sample of a woman saying, breathily, "I quite like that sound", over and over.

It turned out that the first, eponymous album by Euphoria was available through iTunes. One short sample was promising, so I plonked down my electronic dosh and bought the whole album.*** It's wonderful, with contributions from some of my favorite musicians and composers (Anne Dudley from Art of Noise, pedal steel wizard B. J. Cole, and Roy Babbington from Soft Machine). The basic sound comes from the interplay between Ken Ramm's slide guitar and Garry Hughes' programming. (And if it's not the same Garry Hughes, the coincidence is remarkable.) Highly recommended. In fact I think I'll just download their second album, Beautiful My Child....

--
* I may have got some of the history wrong; I haven't researched it recently. Corrections are welcomed.
** If the music is all on computer and iPod, may as well store the original CDs out of the way.
*** Some time I must write about how iTunes has finally killed the idea of deferred gratification.

Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra

This weekend I'm going to set work aside and immerse myself in Boulder. Tonight I met some old friends for dinner and a stroll along the Pearl Street Mall. Tomorrow evening I'm going to a concert by the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leslie Dunner:

• Sibelius Andante Festivo
• Brahms Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, Op.77 (Corey Cerovsek, violin)
• Nielsen Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, 'The Inextinguishable'

7:30pm at the Macky Auditorium. As for Sunday... well, we'll just have to see.

Everything, everything

Over on the Al Stewart mailing list, there's been a discussion of the forthcoming boxed set by EMI. Many of the list members already own everything in the set, including the "unreleased" and "alternate" versions, so the obvious question is, do you buy it, and if so why? My comment:

I used to be a completist - everything by Al, everything by the Legendary Pink Dots, everything by the Pet Shop Boys, everything by Faithless.... But as John Cleese put it in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "I got better." I think what did it was the torrent of "Dick's Picks..." live recordings of the Grateful Dead; I realized that I didn't need eight different versions of "Franklin's Tower". From there it was a short step to giving up my ambition of collecting every single different remix of "West End Girls". Subsequent recovery was uneventful.

Besides, I couldn't bear to think of myself as the kind of anorak whose Last Will and Testament proudly bequeathes: "my entire collection of Freddie and the Dreamers records to my dearly beloved grand-nephew Cyril, knowing that he will treasure them as I have".

(You may recognize the subject line as the title of a CD by Underworld. I own this CD; in fact I think I have everything that they've released. Oh, well.)

Audioscrobbler

I've started using an interesting web service called Audioscrobbler to publish information on the music I'm listening to. It works like this. You install a software agent (plugin) that knows how to interrogate your preferred digital music player to find out what's playing. In my case, that means running the plugin for iTunes on Mac OSX, but most popular software is supported. Periodically the plugin uploads the list of tracks you've played to the audioscrobbler server, which builds a page for each user (here's mine) showing what they've listened to recently, plus a bunch of statistics. (If you're off the net, the plugin caches the information until you reconnect.) The server also calculates affinity groups, and shows you recommendations based on what other people who like the same music you do are listening to.

But this is a security risk, isn't it? After all, who knows what information the plugin might be sucking off your system? Well, actually, I know! All of the plugins are open source, and I was able to read through the source code for the plugin to verify its behaviour before I installed it. And although this isn't proof of good intentions, the raw data is available under a Creative Commons license. In fact a colleague of mine is using the data in a research project.

So now you can see what I'm listening to, on my Mac or on my iPod. One warning: I'm having iTunes play through some of my favourite material each night, just to load a statistically meaningful dataset. So if it looks as if I'm listening to stuff when I ought to be sleeping, relax. Anyway, right now it's working through my Captain Beefheart collection: it's up to "Safe As Milk" on Strictly Personal. An awesome track....

Sad songs say so much

From Friday's Guardian Review, "Tom Reynolds, author of I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard... offers his top 25 miserable tracks." A classic list, including such ghastly dirges as Tell Laura I Love Her and Seasons in the Sun, as well as Bobby Goldsboro's excruciating Honey:

The world's wordiest dead wife song, Honey is jammed full of blooming flowers, puffy clouds, singing robins, planted trees, and a puppy, all of which just make you want to swallow a hand grenade. The narrator mourns Honey, his deceased spouse, while condescendingly describing her as kinda dumb and kinda smart. If you feel inclined to listen to Honey, please drink heavily and then bale out after Honey dents the car. Otherwise, you'll get hit with angels carrying Honey away and clouds crying on flower beds. You won't make it out with your senses intact. It is that bad.

(Via When Last We Left Our Intrepid Heroine... in Iraq.)

PT@Somerville

A good show by Porcupine Tree. The band was really tight, though Steven Wilson's voice was a bit weak at times, as if he was getting over a cold. Fortunately John Wesley's harmonies filled out the vocals nicely. They did a number of songs from the new album "Deadwing", of course, but mixed in plenty of older stuff. Last time I saw them (at the Berklee in Boston) the best number of the evening - most energy, most inventive solos - was "Russia on Ice". This time it was "Hate Song": absolutely stunning. Both of those are from the "Lightbulb Sun" album, which is one of their strongest collections. And I was delighted by another oldie: a lovely performance of "Even Less", which is a personal favourite.

[UPDATE] The opening act was Tunnels, English, electronic vibes/bass/drums, fusion instrumentals, vaguely Soft Machine-ish. Not bad, not where my head was at. The PT setlist was: Deadwing // Sound of Muzak // Lazurus // Shallow // A Smart kid // Hatesong // Arriving somewhere but not here // Fadeaway // Halo // The start of something beautiful // Blackest Eyes // Even Less // ENCORE: Shesmovedon // Trains

at porcupine tree

grabbed some dinner at a tapas bar, and i'm now in the somerville theatre, waiting for the porcupine tree show to start.... blogging on my treo. good crowd, very mixed (unlike the LPD where most folks are goth). and yes, I remembered to buy earplugs!

The new Al Stewart album

Just listening to tracks from the new Al Stewart album, "Beach Full of Shells" on a great Internet radio station: Radio Frontiers. A nice mix of old and new Al music, and a nice crowd on the IRC chat. The DJ, Peter, is repeating it on Saturday; I'll find out the exact schedule and update this. (UPDATE: 1pm EST.) No special software needed, really: I'm using iTunes. (Oskar reports that WinAMP with the MP3Pro plugin is crisper.)

One song?

So I've got one free iTunes song from Apple. What should I get?

NP: Hang on Little Tomato

Discovered in Provincetown last weekend: Hang on Little Tomato by Pink Martini. As an Amazon reviewer put it, "Somewhere between a 1930s Cuban dance orchestra, a classical chamber music ensemble, a Brazilian marching street band and Japanese film noir is the 12-piece Pink Martini." The title track from Pink Martini's last album, Sympathique, also shows up on another CD that I bought at the same time: Hotel Costes: Best of Costes, selected and mixed by Stéphane Pompougnac.

[However those who think I may be getting too deep into this "lounge" stuff can relax: the new albums by Porcupine Tree and Al Stewart are on the way....]

Caught by the marketing machine: Moby "Hotel"

On the strength of a slick sampler download from iTunes, I bought Moby's new album "Hotel". Oh dear. (British understatement, that.) Kelefa Sanneh wrote an unsparing review of the album in today's New York Times: This music isn't just dull, though. Like much of what Moby has produced since "Play," it's condescending, too. Much of it sounds like the work of a producer who thinks pop music is supposed to be kind of idiotic, and who thinks pop audiences should be glad that he deigns to give us what we want. Do we like sex? O.K., here's "I Like It," four singularly unpleasant minutes of heavy breathing. Do we like songs about how the world is happy and sad and good and bad? O.K., here's "Slipping Away," with a wispy beat and Moby crooning, "Open to everything, happy and sad/Seeing the good when it's all going . . ." - you can finish the couplets yourself. And, knowing that we like familiarity, Moby has his collaborator, Laura Dawn, sing a slowed-down version of the New Order hit "Temptation."

Fortunately, my car has a 6-disc CD changer, so it was a matter of a click of a button to get away from this stuff to music with real soul - Final Straw by Snow Patrol, or Sunday 8 PM by Faithless. And now Chris tells me I should pay attention to The Futureheads, and from the videos on the website he's right. And the Pickle thinks I should dive into the Avenue Q Soundtrack and accept that It Sucks To Be Me and Everyone's A Little Bit Racist. So much music, so little time.

SXSW Music

Steve turned me on to the massive BitTorrent download of new music sponsored by the south by southwest festival. Although I'm not a regular BT user, I cranked it up and downloaded all 2.75GB. It took three days. (And yes, I left BT running to share nicely.)

This morning I dragged it all into iTunes. 714 songs, 1.9 days playing time! Who's got time to listen to all of that? However, over (extended) breakfast and (several cups of) coffee, I managed to scan most of it. (I know it can be unfair to judge on the basis of the first few seconds, but when you also consider the artist's name, the song title, and genre....) I kept a window open to the SXSW Showcase page so I could follow up on particularly interesting artists.

From that vast collection, here are the 20 songs that caught my attention. If it looks as if I was biased... well, yes: the women singer-songwriters in this collection were very strong; the "pop", "rock", and "punk" offerings (though frequently mis-classified) were less distinctive. But there's all sorts of music here - you might be surprised. Enjoy:

"Betty" by The Lascivious Biddies
"Moving Pictures, Silent Films" by the Great Lake Swimmers
"I Do Dream You" by Jennifer Gentle
"Silver Screen Demos" by Jesca Hoop
"Move On" by Jessie and Layla
"Old Fashion Morphine" by Jolie Holland
"Not Going Anywhere" by Keren Ann
"Nutopia" by Meg Lee Chin
"mudpies and gasoline" by Patricia Vonne
"Take the Long Way" by Po' Girl
"Into My Heart" by Rachel Fuller
"Television" by Robyn Hitchcock
"Anonyme" by Samadha
"hard road" by The Shore
"Building a Road" by Spottiswoode and His Enemies
"I'm On My Way" by Theresa Andersson
"lie in the sound" by Trespassers William
"Beautiful Dawn" by The Wailin' Jennys
"The Ghost of the Girl in the Well" by the Willard Grant Conspiracy
"Mannequin" by The Witnesses

(You can also stream or download individual tracks from SXSW.)

deadwing

Oh joy, oh bliss.

From the News section of the Porcupine Tree website:

The new Porcupine Tree album Deadwing is released on 28th March by Warner Music in Europe, and on 19th April by Lava in the US. [...] There are guest appearances by Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth, and Adrian Belew of King Crimson.

The European tour starts at the end of March, and a US tour will commence in mid May.

You can download a 19MB QT video mashup of some of the tracks from the album here; the single Shallow is on iTunes. And I just received email from Ticketmaster:

Porcupine Tree
Somerville Theatre, Somerville
Wed, 05/18/05 8:00pm
On Sale Fri, 03/11/05 10:00am

(Thanks for the corrections from the men from the ministry....)

CD of the week: "The Best of Groove Armada"

A couple of days ago I was checking out late night TV shows in England when I came across a video of a concert with a really exciting and energetic band. I didn't know who it was, but the singers (a soulful woman and a stunning rapper) had the crowd in their hands, and one of the keyboard players would occasionally step out front to play trombone. I watched, mesmerized. At the end of the program, I saw that the name of the group was Groove Armada. For some reason I'd never heard of them before, even though they've been around for at least six years. (The official web site is a little spartan; try the BBC profile instead - at least unless and until the Beeb's web goes away.)

Anyway I picked up a copy of their "Best of" CD at Heathrow this afternoon, ripped it into iTunes and transferred it to my iPod so I could listen to it on the flight home. Very tasty. Recommended.

CD of the week: The Who Live at Leeds: Deluxe Edition

I was hunting through the bazillion tracks on my iPod looking for something, and I stumbled on Magic Bus by The Who. One thing led to another... I found myself with a long drive through holiday traffic, and I had a new iTrip which allowed me to listen to the iPod though the car radio, so I cued up the incomparable deluxe edition of Live at Leeds and let it rip.

I bought the original, single LP version of the album many moons ago when I was still a student. Of course the new version includes a complete live performance of Tommy, as well as several additional classic Who tracks. Definitely one of the great live albums, right up there with Live/Dead, disc 1 of Umma-Gumma, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!, and Wheels of Fire.

Eminem's "Mosh"

I finally got a chance to watch the politically-charged video for Eminem's "Mosh". I'm not a big rap fan, although I really like Maxie Jazz and Faithless, and I've never gone for Eminem (even if Elton John has exonerated him). However Mosh really worked for me. It's powerful, and absolutely spot-on. A precision-guided musical weapon headed for the White House. Crank up the volume, check it out, get angry, and VOTE.

RIP: John Peel

Starting in the late 1960s, John Peel introduced a generation of British radio listeners - including me - to wondrous and strange "underground" music: Captain Beefheart, the Incredible String Band, Country Joe and the Fish, and many, many more. (Who can forget the Purple Gang's "Granny Takes A Trip", an innocent little ditty whose title was guaranteed to get a rise out of BBC management?) He even started his own record label, Dandelion, to give a chance to college bands like Principal Edwards' Magic Theatre. And the wonderful thing was that he wasn't stuck in one era: he was always looking ahead, introducing listeners to the unexpected, for nearly 40 years.

On my last trip to England, I was driving down the M40 and tuned in to a talk radio show which seemed to defy all the rules for the genre. It juxtaposed topics in a head-spinning way: the silly, the sad, the ecstatic, and the profound. The host's voice seemed familiar, but I was concentrating on my driving, and so.... And then at the end I learned that it was John Peel, in a non-musical role, and I realised why the program had challenged conventions. Because he always did. Thanks, John. And goodbye.

Update: Chris just posted a nice piece with a link to John Peel's favourite song, Teenage Kicks by the Undertones.

Update: The radio show was Home Truths. You can listen to a tribute issue of this wonderful program at the BBC Radio 4 website.

Two CDs of the week: "Blackfield" and "Speak"

It's like waiting for a bus... you hang around for ages, and then along come several. Well, in this case the waiting has been for the mail from England, which finally delivered two very special CDs with one thing in common: Steven Wilson.

In the USA, Steven Wilson is best known as the leader of Porcupine Tree, the progressive and increasingly heavy rock band that began with some home produced tracks with a fictitious back-story and has now become a major force, with albums such as The Sky Moves Sideways, Signify and In Absentia. But in Europe, he was always better known for a variety of collaborations with different artists using different names. Which leads us to today's crop.

First up is Blackfield, a new project by Steven and Aviv Geffen. The songs are simple, short, direct, and beautiful; the sound is that of Lightbulb Sun-era Porcupine Tree, with full, sensual arrangements. Deeply satisfying. The album is short - ten songs, just over 30 minutes - and there's a bonus CD with two new tracks plus a live version of Cloudy Now and an MPEG video of the title track.

The second album is Speak by No-Man. Tim Bowness and Steven Wilson have been No-Man since the late 1980s, and this material first appeared on cassette back in 1989, long before they had a recording contract or a sense of where they were going! Although unmistakably by the same artists who gave us the rich soundscapes and tone poems of Flower Mouth and Returning Jesus, Speak is more eclectic, less structured. Fragments of melodies, rhythms, and "found sounds" of indefinite provenance sweep in and disappear as if dissipated by a sudden breeze, while Tim's quietly insistent words pull you in. I have all of No-Man's later work; it's good to be able to hear their roots.

Blackfield has been released in the USA, but No-Man recordings are hard to find. The best source is Burning Shed Records in England.

October Project @ Capo's

What a perfect end to a lousy week! I've been sick since Monday (probably a bug I picked up at the offsite in Washington DC), and not until Friday afternoon did I finally start to feel human. This morning, I woke with a feeling of pent-up energy and anticipation: I was going to see October Project. And I just did.

You may remember October Project from the two wonderful albums that they released on Epic Records back in 1993 and 1995. The combination of magical songs by Julie Flanders and Emile Adler and the ethereal yet powerful vocals of Mary Fahl and Marina Belica wowed many fans: their live performances were pure dynamite, and the albums still keep selling. I saw them twice, once in an acoustic set and once in high-octane electric, with guitarist Julian Coryell blasting them into orbit. Inexplicably (at least to someone not in the music biz) they were dropped by Epic, and went through a turbulent time. Mary Fahl left, eventually producing a solo album that was OK, but nothing like as good as OP. Marina (decembergirl) made a nice solo EP and an intriguing instrumental album. Julie and Emile worked with several lead vocalists and backing musicians under the name November Project, and released one promising EP, A Thousand Days, which is almost like an October Project album, but.... I saw one of these line-ups at Johnny D's in Somerville, and wondered whether or not it was going to work out. It didn't.

At last, what many fans had hoped for came to pass: Julie, Emile and Marina got back together to re-form October Project. In the new line-up, Marina handles lead vocals with Julie singing harmony. Is it the same as Mary and Marina? No. Does it matter? Not really. The key to OP has always been the combination of the singers and the songs: the magic is holistic - forget reductionism. I can't imagine anyone covering an OP song, and I can't imagine OP singing anyone else's material.

The new OP has released one excellent 6-song EP, Different Eyes, and is working on a new album, albeit without a recording contract. (I wish that they'd try the approach that Marillion used to finance their last two albums: getting fans to "pre-buy" the album over the Internet. But I digress.) Meanwhile they continue to play live with a variety of instrumentalists, mostly around their home base of New York City.

Which brings us to tonight's concert at Capo's in Lowell, Mass. It was the first time I'd been there, and from a look at their calendar I suspect I'll be back. The opening act was an interesting singer/songwriter from Vermont, Gregory Douglass. The friends I was with really liked him, but he wasn't quite my cup of tea. Never mind, I was glad of the chance to hear him.

The core trio of OP - Marina, Julie, and Emil - was augmented by three instrumentalists; I got the impression that this was the first time they'd all performed together. Martha Colby played cello. That probably gives the wrong impression; let me try again. Martha Colby played LEAD CELLO. HEAVY METAL CELLO. Think J.J.Cale's viola on the Velvet Underground. I could imagine Martha jamming with Porcupine Tree. Don't mess with Martha. (Plus it was her birthday.) Craig Benelly was on guitar. And a Boston-area friend of the band, Joey G., handled percussion. [If I've got any details wrong I hope Marina will correct me.] As usual, Emil played keyboards and added vocal harmony.

The concert was wonderful. I didn't write down the setlist, but they did at least a dozen numbers, followed by a three-song encore. They did all of the "greatest hits": Ariel, Falling Farther In, Take Me As I Am, Sunday Morning Yellow Sky, and Bury My Lovely. They did five of the songs from the recent EP, including See With Different Eyes and If I Turn Away. And they introduced a number of new songs. When I see a group for the first time in years, I always have a slight feeling of trepidation about new songs. "Do they still have the touch? Will they be up to the standard of the songs I've loved for so many years?" Well, as an Australian would say, "No worries, mate!" The new songs are OP at their finest. Two stood out in particular. The first was a moving story of a woman who finds that she was adopted, and who travels to meet her birth mother. The second was what I hope will be the title track of the new album: This Is For You. It contains some of Julie's most compelling and poignant words, in a deceptively simple and quite beautiful setting. Marina sang it perfectly, effortlessly. It brought forth a standing ovation from the wildly enthusiastic audience.

Thanks, OP, for one of the best concerts I've ever been to. And thank you Marina for our conversation afterwards. I can't wait for the album.

Morning-after update: Some particularly memorable moments:
- Emil explaining how the Sesame Street theme evolved into the music for Bury My Lovely.
- The special gleam in Julie's eyes as she sang Always.
- Martha's solo at the end of Sunday Morning Yellow Sky.
- Everybody singing Hey Jude to celebrate John Lennon's 64th birthday.
- Ariel. 'Nuff said.

CD of the week: "Stripped" by the Rolling Stones

Really brief this time - I have to get to bed; I'm supposed to be on a 5:30am flight from BOS to PHL tomorrow morning. (Customer visit.)
I'm an "early Stones" kind of guy: I'm afraid that I lost interest after Sticky Fingers. The great thing about this live-in-the-studio album Stripped is that they get back to their roots without a trace of sentimentality. They absolutely rip into Street Fighting Man and never let up. Great blues, kick-ass rock. Even Angie sounds good - much better than the original version. Essential stuff - and the multimedia content is nicely done too.

CD of the Week: Bob Dylan's "Live 1966"

1966. How old was I - 15, 16? Just starting 6th Form at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. (I was in 6T1, taking maths, physics, and economics - a combination that drove my teachers crazy.) I was listening to more classical music than pop, folk, or rock. I was most aware of the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and Manfred Mann. However there were a number of American artists getting my attention - the Byrds, who had hit with Mr. Tambourine Man the year before, and then the Beach Boys, the Mamas and Papas, and the Supremes. (The last three mostly because my best friend John Hughes never stopped playing them, and I spent a lot of time at his house hanging out with his sister, Gwyneth... but I digress.)

And then there was Bob Dylan. From my perspective, he made an almost magical transformation: one minute he was a conventional socially-conscious folk singer, hanging out with Joan Baez and the Greenwich Village folk crowd; the next, he'd become a surrealistic poet. I didn't have any connection to the beat scene; I didn't listen to jazz, but enigmatic poetry was cool. Burroughs. Ferlinghetti. Ginsberg. Brautigan. Even Gerard Manley Hopkins (ignoring the religious metaphors - how pretentious). With no Google to help, I carefully transcribed the lyrics to Desolation Row and Ballad of a Thin Man, and marvelled at them. Was there some deep meaning there, or were the immediate impressions the beginning and end of it? At 15, such questions can seem profound... and perhaps they still are. No matter.

For Dylan's early fans, his "plugging in" was a really big deal. Not so to me: Dylan, along with Simon and Garfunkel, Laura Nyro, and Leonard Cohen, was primarily a poet, and in my teenage head "poetry" and "pop music" were quite distinct categories. It took a couple of years for that to break down. The Beatles didn't do it - they were sui generis - but albums like the Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow" started the rot, and with "Electric Ladyland" Jimmy Hendrix blew the doors down. And of course one of the songs on that album that did the damage was All Along The Watchtower - that guy Dylan again.

Bootleg albums? Of course: every self-respecting student in the late 60s and early 70s had a couple of bootlegs in their record collection. And I remember that I had the chance to buy the most frequently bootlegged Dylan recording: the legendary "Royal Albert Hall" set. But at the time my interests were elsewhere: I chased Cream, and Led Zeppelin's "Blueberry Hill" instead.

Fast forward 35 years: I find myself reading a review of the official CD release of Dylan's "Royal Albert Hall '66" set. It turns out that it was actually recorded at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester (a venue with fond memories, but that's another story - maybe). And according to all the critics, it's one of the best live rock'n'roll recordings of all time. So last week I bought it. And the critics were right. It's the best. (I guess I forgot the pantheon: Dylan, Lennon, Hendrix, Miles. Only one left....)

I sit here, trying to remember what it was like to listen to Dylan when I was 15, and then hearing the sheer presence in this live recording. The imagery of Desolation Row is still as powerful, and enigmatic, and breathtaking as ever. And when my guard is down, Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat sneaks up on me, and I find myself savouring the glorious absurdity of:
You know it balances on your head
Just like a mattress balances
On a bottle of wine
Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat

What a time.

More on Great War poetry

In my earlier piece on Some Corner of a Foreign Field I forgot to mention that one of the poems is The Volunteer by Robert Service. I also have a powerful collection of Service's wartime poems set to music by Country Joe McDonald, called War, War, War. It came out in 1971, was briefly reissued on CD in 1995, and is well worth getting hold of. The most gut-wrenching piece is the last: The March of the Dead (and yes, I know that this is about the Boer War, not the Great War - but the sentiment is timeless).

Speaking of Country Joe, check out the new song by the Country Joe Band, Cakewalk to Baghdad. It's a cheerful little ditty in the spirit of the immortal I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag [audio]; and as they sing, it's Easy to cakewalk in ... not so easy to cakewalk out.

CD of the week: "Some Corner of a Foreign Field"

Because of the rehosting activity, I missed last week's CD of the week posting. I'll try to catch up...

This week's CD is a little unusual, even for me. You can't buy it in music stores, or at Amazon.com. I found it at a British goods shop in Newburyport, MA, along with the tea towels, Marmite, beer mugs, and Burbury coats. It's produced by a small company in Worton, Oxfordshire called Classical Communications, that seems to specialize in "bespoke" CDs for musems and corporate customers. It's run by a guy called Martin Souter, and this particular CD seems to have been a labour of love for him.

Some Corner of a Foreign Field is a collection of poems and music from the Great War of 1914-1918. It runs the emotional gamut, from fiercely patriotic to deeply cynical, from whimsical to heartbreaking. Some of the pieces are familiar - Kipling's Recessional, Rupert Brooke's The Soldier. Others are wholly new, at least to me - Philip Johnstone's deeply sarcastic High Wood about postwar battlefield tourism, Edward Thomas's As the team's head brass, and Eleanor Farjeon's Easter Monday. Perhaps the ones that touched me most unexpectedly were AA Milne's throwaway piece OBE and May Cannan's The Armistice.

The music consists mostly of contemporary (and hence very scratchy) recordings of such songs as We don't want to lose you (but we think you ought to go), If you were the only girl in the world (followed by the sarcastic If you were the only Bosch in the trench), A Mademoiselle from Armentiers (NOT followed by one of the ribald variations that I suspect are better known than the original), and Roses are shining in Picardy. The final sequence of poems is beautifully linked by passages from Elgar's Nimrod and Mozart's Adagio from Clarinet Concerto.

I'm not sure why this CD has grabbed me so strongly. In part, I suspect, it's because of the power of the poetry: I've always thought that the Great War galvanized a generation of poets to produce some of the finest English poetry ever written. I wonder, too, about certain similarities between the war of 90 years ago and that of today. Of course they were tremendously different; yet both wars were marked by leadership of extraordinary stupidity and vanity, and by a reckless disregard for the waste of life.

I wonder what poetry this century's folly will produce?

CD extra: "As Smart As We Are" by One Ring Zero

I saw a reference to As Smart As We Are on Neil Gaiman's blog. I'm a sucker for the musically bizarre (as a teenager I was a great fan of Captain Beefheart), and the idea of a book/CD with lyrics by people as diverse as Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Rick Moody, and Neil Gaiman, set to klezmer music (well... sort of) was irresistible.

And it is. It's bloody brilliant.

Further description could never do it justice. Listen for yourself. There are some MP3 samples on the website. But be aware of what a poor Amazon.com reviewer found:

Alas, while there are indeed some outstandingly clever pieces, a fair number of selections are R-rated, with vulgar and profane language and subject matter. I was looking for Monet and found Maplethorpe ! It is an unfortunate juxtaposition of 19th century instrumentals with the lyrics and subject matter of rap.

And the crowd went wild....

CD of the week: "The Best of Both Worlds" by Marillion

I'm going to be brief on this one, because it doesn't need much explanation. I've been a Marillion fan since the late 1980s: I think it was my son, Chris, who introduced me to Script for a Jester's Tear and Misplaced Childhood. Like many others, I found an echo of an earlier love in this music: it harkened back to the original Genesis* and albums such as Trespass and Nursery Cryme. (For me, Invisible Touch is the nadir, not the apotheosis of Genesis' work. But I digress.)

Part of the magic of the first incarnation of Marillion (from 1982 to 1988) was the slightly-manic presence of Fish, the lead vocalist. When he left, many wondered if the band would survive, and the first new release with Steve Hogarth, Season's End seemed to confirm our fears: it was closer to pop than prog. But gradually the new band forged a new identity, and albums such as Brave and Afraid of Sunlight were eagerly snapped up. The two most recent albums, Anoraknophobia and Marbles, were self-produced by the band, financed by advanced orders from tens of thousands of fans (including me).

This album is a double CD of their work on EMI. The first CD covers the Fish era, including classics like Assassing, Kayleigh, and Warm Wet Circles. The second covers the Steve Hogarth ("H") period up to 1997, including The Univited Guest, Waiting to Happen, and Afraid of Sunlight. (It also includes the execrable Hooks in You, but that's what the SKIP button is for.)

If you want to understand Marillion past and present, this is a great collection. If you just want to plunge in and experience today's Marillion, I'd recommend the 2002 release Anorak in the UK Live instead.
---
* The Genesis line-up with Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Steve Hackett, and Phil Collins

CD of the week: Soul Calibur II Soundtrack

OK, this one is weird.

I enjoy videogames, although I'm not very good at them. I don't want to have to learn lots of complicated stuff in order to play. If learning is required, I'd rather apply it to something a bit more important. That's why I gave up on Final Fantasy X; I couldn't be bothered to learn how to play three-dimensional water-polo, with complicated rules, just for a game.

Some years ago I saw the original Soul Calibur game on the Sega Dreamcast, and I was mesmerised. It's a 3D fighting game: oriental swords, axes and nunchuks rather than fists or guns, and characters ranging from hulking monsters, to ninjas, to anime-style Japanese schoolgirl heroines. (And then there's Voldo, of course.) Gorgeous graphics, good A.I., playable at various levels from mindless "button-mashing" to intricate 10-click combination moves. I bought a Dreamcast just to play Soul Calibur. Eventually my Dreamcast died, Sega got out of the console business, and I put it all behind me.

Recently Sega released Soul Calibur II on all the major consoles, and I bought a PlayStation 2 just to play it. (OK, I do play a few other games, but 90% of the time it's SC2.) Visually, it's gorgeous. Playability is perhaps a little inferior to the original, but there are some nice new modes to explore.

But one of the aspects that really grabbed me was the music. (Yes, this really is a CD of the week entry!) It borrows familar themes from the original Soul Calibur, but there's a lot of wonderful new music. Eventually I bought a Japanese import of the soundtrack on eBay.

So what kind of music is it? It's a glorious pastiche: an amalgam of all kinds of musical styles, from John Williams-style triumphal marches to dark atmospheric passages that might have escaped from the Twilight Zone, to pastoral tone-poems. At times it's a bit reminiscent of Sibelius' Karelia Suite. And it draws upon musical styles (or, more often, cliches) from all around the world - flamenco from Spain (oddly the theme for a French swordsman), swirling music from an Ottoman bazaar, and characteristic pieces from China, Korea, and Japan. And the major themes are presented in many different arrangements, from full orchestra to delicate piano-violin duets.

It must be odd doing the music for a videogame. It has to stand up to incessant repetition (so the CD contains lots of relatively short passages that can be assembled in various ways), and it has to reinforce the gameplay, so consistency is important. Hardly anyone will actually listen to it, of course. And the rest of the project is so expensive that the budget for the music is pretty good; no need to skimp. Combine with a Japanese attention to detail (and, it must be said, a complete lack of musical inhibition or conventional ideas of taste), and the result is extraordinary.

And why did I choose this for my CD of the week? I have a CD changer in my car, which uses a 6-CD cartridge. I realized yesterday that the Soul Calibur II double CD has been in the cartridge for the last four months. Other CDs have come and gone, but SC2 became my own soundtrack. Odd, that.

CD of the week: Schubert: The Last Four Quartets

Although this is a double CD containing four of Schubert's quartets, I tend to listen to an iTunes/iPod playlist that picks out just one of them: String Quartet No. 15 in G major, D. 887 (Op. posth. 161). I first heard this piece on an old Deutsche Grammophon LP back in the late 60s or early 70s*, and I remember being stunned that a string quartet could have such symphonic proportions. At the time, I owned a nice LP box set called The Rise of the Symphony which explored the evolution of the modern symphony through works by J. C. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. My immediate reaction on hearing Schubert's G major quartet was that he'd made the symphony orchestra obsolete. OK, I was impressionable - but the work continues to exert an almost hypnotic effect on me to this day. I know that Death and the Maiden gets all the attention, but to me it's just a warm-up for the main event.

As to the performance, I've listened to many quartets trying to capture the combination of ethereal beauty and naked power of the work. I had great hopes for the version on CBS by Ma/Kashkashian/Phillips/Kremer, but I found it disappointing. This budget recording by the Quartetto Italiano is deeply satisfying, however. It induces the chills up and down the spine just the way Schubert intended.....

* My brother reminds me that the LP in question was an Amadeus Quartet recording that he gave me one Christmas in 1973 or thereabouts.

CD of the week: "Four Sail" by Love

This is not a new album. And it's not Arthur Lee's masterpiece Forever Changes. So why is it my album of the week?

Lee had finished up Forever Changes, and the original band was falling apart (mostly due to drugs), but the contract with Elektra was unbreakable. Arthur Lee owed them one more album. So he hired three studio musicians, power rockers who were clearly hooked on Blue Cheer, Spirit, and Moby Grape, and they recorded "Four Sail". (For some reason, Amazon.com calls it Foursail. Whatever.) I bought it the day it came out back in 1969. I still have the vinyl, but a year ago it was finally re-released on CD, so now everyone can enjoy it.

What makes the album work so well is the interplay - and the tension - between Arthur Lee's songs - wistful, sardonic, pensive lyrics over jazzy, Latin-influenced melodies - and the power rock trio behind him. Michael Fremer's review on Musicangle gets into the details better than I can, but the result is a glorious album of rock'n'roll. It can stand up to any of the great rock albums from the late 60s by folks like Steve Miller, Spirit, even the Stones. Sadly, it's been largely ignored because it isn't Forever Changes - but it doesn't pretend to be.

Four Sail is one of those albums that I find myself slipping into the CD changer in my car every few months... and then no matter what else is in there, Four Sail is what I listen to. It's a "roll down the windows, crank it up and cruise" kind of album. And that's what I've been doing this week....

First new music in months

I'm not sure what happened. I used to buy a new CD every couple of weeks, deliberately mixing it up between the familiar and the new. But for the last few months my only new music has been Marillion's Marbles, which arrived unexpectedly from the UK, and a mix CD of Japanese pop and anime theme music from Hannah. Marbles was more or less expected - I'd been one of the thousands of fans who pre-ordered a copy to help the band fund the production of the CD, and our reward was a double CD with the names of all the supporters.

But that was weeks ago. Today I wandered round a CD store unable to find anything that fit my mood. And then I realized that the reason I was dawdling was that I was half-listening to the music playing in the store, and that the voice was familiar and insidiously seductive. And so I bought it: the new CD by Morrissey, You Are The Quarry. Wonderful. The best since Viva Hate, in my opinion.