ultravox! / john foxx

The first three Ultravox albums are very different from the band that hit the big time in 1980 with Vienna. Under the leadership of John Foxx, Ultravox! (with the ! apeing that of the German band NEU!) issued three albums between 1976 and 1978 which run the gamut of trashy glam, punk,  and eventually synth pop. It’s occasionally a bit rubbish, especially when they try too hard to be punks, and clearly they’re way too nice and middle-class to pull it off convincingly. But on the whole it’s a cracking mixture of the punk sensibility, the clear musical influences of Roxy and Bowie, and Foxx’s literary inclinations (especially his JG Ballard influences which see his lyrics peppered with lines about machines and liquids and stuff). Plus this band can play.

The first self-titled album sees all sorts of instruments thrown into the mix – wobbly synths, manic violins, incongruous acoustic guitar on the epic "I Want To Be A Machine", even some r’n’b style harmonica. It’s all a bit of a muddle to be honest, but in the same way that first Roxy album was a huge mess of ideas. It’s not as good as the first Roxy album, not be a long chalk, but the ambition is clear. The whole thing is a bit rough and ready, but the assistance of both Steve Lillywhite and Brian Eno helps pull the album together. Eno was at Island studios mixing some of this album when one of Ultravox took a call for him. Eno didn’t like being interrupted, but he was told it was an international call, and the guy on the other end says he’s David Bowie. Still thinking it was a prank, Eno reluctantly took the call, and by the end of the week he was helping Bowie record Low at the Chateau d’Herouville just outside Paris.

The second Ultravox album, Ha! Ha! Ha! was recorded in the first few weeks of 1977 and has an appealingly vital live sound. The songs are way more focused and tighter and display a far stronger commercial sense than on the debut. And the best ideas are those that clearly point the way forward – the closing track, the hugely electronic "Hiroshima Mon Amour" is an astounding leap forward from the opening punky thrash of "ROckWrok" (and check out that crazy spelling folks, and surely the title came from the not at all punk 801’s "RongWrong"?) But despite the chilly Germanic soundscapes of "Hiroshima" that song on this album that really sums up the Foxx era is "The Man Who Dies Every Day" – a stomping electronic beat, woozy keyboards, jagged guitars and a very English lyric which marvellously rhymes ‘a moment in the rain’ with ‘a gesture of disdain’, delivered in Foxx’s clinical croon. And it’s supremely catchy.

The third Foxx album, 1978’s Systems Of Romance, is more of a precursor to Vienna in terms of the overall sound, but apart from a few key songs, it seems to me to be rather confused as to what’s it’s trying to achieve. There’s still a number of guitar-led tracks that try to hang onto the punk sound even though it’s clear by now that Ultravox don’t do that very successfully. The more synth based songs are notably much better – the dreamlike "Slow Motion" is especially good and "When You Walk Through Me" is basically a psychedelic Beatles-type song (complete with phasing and Warren Cann playing the drum part from "Tomorrow Never Knows"). It’s a good album, but perhaps not as enjoyable as Ha! Ha! Ha!.

And then Foxx was gone, intent on becoming a Machine, delivering the astonishingly good Metamatic at the start of 1980. Gary Numan steals much of the Systems Of Romance sound for Replicas and The Pleasure Principle (and steals Billy Currie to help him achieve it) and has massive success with a sound and style that Ultravox had originated. By then of course Ultravox had basically split up, during the middle of 1979 (Warren Cann drummed for the Buggles for a while, and Currie played with Numan and then Visage where he met Midge Ure.) Ultravox then reformed with Midge in the winter of 1979 / 1980 and came up with Vienna. And they didn’t look back after that!

neil young & crazy horse live

I've downloaded a few recent gigs from Neil and the Horse but none are as good as the superb show they played I've downloaded a few recent gigs from Neil and the Horse but none are as good as the superb show they played just three nights ago at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City. It was part of a Hurricane Sandy benefit, but they didn’t change their regular set at all, so it’s just 13 songs... however, as some of these run for more than 20 minutes each you still get a gig lasting more than two hours. 

And, although I’m not sure it’s entirely appropriate, they encore with a 25 minute “Like A Hurricane” which does what Sandy couldn’t, and blows the roof off the Hotel. It's surely one of the best “Hurricane”s I’ve ever heard. The energy from the Horse is incredible throughout the whole show, and Neil is on fire, singing his socks off, and coaxing the most amazing sounds out of Old Black – how the hell that guitar is still going, after all the abuse it’s had over the past 40 years, is something that only Neil can explain, but I’m so glad that it is still functioning, as no other guitar sounds quite like it.

There are so many highlights - “Ramada Inn” is the best I’ve ever heard; lovely new song “Singer Without A Song” finds Neil at the piano with the Horse clustered round him helping out on harmonies. The show heads for the home straight by cranking up the Crazy Horse Time Machine - the always brilliant “Cinnamon Girl” is followed by the even older “Mr Soul” and then it's straight into a spirited but rather ragged “Rockin’ In The Free World” (rarely played on this tour) and then a stompingly good “Hey Hey, My My”. The encore is the aforementioned amazing encore of “Hurricane”. 

No UK dates so far, but Neil has just announced Australian dates for next March so he and the Horse are obviously planning on continuing this tour next year. I would LOVE to see them live, especially playing as well as they are right now.

neil young & crazy horse - psychedelic pill

The new album from Neil and the Horse is an odd one - loads of electronic wizardry, synths galore, lots of rapping, and beat box stuff, it’s like Neil has gone all Doctor Dre on us.

Actually no. Of course not.

It’s EXACTLY like you’d expect a Neil Young and Crazy Horse album to be, only just a bit bigger and longer than usual. This music really, genuinely, is timeless. It really could have been recorded at any point in the last 40 years or so.

The opening song "Driftin’ Back" kind of makes this point. It starts with Neil and his acoustic, strummin’ away, singin’ his ol’ song and then the Horse are faded in, rumbling along at full speed (which for the Horse isn’t actually that fast these days) – the effect is exactly that of remembering an old Crazy Horse song and it popping up in your mind, quite literally driftin’ back. Neil starts riffing on how MP3's only give you a tiny percentage of the actual music when you used get it all - the lyrics seem like random thoughts that pop into Neil's head - by the end he starts wondering if he should get himself a Hip Hop Haircut, but frankly it's not the words that really matter. The wistful, things used to be better, vibe is carried by the laid back but still urgent guitar work. The track lasts for nearly 28 minutes! That’s actually longer than the whole Neil Young and the Shocking Pinks album. By the 3 minute mark you know precisely how "Driftin’ Back" goes, and you’ve got another 25 minutes still to come. Yet it doesn’t get boring, at all. In fact I was really quite disappointed when it ended.

The album mixes a handful of really lengthy songs with a number of shorter tracks – such as the title song, which is swathed in phasing to an almost comical degree, or the jaunty "Born In Ontario", or "Twisted Road" with it’s namechecks for Dylan and the Dead. These slighter, shorter songs are terrific, and are arguably more directly emotional ("For The Love Of Man" is the most tender, being a delightful song for his son) but it’s the long ones which will, quite rightly gain most of the attention, and these are really what we all came for.

The bitter sweet "Ramada Inn" is a bit like an update of "Love And Only Love". Neil tosses out the lyrics like murmured asides, but he stil manages to paint an extraordinarily vivid picture (with such few words), of a couple in their twilight years. Once he's had a few drinks she barely recognizes her husband anymore, but they still, somehow, love each other.

"She's Always Dancing" has another classic Horse tune and a lovely chorus with some cracking harmonies from the four of them. In fact, one of the best parts about this album is the slightly wonky singing. The harmonies are just about there, the lead vocals are just about on track, but it's all a bit ramshackle and has a wry well worn feeling about it. The implication is that these guys still have it, but only just, but they are still gonna give you everything they've got.

The epic "Walk Like A Giant" carries on the album's main theme - a wistful look back at the past, when, as younger men, they were convinced that they could change the world. The cheery whistling that pops up at various stages is at odds with the sad sense of the words, that perhaps the optimism of youth doesn't actually change things after all.

Perhaps the only minus point on the album is the inclusion of the second, un-phased version of "Psychedelic Pill". It’s not that it’s bad or anything, far from it, but it seems wrong being tacked on the end after the massively drawn out ending of "Walk Like A Giant" which is the perfect conclusion to the album. So to stick a short track after that seems very out of place. And, what's more, the alternative version of "Psychedelic Pill" bizarrely fades out just before the end of the song, which makes it an even more inappropriate way to close the record. But that’s Neil for you. Even when you think you've got the measure of him and of this album he goes and does his own thing. Just when you don't expect it. Just because he can.

This album is very worthy successor to all the other Neil / Horse albums. It’s just like the very best of them, yet it’s still different, still fresh, still engaging and engrossing and I could listen to this sort of stuff for ever.

marianne faithfull - broken english

Marianne Faithfull was the darling of the 1960s. With her classic English rose beauty and her rock star boyfriend - Mick Jagger - she appeared to have it all. But her association with the Rolling Stones almost killed her. To many, it seems as if she was dragged into a mire of drugs and depravity by the Stones, although by all accounts Marianne didn't need much encouragement. By 1970 she was being haunted by the ghost of Brian Jones (she would actually see his face in mirrors), she'd attempted suicide and was a full blown heroin addict. Much of the 1970s would find Marianne homeless, sometimes actually living on the streets, moving from one filthy squat to another. There were a couple of attempts at resurrecting her recording career - in 1975, in conjunction with Joe Cocker's band, she recorded a number of country standards that weren't properly released until many years later.

But in 1979 she returned. Encouraged by her then boyfriend Ben Brierley (at the time a member of the Vibrators) she worked up a number of excellent new wave songs, the demos of which impressed Island Records enough to give her a 3 album deal. The resulting sessions were overseen by Mark Miller Mundy who managed to draft in some formidable musicians, including Steve Winwood, Morris Pert and Barry Reynolds (who was concurrently working with another new Island signing, Grace Jones).

Broken English is very 1979 in sound and production, and very English too. The drums have that peculiarly British dry crispness that many songs had at that time, and the undeniable funkiness of the band is played down rather than up as an American production would have done. It also rocks, hard. The title track has some excellent dynamics – a solidly pounding beat but with all sorts of guitar / keyboard clashes over the top, and Marianne’s cracked and rasping voice topping it all off. Marianne's voice had changed considerably since the 1960s; never a particularly strong voice it had now deepened and lowered, ravaged by years of nicotine and narcotics. But it suited the new material so very well, investing the songs with a weary, worn out quality that was perfect. 

 There are a couple of lighter songs, like "Brain Drain" or "What’s the Hurry?" but these are balanced by tracks like the darkly brooding "Guilt" or the snarly cover of Lennon’s "Working Class Hero". Side two opens with the delightful "Ballad Of Lucy Jordan" – one of Annie Nightingale’s favourite songs ever – which sounds like it was perfectly written for Marianne (but it wasn’t - it was, slightly alarmingly, actually a Dr Hook song from the early 1970s…). The album closes with one of the most vicious songs ever, "Why’d Ya Do It?", which still, even now, surprises me with the depth of bitterness and loathing in Marianne’s voice. A stunning performance.

Left off the album, but used as a b side, was a brilliant new version of "Sister Morphine". After all her troubles throughout the 1970s, homelessness, addictions of all sorts, near death illnesses, it’s here, ten years on from when the song was written, that Marianne invests the song with the level of gravitas that the slightly sensationalist lyrics require. Much as I admire the Stones version from Sticky Fingers, I can’t help thinking that Jagger is play-acting the role. I just can’t quite believe his version, but I can believe every word that Marianne sings on this recording, and it’s pretty damn scary too.

Interestingly the album nearly didn't sound as contemporary and as New Wave as it did. All the songs were originally recorded in a far more conventional AOR style, and it was only as the masters were being readied for pressing that Marianne and Mundy decided to remix the whole thing into a more synth / new wave style, and that's when they employed Steve Winwood to add a whole bunch of new keyboards. The original backing tracks sound not unlike Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac. Not a bad thing per se, but the reworked album was clearly better and more original and has stood the test of time rather better than the original version would have, as that sounds very late 1970s.

Having said that though there’s something very impressive about the original versions, mixing new wave musicians with straight up old school UK session men. The mixture works well and gives the songs both an edgy feel and also a strength and effortlessly commanding quality that punk musicians didn’t possess. Without the overbearing synths of the finished album we have saxophones and slide guitars taking centre stage. A track like "Lucy Jordan" is much closer to the Dr Hook original (yikes!!), with gentle guitars and an insistent shuffle on the drums, rather than the weirdly burbling synth dominated finished version (which had no drums at all, and apart from keyboards, virtually no other instruments at all, for that matter). The closing "Why’d Ya Do It?" is much longer in it’s original form, though not quite as scathingly harsh; there are more backing vocals too, across the whole album. Fascinating stuff. Marianne has said that she now prefers the original version, although she’d assumed the tapes to be long lost. But apparently the master had simply been sitting on a shelf in a store room marked DNU, 'do not use'.

The next couple of Faithfull albums – Dangerous Acquaintances and A Child’s Adventure kept to a similar new wave style as Broken English, but with more of an eye to getting a hit. No hits were forthcoming of course, and the albums were rather weedier and less impressive than intended, though both contain a number of excellent songs amongst the lesser numbers. Most notable is Barry Reynolds' brilliant "Times Square" which opens A Child's Adventure and which stands head and shoulders above the rest of the album.  

steven wilson - get all you deserve

Today’s music is Steven Wilson in concert earlier this year in Mexico City.

It’s the soundtrack to his new dvd / blu-ray called Get All You Deserve, which I don’t actually have yet, but it's on my list. Rather annoyingly the double cd version is only available with the blu-ray, but the internet has all sorts of goodies if you know where to look and so I now have a shiny FLAC copy… And it sounds mighty fine. Beautifully crystal clear recording, as you’d expect from Steven Wilson, not too loud either, not brickwalled and clipped like so many albums these days, so the loud bits sound significantly louder than the quiet bits, and there’s lots of contrast. It actually sounds like a real band, playing real instruments at real volumes. The band is superb, with Wilson conducting and directing as much as he’s playing, so the whole thing comes across a bit like Zappa’s bands of the 1970s, mixed with King Crimson and some early 70s fusion. In fact with all the mellotron, flute and frankly groovy electric piano on display you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was actually 1972. But this is very sharp stuff, not woolly prog rambling, and even the more improvised passages are precise and controlled – plus there’s some satisfyingly heavy shredding at times.

There’s no Porcupine Tree, the music all comes from Wilson’s two solo albums, plus one new piece. Interestingly, although the tracks really don’t deviate much from their studio templates, the looser feel conjured up in concert really suits the pieces. The next album is being recorded as I type this, with the emphasis in the studio on the band playing as a unit and allowing lots of room to stretch out and improvise. He’s describing it as much jazzier than his previous work, which could be good, or it could be horrendous. But if Wilson’s idea of jazz is the new track, then I think we’re ok. This piece, called "Luminol" is a fiendishly complex little monster, with lashings of early 70’s Crimson. Not what I’d call jazz, but it's damn good music so who cares.

tom verlaine - vanity fair

Tom Verlaine on the iPod today.

Specifically the Vanity Fair sessions from 1986. This is a complete album that, for reasons that no-one understands, was rejected by Verlaine's record label Fontana. It's been suggested that the songs weren't commercial enough, which is rather baffling. This is Tom Verlaine we're talking about - he's never been commercial! And Tom came up with a replacement album, Flash-Light, the following year, an album that I would suggest was considerably less commercial than the original submission… but that’s Verlaine for you...

The original sessions were recorded in London with Dave Bascombe producing and the only track that survived the rejection was a remixed "The Scientist Writes A Letter". For no obvious reason unknown the original Bascombe recording is referred to as the ‘Paris version’ despite having been recorded in London… that wacky Verlaine humour, huh? "One Time At Sundown" is the only other overlap with the Flash-Light album, but it was totally re-recorded for the released album, so this London version is different (though not that much…)

Some, but not all, of the other Vanity Fair tracks cropped up as b sides over the next few years, and some also appeared on The Miller’s Tale, the now hard to find compilation that came out in the mid 1990s. 

But the album, as originally planned, would have run as follows -

1. Sixteen Tulips

2. Caveman / Flashlight

3. Anna

4. The Scientist Writes A Letter 

5. Call Me The

6. Circling

7. Smoother Than Jones

8. Vanity Fair

9. One Time At Sundown

It's a great collection with lots of chunky guitar work from Tom and sterling support from Fred Smith on bass, Andy Newmark on drums and Jimmy Ripp on guitar.

Many of the songs are solid rockers, such as the delightful "Sixteen Tulips" or "Smoother Than Jones". In fact, these two are extremely catchy, and make me wonder about the 'not-commercial-enough argument. The melody of "Sixteen Tulips" is also suspiciously close to "Say A Prayer" on the Flash-Light album, which also makes the non-commercial argument fall apart even more.

There are gnarly, twisted guitarfests too, such as "Caveman / Flashlight" or the title track. But it's perhaps on the quieter numbers that this album really shines.

"One Time At Sundown" is light and airy and "Anna" is beautiful, and gloriously lovely in a way that most Verlaine songs aren’t. I love the offhand way Tom mumbles ‘I must lay down, but I’m not tired…’

But it's "The Scientist Writes A Letter" that floors me every time with how brilliantly clever it is, and how brilliantly emotional it is too. The guitar synths work well here, and the closing guitar solo is absolutely stunning. Tom’s vocal on this track is also worth mentioning. Frequently his vocals give the impression of being an afterthought, tossed out with little care. But here the vocal is superb – perfectly pitched, half spoken, half sung, excellent timing, and extremely well acted too. I also love the way that the lyric is written out as a letter on the lyric sheet. When you read the letter it’s almost impossible to imagine how the words could ever fit into a song, but they do, and Verlaine makes them work perfectly.

Dear Julia,
Unless chance finds us face to face again, this is the last you'll hear from me. I spent this Sunday, a long afternoon, freezing at my friend's house by the sea. We men of science... you know.

I've returned to my research in magnetic fields. It's funny how attractive indifference can be. My sense of failure... it's not so important. Electricity means so much more to me. We men of science... you know...

It's snowing again, seems like it's always snowing. Sit down to write and it's so cold. Outside my window, there's a tree so white I can hardly look at it.

It's quiet here. I look thru my glass at patterns all so well defined. Please send my winter coat soon as you can ...I find I have no other lines... we men of science... you know... all the best... all the best Julia…

The conceit of the whole vocal being a letter could come off as being daftly pretentious, but it works; it’s invested with a sharp emotional pull, and makes me buy entirely into the song. It’s the little touches – the repeated self deprecating line ‘we men of science’ is followed by a barely audible weary murmur of ‘you know…’ which doesn’t sound like much when written down but it’s wonderful when Tom does it! The Vanity Fair version is slightly different from the more familiar Flash-Light release. The synths are slightly more prominent, the whole mix is more punchy and interestingly less dreamy, and the middle part has an entirely different spoken section – instead of the tree that is so white that Tom can hardly look at it, we have some mumbled nonsense about men on a train talking about icicles… I think he made the right choice in changing this bit.

Most copies of Vanity Fair contain a bonus track - a brilliant live version of "Marquee Moon" from the 1987 tour. What a performance. I mean it’s hard to get this track wrong, as it’s so fantastic anyway, but Verlaine and Jimmy Ripp really nail "MM" just as well as Tom and Richard Lloyd did when Television played it. Tremendously exciting stuff.

Enough – I'm going to play it again. 

lou reed in the 1970s

I recently played a couple of Lou Reed albums from both ends of the 1970s and came to the conclusion that pretty much everything Lou did during that decade was astounding, one way or another, and the pretty much everything he's done since has been decidedly underwhelming. OK, so that's perhaps a huge generalisation, but that's what generalisations are, sweeping and frequently unfair. But in this case, it's true.

After Lou left the Velvet Underground in August 1970 he decided to leave the music business altogether. But a spell working in his dad's office convinced him that a settled-down life wouldn't work, and besides, he was still coming up with songs at a rapid rate.

After some legal shenanigans Lou ended up with a record deal on RCA. Lou Reed - the imaginatively titled first solo album from early 1972 contained a bunch of reworked Loaded out-takes which were remarkable only because they were all vastly inferior to the original Velvets versions. To be fair “Ocean” was pretty good, though the various Velvets' takes of this are miles better. But the new songs were good - “Going Down” is lovely, and “Wild Child” has a real spark. An interestingly patchy album, and one that oddly has not really dated too badly. 

The big one followed. Late in 1971 David Bowie had also been signed by RCA, and he'd made a big deal about saying what an influence Lou Reed had been. The success of the Ziggy Stardust album convinced the RCA suits that Bowie had the magic touch, and, after the less than positive response to Lou Reed, it was decided that David should produce Lou's next record. In fact much of the production of Transformer was carried out by Bowie's guitarist, Mick Ronson, who also contributed the stunning string arrangements as well as playing guitar and piano. Transformer is a strange little record - on the one hand it has stone cold Lou Reed classics like "Walk On The Wild Side", "Perfect Day" and "Satellite Of Love" all of which sound just as fresh today as they did 40 years ago. But on the other hand there are a number of rather pedestrian rockers, such as "Wagon Wheel", and the truly bizarre, tuba-led "Goodnight Ladies". Whilst Transformer is often hailed as a peak of Lou's career, it's hard to see it as little more than a few decent songs, a few ok songs and a whole bunch of luck, being in the right place at the right time, with that year's hot new act behind the desk. It's not really part of the glam rock scene, despite being lumped in due to the Bowie connection, and, crucially, beyond a handful of shows where Lou slapped on the make up, he didn't embrace that scene at all. Lou's next move was something that no-one would have foreseen. He decided to create a concept album, a film for the ears he claimed. And it was to be a double album too!

But when Berlin was released it had become a simple single record, and it received a hugely negative reaction, which had a massive impact on Lou's relationship with the press for ever more.   

In the spring of 1973 Lou had recorded over an hour's worth of material for Berlin, but due to record company pressure he and producer Bob Ezrin were forced to edit the song cycle down to a more acceptable 45 minutes or so. Much of the orchestral work overseen by Ezrin was lost, many of the songs were trimmed, but the core of the album remained, and it wasn't pretty. In describing Caroline's journey from carefree socialite to suicidal junkie, Lou had indeed crafted a film for the ears, but it was a squalid, shocking film. There are moments of pleasure - the giddy whirl of the first "Caroline Says...", the inebriated swagger of "Lady Day", but by the time we reach side two it's despair all the way down until the astonishing redemptive chant of "Sad Song" which to my mind is nothing less than Caroline's departure from this earth to a better place. It's an extraordinarily brave set of songs, and a set which would be unbelievably depressing had the songs not been up to the job. But they are. Every one crackles with invention and cleverness and melodic twists and turns that absolutely grab the listener from the very beginning, and hold your attention to the very end. And just like with a good film,or an absorbing novel, the attentive audient is able to make it through the dark horrors of "The Kids" or the utter blanked out despair of "The Bed" because we have been drawn into the album and are desperate to know how it will end. It's extremely clever, literate, and above all, adult song writing, of the kind that Lou had been promising since the very beginning of the Velvet Underground. It's exactly the sort of continuation of songs like "Waiting For The Man" or "Heroin" that he should have been writing. “Caroline Says II” has that killer line, which Lou delivers so brilliantly - "You can hit me all you want / but I don't love you anymore". It's devastating writing. The level of numbed out pain present in that line is so awful. It's a terribly sad moment on a deeply emotional album.

But it was because it required the audience to think, to get involved, to use their emotions, to invest time and effort in the album, that it received terrible reviews. "The worst album by a major artist for many years" was one headline. Today this is baffling. There is a grown up audience for grown up music but back in 1973 pop music was fluffy ephemeral glam nonsense, and Lou's idea of a good record was nothing like that of anyone else. It went out of print for many years because RCA had no incentive to press a second run. Lou, of course, loved it, just as he always cites Metal Machine Music and The Bells as his favourites, perversely and precisely because they are so unrepresentative of his usual work. 

It's odd that Lou has never tried to restore Berlin. Maybe the missing parts are gone for good. Although it's still a fabulous album, and beautifully produced too, it would be fascinating to hear what it might have been.  

But the controversial reviews didn't bother Lou at the time as by mid 1973 he was starting his lengthy detour into hard drugs, and so little of anything bothered him at all. He played the Rock 'n' Roll Animal tour throughout Europe and the USA during the autumn and revelled in the madness of the tour. The final show was recorded and was released in two halves as Rock 'n' Roll Animal and Lou Reed Live over the next couple of years. Both are cracking albums. Nearly 40 years on this is still what live albums should sound like. It's such powerful music. There might be some very obvious bum notes at times and Lou fluffs words all over the place, but it's a great crowd, and the band give such energetic performances. The twin lead guitar attack of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner is phenomenal and the melodramatic organ flourishes in songs like “Heroin” work incredibly well. Lou's singing is a bit variable at times but it fits with the music, which also wobbles alarmingly in places. Despite this being one of the last shows on the tour the drummer still has a real problem with the opening of “How Do You Think It Feels” - he can't seem to get that intro right. But so what? It's a storming album, a faithful account of a great concert.

Lou was on a slippery slope into serious drug dependency and wouldn't be this fired up on stage for many years. The next few years saw some amazing gigs and but also some truly terrible concerts, characterised largely by Lou raging around haranguing everyone in sight, or else virtually catatonic, being carried on stage and plonked in front of a mic. I have an interesting tape of a 1974 Australian show, which has an incredibly powerful “White Light / White Heat”, and a very weird “Heroin”, all spooky church organ effects, but Lou sounds seriously ill. Really not on this planet at all. The final number is a very odd acappella “Goodnight Ladies” that frankly would have scared the audience into going home...

In 1974 he recorded Sally Can't Dance which became one of his biggest selling albums. Lou found this incredibly amusing as he reckoned that his input into the record was minimal. Perhaps his next album would be an even bigger seller if he wasn't on it all, he wondered. Sally Can't Dance continues with the expansive Berlin sound, but with rather more obviously commercial appeal. The songs were snappier and catchier, though lyrically Lou was at his acerbic best, thus damning almost all the songs from ever being top forty hits.  

The mid 1970's were a terrible time for Lou on a personal basis - the drugs, his bizarre relationship with 'Rachel' - yet he continued to tour. In 1975 his drug habit was apparently so bad that he actually missed a few shows - the gigs continued with guitarist Doug Yule filling in for Lou. The audiences must have been pretty stoned too - allegedly no-one noticed...

Yet musically, even when it doesn't quite work, this mid 70’s work is always fascinating. There's a level of intensity that's missing from many of his other albums, and a sense that anything could happen. There's a tangible feeling of danger, of being on the edge, of listening to something created by someone you really wouldn't want to know...

Coney Island Baby is a very strange album. Ostensibly commercial, slickly produced, with catchy light songs – “Charley's Girl”, “Ooooh Baby”, “The Gift” (which is a really funny song, though it's a wonder it doesn't sink under the sheer weight of its hysterical self referential irony). But then you get the title track, which lyrically is fabulous and very personal and beautiful. Then there is “Kicks”. Possibly the nastiest song Lou had committed to record at this point. It's dreadfully violent and dispassionate, and the use of the party chatter, which slides in and out, is very disconcerting.

Rock'n'Roll Heart is another odd album. Even more lightweight than CIB, but often the songs have a dirtier, grimier side – “Temporary Thing” is very unsettling. “You Wear It So Well”, which is one of my favourites, has a definite air of desperation about it - the singer doesn't sound quite in control. The recent cd version of this version is one of the few cd remasters to have drastically improved the album. The weedy thin sound of my vinyl has been replaced by a crunching bassier ambience, which hugely improves the whole thing.

I have a great bootleg of a 1976 show with trumpeter Don Cherry guesting. Many songs are extended into jazzy jams and although they don't always quite come off, and the free jazz element of Cherry's playing doesn't always fit with the basic rock'n'roll of songs such as “Sweet Jane”, it's still a fascinating and thrilling set. The version of “Kicks” at this show really, er, kicks...

Street Hassle is possibly the oddest of the lot. The basis of nearly all the tracks is live recordings from a show in Germany in early 1977 where Lou played loads of new songs to a bemused German crowd. Some were played twice to ensure a good recording. Some of these tracks, “Leave Me Alone”, “I Wanna Be Black”, “Dirt” had been knocking around for a few years, but once the basic tracks had been weirdly overdubbed, the songs changed considerably. Others, like the totally out there version of “Real Good Time Together” took just the throbbing guitar part as the basis for the song and for Lou to put his vocals over. The full band was harshly faded in half way through. The vocal overdubs remind me of “Lady Godiva's Operation”, in that various levels and mix settings have been used to a disconcerting effect. However, throughout all the weirdness it sounds as if Lou is having great fun. Admittedly it’s a perverse sort of fun as the songs are mostly unpleasant, one chord dirges, with some tuneless harsh singing plonked on top. “Leave Me Alone” is especially hard to get through. Then there is the title track. A song of beauty and grace and delicacy. Totally out of place amongst the grime. One of Lou's most poetic lyrics, a story from the streets, and some unusually personal lines. Later live performances would significantly lose all the stuff about how 'she took the rings right off his fingers...' which at the time Lou candidly said was all true.

In early 1978 a residency at The Bottom Line in New York gave us the fabulous Take No Prisoners. Such a shame more recordings of these shows haven't been released. I love the Stereo Binaural sound on this album. It gives the live band a presence that really leaps off the turntable. The stories, the jokes, the fast snappy put-downs. And the music too. What a great band, able to twist and turn along with Lou's random deviations and flights of fancy. A wonderfully stirring “Coney Island Baby” is one of my favourite Lou tracks - that long ending is beautiful. An amazing “Street Hassle” is another highlight, as is the opening “Sweet Jane”, which kicks harder than any other version I've heard.

1979 - The Bells. Which I love. Can't totally explain why, but there's a great atmosphere on this album - the Stereo Binaural sound probably helps too. “City Lights” is delightful. “Stupid Man”, another of my all time favourite Lou songs, is such an infectious track. Side two is the real meat of the album. “All Through The Night” repeats the “Kicks” trick, by mixing in dialogue and chatter, though thankfully this time the lyrics aren't as scary. The repetitive sax riff is very strong, it really works. “Families” is another oddly personal and very very sad song - again the riff is unchanging which allows you focus on the impassioned lyrics more. Lou sounds on the verge of tears at a couple of points. “The Bells” - a great, if flawed sound poem. Allegedly the whole thing was improvised, including Lou's vocal. The early part of the song is a mess of sounds, guitar synths and trumpets, all descending chords and doom - but it does seem to come together at the vocal section. It's not perfect, bum notes are everywhere, but if this had been polished it wouldn't have sounded anywhere near as good.

A live set from Berlin 1979 contains an even weirder live version of “The Bells”. And some very extended songs – “I'll Be Your Mirror” runs to 12 minutes.... “Waiting For The Man” to nearly half an hour!

The final album this band produced was 1980's Growing Up In Public - a neat selection of short sharp mainly acidic songs. Lou had just met Sylvia who inspired a few rather soppy songs (“Love Is Here To Stay”.... for goodness sake...), and Lou stopped drinking. A few songs stand out – “How Do You Speak To An Angel” is wonderful, and “Standing On Ceremony” is great too, with Lou in character as a parent snapping - 'Please take your hat off!'

After this Lou cured all his addictions, and fully dried out, revamping his life and his band. The next album would be the superlative The Blue Mask, which basically set the template for all following Lou Reed albums - 2 guitars, bass, drums, all recorded crisply with the emphasis on the precision of the sound at the expense of the mood and feeling. The Blue Mask is truly great, but each subsequent album repeated this formula with diminishing returns. Occasional deviations (drum machines on Mistrial, infrequent uses of sax on Set The Twilight Reeling) didn't really alter the fact that the songs generally were weaker, and the interest level was decreasing.

Today it's apparent, to me at least, that The Blue Mask is the last thing of any great value that Lou worked on. There were little successes, such as the John Cale collaboration Songs For Drella, where the old spark returned, but in general Lou's work over the past 30 years has, for me, been progressively duller and less involving. Shame really.

opal evenings

The real value of the iPod shuffle facility is that it throws up long forgotten music, forcibly reminds you what you've been missing, then makes you play old albums that haven't been played for way too long.

Two tracks recently, both from 1988, made me abandon my shuffling and delve deeper into the albums this music came from.

Firstly - "Balthus Bemused By Colour" from Harold Budd’s synth and reverb heavy White Arcades. It's a great piece of music, way too echoey, but that’s what you get if you hang around with Robin Guthrie for too long. The White Arcades is a lovely album, but is perhaps the only Budd record that sounds dated, or rather, of it’s time. All his other stuff is timeless.

But just when I was thinking - I must play the whole of The White Arcades again, I heard -

"Winter Music" by Roger Eno, from Between Tides. Interestingly this dates from the same time as the Budd track, but this one, as with all of Between Tides, really is timeless. The mix of strings and piano on this album is quite magical and although I adore Voices I think that Between Tides is perhaps the better album.

Roger Eno is Brian Eno's brother, younger by some eleven years. He worked with his brother on Apollo in 1982 and in 1985 Brian assisted in the recording of Voices, the ironically titled all instrumental debut album from Roger. The frosty synth embellishments contributed by Brian are excellent and give the album a real sense of a chilly winter’s night. But these also invite comparisons with the piano / synth albums Brian made with Harold Budd and at times Voices veers close to being Son Of Plateaux Of Mirror, a comparison which is quite understandable but is perhaps a little unfair to Roger. Whilst Budd's playing is pretty and sparse, much like the younger Eno's on Voices, in general Roger's piano work relies more on melody and is imbued with a peculiarly English flavour which sets it apart from Budd's minimalist beauty.

Roger worked without his brother on the 1988 follow up album Between Tides. Contributions and production from infinite guitarist Michael Brook, and the addition of gorgeously simple string arrangements mean that Between Tides is a large step away from the wintery ambience of the debut. Most of the pieces are wistfully melancholy, utterly beautiful, calming and reflective in a very English pastoral manner.  

In 1988 Roger Eno, Harold Budd, Michael Brook and electronic zither player Laraaji played a series of joint concerts under the title An Opal Evening. Opal was the record label set up by Brian Eno and his soon to be wife Anthea which had signed all four artists.

These concerts would typically allow for a solo set by each musician with joint ventures and improvs often joining the sets before all four would combine for a finale. The improvisational nature of much of the music extended to the casualness with which the quartet approached their stagecraft. Dr Martin and I saw the show at the Royal Festival Hall at which there was a surprising amount of laughter, not least when Michael Brook announced that Roger Eno would be onstage next, 'when we can find him'. Roger eventually arrived to huge applause which clearly baffled him.

One of the tracks played at the RFH went by the clearly ironic title of "Optimistic Prelude" at that point. A lovely, slightly wistful piece with a repeated piano motif overlaid with gently increasing strings, and a mournful oboe, this piece was wonderful in the hall, and this actual performance appears on Between Tides as "Winter Music".

A later Opal Evening, at a Festival in Lanzarote in December 1989 gave rise to a number of semi-official albums. It seems like the usual Opal suspects played at this Festival, which was televised, either just locally in the Canaries or across Spain, it’s not too clear. The artists, Budd, Brook, Roger E, and Laraaji (plus Peter Hammill, who was also on the bill) obviously gave their permission for the tv broadcast and possibly for the subsequent Spanish only home video of some of the performances, but it seems that was as far as it went.  

So when Sine Records issued half a dozen cds in the mid 1990s taken from these performances the artists weren’t terribly impressed. But there seems to be some sort of legal grey area here as the cds were apparently dubbed from the tv recording. Obviously these cds weren’t strictly bootlegs as I bought most of them in HMV in Oxford Street, but they obviously weren’t strictly authorized either. And that led to all sorts of made up titles on the discs. Check out Budd’s Aqua for a right old muddle with the track names. Roger’s Night Garden seems to feature all new pieces, so it’s unclear what the titles ought to be, and Laraaji’s music is pretty much untitle-able anyway! Michael Brook says he’s never been paid for his disc, so I guess the others haven’t either.

The sound quality isn’t bad on all of these but while most tracks have the audience / applause neatly faded out there are a few pieces that shake you out of your ambient induced reverie when some overloud clapping crashes in. But… despite all that, there’s some excellent music to be found on these. The Brook one is especially good I think.

Anyway, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting re-acquainted with Between Tides. Lovely music for a quiet evening unwinding with a glass of wine. Perfect.

dali's car - ingladaloneness

The ‘new’ Dali’s Car ep InGladAloneness features Mick Karn’s last recordings before cancer took him from us. 

These songs were created by Karn and Peter Murphy back in 2010 and I don’t really know why it’s taken nearly 18 months for these five songs to be released. But was it worth the wait? Absolutely. It might seem odd to wait nearly thirty years before before crafting a follow up to the 1984 Karn / Murphy album The Waking Hour, but then little these two musicians have done has ever really followed a logical path.

The way the 20 minute ep is structured is very interesting, as it appears to feature Karn less and less, as if he’s gradually slipping from view as the songs progress.

We start with "King Cloud" and "Sound Cloud" which both feature some of that rubbery basswork that so dominated the first Dali’s Car album. But instead of the sparse synthetic percussion and warbly synths from The Waking Hour, the new tracks use Karn’s bass in a much more conventional manner. Most of the instrumentation was added later, under the supervision of Steve Jansen and Jakko Jakszyk. Jansen’s superb playing is a vast improvement over the clunky drum machines of 1984, but part of the wonky charm of the debut album was perhaps the ramshackle method of its construction.

This is perhaps InGladAloneness’s only weakness – that it sounds a little too accomplished.

Jakko adds all manner of guitars and strings and creates a beautiful soundworld not too far removed from that on A Scarcity Of Miracles (the brilliant album he did with Fripp and Mel Collins last year).

Murphy’s vocals are delightfully off beat. Whilst he doesn’t sound quite as loopy as on The Waking Hour, there’s still more than enough Murph idiosyncrasy to keep me happy.

Anyway, whilst the first two tracks are relatively conventional, well, as conventional as could be expected, the last three are more intriguing. "Artemis Rise" takes the original 1984 track "Artemis" as its basis and adds layers of vocals and guitars and Jansen. By contrast "Subhanallah" is pretty much only Murphy and Turkish singer Shengul (she also features on the Murph’s 1999 track "Surrendered") singing an Arabic chant – the title translates as ‘Praise be to Allah’ and it’s absolutely lovely. Gorgeous understated strings too.

The final track starts with some of Karn’s muted bass clarinet, layered and multi-tracked. Then, after a minute or so, a gentle guitar picks out the refrain of "If You Go Away" and Murphy sings the first verse (based very closely on Scott Walker’s interpretation of this Brel song). He sings it brilliantly (and PM has been singing this one in recent concerts too, which must be great to hear.) It’s also extremely emotional. Slightly strange that we only get the first verse, but it somehow works very well, leaving the song sounding half finished, which is very appropriate considering that Karn was taken so ill that he was unable to complete the sessions.

It’s a wonderful little ep. Unlike Murphy’s recent songs, unlike Karn’s left field avant garde jazzy albums, so very Dali’s Car, but with a modern, more grown up sheen. The title is slightly annoying, especially in the way it’s all run together but still capitalized weirdly – that sort of thing always annoys me slightly - but musically it is terrific. I wish more of this music existed, but this 20 minute fragment is all we shall be getting. But it’s well worth it, a fitting testament to Karn's talent.

roxy music - stranded & country life

Today’s music is a couple of genuine 100% classics. Roxy Music’s Stranded and Country Life.

Both contain some really top notch songs (among the classics are “Mother Of Pearl”, “Song For Europe”, Street Life”, “Amazona” on Stranded and “All I Want Is You”, “Out of The Blue”, “A Really Good Time” and “Casanova” on CL) and both albums are brilliantly produced with even the weaker songs garnished with delightful little touches. “Triptych” is especially cleverly constructed with both startling choral vocals on the middle section and harpsichords on the opening and closing parts.

Both albums have striking covers (with perhaps CL having one of the most striking covers by anyone, ever), both feature the stunning violin work of Eddie Jobson, especially on “Out Of The Blue”, Manzanera plays a blinder on both (“Amazona” is a real tour de force) and Andy Mackay contributes some of his best ever saxophone work on “A Song For Europe”. Paul Thompson’s drumming is never better (just listen to his power drumming throughout “The Thrill Of It All” or at the start of “Mother Of Pearl” and the sudden switch when the song changes down a gear – brilliant). Ferry’s lyrics are beautifully bitter sweet and perfectly sung (listen to the high notes that he reaches on the gorgeous “Just Like You”). And there are even touches of humour – the backing vocals on “Mother Of Pearl” are terrific – as Ferry sings ‘well I’ve been up all night’ the backing vocals chip in with a sarcastic ‘again?’ which is a very clever touch. Also very funny are the strident German vocals on “Bitter Sweet” as the oompah chorus contrasts brilliantly with the lovely oboe-led verses, and the cry of ‘ahhhh more champagne…’ in “If It Takes All Night” always makes me laugh - the imagery of Ferry smoothly stalking his way round party after party would come to haunt him in later years, but back in 1974 that’s exactly what he was doing.  

Both albums are so good, but for me Country Life just edges out Stranded for position as my favourite RM album. Mainly because of the beauty and self pitying melancholy of “A Really Good Time” which contains one of my all time favourite Ferry lyrics and arguably Jobson’s prettiest violin work.

But whatever, they are both superb records.

bowie 1971

And further to the final Ziggy Stardust show I had fun with a bizarre collocation of Bowie tracks from 1971. This bunch of songs included some demos of tracks that made it to Hunky Dory, some demos that didn't, some other completely finished songs, some rough and ready rehearsals, some sung by DB, some sung by his friends, some excellent, some… not quite so excellent…

The ones I can remember include -

"Rupert The Riley". Yes indeed, a song about Dave’s car… sung by a slightly seedy character David and Angie had met at the Sombrero nightclub called Mickey King. He was apparently murdered in the mid 1970s after some sort of narcotic deal went bad. Anyway, the song is terrific. Daft as heck, but great fun and the beep beeps were recycled nine years later on "Fashion".

"Lightning Frightening" which is basically the song "Dirty Dirty" from Crazy Horse’s 1971 debut album sans Neil. Exactly the same music and arrangement but with Bowie’s vocal melody and lyrics instead. What a cheek. Still not a terribly good song in either incarnation.

"Miss Peculiar (How Lucky You Are)" – a very melodramatic piano tune in a sort of waltz time. With its oddly staged singing this wouldn’t have been out of place in some sort of musical theatre and shows how Bowie’s writing in 1971 was all over the place.

"Lady Stardust" – recorded at the same session in March 1971 as "Miss Peculiar" is this demo version. Which is pretty much identical to the finished version that appeared on the Ziggy album in 1972.

"Looking For A Friend" from the Arnold Corns sessions. AC was a made up band fronted by Bowie’s costume maker Fred Burrett, who styled himself as the more exotic Freddie Burretti. Although Bowie deemed even that name was too ordinary and for AC purposes Freddie became Rudi Valentino! Although he had the looks, Freddie couldn’t actually sing terribly well, but this didn't matter as DB was basically using Arnold Corns as a front - so he could still keep issuing songs whilst trying to extricate himself from his Mercury Records contract. "Looking For A Friend" was attempted on numerous occasions throughout 1971, firstly with Arnold Corns, then with a mix of the Corns musicians and the Spiders and later still during the Ziggy sessions in the Autumn. It’s a pretty good song, a bit ramshackle but in a good Mick Taylor era Stones manner. Pity it never really got finished.

"Shadowman" – another somewhat ramshackle recording of a terrifically good song. Elements of this were nicked from a Biff Rose tune called "The Man" (Rose was a big favourite of Bowie’s – he also wrote "Fill Your Heart" which DB covered on Hunky Dory). Bowie himself re-recorded the track as a gorgeous Mike Garson led ballad for the Toy project in 2000.

"Man In The Middle" – another Arnold Corns song and mainly sung by co-writer and AC guitarist Mark Carr-Pritchard. Bowie joins in the harmonies and Mick Ronson adds some urgently stabbing guitar work which he then recycled into the main riff of "Hang On To Yourself" later in the year.

"Moonage Daydream" – the earliest version of this song from January 1971 is horridly weak and limp. Nothing like the tour de force from the Ziggy album. This is also peppered with embarrassing Americanisms as DB weedily mutters things like "far out" with very little conviction. The hopelessly lumpen drumming doesn’t help either.

"Bombers" - one of the most famous Hunky Dory out-takes as it was on the album until a very late stage when, for reasons unknown, it was replaced by "Fill Your Heart". It’s another very stagey song and DB sings in an oddly mannered way, but it’s quite good fun in its way.

There are lots of other songs from this hugely prolific period. I doubt that Bowie ever again wrote quite as many songs in such a short period of time; and most of them were absolutely brilliant.

the last ziggy stardust concert

Whilst on holiday I took the opportunity to listen again to my restored version of the final Ziggy Stardust performance. This took place at the end of a very long and successful tour which climaxed at the Hammersmith Odeon on July 3 1973. Bowie may have been worn out but he still delivered a solid show which ended with a special guest (Jeff Beck) and a major surprise.  

It’s a hugely significant gig, probably not one of the best Ziggy concerts, and certainly not one of the best recorded shows. The concert sound was recorded very hastily as the decision to film the show was only taken the day before. Lack of time to set up mics and test the sound balances leave the raw recordings sounding very brittle and thin. This may be one of the reasons that the show wasn’t issued in late 1973 as planned. The tapes sat on a shelf for 10 years until DB finally allowed the film to be issued on video in 1983 along with a remixed and (not very well) overdubbed soundtrack album. In 2005 the film was remastered again for DVD and Tony Visconti spent a long time working his magic on the soundtrack. The 2005 remaster is a big step up from the 1983 release, but there was only so much that Visconti could do. Most of the 1983 overdubs were removed, though he kept some of the added backing vocals on "Moonage Daydream" and "Time" as Ronno’s original vocals were sung off mic.

But even this reissue was incomplete. The DVD features far more of the intro so to the remastered 2005 cd I’ve added the DVD stage announcements and crowd noise. Mike Garson’s piano medley of Bowie tunes which was played as an overture to the gig (and which appeared on the web a year or so back in excellent quality) is now back in it's place at the start of the show. Then I cleaned up the two songs which Jeff Beck refused to allow a release – "The Jean Genie" which slips into "Love Me Do" and which has been available since the mid 1970s on bootleg, and then the version of "Round and Round" which Beck also played on and which somehow appeared in trading circles about 20 years ago. The quality of "The Jean Genie" was fine, it needed a bit of boosting but it’s otherwise a good recording. "Round And Round" is more muffled and rather distant, and there’s not too much that can be done with it, but just as I was about to restore it, a raw sound desk recording of the two Beck tracks slipped out onto the internet. Whilst I decided to stick with the bootleg "Jean Genie" (as it sounded more listenable than the sometimes harsh soundboard), the improved version of "Round And Round" was a marvellous and timely find. 

After the two Jeff Beck assisted songs Bowie stepped up to the mic and thanked the crew and the band and then he said, "This particular show will remain with us the longest, because, not only is it the last show of the tour, but... it's the last show we'll ever do." The following "Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide" is perhaps a little workmanlike musically, though DB gives it everything he’s got. One reason for the rather muted band performance is probably that none of the band (bar Mick Ronson) knew anything about the retirement and they were as shocked as the audience!

In my restoration I used the retirement announcement from the bootleg as the official recording oddly sounds very thin and lacks the atmosphere of the boot in which the utter shock of the audience is extremely clear. 

Anyway, after all that, it’s still a good gig, though perhaps thought of more highly than it should be purely because of the historical significance, rather than the musical quality. Some of the songs are brilliantly played and sung, but some are, frankly, a bit of a mess. There is a real sense that both DB and the Spiders are exhausted. The pre-gig announcements refer to 70 gigs in 65 days which is a very heavy schedule, so it’s little wonder that things are getting a touch frazzled. For example, "Cracked Actor" is pretty awful and "Watch That Man" suffers from too fast a tempo and lack of finesse. On the other hand "White Light / White Heat" is tremendous, "Space Oddity" is genuinely majestic and "My Death" is simply stunning. "Moonage Daydream" is rather marvellous too, as is the very neat medley of "Wild Eyed Boy" / "All The Young Dudes" / "Oh! You Pretty Things". "The Jean Genie" is perhaps a little too enthusiastic and seems oddly sloppy in places (and someone, possibly Jeff Beck, is out of tune) but it is tremendous fun. The retirement announcement still sends shivers down my spine and the stunned and disbelieving crowd is more than audible at that point.

Of course you should never believe anything that David Bowie says - 11 months later he was embarking upon the Diamond Dogs tour, arguably the most ambitious concert tour ever staged in North America. Wish he'd come out of retirement one more time...