neil young & crazy horse - london o2 17th june 2013

You can spot a Neil Young audience a mile off – lots of check shirts or old Neil Young t-shirts, lots of bald heads, lots of facial hair (mainly white). I felt very youthful…

Los Lobos were the support act – really good too. They were much heavier than I was expecting, playing some excellent bluesy rock with a Tex/Mex twist, and yes they did play "La Bamba", but a very slow pounding version.

No sooner had they left the stage, at about 8.25, then Neil’s roadies appeared. Dressed in white lab coats and wearing Einstein wigs they scurried about the stage gesticulating wildly and generally being very entertaining. The stage set was the traditional Crazy Horse set – the giant speakers (which at this point were covered by giant packing cases) and a giant microphone centre stage. As the lights went down the Beatles’ "A Day In The Life" was pumped over the PA and other roadies wearing hi-viz jackets and hard hats began winching the cases off the giant speakers.

As that monumental final chord rolled across the O2 Neil and the band lined up on stage with all the road crew and the national anthem played out. Neil took his hat off and put his hand on his heart. They’ve been doing this all tour, with the national anthem of the relevant country. Much of the O2 actually sang along, and it was oddly rather moving.

Then Neil strapped on Old Black and hit a super massive chord. It was simply a HUGE wave of sound. And we were off with "Love And Only Love".

For most of the songs Neil, Frank (Poncho) Sampedro and Billy Talbot just huddled together in from of Ralph Molina’s drum riser. Heads down, playing like their lives depended on it. Sometimes Neil would wander across the stage, seeming to follow his guitar, sometimes he’d stomp hard on his various pedals and create even more distortion, sometimes Poncho would do a little jumping up and down, which at his age (and with his rather bulky size) may not have been too wise. Poncho in fact has a mane of snow white hair and a white beard and if you stuck him in a red suit he’d make a great Father Christmas! Billy Talbot’s wild curly hair is rather more tamed these days too, and he wears little half moon glasses which gives him the air of an elderly professor, but he still plays the biggest bass. I couldn’t really see Ralph Molina very well but his drumming was spot on all night, simple, basic even, but perfect for Crazy Horse. Neil, in his black hat, black shirt and black jeans seemed to be glowering at first, but as the show went on he seemed to loosen up and during a number of songs he had a huge grin on his face – it seemed like he was sharing jokes with Poncho and Billy, usually mid song. And the solos went on forever. There’s something magical about Neil’s soloing. Technically it’s probably all the place but the way he uses volume and distortion and someone creates pure music from it, is astonishing.

"Powderfinger" was second – what a song. Then two from the new album – the title track followed by "Walk Like A Giant" which was simply incredible. The song itself is long, but the ending must have taken up nearly ten minutes, Neil and Poncho and Billy huddled down and wave upon wave of feedback and noise rolled out. The scientist / roadies set up fans and threw leaves and litter which blew across the stage – this created a genuinely apocalyptic atmosphere. The noise got lower, punctuated by stray drum shots and it felt like we were in middle of some terrible devastation. A final monumental blast from Old Black triggered a rainstorm on the big screen at the side of the stage over which we got the ‘No Rain’ chant from Woodstock. Eventually it faded to quiet and Neil was alone on the stage with an acoustic, and his harmonica rack. 

We then had a handful of acoustic songs as Neil wandered around the stage singing "Comes A Time", "Blowin’ In The Wind", the first live outing since 1999 for the beautiful "Red Sun" (from Silver And Gold) and two lovely new songs - "Hole In The Sky had some great harmonies from Billy, and for "Singer Without A Song" Neil sat at an upright piano as Poncho added some acoustic guitar. This song is a really lovely ballad which is about a girl who’s lost her way, and as the song progressed a girl walked across the stage dragging a guitar case, pausing and sighing theatrically and looking forlorn. It all seemed very filmic. She had lots of tattoos and her hair was done in a way that made me realise that the song just had to have been inspired by Amy Winehouse.

Then it was electric guitars again for a stunningly good "Ramada Inn". Followed by "Cinnamon Girl and "F*!%in' Up" which was fantastic – that riff was enormous! Then the song broke down half way through to allow Poncho his bluesy call and response bit as we all had to chant "you’re a f*!% up" over and over while Neil just grinned his head off. It was oddly cheesy, but huge fun and after a while of doing this Neil just ground out that riff again and we finished off the song. A cracking "Mr Soul" lead into "Hey Hey My My" which was another incredible performance and another very long ending. And that was it. They’d been onstage for just over two hours. And we’d had just 14 songs!

The cases began to be lowered over the giant stacks, but then the scientists waved their arms about and the winches went back up. Down from the rafters came a small keyboard (it had little wings on it…) and I knew that they’d be playing "Like A Hurricane" as Crazy Horse use a keyboard for no other song! Sure enough it was "Hurricane" time. I was so delighted – just what I’d come to see – Neil Young and Crazy Horse playing "Like A Hurricane" – it doesn’t get much better than this! Knowing how strict they are with time keeping in London I was surprised though – I was expecting the show to finish at 11 and they began "Hurricane" at five to… After about 10 minutes a scientist roadie ran out and held a bit of paper in front of Neil. It must have said ‘wrap it up NOW’ as Neil turned to the band and played a huge downward chord which brought the song to a rather sudden ending. Then he thanked us all and wished us all a good ride home and then launched into "Roll Another Number (For The Road)". After that he spoke again and said that, as we were such a good looking audience (!) we deserved another song! So we had a rare outing of "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere"! Just as they started the song he had a funny grin on his face and said something like ‘I can hear managers and officials getting their calculators out now…’ so I guess he was going to be fined for running over, but it meant we had one of the longest and most varied sets of the tour so far.

As you may have guessed, I loved every second of the show – but there were quite a few who left before the end and I’ve read reports of people complaining about other shows. If you get a chance look up the reviews of the Dublin show – loads people there moaning about the self indulgent guitaring and the lack of ‘nice’ songs like "Heart Of Gold"… I reckon that the grumpy old buzzard would be very happy with comments like that… This was a Neil Young And Crazy Horse show – self indulgent guitaring and long drawn out feedback drenched noisefest endings is what they’ve been doing since 1969, and it’s what I came for! Complaining about that is like going to see Motorhead and then complaining that they were a wee bit loud… Still I can’t imagine that Neil cares one little bit – indeed the whole show seemed to me to be about Neil enjoying himself with his buddies – he doesn’t really care what the audience thinks, and half the time he seemed unaware that there was an audience at all, he was so lost in his own world. I get the strong impression that this tour may well be a last hurrah for the Horse. They are all getting on and to play this music at their age must be so tiring. Neil did say to us - ‘it’d be nice to see you again some time, if you’re still around, and if we’re still around…’ But if it is the last time they tour, then what a tour to go out on. Not resting on their laurels, not playing a snoozefest ‘hits’ show, not doing what people expect and still provoking enough of a reaction and irritating enough of the audience to make some of them walk out! Gotta love the Horse.

Long may they run.

laurie anderson musings

Looking at a few vids on youtube recently I discovered that some kind soul has upped the whole of Laurie Anderson's movie Home Of The Brave - the document of her 1985 tour, and a film that I’d never seen.

I have now. 
And it’s absolutely great – much better than the rather short soundtrack album (on which half the songs have been re-recorded in the studio anyway), and it’s brilliant to see Laurie being so very active, rather than the lecture-style she has adopted in more recent years. And Adrian Belew is so chirpy, as always, a great bonus to have him on stage.

The drum pads all over her body are cool, the dancing / choreography is cool, the songs are cool, the whole thing (in spite of a few dodgy 80s fashions / hair) is so very very cool. Hell, even William Burroughs crops up, being all decrepit and croaky. The projections and the backdrops are great, but I especially like the choreography – everything on stage is so perfectly placed, perfectly thought out. And there’s a really funny bit when Laurie phones her keyboard player, just across the stage to talk about what they’re going to do next.

You get the sense that had Laurie been that little bit more famous then Home Of The Brave could have been her Stop Making Sense and cemented her image in the minds of the general public. Then again, she’d probably have hated that. Apparently Home Of The Brave is unavailable on DVD which is a terrible shame.

With a nifty little ‘capture the sound off youtube vids’ gizmo that Lucy helped me find I have indeed captured the sound of the show and split it into individual tracks. Of the 18 or so songs, only four are the same recordings as on the soundtrack album, so the film versions are really worth having. "Smoke Rings" wins the prize as cracking rediscovery of the day. Laurie and the singers act out a game show - in Spanish. What a beautifully mad song!

"Que es mas macho - lightbulb o schoolbus?"
"….Uh… lightbulb?"
"No! Lo siento. Schoolbus es mas macho que lightbulb".

It’s brilliant. No idea why, but it just is.

Plus I’ve found a few more rare tracks on youtube – some very interesting pieces from the Homeland period. First up is “Mambo and Bling” which was available only at 2008 concerts and is kind of a dry run for “Another Day In America” – narrated by Fenway Bergamot, some of the lines actually crop up in the Homeland track. The b side of “Mambo” is called “Behind The Screen” and is an instrumental – all moody violins and spooky keyboards and it’s wonderful. Then there’s the b side of the “Only An Expert” single – “Pictures and Things” is again rather like “Another Day In America” and picks up many of the lines from “Mambo” that weren’t recycled into “ADIA”.  Together all three of these lengthy Fenway tracks have a few overlaps, but all have some fascinating lines of their own, and I just love the mood that’s generated by the combination of the Voice of Authority and those ever so sad violins and keys.

There’s also an amazing version of "Another Day In America" from the Jimmy Fallon talk show in the US. Laurie is dressed as Fenway, the voice of authority, just like on the cover of Homeland, and she looks really freaky. And she’s backed by a guy playing the biggest saxophone I’ve ever seen. It must be as tall as he is. It’s incredible.

the velvet underground and nico

A bit late to the party I know, but I've been listening to The Velvet Underground And Nico - the umpteenth reissue with all sorts of bonus tracks...

And this time, just to confuse everyone, there's a double disc, just like the last double disc from a few years ago, but with different bonus tracks. AND there's also a Mega Sized Box Set with the Valleydale Ballroom gig from November 1966, the original recordings from Scepter Studios in April 1966, and some tracks from a rehearsal, one of the very first with Nico, recorded at the Factory in January 1966. Add to this the mono and stereo versions of the album, plus the single versions and Nico's Chelsea Girl album and you have a Mega Sized Box Set containing an awful lot of stuff that we’ve all bought many times before. A sneaky FLAC download has revealed that, as I thought, there’s only a small amount of stuff that is strictly ‘new’.

Let’s start with the fabled Scepter Studios acetate. These are the first recordings for the album. And so it’s been treated a bit like the Holy Grail for VU fans. Apart from "Sunday Morning" which was recorded much, much later, pretty much the whole album was recorded at Scepter in mid April 1966. Tom Wilson apparently later oversaw a new mix of these tracks which is what ended up on the album, but essentially the Scepter Acetate IS the debut album, just hissier and less clear. Three tracks originally taped at Scepter were totally re-recorded for the album a month later - "Heroin", "Waiting For The Man" and "Venus In Furs" – which means that the Scepter versions are new to my ears, but otherwise listening to a de-clicked, de-hissed recording is not worth the effort when the pristine Mono version in this box set gives you mostly the exact same tracks. The only other difference is that "European Son" on the album was edited down from the nine minutes plus version recorded at Scepter, but do you really need three more minutes of guitar noise? I certainly don’t.

FWIW the original Scepter versions of the re-recorded songs are inferior to the remakes and clearly the Velvets made the right call in re-recording these songs. AND, a couple of the ‘alternative’ tracks on the Stereo disc are actually the Scepter recordings nicely remastered and mixed into stereo (so we have the longer "European Son" and the un-used "Heroin" as bonus tracks for example, even though they are also on the Demos disc but in Mono and less clear!)

So, basically, apart from a couple of tracks the Scepter acetate is a bit of a wash out.

The January 1966 rehearsal is quite good fun, and is surprisingly good quality, but ultimately it’s the Velvets mucking around and jamming with the only notable track being Nico attempting to sing "There She Goes Again" and proving conclusively that she’s entirely wrong for that track. But really, how often will you want to play these songs? A couple of times perhaps, but that’s it, they’re not that interesting. .

The Valleydale Ballroom gig is the only complete Exploding Plastic Inevitable gig, and one of only a couple of live recordings where Nico sings with the band. The gig is bookended by two lengthy half hour improvs which feature Nico wailing tunelessly at times. "It Was A Pleasure Then" on Chelsea Girl was an attempt to capture some of this free-form improv style. But if, like me, you are one those people who finds even eight minutes of tuneless warbling to be irritating, then "Melody Laughter" and "The Nothing Song" will drive you to despair. The rest of the gig finds the Velvets playing most of the debut album, and they play it competently, but that’s about it. It’s surprisingly low key, everything is professional and very very safe. No surprises at all, with virtually every song sounding just like the record. So again, how often will this get an airing? Not often. Plus, despite the best efforts of the audio restoration boffins it’s still a fairly ropey audience recording from 46 years ago, so it’s never going to sound that good. This show has been booted loads of times over the years and it sounds better now that it ever has; it’s perfectly listenable, but it’s still muffled, muddy and murky.

Chelsea Girl sounds good though – cleaner, sharper than my now very old CD, and I’d not got the Mono version of the VU&N album before, which is very sharp and some songs undoubtedly sound better in Mono, with some noticeable mix differences too.

So, the Mega Box Set actually includes very little that is genuinely new and worth having especially if you've already bought the VU&N album many time before. If you've not already got this record, then where have you been since 1967? Go out right now and get the double disc version. It's the best it has ever sounded and contains the Scepter / rehearsal material for good measure. 

  

the next day - the return of david bowie

I had never expected to hear anything new from David Bowie; I would have put good money him never releasing any new material ever again, and I'd resigned myself a few years back to the fact that he'd clearly retired. So this was a huge shock. The first listen to "Where Are We Now?" play was approached with quite some trepidation and to be honest I was slightly disappointed on first listen. It doesn't immediately grab your attention and I think my expectations were way too high.

But after just the second play something clicked in my brain and I realised that it was genuinely one of the most marvellous recordings I'd heard for quite some time. There's a quiet restrained dignity about it, a lack of pretension and flashiness that's both disarming and charming. And there are a couple of points which actually choked me up a bit. The understated emotion shines through the more you hear the song. And although you may read in the ill-informed press that Bowie's voice is not what is was, well I would strongly disagree with that. His vocal is actually very reminiscent of "Thursdays Child", the lovely, and similarly vulnerable, single from 1999. Both songs have Bowie singing in a slightly weary, melancholy manner. But this is clearly deliberate - it's not a showy vocal, it's intentionally low key, he's acting the song, like he's done so many times before, and if you listen to the end of the song there's absolutely no doubt that he hasn't actually lost any of the power in his voice - so pooey to the stupid hacks and the doubters!

Unsurprisingly it most closely resembles the sound on Heathen and Reality, Bowie's previous two albums, both produced by Tony Visconti and featuring many of the same musicians. The textures, the way Bowie's voice is recorded, the guitar sounds - they all expand upon techniques used by Visconti on tracks like Reality's "The Loneliest Guy" (another song with a faltering and hesitant vocal, deliberately sung in this vulnerable manner by a man in full control), or Heathen's "I Would Be Your Slave".
 

To strengthen my conviction that his voice was undiminished by time I looked at the testimony of producer Tony Visconti, who spent two years on the new album. He says that Bowie still has one of the strongest voices he's ever worked with in a studio, and that Bowie's health is extremely good. That's good to know, as the rumours - based on absolutely no proof whatsoever - over the past few years have saddled David with everything from a stroke to cancer. Visconti expressed some surprise that this song was chosen as the lead single for the album, as it is rather atypical of the rest of the album. But, Visconti noted with a smile, as always David does just what he wants and it always works out fine.

And the video was oddly compelling, and decidedly weird. And as such, it's very Bowie. Towards the end there are a couple of shots of DB standing in a messy art studio looking rather serious, but somehow, at 66 he still manages to look so damn cool that the first time I saw this I broke into such a big grin.

By tea time on that first day the song was number one in the iTunes charts! - so pooey also to the Biebers and the Rihannas - here's a proper song, played by real people and sung by a man who needs no autotune. Aside from the song itself, I think what really wowed commentators is that it came completely out of nowhere. The secrecy surrounding the new project was brilliant. Absolutely no-one knew anything until the video was distributed. In an age where Lady Gaga is giving you minute-by-minute updates via Twitter on what hat she's going to wear ('do I choose the one shaped like a toilet or the one made of beef??'), DB has recorded an entire album and NO ONE KNEW. Who else could pull this off?

 

Then the album, The Next Day came out in March. 

I know I’m biased, and I’d probably have liked almost anything Bowie came up with after ten years of silence, but really, objectively, this is such a fresh sounding, exciting, exhilarating record that it genuinely doesn’t sound like an album recorded by a 66 year old. I hope all the rumours of ill health that have dogged Bowie over the past few years are just that, or at the very least any ill health is now behind him, because on the evidence of The Next Day there’s so much more creativity and life in him yet. 14 tracks, all of equally high standard, every one a little gem, and every one intensely different from the others. It’s like 14 different facets of Bowie. Plus there's 4 more bonus tracks to be had, and they are all pretty damn good too.

On first listen I was totally entranced, and my smile grew wider and wider as the album progressed. There’s so much going on - on every song there are dozens of little nods to the past, great fun for a seasoned Bowie fan like me, yet there is absolutely no wallowing in past glories. And it grows with every listen. Every new play reveals more and more. This is an urgent album, demanding your complete attention, and it positively bristles with invention. Most of the songs are around the three / four minute mark, they are all tight, concise, no filler, no flab. Some tracks have the most fantastic backing vocals, others have stonkingly heavy guitar work, some have bizarre rhythms and frantic drumming, and all have some of the best vocals that DB has ever committed to tape.

"Where Are We Now?" had attracted a lot of press comments about how tremulous Bowie’s voice sounded. As I suspected this was intentional, Bowie was acting the song – the rest of the album finds him really belting out some tracks – for example, the angry title song opens the album with a massive burst of energy and a cracking vocal - ‘here I am, not quite dying’ snarls DB in what is surely a dig at all those who’d written him off.

I could waffle on all day about how much I love this record but here are some of the highlights -

the deceptively catchy "Valentine’s Day" has one of the sweetest melodies on the album, yet the lyrics deal with a kid shooting his classmates at school… the closing "Heat" which is moody and mysterious and is as close to Scott Walker as DB has ever come. Musically this song could have fitted onto Scott’s Climate Of Hunter.

Elsewhere there are a couple of frantically loopy songs – "If You Can See Me" seems to have every musician playing at a different speed with Bowie spitting out the vocal, yet unaccountably it all hangs together and it really sticks in your brain. And "How Does The Grass Grow?" finds Bowie la-la-ing the melody from the Shadows’ "Apache", which ought to be very silly, but comes over as weirdly sinister. Then there are the more straightforward songs like "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" or "You Will Set The World On Fire" which ROCK and slower pieces like the sinister "Dirty Boys" which is over far too quickly, or the Low-esque "Love Is Lost" which is full of Eno-style squelchy drums. "I’d Rather Be High" has a chorus that sounds like the most 1960s chorus ever, yet the verses have angular, very Tom Verlaine-esque guitars.

The band is magnificent. Bowie has used a small group of tried and tested musicians, people he knew he could rely on entirely. Earl Slick and Gerry Leonard combine to become every guitarist Bowie has ever worked with, plus a whole load that he hasn’t – here there’s a Frippian sound, over there a bit of Reeves Gabrels, or a dash of Belew, or a Mick Ronson lick. But it’s all new, so very fresh and it’s genuinely thrilling stuff.

The drumming is superb – Zachary Alford takes the lion's share, but Bowie stalwart Sterling Campbell also anchors a number of songs – Sterling has worked with Bowie for nearly 20 years, and the links go further back as his drum teacher was none other than Dennis Davis, Bowie’s drummer from Young Americans to Scary Monsters.

On bass we have the ever-wonderful Gail Ann Dorsey on most songs, with Tony Levin on a couple and producer Tony Visconti on another. Bowie himself plays a bit of guitar, and most of the keyboards, and apart from the odd saxophone overdub or strings session that was pretty much it. A small group playing much of the material live in the studio.

I bought the CD, from a real shop. I walked back to work feeling absurdly pleased with myself that I’ve bought every Bowie album since Let’s Dance (30 years ago almost to the day) on the day of release. I’ve no idea why that’s important but it somehow makes me feel good… even having the streamed version prior to the actual release date didn't reduced the excitement of picking up The New David Bowie Album off the shelf. And those are words I never thought I’d be typing in 2013.

Of course I bought the deluxe edition with the bonus tracks. These are very much bonus pieces – they probably wouldn’t fit on the album anywhere else, but I’m slightly disappointed that they’ve been added onto the end (rather than occupying a bonus disc) as they kind of spoil the brilliant ending that "Heat" provides. The darkness and mystery of "Heat" will be somewhat spoiled by the jaunty swing of "So She" which now follows.

But these are minor (and fixable) quibbles. The music itself is astonishing, the singing is even more astonishing considering the 10 year lay off, and the lyrics are by turns dark and troubling, witty and playful, and densely opaque – as all the best Bowie lyrics always are.

The sleeve design, with its rework of the "Heroes" sleeve, has grown on me, but the fold out lyric sheet is incredibly hard to read - doesn’t Bowie realise that some of us are getting on a bit and our eyesight isn’t what it used to be!

Probably the best thing about this album is that it sounds so very David Bowie, all the little touches of past Bowie songs are whooshed up into a sound which is partly new, partly familiar, but completely Bowie. It couldn’t be anyone else. As I said, every track is tremendous, every track is unique and every track is a brilliant experience. This may not be Bowie’s best album – there are just too many other candidates for that title – but it’s certainly up there with the best. I really, genuinely, mean that.

Welcome back, David, it's so good to have you back in my life again!

  

talking heads live - recent discoveries

Remain In Light, Talking Heads' 1980 album, remains one of my all time favourite albums. The complexity and density of the polyrhythmic songs is something quite unearthly, something so stunning that it's almost impossible to work out how it was done. The sheer number of overdubs and overlapping vocal lines is astounding.

Yet during the late summer and into the winter of 1980 Talking Heads not only played most of this album live, but they somehow actually improved on many of the songs, live on stage.

I've mentioned the debut show of the expanded Heads before, and if you want to hear what they could do then I recommend the brilliant The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads - one of the finest live albums ever made. But recently a soundboard from the Amsterdam show in December 1980 has circulated. It's not as slick as TNOTBITH, but in many ways it’s more fun as this was what the expanded Heads sounded like in the flesh, warts and all, having an absolute ball on stage. Adrian Belew has a real blast on "Warning Sign" and goes suitably nuts on "The Great Curve", but the whole band is really on form. "I Zimbra" is perhaps the best version I’ve ever heard and "Houses In Motion" is superb too. The only less than successful track is, oddly, "Once In A Lifetime" which appears to be played too slowly and as such it loses all it’s energy. Dolette Macdonald sounds like she’s trying to speed things up with her excellent backing vocals but to no avail. You clearly can’t get Chris Frantz to change his rock solid playing mid song! Very odd, as I’ve never heard a duff version of this song before.

Another recently discovered Dutch soundboard, from Leiden on 01 July 1982 has been tickling my ear hairs too. This was the opening show of the Heads summer 1982 tour and first night nerves are all over the place. The gig itself is full of energy and many of the songs are played with an aggression and sense of excitement that you just don’t get the following year on the far more polished Stop Making Sense. In many ways these 1982 shows are my favourite Heads gigs – Jerry gets to perform “Slink”, Tom Tom Club were the opening act (basically the whole expanded Heads band minus David) and Byrne gets to perform four new songs from The Catherine Wheel (the three “Big” Songs and “What A Day That Was”), all of which are killer live tracks. And they find time to debut the newly written but not yet recorded “Swamp”. So, out of the 14 or so songs played every night, almost half of them were unfamiliar to the audiences.

A wonderful tour and there’s a few partial radio broadcasts of some of the gigs, but this is the first complete soundboard show I’ve come across. As I said first night nerves plague the band, especially Byrne who messes up loads of words; though he rarely stuck the ‘official’ words in concert usually he sounds far more confident that he does here, repeating lines and getting verses the wrong way round which really confuses poor Dolette Macdonald who tries to keep up with him but simply can’t! Jerry’s vocal on “Slink” is mixed rather low too, though this might not be a bad thing as he’s rather off key, but the biggest problem is poor Raymond Jones. He had the unenviable job of replacing Bernie Worrell for this tour but on this opening night his synths really aren’t working properly. His burbly interjections don’t always come in on cue, and are frequently too loud or too quiet or simply wrong. Later gigs that I have are much much better, so it seems his problems were sorted out, but it’s a shame that we have, say, a perfectly good version of “My Big Hands” that is thrown off kilter by his sometimes wayward keyboards. Otherwise it’s a great show, with some surprisingly hard and aggressive playing on tracks like “Life During Wartime” and “Cities” – Alex Weir is perhaps no match for Belew when it comes to bizarre animalistic guitar noise, but he sure has a wonderfully fast, furious and funky style which works brilliantly on tracks like “Big Business”.

And speaking of The Catherine Wheel. I played some of this again the other day, and I still love every single note. I had the LP (which just had the songs) for quite some time before I was able to get hold of the cassette containing the full length work. As a consequence I perhaps love the songs slightly more than the rest of it, but the whole thing is just magnificent. And I was delighted to learn that I perfectly remembered every single word of "His Wife Refused" as I sang along in the car. Mis-spent youth? Well, at least I wasn’t smashing up phone boxes or anything. Learning the words to obscure and bizarre David Byrne songs seems like time well spent to me…

talk talk live

Talk Talk live comes in three major chunks - 1982, 1984 and 1986, and, apart from a few one offs this is the extent of it.

I recently played a bunch of 1984 shows as the band were plugging It's My Life.

First up was a show from the Hammersmith Odeon right at the start of the gigging for that year...

At this early April show the band seem rather tentative; it was one of their first performances since late 1982, and the first with an expanded six piece band (the core of Hollis, Webb and Harris are augmented by Ian Curnow on keyboards and synths, Phil Ramocon on piano an Robbie Macintosh on guitar (and at some shows percussionist Morris Pert appears to have played)). Lots of It’s My Life tunes in the show of course, but most of these would really flower later in the year as TT became far more self assured.

After a month or so of European gigs in the spring, TT played in the US for much of the summer, usually supporting other bands such as the Psychedelic Furs, Berlin, Sparks, or here, at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater, the Alarm. Macintosh had prior commitments with the Pretenders, so John Hook comes in on guitar with Phil Reis installed as full time percussionist.

This radio broadcast is magnificent, and show itself opens brilliantly with a long build up into "Such A Shame". Arguably their best opening number, so it's, ahem, such a shame that this song would more usually be played as an encore. 

Then in September the band returned to Europe and the UK for more shows. A number of these gigs were televised on the rapidly expanding European tv channels. A May show from Florence had appeared on MTV Europe (though no concessions were made to the tv audience and the performance seems very dark and gloomy on tv – these days the show would be lit differently to benefit the tv cameras), the Dutch show Veronica’s Rock Night, which was syndicated across mainland Europe, broadcast a show in September (much better filmed as the gig was set up for broadcast) and the November show in Dortmund was reshown numerous times on Germany’s ZDF network. In addition I have at least another 5 shows that were aired on European radio stations, one of the best being the Paris gig from late September (although I could do without the annoying DJ interruptions). So 1984 was a great year for TT shows, and yields a large number of very good quality recordings (plus a healthy number of pretty decent audience recordings too).

And every recording I have is uniformly excellent. This was a very strong live band, and a very consistent one too.

february random music

Some more random shuffled music - 

 

“In The Clouds” from All About Eve. Brother Rob would be very happy with me! But this is a terrific track actually, really summery and cheery, and I’d forgotten what a lovely voice Julianne Regan has. Nice chiming guitars in a very 80s, almost Cocteau Twins way. 

 

“I Follow Rivers” from Scandanavian popster Lykke Li. Excellent and extremely catchy song, and an enjoyably unusual production too, with lots of percussion well to the fore.

 

“Secret Side” from Nico’s The End… very slightly mad, especially the hissing and wheezing of the harmonium, and with added white noise washes from Cale and Eno’s synth backings. Chilly stuff. 

“Endless Summer Of The Damned” – from Bauhaus’ last album Go Away White, an album that the band didn’t live to see released as they’d already fallen out and broken up, again, even before the sessions were complete. This one has a terrific glam riff and the Murph in full declamatory vocal mode. Rather wonderful actually. 

“The Apparent Chaos Of Stone” – Robert Fripp and Theo Travis live at Coventry Cathedral in 2009. This piece is more Theo than Robert as he noodles away on the flute for nearly ten minutes with the Venal One creating gentle wooshes and whirrs via the Lunar Module. This whole album is very good, the flutes really work well with the soundscapes, adding a warmth that the soundscapes can sometimes lack.

 

“Heroes” – Bowie live in Tokyo, December 1978. This was the very last show of the Stage tour and Japanese tv broadcast about an hour of the show, resulting in this excellent quality recording. Cracking rendition of “Heroes” with DB really going for it vocally. 

 

“Down Colorful Hill” – Cheer Up!!! Do Red House Painters ever smile I wonder? Or laugh? Having said that, this is a very lovely song. 

“I’m Not Satisfied” – from the Mothers Of Invention’s Cruisin’ With Ruben & The Jets – an album of doowop style greasy love songs. As the sleeve says, it was a last ditch attempt to fool DJ’s into playing the Mothers’ music on the radio. As with previous attempts it failed, as Zappa and the Mothers were seen by the upstanding moral guardians in radioland as being subversive, dirty and politically suspect. Can’t have them polluting the airwaves with their songs about how vegetables keep you regular (“Call Any Vegetable”), and songs about people with largish limbs - “Big Leg Emma” was actually on a list of banned records because, according to Zappa, a girl with a big leg ‘caused unease’ in the higher echelons of an LA radio station!

 

“Ali Click” – what a great song this is, lots of Enoid percussion and those weird almost nursery rhyme-like lyrics about Jolly Roger which are virtually impossible to understand but still, in Eno’s measured reserved English tones, somehow sound slightly rude.

  

“Flight Into Space” from the Moonraker soundtrack, which is one of the best soundtracks that John Barry ever did for the Bond films. This is quite an epic piece. 

"Sugar Hiccup” from the Cocteau Twins' second album Head Over Heels. This song, (and the equally excellent “From The Flagstones”) marks the exact point that the Twins moved from doing second rate Siouxsie knock offs with terrible drum machine beats, to giving us sprawling mini epics of full of reverb, spangly shimmery guitars and Elizabeth Fraser’s astonishing vocals. Musically “Sugar Hiccup” is almost a dry run for the following year’s “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops”, but it’s a marvellous song in its own right. The only downside is that it very rapidly fades out halfway through a chorus, which gives the impression of someone saying ‘yeah, that’s long enough, next one please’ and just fading it out without any attempt to make it fit the song. 

 

“Everything” from Anathema’s superb 2010 album We’re Here Because We’re Here. This is a tremendous album, mixed by the ridiculously busy Steven Wilson. It’s a huge sounding record, every track is big and wide and sounds like it was meant for vast open spaces. This is a lovely ballad, starting off fairly intimately but expanding as the song progresses into another epic.

 

“Not A Young Man Anymore” in which Dean and Britta play a Lou Reed song far better than Lou and the Velvets ever did. Here, it’s not a bad song at all. The bootleg I have of the VU playing it in early 1967, well, it’s pretty awful. Lou’s singing is especially painful. 

“Reynard the Fox” – Julian Cope basically goes utterly loopy before your very ears. Yet, somehow, it’s still very entertaining. That whole Fried album is like that – clearly Mr Cope is a long way out of his tree (I mean just look at the album cover), yet the songs are cracking.

 

“Where Are We Now?” – I’ve not played this for a little while, but it’s still absolutely marvellous. I’m so excited about the new Bowie album. A couple of weeks to go now…

“Don’t You Get Me Down” – one of the brilliant set of songs that Charley recorded last year. Her tunes are very clever, slightly offbeat, some very unusual chords and stuff, yet the songs are nearly always incredibly catchy and very easy to sing along with. I wish she’d record more.

 

“Dominion” – the last part of Tangerine Dream’s Logos. Classic synth sounds. 

“Night School” – from Zappa’s Jazz From Hell. This was an all instrumental album that Zappa recorded on the Synclavier synth back in 1986. Just to satisfy the fans he added one guitar solo track. But this one is a jolly, very commercial sounding, tune that was originally intended as a tv theme for some late night educational programmes. The Synclavier sounds are horribly dated now, but it’s a fun little tune.

 

“Hong Kong Garden” – named after a Chinese restaurant favoured by the Banshees. What a song! This is just brilliant. And it was their debut single – it shows such confidence. Amazing. 

“Autobahn” recorded live in 1991 on The Mix tour. Not much else to say. It’s “Autobahn” – it runs for 11 minutes, it’s great. As always. 

“Neal And Jack And Me” – just the interlocking guitar parts, with some nice Frippian squeaky mouse overdubs. This must have been one of Dear Old Mr Stormy’s Monday Selections some time ago. These little snippets of rehearsals and workings are always pretty interesting. However some, the little 20 seconds fragments of Lizard tunes and such like are interesting once or twice and that’s it – but others, like this one, 2+ minutes long and recognizably part of a song, repay repeated listens and have thus made it onto the iPod.

“Pop Muzik”  - M's brilliant single which is of course one of the greatest ever pop songs in the history of the world. It’s also very cleverly produced: towards the end the stereo image suddenly expands – it starts off as a really tight little synth pop song but then suddenly it seems to cover the entire sky as everything is hugely opened up. I’d never really noticed this before and I would think you’d only really get this impression on headphones, but it’s very clever, and very effective.  

 

“Moss Garden” from Dave ‘n’ Brian. Love that Japanese Koto that DB plays, and the backing synths and atmosphere’s from BE are fab. 

“Black Metallic” from indie also-rans Catherine Wheel. They never really made it as big as everyone expected – this single and the accompanying album, Ferment, came out in 1992 and everyone seemed convinced that they’d be huge, but it never really happened and as far as I know they split some years ago. “Black Metallic” is however a monster of a tune and it sounded extremely good 20 years on. 

“Whole Lotta Rosie” from AC/DC. Rock doesn’t get much rockier than this! 

 

And finally - “The God Of Adverbs” from the recent David Sylvian collaboration with Jan Bang. We have DS’s calm, measured narration over some very odd squiddly backing ‘music’. “In Azerbaijan there are no adverbs, merely meandering circumlocutions. The God of Adverbs finds this deeply distressing.”

It's a really compelling record - and a strange one - but I love strange records...

 

random music again

Haven’t done this for a while but I shuffled the iPod recently and this was what it gave me –

 

“Fame” – classic Bowie to start us off, this was a live version from 1978, and darned fine it was too. 

“Instant Karma” – Peter Murphy’s cover of the Lennon song, from 2009. The Murph more than does the song justice. Great fun. 

“No Reply” – the Fabs from before I was born. What a great track this is.

“Jealous Guy” – again a live version, from Ferry’s 2007 tour. Always a popular live song, and Ferry always delivers on this one. The whistling is a bit of a show stopper too. 

And then I realized that the first four songs all had Lennon’s hand in them in some way! Weird or what. But we moved on from John and next up was –

 

“North Star” – lovely stuff from Robert Fripp and Daryl Hall. Gorgeous vocals and a lovely laid back guitar part, which comes about 3 years before the very similar and also very lovely “Matte Kudasai”. 

“Frozen Roads” from Brett Anderson’s 2009 album Slow Attack. This is a superb album from start to finish and is by quite some distance Brett’s best album – all tracks were co-written with and produced by Leo Abrahams. “Frozen Roads” is a stunningly good piano led ballad which seemed very appropriate with all the snow around.

 

”Distant Lights Of Olancha Recede” – a Harold Budd poem (these are always welcome – his well worn recitations are tremendous) was followed by another Budd track from By The Dawn’s Early Light – “Boy About 10”, which has that wonderfully mournful violin on it. This is one of my favourite Budd albums. 

“River Deep Mountain High” – the classic Ike ‘n’ Tina Turner song. Pretty epic stuff I think you’ll agree.

“Zannat” from the Hector Zazou and Zwara album – quite a contrast to the super high energy of the Spector production of the previous track. A marvellously atmospheric meld of modern and ancient. 

“Its-a-happening” from the Magic Mushrooms! This is from Nuggets and it’s charmingly loopy. Imagine what you think a song called “Its-a-happening” from 1968 by the Magic Mushrooms would sound like. And it does. It’s exactly like that. 

 

“Ohm Sweet Ohm” from a Kraftwek show just a few nights ago in Dusseldorf where Ralf and the boys are playing Der Katalog over eight nights with all the 3D gubbins (like they will at the Tate Modern later this year). I grabbed the Radioactivity show that appeared on Dime the other night. The quality is pretty good and having the full Radioactivity album played live is a real treat - new performances of tracks like “Antenna” and this one, the always good “Ohm Sweet Ohm” – a joke that surely only works in English?  

 

“Third Uncle” from the 801 Live album. Furious guitarwork from Phil Manzanera, and Eno belts out the vocals which he’s never done since. What a great track. 

“Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please!” the one and only hit from Splodgenessabounds. I’ve always liked this one – it still makes me laugh, the way that the singer is getting progressively more and more frustrated. 

“”Life Is A Minestrone” - 10cc – I have a handful of 10cc tracks, and they are terrific. Pity they got so dull after a while, but for a time between 1973 and 1977 they turned out some absolutely impeccably constructed pop songs.

And to end the iPod came up with –

 

“Upon The My-O-My” from the unique Captain Beefheart. This is one of his more commercial songs, from the Unconditionally Guaranteed album that most Captain fans dislike, but which I think has some cracking songs. And it’s not as willfully bonkers as something like Trout Mask Replica, or later albums like Ice Cream For Crow. He performed this one on the OGWT in 1974 and this clip often crops up on those Sounds Of The Seventies type programmes – the good Captain keeps leering at the camera and reaching out as if to grab the viewer through the television, and you feel that he could actually do it!