randomoniums

Here's what the iPod has shuffled for me recently –

"Party Of Special Things To Do" from the wonderful Captain Beefheart. Great intro, just the good Captain intoning "The camel wore a nightie, at the party of special things to dooooo". So there we are… the song itself is surprisingly conventional sounding and comes from no-one's favourite Beefheart album Bluejeans And Moonbeams. 

"Warning Sign" - a 1976 Talking Heads demo. The band as a trio, before Jerry Harrison joined. Aside from some different lyrics and Byrne sounding strangely calm, far less nervy than usual, it's not wildly different from the eventual version on MSABAF. 

"The Needle And The Damage Done" - Neil at the O2 in 2013, the show I saw. This song never changes. Always impressive.

"Wrecking Ball" - Emmylou's version, but with Neil on backing vocals. Beautiful, really beautiful.

"Dark Matter" - the final, extremely moody track on Porcupine Tree's 1996 album Signify. It's also quite brilliant. One of Steven Wilson's most impressive songs ever I reckon, understated and restrained for the most part but with a glorious, almost Pink Floydish guitar solo to close the piece.

"1984" - the opening track from David Live, which is an awesome album, despite Bowie's occasionally hoarse vocals (partly the result of too much of Colombia's finest up his nose) and the clear tensions in the band. You know the story - no-one told the band that the shows were to be recorded so bass player Herbie Flowers appointed himself as shop steward and told Bowie's management - MainMain - that the band would strike unless they were paid at a proper recording rate. Manager Tony DeFries managed to avoid the conflict by simply disappearing and Bowie himself had to guarantee that the band would be properly reimbursed. Flowers, perhaps predictably, wasn't paid as promised by the end of the tour and ended up suing MainMan to get his money…Anyway, we ended up with a surprisingly impressive live album, even if Bowie himself hated it. 

"Fortune Presents Gifts Not According To The Book" from Dead Can Dance's album Aion. This is an odd one - I'm sure it's no-one's favourite DCD album, yet it contains a number of really fabulous tracks. And although it seems like the whole album is some sort of pseudo medieval pastiche, there's still a few tracks that are played on very modern tech.

In fact you could say that when you expect flutes it's whistles, and when you expect whistles it's flutes!

Hey, it's not often you get to do a Dead Can Dance joke... Anyway, it's a much better album than my memory tells me, and one which has definitely grown on me over the years. I remember being very disappointed by it back in 1990. Too much hurdy gurdying for my liking.

There's still an odd feeling to some tracks, like "Salterello" or "Mephisto" - pieces which clearly want to evoke the feeling that a 15th century jester is playing the tunes. These, for me, don't quite work because I can't help thinking that Neil Innes and his minstrels from Monty Python And The Holy Grail are going to start singing about how -

"Brave Sir Robin bravely ran away / when danger reared its ugly head / he bravely turned his tail and fled / oh, brave Sir Robin turned about / so gallantly he chickened out."

"Er, that's enough singing for now lads," suggests Brave Sir Robin....  

Back to "Fortune Presents Gifts Not According To The Book" - I really love this song, Brendan's vocal is commanding and warm and rich, and the song is a genuine oldie from the 16th century Spanish Hit Parade. Really. 

"Do You Like My New Car?" - much silliness from the 1971 Zappa band as they go through their extremely rude, but actually rather funny groupie routine. It was semi rehearsed but changed every night with updates of what the various band members had been doing, or rather who they'd been doing… 

"We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)" - one of my favourite Peter Gabriel songs ever. The gradual build up of the chorus vocals chanting "We do what we're told", is chillingly effective (reflecting the chilling effectiveness of Stanley Milgram's experiments) and I love all the Eno-esque bleeps and bloops of the backing track.

"Revelator" from Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator) - a stunningly good song from an extremely excellent album. cropped up on shuffle yesterday. There are a handful of songs on this record that are a little too banjo and straw-hat for my tastes, but then you get songs like the brilliant title song, or "April The 14th" or "Elvis Presley Blues" or the truly gorgeous "I Dream A Highway" which are just wonderful and the slightly worrying yeehaw-ness of those other tracks is all forgiven. Perhaps driving to Chelmsford across the Essex countryside doesn't really do this album justice - I need to be driving across endless plains in Nebraska or Texas, dusty and parched, in a old pick up. But the Dunmow / Chelmsford road will have to do for now. Useless factoid - Tom Jones covered "Elvis Presley Blues" on his latest album! 

"Transmission" - Peter Murphy live in 2009 blasting out a superb cover of this Joy Division song. PM does JD really well, very effective. 

"Where You End" - lovely Moby song from the excellent Hotel album. He's so good at writing very simple, but very good pop songs. I wish he'd do more like this. 

"God Save The Queen" - we mean it maaaann…. It's funny how terribly tame the Pistols sound these days. It's a cracking little song, but it's hard to see why the Pistols caused such a horrendous outcry. It's a bit insulting about Her Maj, but in a rather childish way, like a silly kid saying a rude word in front of a vicar. I suppose it was nearly 40 years ago now (!!) and I guess Britain was far more easily shocked back then.