john cale - music for a new society (and other things)

For some reason I woke up recently with John Cale's "Chinese Envoy" rattling around my brain. 

 

So I played Music For A New Society. Which is equal parts beautiful and scary. Some of the pieces are positively unhinged ("Sanities" and "In The Library Of Force" are especially worrying), but the simple rework of "Close Watch" is stunning (though I could do without the bagpipes at the end…) and "Chinese Envoy" is perfectly lovely. Incidentally the track "Sanities" was actually called "Sanctus" but the people doing the record sleeve couldn't read Cale's writing and somehow it ended up being called "Sanities" - which Cale then thought was a better title, despite not actually being a word! 

 

The full band rock song "Changes Made" probably shouldn't be here - it's a fine song, but was included only at the insistence of the record label who wondered if Cale could at least include just one a 'proper' song. Cale actually felt sorry for them, and so, as the rest of New Society was so uncompromising, he agreed to record one regular song... It would fit far better on the previous album Honi Soit or the following record Caribbean Sunset.

 

Anyway, New Society remains a favourite Cale album of mine, despite it being the work of a paranoid raving loony and being generally unlikeable, scary, depressing and eerie... 

 

Then, a few weeks ago Cale released M:FANS - a brand new reworking of Music For A New Society and it's (mostly) very good. Extremely different from the original album - which I suppose is rather the point. 

 

Some of the tracks are perhaps a little overladen with electronics and effects - "Sanctus" and "Library Of Force" for example, and I'm really not sure about the new "Close Watch". But the best tracks are a little cleaner and more direct - "Chinese Envoy" has become a sort of Talking Heads-ish dance track, which is really excellent and is, for me, the highlight of the album, and "Broken Bird" is now a straightforward piano ballad. There are two versions of "If You Were Still Around" one of which was recorded a couple of years ago after Lou Reed's death (and was the catalyst which suggested to Cale that reworking the whole album might be viable). I prefer the second one with the choir, the first is perhaps a little too overwrought for me. 

 

It'll need a few more listens, but this has always been a dark and slightly worrisome album, and these new versions don't dispel that feeling at all. Cale's voice is still very strong, and his desire to push the boundaries shows no sign of easing up. Thank goodness.

 

After the original New Society Cale stepped back from the abyss and delivered two more albums (and a throwaway live record) before he totally cleaned up. 1983's Caribbean Sunset  is still fairly paranoid, but at least Cale sounds like he's actually having a bit of fun on this album, not on the verge of blowing his brains out... It's got an oddly commercial sheen to it, some of the songs really rock, hard, and the title track is so delicately pretty. Oddly, this album has never received a CD release as Cale obviously has some issues with it. Yet, even more oddly, some of the songs (like "Model Beirut Recital" and "Magazines") have cropped up numerous times in Cale live sets over the years, so he must like some it, at least...

 

In 1985 he issued the somewhat unloved Artificial Intelligence. It's actually rather poorly recorded and produced, which is quite unusual for a John Cale record - the whole thing seems weirdly lop sided and astonishingly clunky, but the bulk of this songs are very good. 

 

In fact, once you get past the lumpy production "Dying On The Vine" is surely one of Cale's best ever songs. The lyrics are wonderful, hinting at some sort of spy drama in a hot foreign land. "Meet me when all the shooting's over… you can bring all your friends along for protection…the authorities say my papers are all in order, and if I wasn't such a coward I would run", but as ever with Cale's songs, the lyrics are vividly evocative, of something or other, but delightfully unspecific when it comes to details. 

 

Elsewhere, tracks like "Fadeaway Tomorrow" and "Satellite Walk" represent Cale's attempt at a top forty type song (though no-one bought it, possibly because no-one knew what "I took my tomahawk for a satellite walk" meant - the 12" 'dance' mix isn't noticeably any dancier either…), but "Black Rose" is lovely (and was the title song until Cale changed his mind at the very last minute requiring a total rethink to the cover - hence the horrid drawing we ended up with, which was really looks like it was done at the 11th hour). And the marvellous opening track "Everytime The Dogs Bark" hints at the paranoid ranting Cale of yesteryear. 

 

During the recording of this album (done at the same time and with the same musicians as Nico's Camera Obscura, fact fans) Cale's daughter Eden was born. Seemingly overnight Cale cleaned himself up. Gone were the frightening number of whisky bottles, gone were the narcotics that kept him up for days at a time while he scoured the news for evidence to back up his paranoid political conspiracy theories. Now sober, he took up squash and tennis (with the same fanatical devotion as he once given to his drinking), and once his live commitments were over in 1985 he took the next four years off, to be with his wife and daughter. He only emerged from his retirement in 1989 when Brian Eno suggested recording the Falklands Suite (which Cale had written in 1982 soon after the War) with a Russian orchestra - that then lead to Wrong Way Up and, fortunately, loads more Cale albums. 

random tunes on thursday

With the iPod on shuffle, this is what I've heard today...

 

Some moody Doctor Who music from Tom Baker's second story The Ark In Space. Lovely stuff from Who's regular composer Dudley Simpson. This guy worked wonders, creating compelling atmospheres from a small group of, mainly, woodwind players.

Iggy Pop - "Five Foot One" live in 1979. A really strong performance - the band featured the cream of UK punk - Glen Matlock from the Pistols and Brian James from the Damned, and they were a superb foil for some of Iggy's most impassioned stage shows.

Giles Giles and Fripp - "The Crukster" - a weird spoken word thing with some impossible, frantic guitar runs underneath the narration. Bonkers. And almost unbelievable that within a year, these guys would have effectively morphed into King Crimson.

Zappa Plays Zappa - a live, note perfect rendition of the fiendishly difficult "RDNZL". Breathtaking stuff. You'd think the percussion alone would take years to master!

Tim Bowness / Peter Chilvers - "Winter With You" - the sparser version from Overstrand and quite possibly one of the best songs in the world. Really. Absolutely stunning. Brings me to tears almost every time.  

Lou Reed / John Cale - "Open House" - I'd forgotten how good the Songs For Drella album can be. When Lou was on form there was almost no-one to beat him, and this is cracking. Superbly arranged too, thanks to John Cale, and with beautifully pitched vocals. 

Harold Budd / Robin Guthrie - something with impossibly pretty piano and shimmery guitars, you know how it sounds...  

Daniel Lanois / Emmylou Harris - "May This Be Love" live in 1995 on the Wrecking Ball tour. Gorgeous. These two should work together some more - they bring out the absolute best in each other. Emmylou's voice is so lovely on this Hendrix song and Dan and the band kick up a firestorm of noise behind her.

Iggy again - "Dog Food" also live in 1979 but a really shambolic performance. Iggy's obviously somewhat, er, distracted and whereas he's usually spot on with his vocals (even when he's ingested enough stimulants to send him to another planet), here he's missing cues and just splurging the vocals out wherever he wants, regardless of the structure of the song. A right mess.

David Bowie - "And I Say To Myself". I love his 1960s songs; this one is real delight as his backing band the Buzz chant the backing vocals offhandedly back at Dave. Although none of his songs became hits in the 1960s (not until "Space Oddity" at the very end of the decade) it's sometimes hard to fathom why, as most of his songs were catchy and delightful, frequently with a welcome sense of gentle self mockery.

The Pineapple Thief - "Magnolia" - the title song from their 2014 album. It's a really solid record. 12 short snappy grown up rock songs in 45 minutes, which gives the sense that TPT were doing their level best to avoid the Prog Rock tag that frequently follows them). There's a surprising tenderness on this album which was somewhat missing from the more muscular vaguely Radiohead / Muse-ish sound of the previous couple of albums.

And finally...

 

Yet more Iggy! - "Nightclubbing" from The Idiot. In an interview conducted in late 1976 Iggy described the sound of his forthcoming debut solo album as "James Brown meets Kraftwerk". I'd argue that most of The Idiot sounds nothing like that description, except for just one track - "Nightclubbing". Harsh drum machines, big fat synths, but it's also, oddly, impossibly, rather funky. I love the two tiered vocal on the second verse, I love the wailing wah-wahed guitar at the end, it's just a superb track. And a brilliant production too - it sounds like nothing else on Earth.

rambling thoughts - karl bartos

I recently revisited Karl Bartos’ 2013 album Off The Record.

 

The cover has a picture of Karl’s Kraftwerk robot (a move which apparently enraged Ralf Hutter, who tried and failed to get the record withdrawn...). And the KW influences don't stop there.

 

The music itself shows Karl returning very much to the classic KW sound after experimenting with simpler guitar based pop on his previous album. Whilst Bartos’ solo stuff is often not as interesting as the stuff he produced with his old band, it’s still strong and Off The Record represented a sort of rounding up exercise as some of these songs had been knocking around for years and years waiting for Karl to finish them off.

 

Bartos claimed that after 20+ years out of KW he’d obviously moved on, but Off The Record doesn't bear this out. Maybe the excellent opening track “Atomium” shows a much more muscular rhythm track than anything KW would have done, but Karl still relies on the Robovox for the vocals which obviously invites direct comparisons with the Dusseldorf boys. And this direct link crops up throughout the album - for example, many of the drum sounds are identical to those that Karl played when he was KW’s drummer – and, sadly, whenever this happens it’s Karl’s songs that seem to come off as second best. Which is a shame as this is actually a very good collection of synth pop. "Rhythmus" takes this even further, using much of the melody from "Computer World" but seeing as Bartos composed this Kraftwerk melody in the first place, it's probably not too surprising.

 

Karl dips even further into the past with the final track, “Hausmusik”, which has tinny rhythm box percussion and wibbly analogue synth sounds and sounds like Harmonia or Cluster from 40+ years ago! It’s a charmingly simple piece and it’s probably my favourite.  

 

rambling thoughts - revolver

It’s interesting that the first few Beatles albums basically reflect the Fabs' live sets at the time. And Beatles For Sale is like a mopping up record of covers and early tracks before the ground subtly shifts under the band. Help! introduces all sorts of other instrumentation and styles, a trend which really catches on during Rubber Soul, which is an album that I probably prefer to Revolver, mainly because I think the basic songwriting is stronger and more consistent – for me Revolver errs a little too much on the side of experimentation to be quite as enjoyable as Rubber Soul.

 

Having said that, Revolver is still one hell of an album with some delightful songs like “I’m Only Sleeping”, some silly songs (yes, I'm talking to you, "Yellow Submarine"), some bitingly harsh tracks like “Taxman” and the all out insanity of “Tomorrow Never Knows”. And the band was so confident that they could afford to leave off the brilliant “Paperback Writer” as a single and dump the stunning “Rain” on a b side!

 

Perhaps the only track that doesn’t really cut it for me is Macca’s “Got To Get You Into My Life” – it’s not the song, which is really excellent, but the Beatles seem to be the wrong band for this tune. It so badly needs an Otis Redding style soul band, and especially a drummer with more groove than Ringo, who’s usual splatty style is just plain wrong here. I remember that Earth Wind and Fire did a cracking version in the seventies, which I think is actually what the song needed. 

 

Incidentally all my Beatles albums up to and including Revolver are in mono on the iPod. From Pepper onwards they are the stereo versions. Except that I've included “Tomorrow Never Knows” in stereo, with all the tape effects and backwards lunacy coming atcha from every angle. It works brilliantly - we have all of Revolver in glorious mono, powerful, clear and forceful - then the final track, “TNK”, fires up in headsplittingly mad stereo. It just seemed the right way to sequence it. And on headphones the sudden change is wonderful, and like, totally mind expanding. Man…

 

 

kraftwerk - utrecht december 1981

For no obvious reason today's listening started off with part of a Kraftwerk concert from 1981.

This isn't the whole show, sadly, but it's a soundboard recording, which is terrific to have from 1981. Kraftwerk undertook the Computer World Tour across the summer of 1981 but they also played handful of gigs in Germany and the Low Countries in December '81, four months after the main tour had finished. I seem to recall reading something years ago that said these gigs were scheduled at very short notice as the band wanted to road test some major upgrades to the Kling-Klang studio that had been necessary due to wear and tear incurred on the big summer tour. 

 

Whatever the reason this soundboard from Utrecht sounds significantly different from other recordings I have heard from the Computer World Tour. For one thing the band sound more 'live' than at any point since 1975. There's a clear sense of four guys actually playing this music, wrestling with the technology, trying to keep the machinery under control. Ralf and Florian's vocals are noticeably more animated, the drumming is more forceful (and at times actually sounds like Wolfgang is hitting those delicate metal pads really hard) and everything has a far more immediate feel about it.

 

Some songs are rearranged slightly - "Autobahn" is now cut to 12 minutes, but a very busy 12 minutes with Ralf and Florian seemingly improvising and almost scat singing towards the end, which is very unusual. "Radioactivity" is mid way between the slow, stately, measured original (and this was how it had been performed during the summer 1981 dates) and the faster, more urgent Mix version that came at the end of the 1980s. The drumming is especially different.

 

It may have been rather weedy on the album, but this live "Pocket Calculator" rocks. Really. 9 minutes long, it's a stomping powerhouse performance. And we get the only live outing for "Metropolis" until the Katalog shows of the current decade. It's a cracking performance too.  

All in all, one of the very best Kraftwerk live recordings in existence.

 

 

tim bowness & peter chilvers - post-its

I simply don't have the words, at the moment, to write in full about how Tim Bowness and Peter Chilvers' music is so very important to me. The wonderful reissue of their 2002 album California, Norfolk (in a superb two CD package together with the second album Overstrand), accounts for a very large proportion of my music listening time over the past couple of years. And their song "Post-Its" is the most played song on my iPod by quite some distance.

 

This is music that I keep returning to. And, although I find it easy to waffle on about other music I like, I find it incredibly hard to explain quite what Bowness and Chilvers' music does to me. But it's become a part of me over the past few years - I find it oddly comforting and reassuring in a way that a lot of music isn't. The sentiments expressed, the emotions contained within each song, they seem to speak to me on some incredibly deep level. The music is almost always absolutely gorgeous - Chilvers is apparently incapable of writing anything other than really pretty music, and his lightness of touch means that none of these songs become ponderous or heavy, despite the sometimes desperately sad subject matter. In his lyrics and singing, Tim Bowness somehow seems to be able to articulate my own feelings. Without really understanding how or why, these songs have become utterly vital to me.

 

I will try to get around to writing about these incredible records in more details one day, but for now I will try to understand a bit about the song "Post Its". 

 

California, Norfolk was first issued in 2002 and the following year the companion album Overstrand was released, which was mainly comprised of alternate versions of some of the California, Norfolk songs, plus reworkings of a few other Bowness / Chilvers tracks. Although I adore the original album it's the reworked songs that have become the ones I return to more than any others. The original version of "Post Its" has a charming, slightly lopsided rhythm track and generally brighter outlook. The Overstrand version is dominated by Chilvers's keyboard, an all encompassing organ swirl that spirals from speaker to speaker throughout the track. Gradually other instruments are filtered in - gentle piano, some bass notes, a snippet of the orchestral swells from the original, but mostly it's the organ. It gives the song a mood of regret, of longing, which fits the lyrics perfectly.

 

Tim Bowness' words fit the music perfectly too, both in the actual lyrics and in Tim's brilliantly performed vocals. His voice is warm, intimate, so beautifully recorded that it feels like he's right in front of you.

 

The song itself shifts between the beginning and the end of a relationship. The opening line "on a day not meant for smiling, you made me smile" is so delightful, you can actually feel the promise and hope and optimism. 

 

The second verse is stunningly good at sketching in the first feelings of love, when anything and everything is possible - it's all so innocently romantic and full of anticipation and desire.... "we spent a lifetime devising plans to spend the night, we spent a night-time devising plans to waste our lives..." 

 

But then... "we spent forever, just testing ways to twist the knife..."

Rather than the carefree couple happily wasting their lives together, the mood has soured, horribly, suddenly, shockingly and Tim's voice is weighed down with dejected hopelessness.

 

As a sudden slap in the face it's as dramatic and as effective as the change in Talk Talk's "I Don't Believe In You" - another song which charts the failure of a relationship. There's a stunningly harsh moment where Mark Hollis switches from the repeated refrain of "I don't believe you" to "I don't believe in you" which signifies the final end, the complete breakdown of trust.

 

The choruses of "Post Its" contain far more in the way of sadness and resigned hurt, rather than the muted anger that is momentarily raised in the "twist the knife" line. All that youthful expectation from earlier has been overtaken by disappointment and dejection. As with so many Tim Bowness lyrics he's again found a way of making the mundane and everyday come alive with feeling, charged with emotion and melancholy. Something as ordinary as post it notes stuck to the wall have charted the whole relationship and their removal marks the final end - "And the post-its on the wall, that have marked our rise and fall, come down..."

 

Is this the final end though? There is perhaps a glimmer of hope offered by the closing part of the song as the chorus lines are repeated and overlaid with the opening lines - "on a day not meant for smiling, you made me smile" - is this juxtaposition an indication that maybe a new love has been found? Or is it merely sorrow, wistfully mourning for the loss of something that began so promisingly but which has ended in grief.

 

Whatever, it's a beautiful song. Sad, yes, but not depressing or maudlin. And in every play I can hear something new. This really is some of the best music I have ever heard.

 

 

david bowie - thoughts

It's been a weird few weeks since David Bowie died. Everyone knows how much of a fan I am, how much I'd admired this man. You'd think I'd have loads to say about him, about his music, about how much it meant to me.

 

But I'm still struggling to find the right words. Failing to find the right words.

 

Oddly, I feel like I ought to write something. Though I know it's only adding to the mountains of words people across the globe have written. But I can't quite figure out what to say. What would David Bowie have done? He'd probably have cherry picked the best bits of stuff he'd already done, mashed it all together and created something bigger than the sum of its parts.

 

So some of the following is lifted from an email of a couple of weeks ago that I sent to a good friend. 

 

I heard the news about David Bowie at 7am, only minutes after the story broke. I somehow went to work, but very little work was done. Utter shock, and tears for a man who I'd never met - apart from a dozen or so brilliant concerts - but I knew him somehow. And he knew me somehow. This guy has been with me every day since I was 13. Every. Single. Day.

 

In a weird way he was almost like an extra relative, a very cool, subversive relative. Bowie introduced me to all sorts of stuff - not just his music but art, culture, films, and loads of other music too. His music spoke to me, made me feel important and free, made me feel less alone, less of an outsider. I was never much of a slave to fashion, but at university I dyed my hair to look like him... Ok, in recent years this blatant hero worship has died off a bit, but I truly admired the dignified way he conducted his life and his work, and still looked up to this guy enormously. 

 

Much of the music I like (Iggy, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Fripp, King Crimson, Eno, Roxy, Krautrock, New Wave, Talking Heads and so many many more) - it nearly all stems from strong connections with Bowie. Other music I like - bands like Suede or Interpol or Bauhaus for example - clearly own all the same records as me, including a huge chunk of Bowie music. Tim Bowness posted a lovely entry on his blog the day after the news where he reflected on Bowie and listed his favourite DB songs - his list is almost exactly my list, even down to the inclusion of the brilliant but hardly ever mentioned "Subterraneans".  https://timbowness.wordpress.com/influences/david-bowie/ 

No wonder I love Tim's music so much, he loves exactly the same music as I do!

 

I can't believe quite how this has upset me. It's actually made me question what I'm doing with my life. I used to have so many dreams when I was young, few of which I've really achieved. And with just over a year to go till I'm 50, I've been thinking that now I've just got to do something about that. I've always gone for the safe option. Got a regular job because it was sensible and paid the bills. Not because it was what I really wanted. Perhaps I should always have said to myself, what would David Bowie do? Because he never played safe, always took a chance, and crucially, followed his dreams. And so must I. 

 

Today I played Blackstar all the way through, for the first time since he died. I've played odd tracks since then, but not the whole thing in one go. I haven't been able to do that until now, as it's simply been too difficult for me to hear. Today I was struck by how obvious it all seemed - in all the excellent reviews of the album, in my first few listens before the news broke - how did no-one realise that this album was the final word? It's perfectly clear that with every song David Bowie is saying "Goodbye".