autumnal shuffling

Whilst sometimes the shuffle feature on the iPod can be a pain – churning out stuff I just don’t want to hear at that particular time, sometimes though it can be brilliant. Like recently.

I would never plan to play some of these songs one after another. But over the past couple of days I’ve heard - 

“Punky’s Whips” from a Frank Zappa concert in 1978, mad, silly and very funny, with a storming solo to boot. It not only rocks hard, but like many Zappa tracks, it's fearsomely complex and tries to wrongfoot the unwary listener at every turn. 

“Pale Blue Eyes” – Patti Smith live in 1976 – she does a fine job on this Lou Reed song, and for even more garage rock cred, she segues it into a laid back “Louie Louie”. Cracking stuff. 

“Birdy’s Flight” from Peter Gabriel’s brilliant Birdy soundtrack – one of my favourite PG albums – all those drums, those seesawing guitars. It's basically a rework of "Not One Of Us" but it's given an intense urgency here that is truly thrilling. 

“Stray Sinatra Neuron” from John Foxx, all chilly synths and general marvellousness. 

“Drive My Car” – one of the best Beatles songs ever surely? How can you not sing along? Beep Beep YEAH!! 

“Star Of The Age” – an epic sounding track from Shearwater’s most recent album, the severely under-rated Animal Joy. Terrific band – I recommend their tremendous Rook album from a few years ago. Really good stuff. 

Something fantastic from the soundtrack of Forbidden Planet. Electronic noises and otherworldly swoops created by Louis and Bebe Barron. Because neither composer belonged to the Musician's Union, and because no conventional instruments were used, the soundtrack wasn't allowed to be called music at all - instead the term 'electronic tonalities' was used. Clearly the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was listening and a great many William Hartnell Doctor Whos had very similar electronic tonalities and moods. Really marvellous stuff – it still sounds totally futuristic now. 

“So Alone” – Lou Reed at his funniest, with this sarcastic and very self-referential little track from Growing Up In Public. 

“I Wanna Be Your Dog” – the Stooges live in Tokyo 2004 – arguably the best version I’ve ever heard of this one. Iggy shouts “Go CRAZY!!!” as the song starts but the audience needs no encouragement. Judging from the cheers Iggy stage dives as Ron takes a savage solo – this really is a fantastic recording. 

“Island” – The Edge and Michael Brook doing beautiful stuff with infinite guitars for the film soundtrack Captive. Never seen the film, but the soundtrack is fab. 

“Reactor” – from the early version of Eno's Music For Films. This is a nicely discordant and very short little vignette. I like those discarded MFF tracks, some weird and very experimental stuff there. 

“Dance Floor” – a wonderfully tinny synth leads this track from Our Daughter’s Wedding. Not as good as their classic “Lawn Chairs” (but then not much is…), but a neat little curio of early synth pop, with a very New York / New Wave vocal. 

“Big Wheels In Shanty Town” – this is the excellent Rain Tree Crow track, but played by Jansen Barbieri and Karn on their 2001 JBK tour. This tour also featured Steven Wilson on guitar (as if the man wasn’t busy enough!) and the resulting live album Playing In A Room With People is pretty good. It’s still weird how Mick Karn could play rubbery bass and saxophone at the same time, (although I suspect he cheated with tapes…) but this is a solid, if unspectacular album. 

“Fljotavik” from Sigur Ros, a nicely low key, piano-led ballad, with Jonsi holding back to deliver a very pretty vocal, no acrobatics. 

“Drugs” – Talking Heads live in Amsterdam November 1980. This is, quite possibly, even better than the best ever version on TNOTBITH. Adrian Belew adds all sorts of animalistic groans and squeals, the keyboards throb menacingly and Byrne sings his socks off. 

“Seesaw Sway” - a top tune from the Peter Murphy's album Ninth. Catchy as hell, but sadly never a hit. 

Something from Philip Glass’ Satyagraha – completely incomprehensible as it’s in Sanskrit, but absolutely spellbinding all the same. 

This was followed by “Opening” from Glassworks, which is just gorgeous, one of the prettiest, most delicate, melodies Glass has ever written. 

“Hot Pants Explosion” – I laughed along with the B52s. Huge fun, masses of energy and enthusiasm, and Fred at his campest (and that’s saying something…). The ending is truly absurd - as the song bounces to a halt Fred says ‘these pants are sooooo hot, I might just have to take ‘em offff…’ Well it’s funny when he says it!

Something from United States – Laurie Anderson burbling on about how TV signals have been beaming across space all these years – so she suggest that basically the first space travellers are cowboys and game show contestants…

“4th Of July” – U2’s attempt at a Music For Films type track. It’s lovely, and a brave thing for them to have put onto The Unforgettable Fire. 

“The Man With The Golden Gun” – OK so the lyrics are somewhat silly with some rather schoolboyish sniggery double entendres, but Lulu really belts it out and John Barry’s music is, as always, top notch. 

“Berlin” – the original, and rather more jaunty, version from Lou Reed’s 1971 solo album. Whilst I like the extra verses I would have preferred the more downbeat approach used on the Berlin album. It’s not so bad really until the very last bit where the band vamps it up and utterly ruins the mood. I would ask ‘what was Lou thinking?’ but I suspect that during the making of this album Lou wasn’t entirely on planet earth, so I doubt he even noticed…

“White Man’s Hut” – an early It’s Immaterial single. Strange but strangely appealing. Vaguely Talking Heads-ish, but with cheery woodblock percussion and kids helping out on the chorus. It all sounds rather more accomplished that you’d imagine from a bunch of musicians who apparently had little idea what they were doing. It’s a far cry from their later masterpiece album Song, which was far more Blue Nile in sound. 

“Delia’s Gone” – One of Johnny Cash’s superb American Recordings. “I’d’ve had her for my wife if I hadn’t’ve shot her down…“ - way to cheer us all up Johnny! 

“It’s Better This Way” – This is bonkers, as are most Associates songs, but it hangs together remarkably well. Frantic doesn't even begin to describe the drumming. 

“Burning Sky” – early Porcupine Tree, basically a cool groove and an excuse for a spiralling psychedelic guitar freak out. Nowt wrong with that! The audience in the Hague like it too, although it sounds like there’s only a handful of people there. 

“Seven Years In Tibet” – Bowie live in Budapest 1997 with the Earthling band, so lots of mad guitars, spooky organ work and weird distortion on some of the vocals. DB sings like a demon on the pounding choruses. One of Bowie’s oddest songs of this period, and also one of my favourites. I assume the two things are linked...

bryan ferry - these foolish things

After two albums with Roxy Music Bryan Ferry decided to cut a solo record, an album where he could indulge himself, not worry about songwriting, an album of covers of some of his favourite songs. These Foolish Things was recorded in a matter of weeks in the spring of 1973 and shows the lighter side of Bryan Ferry. Many of the songs are delivered with a mischievous sense of fun that didn't often manifest itself in Roxy. Ferry rarely sounds like he's having fun - making music often seems to become something of a chore for him - but what immediately strikes the listener is the sheer amount of fun Ferry is having with these songs.

 

Bob Dylan purists hated Bryan's take on "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" but I love it. Thumping drums from the Great Paul Thompson, cheeky backing vocals and Ferry getting his tonsils around every syllable. This was the first track recorded for this project apparently, in Spring 1973, and marks the first time that one Edwin Jobson first worked with Ferry. The whizzy violins on this track are all Jobson and Ferry soon realised that Eddie was a genius on the synth too. Eno's days in Roxy were numbered, and here was a natural replacement, and at only 18, wasn't likely to argue with Ferry the way that Eno did! 

 

The rest of side one is fascinating - mixing well known songs like "Piece Of My Heart" with more obscure tracks like "Please Don't Ever Change" (a Buddy Holly-less Crickets b-side if I remember rightly). What's so good is that Ferry also mixes total sincerity (like his brilliant and moving version of the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby") with camp pastiche - such as the frantic and comic "It's My Party" where Ferry doesn't even switch the genders round, so he's still the one who's jealous of the fact that Judy has stolen Johnny away from him… It somehow actually works, despite Ferry's well known reputation as a ladies man by this time.

 

We also get a lovely Elvis impersonation on "Baby I Don't Care" which has every bit of reverb turned up to the max, and some cracking drumming from TGPT. Oddly, listening to it today, I realised that Ferry wasn't alone in this sort of rock'n'roll revivalism - the sound on this track, and elsewhere on TFT, isn't actually a million miles from the sound of contemporary bands like Showaddywaddy or Mud. But Ferry delivers these songs with such verve and a knowingly ironic archness, which sets Ferry's work well apart from the chart fodder of some of these bands. The album cover also shows Ferry as something of rock'n'roll throwback - with a simple black teeshirt and his hair in quiff he looks more like the Fonz than anything else. And a million miles from the bow-tie / tux image that appeared on his next album cover, which he's been saddled with ever since.

 

Side two begins magnificently. Trying to cover the Rolling Stones is never an easy option, and trying to cover "Sympathy For The Devil" is almost impossible (Guns 'n' Roses did an appallingly lumpy cover in 1990ish, around the same time as their similarly dreadful "Live And Let Die"). But Ferry ditches quite a bit of the Stones original and wisely turns the song into a swampy, swirling mass of horns, spooky backing singers, and a snarling, cackling vocal quite unlike anything else he's ever done. It's quite breathtakingly brilliant. The whole song is basically one long climax, gradually building in tropical, steamy intensity, the stabs from the horn section getting ever more pronounced and urgent, the wurlitzer style organ becoming more and more unhinged, the backing vocals gradually more prominent and more insistent. It's wonderful and I’d forgotten quite how much I love this song. Sacrilege maybe, but I actually prefer it to the Stones version. Really.  

 

Tracks Of My Tears" is a real anticlimax after "Sympathy" - it's as if Ferry knew that nothing could follow it, so he chose to sacrifice the weakest song on the album. It's not actually that bad, but Ferry simply doesn't have the right voice to tackle real soul songs, and certainly at this point in his career his vocals are so mannered that they rarely sound truly sincere - and sincerity is what this song needs. This is not really a criticism of Ferry as his voice is wonderful for so many songs - but it just doesn't suit truly soulful tunes. Look how weedy he sounds on later covers like "Take Me To The River" or "That's How Strong My Love Is" - it's just not the right sort of voice for those songs. And by having the band play "Tracks Of My Tears" so straight it can only be compared with Smoky Robinson's original and can therefore only come off worst from such a comparison. Same thing applies to side one's "Piece Of My Heart" - only a few years after Janis Joplin ripped your heart out with her showstopping version, Ferry plays it safe and polite and it just doesn't really work. 

 

But things pick up with the Beatles' "You Won't See Me" - love the chirpy piano on this and it's clear that Ferry is once again having fun with the song. A nicely jaunty guitar solo from Phil Manzanera too. Ferry was a huge Beatles fan and would go on to cover a number of other Fab songs over his career - my favourite being a lovely version of "She's Leaving Home" in 1976.

 

Then another jaunty track - "I Love How You Me" begins with a harpsichord - or rather Jobson on synth impersonating a harpsichord - and features some sterling saxophone work too. Nice doo-wop backings.

 

"Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever" is terrific, again the horns are really on form and TGPT is superb. Beyond Andy Mackay's sax and oboe Roxy Music never really used horns, and never in this sort of big band way, but Ferry's solo albums are often full of meaty horn arrangements. I really like the throwaway backing vocals on the verses. The girls echo most of Ferry lines but in a very offhand, casual kind of way which is very endearing. They are full on during the choruses, but extremely laid back in the verses, it's rather amusing. 

 

And then we end with the title track. A real smoky nightclub situation… A tinkling piano, the barman clearing away the glasses, Ferry all alone with his memories and his regrets. This song was made for him. But I can't help wondering why he decided to beef it up. I still think it would have worked fine just with the piano and lonesome trumpet, but after the first verse the drums kick in with a surprisingly robust beat. But somehow it does still work, in an oddly jaunty yet wistful way, and suits Ferry extremely well. The fade out is excellent, the girls aaaahhhing everywhere, leaving Bryan to fade away into the darkness with a bottle of cognac amid a haze of cigarette smoke… 

 

A really good, solid album. I first heard this aged about 14/15. The album was nearly 10 years old then, now it's 42… It was out of it's time even then, and I knew that these songs were throwbacks to the 60s, 50s and further back, but as with all good albums, it sets up a mood and creates images and ideas and the fact that it was weird mish-mash of musical styles and eras simply doesn't matter. Crucially, the songs are all excellent - unlike Ferry's follow up Another Time Another Place (which was saddled with a few stinkers and only really has half an album's worth of genuinely good tracks). It's probably easier than ever before to get hold of any album in the world, but I really can't imagine any 14 year old buying this record now, and being transported, as I was, even further back into rock history.

 

 

king crimson - earthbound

In the wake of Tuesday's masterful gig at the Hackney Empire I dug out Earthbound. This was recorded live in early 1972, and was the last tour that Mel Collins had done as a member of King Crimson, before now.

 

First off - what a bloody awful racket. Recorded onto cassettes at the mixing desk, this is rather lo-fi Crimson. Now, poor recording quality doesn't necessarily mean a poor album, if the music's good. 

 

But, mostly, it isn't.

 

The title track of the album kind of sums up what's wrong - all the band, bar Fripp, attempt a bluesy jam. Fripp sits on his stool and attempts to drag them back to gnarly angular rock by playing horrid noises on his guitar. Bassist Boz, saxophonist Mel Collins and drummer Ian Wallace defiantly ignore these attempts until Mr Grumpy just shuts up. The tension in the group is clear for everyone to hear.

 

There are some good points - arguably the heaviest "21st Century Schizoid Man" I’ve ever heard flattens everything in it's path, with Mel providing some genuinely frightening sax playing. The guitar parts are ferocious too, Fripp's anger and unhappiness clearly channeled into the monstrous riffs. 

 

The incomplete version of "The Sailor's Tale" is half impressive - Ian Wallace's drumming is superb - but half disappointing - the savage slashing guitar solo of the original is abandoned in favour of a far less successful approach. And then we have "Groon" - whilst sloshing the VCS3 synth over the drum solo might have seemed avant garde (maybe) back in 1972, now it's wearisome and irritating. Something that might have made for a fun diversion in a concert setting comes across as noisily unmusical and headache inducing on record. The distortion caused by the poor recording quality doesn't help either.

 

As the more recent DGM releases of other concerts by this band have shown, they could, and frequently did, perform some cracking gigs. So quite why Fripp issued Earthbound at all is rather baffling. He clearly didn’t like jazzy, bluesy freeform jams he put within the album's none-more-black sleeve. Perhaps the Unhappy Gigster wanted to somehow document the audible break up of the band. Though why he then had to inflict it on his bespectacled, hirsute and very earnest record buying audience is something of a mystery.

Mel, Ian and Boz remained in the USA at the end of this tour and together they backed bluesman extraordinaire Alexis Korner for some time afterwards. Light years from the complexities of Crimson.

 

Fripp returned to the UK, downheartedly considering his position as a musician. But then he recorded “The Heavenly Music Corporation” with Eno and felt inspired again. Music that only King Crimson could play came flying by his ears so he set about forming the Larks’ Tongues quintet – and that’s another story entirely. 

 

 

rambling thoughts - sweet jane

I had the ipod on shuffle this morning and after a couple of very pretty but very noodly Michael Brook instrumentals I was suddenly blasted with “Sweet Jane” – the original from Loaded.

 

After years of hearing umpteen Lou Reed live versions of varying quality (surely this must be the song that Lou Reed played live more than any other?), it’s wonderful to be reminded of how damn good the original actually is. And this was the ‘proper’ mix that was put out in 1970 - recent issues of Loaded have of course restored the ‘heavenly wine and roses’ section – Lou was allegedly furious when this was edited out without his permission, though I think it was the right decision to lose that bit, as it makes the song so much punchier.

And what a song – Lou actually sings pretty well, that twinkling intro is delightful (although it was apparently nicked from another, unused, song), That Riff is just brilliant, and the whole thing is given a bright commercial shine by the producers that Lou claimed to despise so much. Quite reasonably, the rest of the Velvets were extremely happy with Loaded, with Sterling and Doug both on record as saying that the VU had never sounded better and that it was only Mr Grumpy Reed who had any issue with it. And it does sound good - it's clearly miles away from the seedy grime of the first couple of VU albums, but the brighter, more positive sound of Loaded really works so well. The Velvets still sound like a band from the New York streets, and they have not been turned into, in any sense, a clean cut pop band, but it's genuinely good to hear the Velvets so clearly and so well produced.

 

There's a (surprisingly for the VU) hopeful and upbeat sound to the whole song. The lyrics are terrific too - one of the best of Lou's vignettes, the characters of Jack and Jane are finely and swiftly sketched - one's in a corset, the other in a vest, you figure out which is which... they are saving their money, sittin' there by the fire, the radio playing, and you can hear Jack say...

 

"Sweet Jane... oh.... whoaaa" 

 

It's such a perfect chorus. Positively joyful, a shout out of hope and love. For all his contrary ways, and his professed love of the avant garde, Lou Reed was rarely better than when he wrote straightforward, simple, catchy rock and roll songs. And "Sweet Jane" is one of the best there is, from anyone.

 

 

king crimson - hackney empire 08 september 2015

King Crimson has been around, in some form or another, on and off, since 1969.

But never quite like this.

The new, seven man, line-up of Crimson is fronted by three drummers. And I mean fronted. Right across the stage, with the remaining four musicians ranged across a riser behind the formidable percussion sets. Robert Fripp, the guitarist who claims not to be the leader of King Crimson (the band is still, it seems, merely 'a way of doing things') is nonetheless the only musician to have been a member of every Crim formation.

The rest of the current band is:

Mel Collins on saxophones and flutes (previously a member of King Crimson between 1970 and 1972).

Tony Levin on basses, stick and vocals (previously a member of King Crimson at various times since 1981).

Jakko Jakszyk on guitar and vocals (and occasional flute). Never been in Crimson before but has worked extensively with Robert Fripp and fronted the 21st Century Schizoid Band which was made up of King Crimson alumni (including Mel Collins) and which played much of the KC 1969-74 repertoire when the actual Crimson was not doing so.

Pat Mastelotto, Bill Rieflin and Gavin Harrison on drums and percussion. Pat has been a member of KC since 1994, Gavin since 2008 and Bill (who also plays digital mellotron) has worked extensively with Fripp for many years.

Introductions out of the way. What about the performance?

In a word - magnificent.

But I can't just leave it at that. I just can't. 

The show began, promptly, just after 7.30. Lights down, the various Crims took to the stage after an amusing 'please don't take photos' announcement, and the lengthy percussion intro to "Lark's Tongues In Aspic (part one)" started, almost imperceptibly. Gradually the tinkling noises got louder, the insistent rhythm of the piece more urgent, and the whole thing got louder. Much louder. In the ornate and historic Hackney Empire King Crimson seemed determined to shake the foundations loose. But although the gig was loud, the sound was brilliantly mixed. You'd think that the frontline of drums would utterly overpower the rest of the music. I can't speak for the front row of the stalls, but up on the front row of the balcony the sound was superb and somehow the drums were, impressively, an integral but not dominant part of the mix.

The songs simply flew by. Mixing relatively recent Crimson pieces like "The ConstruKction Of Light" (a complex guitar duet over baffling rhythms) with tracks like "Epitaph" (absolutely spellbindingly beautiful, drenched in mellotron strings, a soaring vocal from Jakko, and not performed live since 1969) this truly was a career spanning set. Virtually all previous Crimson line-ups have all but ignored preceding incarnations - not any more. The Adrian Belew era songs seem to have been dropped (Fripp has indicated that he's more than happy for Belew to carry on performing these with his Power Trio or with the Crimson ProjeKct, a sort of modern Crim offshoot / tribute band with Belew, Levin, Mastelotto and Markus Reuter), but instrumentals from that period remain, and Mel Collins plays saxophone where Belew's vocal lines would have been on "The ConstruKction Of Light".

But mainly it's the 1969 - 74 repertoire that has been re-invigorated by this new band. Songs like "Easy Money" and "The Letter" simultaneously remain scrupulously faithful to their 1970s studio versions, whilst also sounding totally fresh new and extremely modern. I'm not entirely sure how this is possible, but somehow that's what happens. Instrumentals such as "The Talking Drum" are frighteningly fearsome, the sheer power of the band pushing the intensity of the piece to new levels. "The Sailor's Tale" remains a live highpoint - just as it was in 1971/72 when it was last performed. The mix of threatening guitars and percussion giving way to Fripp's astonishing slashing solo before the 'tron fires up again for the home straight. It's a bit of a shame that an actual mellotron doesn't grace the stage, but I imagine that Rieflin's digital version is about a billion times more reliable than the notoriously temperamental real thing.

In amongst the oldies were a number of brand new pieces, the first new Crimson material in over a decade. And, gratifyingly, all these pieces held their own when slotted in next to a propulsive "VROOOM" or epic "Epitaph". Some of the new tracks were percussion workouts, but a couple had vocals - "Meltdown" and "Suitable Grounds For The Blues" - and were grinding, werning tracks, perfectly Crimson.  

For me though, the concert really blew the roof off towards the end. "21st Century Schizoid Man" was always going to be a monster, but this version was incendiary, complete with a frantic Gavin Harrison solo - how does he manage to hit so many things, so quickly and with such astonishing precision? It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, I was captivated by the maelstrom of music blasting from that stage. I genuinely thought that nothing could top this, but then King Crimson played "Starless".

"Starless" is an acknowledged classic, arguably the greatest song in the Crim repertoire, but until last week it had never ever been played live in the UK. Beginning gently, beautifully, with a lovely vocal over a calming mellotron / guitar duet, the song deceptively draws you in. Fripp's pure guitar tones are just magical. After the initial sung part the song dissolves into an complex guitar motif over Levin's superb bass - Jakko began this, before somehow Fripp took it over without anyone noticing... This part ratcheted up the tension to almost unbearable levels, before the band seemingly explodes all over the place, Mel's sax going nuts, Fripp, sitting calmly as ever, but playing some incredibly powerful slashing chords. The percussionists were again quite stunning. The initial melody eventually reasserts itself but this time full of such power and fury. It's an awesome track, and this was probably the best I've ever heard it (and I've heard, literally, dozens of versions of "Starless" thanks to Fripp's meticulous issuing of the Crimson archives). This was simply amazing. I've never experienced music quite like it.

After that the encores could only be a slight anti-climax - but only very slightly as the encore was the storming 1 2 of "The Talking Drum" into "Larks Tongues In Aspic (part two)" followed by a majestic "Court Of The Crimson King". This seemed like such a perfect song to end on that it's a surprise that tonight was the first time it actually closed the show.  

All in all, it was an 11/10 gig, surpassing my expectations by quite some margin. I'd read lots of good things about this new version of King Crimson, and I'd seen the set lists so far performed, but I still wasn't prepared for the sonic experience. There was no banter, no Hello London, not even a thank you, actually. The band simply let the music do the talking. The sound was superb, extremely clear, loud, powerful with loads of dynamics and space - this must have taken some doing considering the sheer amount of music that was actually being played. Just balancing the percussionists must have been a nightmare, but the sound was excellent. I especially liked the way the three drummers complemented each other - one would begin, another would continue and the third would complete the run, as if it was all one six handed drummer. The precision and attention to detail was amazing. The sheer amount of things they had to hit was mind boggling. 

From the balcony we had a wonderful view of everything that was happening on the stage. The lighting was simple, just clear white lights on the band for the whole gig, except for a moody deep red that descended over the musicians during "Starless". But we didn't need a lightshow, it would only have distracted from the skillful musicianship on show - there was so much of that to see anyway. 

Enough rambling. I hope that this isn't the last time I get to see the King, but I suspect it might be. Revisiting all periods of Crimson is so uncharacteristically crowd pleasing of the contrary old goat that is Robert Fripp that I can't help thinking it's perhaps the last hurrah for this band. If it is, what a way to bow out. If it isn't, and I really hope it isn't, then I'm definitely on for the next time! 

david bowie - station to station

I love Station To Station! 

 

David Bowie recorded this in late 1975. He'd just spent a few months in New Mexico filming The Man Who Fell To Earth. Skinny, pale as milk, and with shocking orange swept back hair, Bowie returned to Los Angeles with his head full of new ideas. Whilst making the film he'd been listening to a lot of old fashioned R'n'B and a lot of very new Krautrock. In his head bands like Kraftwerk, NEU! and Cluster mixed with Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and string-laden disco and Bowie began dreaming up new songs, mutant mixtures of funk and motorik, chilly European music and lush Philadelphia soul. 

 

He swiftly recalled the musicians who'd helped him finish Young Americans at the very start of 1975 - guitarist Carlos Alomar, bass player George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis, plus the lead guitarist on his last tour, Earl Slick, and Roy Bittan, from Springsteen's E Street Band, on piano. 

 

Holed up in LA's Cherokee Studios for most of October 1975 the band worked on the new tunes in lengthy overnight sessions. Fuelled by astonishing amounts of narcotics the backing tracks were painstakingly assembled, layer by layer, with the vocals coming last. Bowie seemed to have endless energy, despite apparently living on little more than milk and raw peppers. 

 

Harry Maslin's production is astoundingly crisp. The drums are fantastically well recorded, really sharp and dry (and Dennis Davis' drumming is magnificent too - especially all his fills on "Stay" and the restrained majesty of "Wild Is The Wind"). The instrumental separation is superb too, with every player allowed to shine. The fact that such a small group of musicians was used contributes to the starkness and clarity. Apart from Bowie's own saxophone parts there's no-one else bar the core group on this album. 

 

The title track is an amazing achievement, especially the remorseless opening half. The gradual build up from train effects through Earl Slick's guitar squeals, into the relentless rhythm track is one of my favourite bits of music ever. And then Bowie's vocal entry, with all sorts of rattling noises behind it, is just brilliant. Beautifully sung, it's a bit scary, but incredibly cool too. The lyrics include all sorts of occult and kabalistic images, and the overall effect is one of fatalistic desperation. "It's too late", repeated over and over...

 

"Golden Years" has got to be the snappiest song DB ever did. With one eye on how well "Fame" had done on the US charts Bowie is clearly aiming for another disco hit, but what a song! Effortlessly cool with all those finger clicks and casual clapping, even a bit of whistling towards the end, just tossed into the mix without a care. And what a vocal, soaring from way up high to way down low in the space of one "Go…ho….ohhl...den yeaaarrrrs….". This was the first track to be completed, and an early mix used on the black music TV show Soul Train, where Bowie lip synched (not very well, it must be said) to "Fame" and this new track in early November. 

 

"Word On A Wing" - a prayer, and it's genuine. There's nothing artificial here, no masks, no pretence. And arguably the most heartfelt vocal of Bowie's career so far. I love the synthetic strings, and the restraint of the band. Roy Bittan's piano / synth intro is gorgeous and his playing throughout this song is just lovely. There must have been the temptation to overdo this, add real strings, a gospel choir, that sort of thing. But thankfully the whole song is underplayed perfectly, allowing Bowie's vocal and lyrics to take centre stage.

 

"TVC15" - this one sticks out as an oddity on StS, but it's really needed, and actually works perfectly where it is, as light relief after the emotion of "Word On A Wing" and before the darker drama of "Stay". Partly inspired by a dream that Iggy Pop had where his girlfriend was eaten by a television set… Really. I think Iggy must've had some really strong, er, cheese before bedtime... Bittan's rocking piano lines deliberately mimic 50s rock and roll, while the 'oh-oh, oh-oh-oh' bits were pretty much nicked from the Yardbirds' "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl". And after the super slick Dave Sanborn, who'd played on the 1974 tour and Young Americans, it's great to hear that slightly asthmatic Bowie saxophone sound again. 

 

"Stay" is possibly my favourite on the album, certainly in my top ten all time Bowie songs. From the very start with Carlos Alomar's funky, urgent guitar, right through to the lengthy instrumental fade out it's perfect. Interestingly the chorus is basically a reworking of the Young Americans version of "John I'm Only Dancing (Again)" a song that is well known now, but was, back then, merely an unreleased out-take. Once again, Bowie's vocals are masterfully controlled, the music is taught, hard, driving, super funky and once the second chorus is out of the way the band lets rip, Earl Slick's lead guitar duels with Carlos Alomar's brilliant rhythm, George Murray fights back with some savage jabs from the bass and Dennis Davis anchors the whole thing with his brilliant drumming. It's so wonderfully dramatic. 

 

But not, perhaps, as dramatic as "Wild Is The Wind". Surely one of Bowie's best ever vocals? Again the temptation to sweeten the song is resisted, restraint is the order of the day, with a lush acoustic 12 string holding the song together, the other instruments acting as embellishments. Bowie's second "Don't you know you're life, itself…" is magnificent, and it's followed by an equally magnificent tour of the drum kit courtesy of Dennis Davis, before the song gathers itself for the final push. I love Bowie's music, but there's only a few of his songs that I'd consider to be actually beautiful. "Wild Is The Wind" is beautiful. An absolute work of art.

 

Speaking of art - the cover is cracking too; the words allruntogether, that mysterious black and white photo from The Man Who Fell To Earth - and it has to be the B&W picture, that full colour version on some reissues just doesn't do for me at all. Actually the B&W pic in the centre of the white sleeve was a last minute change as the colour photo covering the full sleeve was the original plan, but when he saw the proofs Bowie changed his mind because the sky showing through the open door was apparently too blue! 

 

Station To Station. It's a masterpiece isn't it? What a shame that Bowie actually doesn't remember recording a single note of it. Bowie laughed about this some years ago and said "I know it was recorded in LA because the credits say so" but he genuinely doesn't remember it at all. Way too much of Columbia's finest white powder had been consumed and it clearly took some of his memory with it!

giles , giles and fripp

I'm off to see the new(ish) seven man King Crimson next Tuesday, and very excited I am too.

 

So today's music takes me right back to where it all began. Nope, not In The Court Of The Crimson King, but to the year before that landmark album, when a peculiar little record was released. It was called The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles and Fripp.

Drummer Michael Giles and his bassist brother Peter Giles had been members of a number of Bournemouth area bands for some years and in the summer of 1967 decided to form their own group. They advertised locally for a singer who could also play keyboards. For reasons now lost in the mists of time Robert Fripp was hired - a non-singing guitarist. Undaunted by this, the group moved to London to seek their fortune. Renting a house in Brondesbury Road they recorded a huge number of excellent quality demos in their front room (thanks to the Giles brothers having a Revox that had been modified to allow complex overdubbing). Peter Giles reluctantly sang, but his very English delivery rather suits the very English subject matter of the humorous vignettes that GGF was writing. In early 1968 Deram Records signed the band and the album The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles And Fripp was swiftly recorded.

 

It's delightfully bonkers, surely the very definition of English whimsy. And terrifically good fun. It's all very dated now; in fact it was probably rather dated back in 1968 to be honest, but there's a peculiarly appealing quality about the whole album. Some of the songs are actually very good - "Thursday Morning" and "One In A Million" are quite Pepper-ish with a very McCartney-esque music hall feel and both were issued as singles. Some of the instrumental work is fiendishly complex - Fripp's guitar runs are incredible and his "Suite" even has some passages that would be re-used in "The Song Of The Gulls" on Crimson's Islands. 

 

And then there's the two narrative pieces - Peter Giles' "Just George" is merely silly wordplay, but Fripp's "Saga Of Rodney Toady" displays a Milligan-esque humour in both the writing and delivery. Fripp adds lots of odd pauses and stutters such as 'Rodney was so… ffffat and ugly'. I love the way Fripp tells of how girls would all run away when Rodney stepped onto the dancefloor, making him look 'even more foolish than Nature had intended…' 

 

Sadly, the singles extracted from the album proved to be smash flops, and the album sold poorly. However GGF forged on, adding a keyboard playing saxophonist / flautist - Ian Macdonald - who contributed to further home demos, as did his girlfriend, folk singer Judy Dyble. In 2001 some of these 1968 demos were issued as The Brondesbury Tapes.  There's a gorgeous version of "I Talk To The Wind" with Judy's lovely clear vocals, amongst many other very pretty tunes such as "Under The Sky". What's interesting to Crimson fans is that some of these demos were later adapted and expanded into King Crimson tracks - for example parts of "Passages Of Time" became the various "Peace" tracks on In The Wake Of Poseidon.

Judy Dyble soon dropped out but Ian's friend Peter Sinfield began helping out with the words. Then, at the end of 1968, Peter Giles decided to get a 'proper' job. Sinfield called in his friend Greg Lake, who could both sing and play bass. But with Lake in place it soon became clear to the remaining Giles and Fripp that the band had now morphed into something altogether different, and very different music was swiftly emerging. The whimsical wordplay of GGF had fallen by the wayside, in favour of something much heavier. Together the musicians came up with a new band name to reflect the new sound - King Crimson…