a load of random songs from the iPod

The iPod MUST have some sort of little brain – sometimes it gets fixated on a particular artist, but not in any way that the iPod can actually know. For example the other day I had a whole batch of Stones related music. But not simply the obvious I Can’t Get No Sympathy For The Street Fighting Jack Flash Rolling Stones stuff either; there was Jagger and Richards solo stuff and Stones covers too. Weird or what.

“Parachute Woman” live from the Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus in December 1968. A superbly rockin’ little blues monster, with a storming slide solo.

“Can’t Be Seen” from Steel Wheels. One of Keith’s best ever solo songs, and certainly one of his best ever vocals, soulful and almost smooth at times.

“Lonely At The Top” from Mick’s 1985 solo album She’s The Boss. This is the only Jagger / Richards track on this record having been attempted by the Stones during the Some Girls sessions as a fairly dull shouty rocker. Here’s it’s revamped into a rather more funky song, with lots of irritating stop / start moments and Jagger giving a performance that all but tips into Jagger Impersonator territory. Every annoying vocal tic and trademark yelp is present and correct here. He’s really trying WAY too hard. Overall She’s The Boss isn’t a particularly bad album, there are notably some good ballads, but this really isn’t a good song.

“You’re So Vain” – Carly Simon’s classic. Brilliant performance, brilliant arrangement and yes that’s Mick on backing vocals. He probably thought the song was about him… Actually, has it ever been revealed who this song does refer to?

“Eileen” – one of Keef’s solo songs. A fairly unremarkable rocker though it does have a very catchy chorus.

And then we move onto even more random stuff...

“Camarillo Brillo” – ahhh… nothing whatsoever to do with the Rolling Stones… finally. Yes, it’s Uncle Frankie attempting a commercial song, and succeeding on most levels (apart from the slightly risqué lyrics). One of my all time fave Zappa songs actually. It’s so unapologetically cheery and summery.

Two from Bryan Ferry - "Windswept" from 1985's Boys And Girls has always been a favourite of mine, but how I wish that the production wasn’t so clunky. Today Ferry would be a lot subtler with a song like this. The overbearing percussion and overly flowery guitar almost swamp what is actually a very delicate song. On the other hand, the almost absurdly busy and cluttered mix of “The Right Stuff” just seems so right for the track, and this is a song which I’ve grown to like a lot more than when I first heard it back in ’87. Sadly the whole Bête Noire album of 1987 is an object lesson in how to spoil a bunch of generally excellent songs by way too much ‘modern’ production. I bought Bête Noire on the same day as David Sylvian's beautiful Secrets Of The Beehive and Sylvian’s less-is-more approach is wonderful on this uncluttered and unhurried album. The Ferry record by contrast has far too many screechy backing vocals, far too much clattering drum machine, far too many guitar lines overlaid on top of one another and far too much time spent on the whole thing leading to Ferry obsessing about the detail and missing the bigger picture by not realizing when he’d done enough. Having said that, the good songs on Bête Noire are great – “Limbo” is classic Ferry, “The Right Stuff” is superb (it’s based on an old Smiths instrumental b side – really! (Johnny Marr plays on this song and nearly toured with Ferry, but there was a clash of dates. Ferry said of Marr ‘I liked the cut of his jib’)), and the exotically latin title track is the sort of slinky song that Ferry does so well. So not a complete disaster by any means.

“Moonage Daydream” – from the Ziggy Stardust album, and arguably the best track on that album with Mick Ronson's scorching guitar work and his amazing string arrangements, and one of Bowie's best ever vocals.  Just pure brilliance from start to finish.

“Wall Street Shuffle” – I have but a small handful of 10cc tracks, but the ones I have are cracking and this is a prime example of the inventiveness of 10cc.

“RDNZL” – Uncle Frankie lets his band go nuts with insane percussion and complexities galore for the first half; tremendous musicianship. Then Zappa lets rip with a real blast of a guitar solo – possibly his most frenzied studio solo. “RDNZL” was a major fixture of the 1973 / 74 shows and this version was recorded in 1974 at the One Size Fits All sessions, but bafflingly wasn’t issued until 1979.

“Magic And Loss” – the title track from Lou Reed’s most cheery of albums - all the songs address Death... This is a frustrating track. It’s actually one of the best things on the album, with an unusually excellent melody and a pretty decent vocal from Lou, but… the horrendously tight and constricted production really hampers the song. The drums are way too loud, as is Lou’s voice but when the song really should let fly towards the end everything is compressed to hell and what was clearly quite a wild and powerful performance (eg the big stonking power chords on the guitar) is mixed way too low (as is the bass). So the song ends on a something of an anticlimax. Good old Lou, starting off with something promising then squeezing all the life out of it – though you can bet that he was insisting that it sounded like the best thing ever recorded.

“Hallo Spaceboy” – more Bowie, this time from January 1996 in Paris at the end of the Outside gigs. This band really beat the you know what out of this track. It’s always worked so much better in concert than it does on record. Live, the song becomes a massive bruising pounding noise machine, and it’s terrifically exciting. However, despite the sheer volume on display, the song is brilliantly mixed and always sounded superb in the concert halls. This is from a radio broadcast so it sounds fabbo to the max.

“Valtari” – as always, the shuffle setting will come up with recent additions. This is the title track from the forthcoming Sigur Ros album and is wonderful within the context of the album, but doesn’t work on its own, and certainly not after the pasting that “Hallo Spaceboy” has just dished out. The calming reflective strings and sense of drifting on clouds that the whole album conjures up is entirely lost with just the one piece. Also, a word of warning, the Valtari album is rubbish if you play it in the car. All the detail is entirely lost and you are left with irritating Jonsi squeals and snatches of melody that don’t connect with anything. Some Sigur Ros is fine in the car, but this one really isn’t. The album itself is really excellent though, but it requires a quiet evening and a glass or two of wine. Anything else just overwhelms it.

“Happiness Is A Warm Gun” – Lennon having fun on the White Album. One the best late period Beatles songs for sure.

“Election Day” from Arcadia. Which was basically the pretentious half of Duran Duran (while the rock half of DD went off and did the Power Station with Robert Palmer and Chic’s rhythm section, Bernard Edwards on bass and Tony Thompson on drums). Anyway, Arcadia just sounds like a slightly funkier Duran (Le Bon and Rhodes being the main architects of DD’s sound anyway) and what with the addition of Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay parping away on multilayered saxophones it’s all darned fine, if overly pretentious, fun.

“Dazzle Ships (Parts II, II & VII)” - ha ha ha ha….what a load of nonsense this is. How on earth did OMD think they’d get away with such silliness? But what I really like is the implication that there are other parts of “DS” kicking around somewhere, perhaps they are waiting for a deluxe edition… or perhaps the subtitle “(Parts II, II & VII)” is just so ‘arty’ that there aren’t actually any more parts at all. In fact, I like that idea. It’s exactly the sort of thing OMD would do!

“Warm Leatherette” – brilliantly sinister stuff from Miss Grace Jones. Cracking performance on this track. Knocks the original by The Normal for six - the sheer power of Jones’ version, and especially her superb vocals, are way better than the rinky dink synths and rubbish vocals of the original. Fortunately Daniel Miller stopped being the Normal and set up Mute Records soon afterwards. (Mute of course, soon scored massive success when they signed Depeche Mode. Mute is still going as a subsidiary of EMI, still overseen by Miller and still releasing oddball stuff such a reissues of Residents albums and the Kraftwerk Katalog box). Grace Jones also popped up on “Election Day” muttering incoherently, which only added to overall silliness.

“No Orders” from J Peter Schwalm’s Musikain. A good song, with lyrics and vocals from Brian Eno. A nicely lopsided beat runs through the song and Eno delivers one of his patented unemotional vocals with some inscrutable lyrics - “We had no orders to…. Go that way…. So we go that way… so we go that way…” Good stuff, and yet another reason why Eno really should sing on more songs.

Blue Oyster Cult's swirly “Don’t Fear The Reaper”. For what at first appears to be such a classic rock song it’s extremely laid back, with layers of seventies sheen squashing the sound into a weird kind of hazy mush. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cracking song, but I question the production choices here.

“Prisoner Of Love” – one of the best Tin Machine songs, a mid paced almost-ballad which reigns in Hunt Sales’ blanket bombing drumming and allows the band to rock out in a fairly conventional manner over one of the best melodies on the album. This also allows Bowie to contribute a cracking vocal without resorting to shouting over the noise.

And finally some Walker Brothers on shuffle. The title says it all - "The Saddest Night In The World" Oh the drama! The heartache! The loneliness!

the wine of silence

Back in 2003 the Metropol Orkest performed a concert of soundscapes - orchestrated versions of Robert Fripp's guitar improvisations. 

On the face of it this doesn't sound like a very enticing proposition as much of the power of Fripp's original pieces comes from the element of chance or hazard that surrounds the music. Much of Fripp's soundscaping is unutterably beautiful and deeply emotional at a spiritual level and I wasn't sure how an orchestra could recreate such personal music. But they did. 

Andrew Keeling and Bert Lams painstakingly transcribed and orchestrated a number of original improv pieces. The original performance was broadcast on Dutch radio back in the day and has existed 'out there' in trading circles for the past nine years. And it was wonderful. Mixed with the lengthy soundscapes the Orkest played three King Crimson numbers, which perhaps didn't fit with the prevailing mood terribly well, but did nonetheless illustrate how cinematic and orchestral in scope much of Crimson's music actually was. 

Over the past couple of years long time Fripp associate and producer David Singleton has been working with the 2003 recordings. The recently released result is The Wine Of Silence, an album of such breathtaking beauty that it's very to hard to describe. With the Crimson pieces now absent the album seems more complete, a suite of sometimes hazy, sometimes crystal clear beauty. Touchstones might be Gorecki, or Tavener or Arvo Part, but although there is a reverent, almost religious aspect to The Wine Of Silence there's a calming, stunning stillness at the heart of the soundscapes, one which absolutely transfixes me and prevents me from doing virtually anything else. In Fripp speak - Music leans over and take me under it's wing. It envelops the listener so completely that the outside world becomes as nothing. It is quite simply a totally transcendent experience. 

Ok, so this may all sound way over the top, but I've quite simply never heard music like it. Singleton has taken the raw tapes and mixed, folded, overlapped and expanded the sound so it sounds like a thousand orchestras are playing with a hundred different choirs. Whilst the two versions of "Pie Jesu" and "Midnight Blue" are stunning enough in their unadorned orchestral beauty, it's perhaps the two pieces augmented by a choir that are at the heart of this suite. The sheer emotional power of “Requiescat” and “Miserere Mei” is almost overwhelming. “Midnight Blue” reminds me in many ways of the three tracks on side two of Eno's Discreet Music. The hazy dreamlike qualities of that record's “Fullness Of Wind” et al are echoed here, but magnified into something that is so enveloping and entrancing that it’s hard to believe. 

Much as I would love to hear / see / experience Fripp continue his guitar soundscaping, I would, even more, love to hear / see / experience a full orchestra playing this stuff. 

But in the meantime I can’t recommend this recording highly enough. It is nothing short of perfection. If you don't have The Wine Of Silence then I suggest you get hold of it immediately. Your life will be immeasurably richer for it. Really. 

Only ten pounds at the Burning Shed... what are you waiting for?? 

https://www.burningshed.com/store/kingcrimson/product/341/3700/

scott

Scott Walker made four almost perfect records between 1967 and 1969 called simply Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and, you guessed it, Scott 4.

The Walker Brothers weren't brothers, and none of their surnames were Walker. Nonetheless during 1965 and 1966 they had more members in their fanclub than the Beatles did in theirs. You would imagine that the three young Americans would have loved this state of affairs, and two of them did. But while Gary and John embraced the pop star lifestyle, hanging out at the coolest clubs and bars with the Rolling Stones and the like, Scott hated all this. An early 1967 tour with the Walkers headlining over Jimi Hendrix just proved to Scott how out of step the band had suddenly become. Hendrix managed to blow the Walkers offstage most nights just by the sheer power of his music - so much so that setting fire to his guitar seemed somewhat unnecessary. After that sort of histrionic stage display the Walkers' act now seemed rather staid. So they simply called it a day. 

Scott was now free to pursue a more esoteric style of music. But he was still constrained by the needs of his managers and his record label to produce hits. Scott Walker would have preferred to sing Jacques Brel covers and hide in the dark, but as one of the biggest pop stars of the day, he simply wasn't allowed to fade away like that. Scott was also pretty lazy, and frequently he was quite content to be led into recording songs just because his team said they'd be good. But regardless of the material Scott was simply unable to give a bad performance. Even the flimsiest of songs turned into a dramatic affair once it was sung by Scott's majestic reverb drenched baritone. 

His first solo record, called simply Scott, was an odd mixture. There was the middle of the road crooner direction that his managers wanted to push him into (both the smooth Jack Jones, and the slightly sexier Tom Jones were suggested as role models for Scott, who simply shuddered at the thought), but there was also the edgier side of Scott, the side that relished the seedy drunken tales of Belgian writer Jacques Brel and he managed to get a handful of Brel songs onto each of his first three albums. Perhaps the more syrupy, middle aged, MOR material was the trade off for being allowed to release Brel songs...

Of the Brel tracks "Mathilde" is perhaps the easiest, a brash and stomping whirl of a track. "My Death" however is the opposite, tucked away at the end of side one after perhaps the most MOR track on the album. The cloying sentimentality of "When Joanna Loved Me" does nothing to prepare the listener for the existential angst of "My Death". Both this song and the album closer "Amsterdam" were borrowed by David Bowie who used them in his early 1970s live sets (and in remarkably similar arrangements too). Of the MOR standards that peppered the album, "Angelica" is the most impressive, partly because the lyrics aren't far from those that Scott himself was writing, and partly due to Reg Guest's beautiful arrangement. Tim Hardin's "Lady Came From Baltimore" hints at a folky / country direction that Scott would actually take up a few years later with decidedly mixed results, though this track is lovely.

But there was also a third element, one which, over the next few albums, gradually took over. Scott blossomed into a formidable songwriter in his own right. He'd already contributed a handful of startlingly good songs to the Walker Brothers, though their singles were always carefully picked 'safe' songs, rather than Scott's kitchen sink dramas. But now, on his own, he could bring these mini dramas to the fore. On Scott there are just three self penned tracks, but every one is a masterpiece. "Always Coming Back To You" is perhaps the slightest of the three, continuing the delicate sound of the Walkers' "Genevieve" written by Scott a year earlier. In amongst the delightful arrangement Scott sings his tale of loss with such understated emotion that it's genuinely heartbreaking. And the delivery of the line 'We'd find we'd missed our bus, so we'd laugh, kiss, what the hell...' brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it.

But it's "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" and especially "Such A Small Love" that cement Scott's reputation for writing hugely dramatic, heartbreakingly sad songs. In the former, the poetic lyrics (check out the graphically striking imagery of 'the window sees trees cry from cold, and claw the moon' for instance) illustrate the gulf between the reality and the dream home of a young couple. The orchestra is held in check on the delicately pretty verses but is unleashed in force on the yearning choruses - 'we'll dream won't we?' sings Scott with such passion and emotion. It's brilliantly arranged by Wally Stott and recorded with precise clarity by Johnny Franz, two men who were vital to the shape and sound of Scott's first few records. 

"Such A Small Love" is one of my all time favourite songs. It manages to mix drunken despair, longing and loss with utter euphoria and hope for the future in such a stunning manner that I'm left breathless every time I hear it. It is full of remarkable touches that carry the listener from the very first highly strung note of the violin to the giddy inebriated conclusion less than five minutes later. I think it's about a funeral and the devastating loss of a friend as the narrator has a rush of memories of the good times and looks forward to when the hurt will lessen. But ultimately the kaleidoscope of images are far more important that the precise meaning. The verses are underpinned by slightly eerie sustained strings, but as with "Montague Terrace" the choruses surge forward like a tidal wave of emotion and excitement. The confusion of imagery as the song actually speeds up towards it's conclusion is astonishing - 'midnight mornings drenched in dago red' mixes Scott's love of cheap Spanish wine with everyone's memories of mornings after the night before; 'drunken madmen nights, ending up in jail' hints at incredible adventures and brings us back to Scott's love of seedy romanticism. Musically this song is near perfect, but it's Scott's peerless delivery that makes this song absolutely perfect. The listener is completely swept along with Scott's evocation of euphoric carefree youth, and his sudden switch to regret and a sense of loss with the last lines of 'perfumed pillows of girls that clung so near, such a small love, such a little tear...' is heartbreaking beyond belief.

Scott's utter command of his voice is something all his collaborators have remarked upon over the years, yet it's something that Scott has generally dismissed. Scott seemed to think that making records and singing on stage ought to be much harder than he found it, and he frequently commented that he had little faith in his singing voice. He continued with singing lessons throughout the 1960s and often felt that others had better range and control. But what makes Scott stand high above most other singers is his effortless ability to inhabit every song, to bestow every track with a different emotion, to create a whole new world with every new vocal. 

While Scott is perhaps the most varied of his first four albums, it is also closest in sound to the Walker Brothers' records and betrays a cautiousness on the part of Scott's management to allow him to depart too far from a tried and tested (and clearly very successful) formula. As Scott's independence grew, so did his ability to project more of himself onto his records. Having said that, the self penned material (and by extension, the Brel songs) on Scott display a remarkable and unique talent, and in "Such A Small Love" we already have one of Scott's finest ever songs.

Scott 2 would follow fairly rapidly, but that's another story...

she's a star

Whiplash was a 1997 album from the band James. It was two years in the making, two tumultuous years during which most of the original sessions were scrapped, guitarist Larry Gott left the band, and James discovered that due to financial mismanagement, they owed nearly half a million in unpaid taxes. Not the best of times. Yet they emerged with their most successful album ever, a stunning melange of danceable pop, anthemic singalongs and weirdly dark, techno tinged ambience. 

The initial sessions in early 1995 saw James reunite with producer Brian Eno. But all the band could come up with was unfocussed jams and songs that didn't really spark. Eno was disappointed and much of this work was eventually dropped. Later sessions found the band carrying on without singer Tim Booth who was in America working with composer Angelo Badalamenti. But his busman's holiday rejuvenated Booth who returned to the band bristling with bright ideas. Previously unpromising song fragments were revisited. "Star", a meandering, muddy track, became the defiantly positive "She's A Star", "Whiplash" which began life as little more than pounding techno track, was transformed by some wistful strings and a beautiful new melody into "Play Dead". And so on. Many of the songs that had been worked on during Tim's absence plowed a more trance / dance furrow than James had approached before. Heavy programming took the place of Dave Baynton-Power's usual light drumming. The lack of Larry Gott's guitar was covered by more emphasis on keyboards and violin. Eno guided many of these sessions but the final mix and glossy sheen that coated the finished album was down to Stephen Hague (a man who knew a thing or two about how to get a synth pop hit - his resume included production for OMD, Pet Shop Boys and New Order, as well as PiL and Siouxsie and the Banshees amongst many many others).

The album opens with perhaps the strongest four songs in James' history. "Tomorrow" was recycled from the Laid sessions in 1993, but whereas the earlier version is tentative, this version is totally in control. A hugely powerful opening for the album, pounding drums, manically strummed guitars and a wonderful vocal.

"Lost A Friend" takes it down a notch and is another of those peculiar songs that only James seem to do, namely a song that appears to have two choruses. And Tim sings in that defiantly English way of his, not a hint of the mid Atlantic voice that so many singers adopt, not a sign of any blues scales or obvious rock star flourishes. His yearning vocal is terrific. Similarly "Waltzing Along" continues this utterly English trend. The guitars swing with the slightly clumpy beat and there's lots of excellent Booth and Eno backing vocals. Eno once reckoned that most of the worlds problems could be solved with backing vocals. It's when you hear the delightful vocals here that you kind of know what he means.

The first single from the album was "She's A Star", a glorious return for James after the previous couple of years of hassle. It's so wonderfully upbeat and positive and perfect to sing along with. No wonder it was one of their biggest hits. The guitar work, from new member Adrian Oxaal, is an unforgettable sliding series of notes that apes, but doesn't copy, the guitar lines that Robert Fripp played on David Bowie's "Heroes".

After "She's A Star" the album takes a turn into more experimental waters. "Greenpeace" is a weird mash up of an ambient verse, all gently chiming bells and stray piano notes, and a stridently chattering techno chorus. The verses seem to be a dialogue between a whispering Tim who at first seems indifferent to what's happening to the world and a sinister alter ego who speak / sings in a distorted voice and who wishes to destroy the environment. Then Booth turns into some sort of falsetto choir boy over the pounding and clattering choruses. And, you know, it works!

"Go To The Bank" is perhaps the weakest song here, losing it's focus about halfway through, but the following "Play Dead" is stunning. After Eno's voice saying 'music depresses me' we're catapulted into a terrifically powerful drum loop but just as you think you've got the measure of the piece it calms down somewhat and Tim croons over some gorgeous keyboards and synthetic strings which mesh with the stomping beats extremely successfully. The chorus is something that U2 would have given their right arms for, a keening melancholy that is also devastatingly beautiful.

"Avalanche" and "Homeboy" are more straightforward and are the most obvious links to the initial sessions. Both are great fun, perfectly played and contain some clever lyrics, with "Homeboy" rewriting some of Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" rather cheekily.

Then we're back in darker territory. "Watering Hole" is all atmosphere and ambience with Booth crooning very quietly at times. The closer, "Blue Pastures" finds Booth ready to fade back into obscurity. Musically it's very pretty and a cousin to the similarly arranged "Out To Get You" on Laid. But where "Out To Get You" is shot through with steely determination "Blue Pastures" is resigned and tired - 'it doesn't really matter if I fade away' whispers Booth at the end of the song. It's a rather unsettling ending.

As usual with James the singles from Whiplash contained loads of great b-sides, many of which were at least the equal of the album tracks. Notably "Your Story" which is one of my favourite James songs - another song with multiple choruses and a truly stirring vocal; this should have been on the album, or a single a-side as it is way too good to be lost on the back of a single. Although nothing like as commercial, the wonderfully weird "Fishknives" is great fun, as is the eerie "Van Gogh's Dog". "Chunney Chops" is little more than an Eno processed jam, but there's a huge sense of the band having a ball with this track.

James would never achieve such sustained success again. Although subsequent albums and singles were every bit as good as those from the Whiplash era the public didn't embrace them in the same way. However I did, and James remain one of my most cherished bands.

There is another reason why Whiplash and the accompanying extra tracks have such a special place in my heart. "She's A Star" was issued at the start of April 1997 with the album coming out mid month.

This coincided exactly with Lucy's birth.

For perhaps the only time in her life she was early, about 5 weeks early, which was a huge shock for Nicky and for me. Worries about potential infections and concerns for her size meant that Lucy (and Nicky) stayed in the special care unit for nearly a month. During that time I went back to work, getting the train home from London each evening, grabbing something to eat, then driving 40 minutes up to Cambridge desperate to see them. I would stay until I was kicked out by the nurses and sadly drive back home. I did a lot of driving and worrying that month. And I listened to Whiplash in the car, a lot. And I sang along at the top of my voice to keep myself awake. So many of the lines in those James songs resonated with me. Off the top of my head - "Tomorrow" had lines like 'got to keep faith that your luck will change' and 'now your grip's so strong' which seemed so right for Lucy. "Waltzing Along" had these - 'may your heart beat strong', 'may your heart lead you on', and the title of "She's A Star" just seemed so perfect.

She IS a star. Happy Birthday, lovely Lucy. xx

rock 'n' roll animal - lou reed live in 1973

Lou Reed's Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal is simply a brilliant live album, but it could have been even better.

A few years ago I basically restored the whole gig into the proper song order by combining R’n’RA and Lou Reed Live. But even with the magic of CoolEdit it was a tricky job as, despite both albums coming from the same 21st December 1973 concert, the mix on Lou Reed Live is noticeably different to that on R’n’RA. I think actually that that Animal has received slightly more post production as the whole album sounds terrific compared with what are more likely the rawer tapes on Live. Lou Reed Live was an album that was quickly tossed out by RCA to make some money following the debacle of Metal Machine Music - they simply dug out tapes from a two year old gig and issued them in late 1975, and I can’t believe that anyone spent more than a few minutes working on Live.

Anyway CoolEdit and a few evenings’ work sorted out the differences in levels and smoothed over the audience transitions. I also had to flip the channels back on Live as, for reasons that no-one can explain, the stereo image is reversed compared with Animal. Guitarists Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner are rather neatly split into each speaker and their twin guitar attack is pretty spectacular at times. But Live has them the wrong way round. So I put it right.

Anyway, in the correct order, this is a stunningly good show. Lou is really on form - at times he’s perhaps a little, shall we say, over-excited, but on the whole he delivers a fine vocal performance. The band is just awesome. All of the musicians bar keyboard player Ray Colcord would decamp to Alice Cooper’s band in 1975. (Colcord is interesting – he’d previously been in Don Maclean’s band and plays on American Pie. Since the Lou Reed tour he’s composed hundreds of TV themes. 

Best track – the opening guitar wig out which then dives straight into "Sweet Jane" - that takes some beating. Though the super funky "Rock And Roll" is mighty fine too (it’s worth noting that much of the funkiness of Reed’s bands between 1973 and 1975 is down to bass player Prakash John – he was born in Bombay, but moved to Canada as a child and had worked alongside Bootsy Collins and George Clinton for a few years in the early 1970s, hence the funk).

In between, there are excellent renditions of Transformer tracks ("Walk On The Wild Side" is almost identical to the studio version but "Vicious" is a full on assault rather than the somewhat fey original), some slightly ragged attempts Berlin tunes (notably "Caroline Says" on which Lou attacks the song with rather more enthusiasm than accuracy, although the lengthy "Oh Jim" and "Sad Song" are both pretty spectacular), and some souped up blasts through Velvet Underground songs. Although the amped up take on "Waiting For The Man" is perhaps a little too over the top, the other Velvets tunes are superb. "White Light / White Heat" takes David Bowie's cover as its template and Lou reclaims the song as his own. "Heroin" is a real tour de force. Stunning organ work combines with the majestic guitars of Steve and Dick to create a song that is both terrifying and beautiful at the same time. As mentioned before the extended "Rock And Roll" is another masterpiece and is a wonderful conclusion to 90 minutes of Lou Reed at his very best.

The next few years would see Lou descend the depths of addiction and issue some wildly variable records (along with some worryingly schizophrenic concerts). When he was up to it the 1974 / 75 gigs could be brilliant, with Lou really delivering the goods onstage (despite the turmoil of his personal life), but there were just as many gigs where Lou was all but incapable of performing.

I have a cracking show from Paris in May 1974 - his singing and phrasing is spot on; he sounds like a man possessed and urges the band to really deliver as well. The Sydney gig from August 1974 is one of my favourites and a recording that I first got as a tape off Chelmsford market, back when I was still at school. It's a terrific gig, and a very decent recording too - there's a truly chilling and very spooky version of "Heroin" with a creepy organ dominating the song, a firey "Vicious" and a full on "White Light / White Heat" although it all ends with a very messy and ramshackle encore of "Rock And Roll" which sounds completely unrehearsed (but it was played as an encore at virtually every gig that year, so there's really no excuse!)

Lou Reed at his best was pretty much unbeatable.

  

hunky dory - david bowie

Hunky Dory isn't my favourite David Bowie album, and although I understand the praise that this record rightly receives, I prefer many of his other records. But… having said that I really can’t fault anything about Hunky Dory. And listening to it again recently, every track reveals itself to be a little marvel.

“Changes”, for all its iconic status in Bowie’s canon (and virtually every feature writer can’t help themselves in referencing this song) but it’s perhaps my least favourite on the record. It’s beautifully put together, the lovely piano work, the dreamy saxophone, the overlapping vocals, it’s all good, but there’s something about this song that I’ve never warmed to.

“Oh! You Pretty Things” is better for me. The twisted sci fi lyrics could have come from The Man Who Sold The World, but music most definitely couldn’t, what with that tremendous clumping piano in the style of Macca’s “Martha My Dear” and a soaring vocal as DB hits some very high notes.

“Eight Line Poem” I always found rather Dylanesque – oblique and obtuse to the point of incomprehension. But it’s a very pretty little interlude before…

“Life On Mars?” which is truly epic. Mick Ronson’s gorgeous orchestral arrangement is astonishing (check out the "Also Sprach Zarathustra" timpani at the end) and Rick Wakeman’s lyrical piano is beautiful. But both are swept along by one of Bowie’s most stirring melodies in what is surely one of his most mature songs thus far.

“Kooks” takes it down a step with this charmingly gauche dedication his newborn son. Never mind that it’s largely a steal from Neil Young’s “Till The Morning Comes” even down to the playful trumpet. There’s another stirring string arrangement here too. And on the next song –

“Quicksand” which battles with “Life On Mars?” for the most beautiful song on the album. For my money “Quicksand” wins as it’s less obvious and the chorus creeps up but totally floors me every time.

“Fill Your Heart” – a throwaway cover, but a cheery, summery one. Bowie’s gleeful vocal stays just on the right side of twee.

Then we get the three tribute songs for Bowie’s 1971 heroes.

“Andy Warhol” is brilliantly constructed, all overamped acoustic anger and some cracking bass. The instrumental coda is marvellous.

“Song For Bob Dylan” is perhaps the most conventional song here. Straightforward 1971 rock and instrumentation, but it stands out because little else on this album is recorded this way.

“Queen Batch” was ostensibly inspired by Lou Reed - ‘some white light returned with thanks’ say the sleeve notes, but musically it owes more to songs like “Sweet Jane”. I love the way that Bowie’s 12 string is doubled by Ronson’s trusty ‘Black Beauty’ (a Gibson Les Paul that stuck with him for most of the 1970s) and at times Ronno overdubs a further guitar line. The superbly overdriven sound simply makes the song.

“The Bewlay Brothers” – no-one ever got a sensible explanation of this song from Bowie. One of his earliest comments about it ‘Star Trek in a leather jacket’ makes as much sense as anything. It is clearly about him and his older step brother Terry, a fact that was tacitly acknowledged many years later, but DB refused to go any further with that line of questioning. Terry had lived with David and Angie for quite some time during 1970 but despite their best efforts it was clear that his schizophrenia and manic depression were no longer manageable in the real world. One of the reasons that David would never discuss the song was that, by early 1971, Terry had been committed to the Cane Hill asylum. (This was a vast Victorian hospital in Coulsdon in South London, which could house 2,000 patients. Cane Hill closed in 1991 and was partially demolished a few years ago to allow for redevelopment but before work could begin the rest of the building was destroyed in a fire in 2010.) Anyway, Terry would call Cane Hill his home for the next 14 years; he never recovered sadly, and he took his life in 1985 by laying on the railway tracks nearby.

The song itself dislocates the mind of the listener, the disparate and fragmentary imagery exactly mirroring the frightening visions in Terry’s mind. (Many of the wilder lyrics on The Man Who Sold The World were also influenced by what Terry could apparently ‘see’.) That “The Bewlay Brothers” is underpinned by a gently strummed and very beautiful melody makes that song all the more sad. Ronno’s backwards guitar is another melancholy and disturbing touch. But it’s the astonishing coda that is really chilling. A myriad of varispeeded voices takes the cheekiness of the Laughing Gnome into altogether darker territory. A genuinely unsettling and discomforting end to this album. 

dead can dance - the early stuff

A recent encounter with some very early Dead Can Dance material prompted these thoughts -

Now I love Dead Can Dance, their music has sondtracked much of my life, but quite honestly the early demos and early John Peel sessions are pretty rubbish. In fact, apart from a couple of songs the demos are atrocious, and I’ve no idea why I’ve kept them. I think that these will be deleted from the iPod fairly soon… The Peel sessions are better, though, like the debut album, they are the sound of a band struggling to find an identity. The spectre of Joy Division – the same sort of heavy bass and frantic drumming, plus an identical guitar sound - hangs heavy over many of these tracks, particularly Brendan Perry’s.

But then you get Lisa Gerrard’s pieces. Her songs are similarly naïve and unstructured, and occasionally veer very close to early Cocteau Twins (especially stuff from the Garlands album). Lisa’s voice is sometimes uncomfortably close to Elizabeth Fraser’s too, so you can see why Ivo Watts-Russell was so keen to sign them to 4AD. But then, just occasionally, Lisa does something miraculous with her voice which lifts the song from a not terribly good second rate indie goth rip off into… what? Something magical and out of this world.

From the Peel sessions and also from the first album it’s impossible to tell which way DCD were heading, (even the later Garden Of Arcane Delights EP doesn’t really offer hints, though it is at least a step away from rubbish indie drumming and incessantly throbbing bass). I can’t imagine that anyone would have guessed that the majesty that is Spleen And Ideal would have followed just a year later. It’s another one of those bafflingly massive quantum leaps forward that occasionally happen. Spleen And Ideal lays the foundation for virtually everything that DCD would subsequently do and ignores virtually everything that came previously. Where this huge leap of imagination came from is anyone’s guess, but how fantastic that it happened.