Glastonbury 2013 Part 2

OK, so I did watch a bit of the Rolling Stones set but frankly I wasn’t that impressed.  They looked tired, jaded and dated.  Mick looked faintly ridiculous, prancing around at his age in front of his largely static fellow band members.  Best rock ‘n’ roll band on the planet?  Hmm…

I was heartened to see that at the same time, over on the Other Stage, Chase and Status had drawn a huge crowd of not-interested-in-the-Stones people with their own brand of RapRock.  It’s good to see that the younger generation are not hanging on to the coat tails of classic bands and nor should they.  Each generation should discover their own and if that includes past examples then fine, if not then that’s fine too.

In fact, this year’s Pyramid Stage headliners didn’t really do much for me.  As well as the Stones, I’ve never really quite understood The Arctic Monkeys and although I like a bit of folk, the dreadful corporate blandness of Mumford and Sons sends me to sleep.  So, where do my awards for this year lie?  There were a plethora of new(ish) bands that got my attention without really standing out so a ‘highly commended’ goes to the likes of Noah and the Whale, Editors, Cat Power, Stealing Sheep, Hurts and Phoenix who were all very entertaining, but I’ve had to reject all of these in favour of my final choice of three.

Two HAIM sisters

In third place are US sister band Haim, who were just about everywhere, so hard to avoid.  They played several sets on various stages and turned up as backing singers for Primal Scream so their PR team deserve a medal at the very least.  Their own sets were full of bluesy rock which at times took flight into fabulously dizzy instrumental jams that few bands seem to manage these days (especially when they are playing to backing tapes!).  Unfortunately, their tunes are a bit disjointed and the vocals a tad idiosyncratic but hey, they come across as a raw joyous talent and they provided some of the best festival moments for me.  One to watch, I’d wager.

Daughter

For second place, I struggled between two bands that I’d not heard of before.  First were Savages, a somewhat strange outfit who delivered an intense and at times, quite frighteningly serious set of spiky songs.  In the end I ousted them for being too close to ‘Scream’ era Siouxsie and the Banshees for comfort and decided to deliver second place to the enigmatic Daughter, whose enchanting set of Indie Folk delivered on the John Peel Stage held me spellbound.  Singer Elena Tonra looks a solo performer but has chosen to surround herself with two male musicians whose edgy arrangements lift her songs to another level.

Chic

My choice for first place was the result of much soul searching, having already panned the Stones for being too old, but this lot were so much fun, so the award goes to Chic.  For me, music is something to be enjoyed and in this business oriented age, it is good to see how uplifting it can be, given the right circumstances and Nile Rogers delivered this in spades.  Everybody danced – how could you not?  Such a shame that Bernard Edwards was not there to reprise those iconic bass lines and see how much of his legacy still resonates with modern audiences.  The most enjoyable set at the Festival by a short glitter ball.

Glastonbury 2013 Part 1

After a fallow year in 2012 which allowed us punters to pay attention to the Summer Olympics and allowed the cows to take off their ear defenders for a bit, Worthy Farm once more played host to the great unwashed and the festival that is Glastonbury.  As has now become a ritual on this blog I shall be posting two Glasto reports, this one with a few thoughts on this year’s proceedings and a second with my world famous awards.

So without further ado, here are some general observations.  This year’s event was generally more of the same, sporting a huge variety of acts from all genres and generations, playing to enthusiastic crowds of awe-struck teens, seen-it-all-before parents and bewildered toddlers.  What was different was that the weather was almost Woodstock-like with clear blue skies rather than the usual deluge and the TV coverage was bigger and better than ever before with live broadcasting of all the major stages on multiple channels, website streaming and mobile access.  In fact, it was all too overwhelming for the poor viewer who could not possibly watch everything and was reduced to the same dilemma that confronts the actual festival goer, that is, which acts do I watch?  Hurrah for hard disk recording!

Some things, however, never change and it is quite curious to note that despite the massive advancements in music tech and the changes in society generally, the one aspect of bands at Glasto that has not changed is that guitars have remained resolutely stuck in the 1960s.  Everywhere you looked guitarists were sporting Fender Stratocasters or Telecasters, Rickenbackers, Gibson Les Pauls or SGs.  If you found a bass player without a Fender Precision you were doing very well indeed.  It seems to be that guitars have become the genes of the rock world that are passed on from generation to generation, tying the line of heritage together into a complete whole.  There is almost a reverence in using classic instruments that the likes of the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix once sported that says, ‘we are descended from the greats’ like the royal right of succession.

Without giving too much away, Saturday headliners, The Rolling Stones, will not be appearing in my Top 3 (to be revealed in my next post) and for one reason only; they are the meanest band in rock.  They made their fortune several times over, years ago, so why do they still insist on holding people to ransom over fees.  This time, they wanted to restrict broadcast time to one hour and when that was finally agreed (the day before their performance), started to quibble over repeat fees.  It’s not like broadcasting their set is likely to keep paying punters away, the festival was a sell out months ago.  It’s about time Mick and the boys started to give something back to the industry and the fans that made them what they are.

I’ve got hours and hours of recorded material to wade through and I've not seen their performance yet, but perhaps I won’t bother.

Couples in Rock

Benatar & Giraldo

Whilst it may be true that behind every great man is a great woman, it seems that in some circumstances, behind every great band is a great couple.  I’ve been reacquainting myself with my 80s love, Pat Benatar via her ‘Ultimate Collection’ (a download snip at 40 tracks for £7) and can’t help but notice that the common theme running through her lengthy career is her relationship with guitarist, Neil Giraldo who ascends from band member and writing contributor to husband and lifelong collaborator.

There is something quite endearing about such relationships.  Unlike most couples with a shared life they are not to be found in front of the TV with their tea on a tray but are more likely to be seen on that same TV doing acoustic versions of songs from their glory days.  Sweet.  In fact couples can be found in many places.  One pairing is Debbie Harry and Chris Stein who have effectively carried Blondie through thick and thin despite their relationship floundering and Chris’s life threatening illness.  Without their tenacity despite no longer being ‘an item’ the later Blondie comeback would not have happened.  Whether or not this was a good thing is still open to discussion but you can’t help admiring them for trying.

Another long-lived couple is Martha Johnson and Mark Gane who are now the only survivors from the 80s phenomenon that was Martha and the Muffins.  Now married, they have forged a lifelong musical partnership and still record under their faintly ridiculous name as at today.

However, before we get too complacent about the warm glow around couples in rock, let us not forget that musical history is littered with failed attempts.  Those of you who have albums by Fleetwood Mac and Abba in particular will bear witness that not all paths run smoothly to musical dotage.  Amongst others who fell along the way are Siouxsie/Budgie, Annie Lennox/Dave Stewart, Sonja Kristina/Stewart Copeland and many others too tedious to list.  It is the failure rate that makes those that endure stand out amongst their peers.  Had she lived, I envisage that Linda McCartney would’ve been a member of the elderly musical couples club, too.

It is said that married persons generally live longer than singletons, so perhaps this translates to musical couples?  If so look forward to a whole string of albums from Blondie, M+M and Ms Benatar.  Hmm.

Black Sabbath Back on Top After 43 Years!

The last time I listened to something, I couldn’t help but notice that my hearing is still in reasonable nick, which, I suppose, means that I can’t really claim to be a massive heavy metal fan.  Which is true…up to a point.  Apart from a couple of concerts that left my ears buzzing for days after, I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to massive hearing loss.  Yet back in the early 70s I confess to a cautious dabbling in the dark arts as a number of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath LPs in my collection will bear witness.  Obviously, none of these albums could really be construed as the real hard stuff, more a sort of metal-lite and listening back to them now, they sound much tamer than I remember and altogether more tuneful than you might expect.

Nevertheless, it seems I have retained a bit of a soft spot for Black Sabbath and as they have just taken the number one album spot with ‘13’ – their first number one for 43 years, I’ve been inspired to purchase one or two newly re-mastered downloads of worn vinyl LPs so that I can relive their majestic grunge all over again.  Back in the day, my first purchase was ‘Volume 4’, an album that used to get played a lot on ‘Fluff’ Freeman’s Saturday afternoon rock show.  This was followed by the magnificent ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ and ‘Sabotage’ – the one with possibly the worst cover of all time - at which point I rather lost interest and moved on to other pastures, namely punk.

In retrospect, there is something gloriously uncomplicated about the Black Country foursome that even today warms the cockles of my rock heart.  Their Midlands based heavy industrial heritage seems to have a voice in their pounding rhythms and grinding riffs as if the factories themselves have manufactured them to order.  There’s nothing I like better than the sound of a Gibson SG and with Tony Iommi’s industrial-accident fingers on the fretboard, that fat buzzing sound has never sounded better, especially when he is constructing those spiralling duets over a crunching riff.

The only issue I have with listening to old Sabbath albums now is Ozzy Osbourne.  I really struggle to reconcile the wild young singer of then with the comedy figure and star of ‘The Osbournes’ of now.  Is it really the same person?  Weird.  I can’t help feeling that Sharon would make a scarier front-person now.  However, that disturbing image aside, it has been a welcome return to the fold for my selected Sabbath albums, ones that will sit on my iPod for a little longer whilst I revel in some industrial heritage.  Unfortunately both the industry and the music have gone, to be replaced by electronics in both instances.  That’s progress for you.

Ray Manzarek 1939 - 2013

So here we are again, mourning yet another passing.  They seem to be occurring with increasing frequency these days.  This time it’s Ray Manzarek, king of the Vox Continental.

I came late to The Doors and even then it was a difficult passage.  It was the otherworldliness of ‘Riders on the Storm’ that first guided me in and on the strength of it, ‘LA Women’ (on cassette – arrghh!) followed.  But horror of horrors, I didn’t like it much and it eventually got passed on to a friend.  Several fallow years ensued and it wasn’t until the mid seventies that I picked up the trail again with the double compilation, ‘Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine’.  Suddenly the penny dropped and I became quite obsessed with them, buying all their studio albums in quick succession.

The Doors were always in my mind a sum-of-the-parts band with every member contributing an equal portion rather than a star with anonymous backing musicians.  Despite Jim Morrison’s charisma, I always found the other members just as interesting and Ray was no exception.  Perhaps it was that Vox organ sound, rather than the ubiquitous Hammond or the fact that he played all the bass parts in the absence of a full time bass player or those key unspecific runs that he was able to conjure up or even those rimless glasses but there was always something about him that caught your attention.

In the late sixties, the guitar was the rock instrument of choice and it wasn’t until the emergence of the prog rockers of the seventies that keyboards would come into their own, but Ray managed to hold his own against Robbie Krieger’s guitar parts in a way that made them both sound good.  Whether it was the shimmering chords in ‘Waiting for the Sun’ or the Bach-like intro to ‘Light my Fire’, his playing was always inventive and appropriate to the mood.  The Doors would not have been the same without him.

More recently, he popped up numerous times as a talking head in TV documentaries reminiscing about the sixties and the excesses of his erstwhile bandmate and despite the ageing effects of time, he still managed to carry the essence of the Californian hippy that he once was.  The wild speech patterns, liberally punctuated with ‘Maan’ and the sixties vocabulary were still embedded in his psyche like a living fossil of the period.  Yet for all that, he seemed to retain the optimism of those days and a zest for life.  He was always good value as an interviewee.

Recently, I picked up the Box Set of Re-mixed Doors studio albums, which I have to say have been sensitively brought up to date without losing the feel of the original albums and it has been a pleasure to hear Ray’s playing, now liberated from some fairly murky mixes and now sounding like they were played yesterday.  In his mind, I’m sure they were.

RIP Man!

Bits and Pieces

The question is: how did I get myself into such a *!*%#! muddle?  I suppose that being raised on a diet of vinyl discs doesn’t really prepare you for manipulating digital files, but all the same, this will take some remediation.  Those of a techno-phobic nature may prefer to look away now.

The story so far: many years ago I started ripping my CDs to my computer so that I could play them in Windows Media Player.  By default they stored themselves as 128 bit .WMA files and all was well.  I then acquired a Creative Zen MP3 player and using its proprietary software, was able to copy .WMA files directly to it and all continued to be well with the world.  Then it all started to go wrong: I bought a new computer and the darkness descended.

First, the Zen software refused to work in the new Windows 7 operating system which stopped me transferring files and then the Zen died.  In order to avoid the software compatibility problem in future I then opted to replace it with an Apple ipod Nano and the dreaded iTunes.  This is where the problems really began.  Every time I imported my .WMA files into iTunes (so as to sync to the ipod) a new copy file was made in 256 bit .M4A format.  This, in turn prompted Windows to see it as a new file and to automatically re-import it into Windows Media Player, thus doubling everything up.  AAARRGGHH!

In frustration, I deleted one or other of the copies, sometimes the .WMA files and sometimes the .M4A files.  This went on for several years.  Just to add to the confusion, I also downloaded albums from iTunes (.M4A) and Amazon (256 bit .MP3) and converted vinyl albums to 128 bit .MP3 files.  This brings me to today where my entire collection of several hundred albums and songs is split between various Windows and iTunes libraries and ripped to at least 3 different file formats.  Did I mention that my daughter also has an iTunes library on the same machine and we share files?  Blimey!  Technology eh?  This would never happen in the old days where you just bought an LP and put it on a shelf.

So, what to do?  I have decided to eschew both .WMA and .M4A files and use only .MP3 for ripping CDs.  This format can be read by both iTunes and Windows Media Player so no duplication.  Whilst laboriously re-ripping all my favourite albums I am also upgrading them to 256 bit as this seems to be the best compromise between quality and file size.  It also means that I can weed out both iTunes libraries of all the duplicated files and leave only the downloads.

Case solved, but what a palaver.  As a by-product of upgrading files from 128 to 256 bit it has become noticeable how the sound graduates from CD screech to LP warmness.  Perhaps LPs had the right idea from the word go – and you only needed a shelf.