Steve Hackett Remasters

I’ve always had to suppress my inner Luddite when it comes to music technology.  Back in the 80s I was never entirely convinced that CDs were ‘better’ than LPs.  More convenient, certainly, but not necessarily better in terms of sound quality.  This attitude has passed into the present where I use an iPod constantly for convenience sake but frankly the sound quality is only average.  The other area where I feel I’ve been had several times over is in the area of ‘re-mastering’ back catalogue.

Over the years I have bought various albums several times, usually as the format changes but also whilst caught on the lure of better quality sound as a result of re-mastering old albums.  Almost without exception, these new products sound ‘different’ but not necessarily ‘better’ and in some case they are just downright worse.  So I am pleased to report that I have just purchased downloads of Steve Hackett’s first three solo albums in re-mastered format and guess what?  They are superb.

I’ve always had a fondness for Hackett’s first three albums as they represent three different approaches to his art.  The first, ‘Voyage of the Acolyte’ is basically what Genesis’ ‘And Then There Were Three’ might have sounded like if it had been Tony Banks that had left rather than Hackett.  It’s a sort of Genesis-with-guitars rather than the Genesis-with-keyboards of the official band – and no worse off for it.  The use of Collins and Rutherford as a backing band gives it a familiar sound but it is definitely a Hackett showcase.  I remember buying this and ‘Trick of the Tail’ together circa 1976 and preferring this.

The second, ‘Please Don’t Touch’ is an attempt at a Transatlantic Genesis complete with American vocalists and production.  Some of this works (Randy Crawford’s fabulous take on ‘Hoping Love Will Last’ is wonderful) and some doesn’t but it still has the trademark snatches of classical guitar and general melancholic atmosphere that pervades his best work.

The third, ‘Spectral Mornings’ is the first of what would become a run of ‘Steve Hackett Band’ albums with a stable line-up of musicians.  Here it is in its infancy containing some cracking instrumentals and a wide diversity of material.  Subsequent albums wrung the Band sound dry and got more formulaic as the restrictions of a set line-up chafed so this first of the bunch sounds so much fresher and more direct.

For the first time, I can definitely attest to the benefits of re-mastering.  These albums sound more detailed, bringing out the tonality of the instruments and have revealed little additional parts in the mix that were once buried.  My original CDs sound very thin in comparison to the new re-masters.  It’s almost as if the old analogue sound has been reinstated giving a fuller warmer, yet more detailed sound and I’m very glad to have digital files of this quality back in my collection.  I understand that Steve himself oversaw the work on this project.  Perhaps it takes the original creator to know what it should sound like?

London Olympics 2012

Oh Dear!  I’m having a colossal post-Olympic let down.  For 16 wonderful days I have lived the Olympic dream and marvelled at London 2012.  I’ve shouted at the TV till I’m hoarse, felt my heart burst with pride at the achievement of Team GB and cried my eyes out watching people of all nations achieve their personal dreams.  I’ve always enjoyed sport but this was something else – something that I’m so glad that I’ve witnessed in my lifetime: a home Games.

I watched virtually everything on TV; three and a half hours of cycle road-racing (gripping), rowing, equestrian, boxing (never thought I’d see a knock down in a women’s match), hockey, football, track and field athletics, swimming, you name it, I watched it.  London never looked better, come rain or shine and the various Games venues set amongst England’s rich heritage, Greenwich Navel College, Horse Guards Parade, Lord’s Cricket Ground, Eton Dorney, Box Hill, Hyde Park, Wimbledon, Weymouth Sound and others scrubbed up surprisingly well.

For me, the legacy of this particular Olympics is the way it has changed the way I look at sport now.  It has put truly professional sports, especially football, into perspective and revealed their participants to be nothing more than highly paid under-achievers.  Whilst it would be naïve to think that Olympic athletes do not receive money, in many instances it is subsistence only, food and board whilst training.  Many still have a day job yet still find the time to train so as to compete and achieve at the highest level.  Somehow, the Olympic Games gives us a pure sporting spectacle and the emotion shown by the athletes reveals that overcoming all odds without monetary recompense is its own reward.  Stunning and humbling.

More in line with this blog, and I apologise if I sound nationalistic here, I felt a real pride in the music utilised in both the opening and closing ceremonies.  As one who has lived a life of music, it was very satisfying to see British music given its own showcase and to underline the decades of quality art we have given the world.  From The Beatles to Take That, this small Isle has come up with the goods over and over.

My own favourite moments included Ray Davies warbling ‘Waterloo Sunset’, Kate Bush’s re-mixed and re-vocalised version of ‘Running Up That Hill’ (modulated down a key or two to suit her current singing range) and Emeli Sande’s beautiful rendering of ‘Abide With Me’.  The only sour moment was provided by George Michael who ignored his back catalogue and chose the occasion to publicise his new single.  What a twat.  The Olympic Games is all about endeavour to achieve – not endeavour to make a few more millions, George.  Perhaps someone should tell him what the Olympic Dream really means.

Here's something else I picked up - a song called 'London' by Thea Gilmore.  It was used by the BBC for the backing to an image collage of the Games and set it off perfectly.  Lyrics are by Sandy Denny and were only discovered recently.  Thea was asked to set them to music - here's the result.

Mott The Hoople and a Turning Point

Is it just me or are there certain songs that are so evocative of their time that just playing them sends you into a time warp?  This has nothing to do with individual memories but taps a pipeline to a broader collective history that lurks in us all.  I’ve blathered on about the link between music and memory before but this is different – I think.  This is more to do with the intrinsic qualities of certain songs that cannot possibly exist outside of their own moment in time.

For me, such a song is Mott The Hoople’s ‘All the Young Dudes’.  Even the title only really exists in 1972.  Transplant it into the present and it sounds ridiculous.  Every time I hear ‘Dudes’ leaking from the radio, my mind is filled with that period in the early 70s when the times they were a-changing.

In the late sixties and early seventies, music was made by earnest, hairy beings who served up the Blues or Prog or something in between.  The God of Music ruled over The God of Image and the more faded your jeans and T-shirt were, the more your sounds were accepted.  By the mid-seventies, Glam had changed all that and the God of Image, (and the brighter and gaudier the better), vied for the attention that was The God of Music’s traditional domain.  Some may say, it was the beginning of the end but that’s another conversation.

In 1972, the crossover between the two begun and Mott The Hoople seemed to bestride the chasm like a colossus, as Shakespeare might have put it if he’d been an NME hack in those days.  To look at, Ian Hunter was a long haired rocker of the late sixties who should‘ve been grinding out some worthy blues covers, yet ‘All The Young Dudes’ wasn’t anchored in the past.  In fact, it was very much looking to the future.  Written by David Bowie, who was essaying the quintessential Glam look himself, it was couched in the modern vernacular and musically, pushed away as far from the then current trend as it dared.

With it’s street-wise half spoken verse and sublime soaring singalong chorus, it was a pure pop song yet it had the otherworldliness of Bowie’s early work that separates it both from the prog/blues albums bands and the frothy chart pop of the time.  It was the future of music.

Others in the Glam vanguard like Bolan and Roxy Music were already paid up members of the new world whose image betrayed their musical direction but Mott The Hoople were not like them.  Sure, they smartened themselves up when they saw which way the wind was blowing but they were not Glam pioneers per se.  Hence their marriage of old style band image and futuristic song had all the makings of a once in a moment musical touchstone, a real turning point.  And you can’t move turning points, they are by definition rooted to their place in time.

Jon Lord 1941 - 2012

It barely seems like five minutes ago that I was writing a post about the role of the extraordinary Hammond Organ in my musical apprenticeship (in fact it was over two years ago) and now here we are mourning the passing of one of its greatest exponents, Jon Lord.  Along with the likes of Stevie Winwood, Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, Jon Lord was a master of the instrument and his signature jazz/rock licks can be heard underpinning music from Deep Purple, Whitesnake and his various collaborative bands from the sixties to the point when he became ill with cancer a year or so ago.

Weirdly, I never owned a Deep Purple studio album, opting for the ‘Live in Japan’ set and the rare ‘Marks I and II’ compilation but always kept a batch of taped DP singles recorded from the radio and TV.  More particularly, and in my usual manner of going for the fringe projects, I bought Deep Purple’s 1969 ‘Concerto For Group and Orchestra’ written by Lord, which I enjoyed then and still like today.  It speaks volumes of the man that he could encompass all forms of music from the discipline of classical composition to the unstructured improvisation of jazz and the sheer brutality of heavy rock.  In his mind, it was all just music and for that I applaud him.  It was a concept that he understood completely yet my music teachers at school failed to grasp.  As a consequence, I was instructed to believe that anything that wasn’t classical wasn’t really music.  What piffle – yet this was the late sixties when such views were rife.  This attitude has changed, thankfully, and today I can attend my daughter’s school concert and hear pieces by Mendelssohn, Bach, Lennon & McCartney and Journey (!)

In 1969 the idea of a ‘Rock Concerto’ was uncharted territory and tantamount to suicide artistically as the audiences for classical and rock music were utterly divided by both generation and attitude.  Rather than try to gloss over this chasm, Lord cleverly treated the rock band as the Concerto ‘soloist’ in place of the usual single instrument and rather than try to blend rock and orchestral instruments together, actually accentuated their differences by making the band loud and raucous thus creating a musical war that is full of drama and conflict.  The live recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Malcolm Arnold is stirring stuff, full of great orchestral themes juxtaposed with bluesy fuzzed up guitar solos.

I admired Jon Lord both as a composer and a musician and if you don’t like his Concerto (or subsequent Gemini Suite) just go and listen to his solos on ’Highway Star’ or ‘Burn’.  After all, it’s just music.

RIP Jon.

Doris Brendel - Not Utopia

I’d just got my USB turntable working properly with Windows 7 (thanks to v2.0 of Audacity) and was busy converting King Crimson’s awesome 1974 offering, ‘Red’ to MP3 when what should pop up in my Inbox but a message from that purveyor of eclectic pop, Doris Brendel. Would I like to review her latest album, ‘Not Utopia’? I would. So here it is on my ipod and it takes some dogged scepticism in fate to believe that Messrs Fripp, Wetton and Bruford didn’t deliberately act as a portent to the arrival of this CD as the opening track, ‘No Lonely Girl’ essays the sort of metal guitar riff and pumping bass that could’ve been lifted from ‘Red’. Spooky.

As the daughter of a celebrated concert pianist and lead singer of cult 90s nu-progressive pop band, The Violet Hour, you’d expect a certain degree of musical nous from Ms Brendel and this album certainly delivers, especially in the areas that matter: variety and arrangement. Let’s take the latter first. What is it about musical arrangement that it seems to have such stigma attached to it? These days, all chart singles sound the same and for the very good reason that they use the same recipe. Take equal amounts of ‘beats’ and synths, chuck them into a computer and regurgitate at c120 bpm. Add auto-tuned vocals to taste. But it wasn’t always like this.

In the pre-digital days of Fripp/Wetton/Bruford, musicians who looked to produce anything outside of the 3 minute single were forced to arrange music in almost classical style (try all 12 minutes of ‘Starless’ from the aforementioned ‘Red’). Perhaps this is why ‘arrangement’ doesn’t figure these days – it has the taint of ‘Prog – do not touch with barge-pole’ indelibly stamped on it. But Brendel and her multi-instrumentalist collaborator, Lee Dunham, care little for prejudice and have stuffed NU with as many different instrument combinations as it will take, from Doris’s own haunting flageolet to rampant guitars, pastoral keyboards, plaintive oboes and String Quartets. As a result, each track has its own sonic identity and surprises you at every turn with its tonal intricacy – thus leading us neatly to point 2.

Variety. Rather than sounding like a current chart album bulging with cloned and ultimately boring, yet hopeful money-spinners, NU sounds wonderfully out of step in today’s market place in that every track is wilfully different. This type of madness was once the norm but not these days and Brendel should be applauded for her bravery. The album displays a multitude of styles from the Blondie pop/rock of ‘Going Out’ to the beautifully orchestrated ‘Kind To Be Cruel’ and the proggy overtones of my current favourite, ‘Passionate Weekend’ (which I would’ve loved to have heard developed to about twice its length!). In amongst these are acoustic ballads, bluesey laments and mad pseudo-metal all of which are imbued with her own brand of lyrical quirkiness and Dunham’s virtuoso playing (which is excellent, although I could’ve done without the drum machine – where’s Bill Bruford when you need him?)

Rising above this tapestry of sound is Brendel’s unique voice, all husk and bluesy emotion – a voice steeped in the sort of life experience that the likes of Katy Perry can only read about. As the blurb that accompanies the CD states, ‘There’s something for everyone’ and it’s true, but the other side of that particular coin is a slight lack of production consistency and the very real possibility that an audience bred on monotony is not going to like all of it. But then the White Album never hurt those scousers, did it? Personally, I love it, well the majority of it, anyway and by today’s standards that’s a firm recommendation. It’s not often that you get to hear an album like this in today’s blanded out world. Enjoy it while you can.

‘Not Utopia’ is available through Sky-Rocket Records. For more information visit Doris’s websites at www.dorisbrendel.com or www.myspace.com/dbdriving  In the meantime, here's 'Going Out' with Sophie Patrick (as if).

Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs - Under The Covers Vol 1

Inspired by the last Bangles album, I have been looking again at Susanna Hoffs’s extra curricula catalogue but this time with some foreboding.  I did this once before following The Bangles’ break-up in 1989 and bought her solo effort ‘When You’re a Boy’ but it didn’t do much for me, hence the slight anxiety.  But this time I have chanced upon her collaboration with producer and multi-instrumentalist, Matthew Sweet and this time it was worth the money.

Sweet and Hoffs, or Sid ‘n’ Susie as they are billing themselves, have tapped into their love of the 60s and 70s and created a series of ‘Under the Covers’ releases (two volumes to date).  Volume 1 spans the 1960s and mixes well known songs like ‘Monday Monday’ and ‘Alone Again Or’ with lesser known efforts from the big hitters of the day like the Beach Boys (‘The Warmth of the Sun’), The Zombies (‘Care of Cell 44’) and a killer version of The Beatles’ ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’.

The prickly subject of covers has been aired numerous times in this blog and it bears stating here that these are not deliberate re-workings of the original songs but more loving reconstructions, done with infinite care in a totally modern environment – no analogue and sticky tape here.  What really sets them apart from the blueprints is the vocal performances which are nothing short of awesome from both Ms Hoffs and Mr Sweet and despite having vocal tones at opposite ends of the scale they combine beautifully.  You can almost hear the fun they had doing these songs which are clearly close to their collective hearts.

Dare I say that Hoffs’ take on ‘Who Knows where the Time Goes’ is on a par with Sandy Denny’s original?  It works, yet somehow you don’t expect an American voice to gel with Fairport’s quintessentially English folk sound.  Sweet struggles a bit with the Wilson falsetto on ‘Warmth of the Sun’ but his rasping performance of Neil Young’s ‘Cinnamon Girl’ is a great cut, as is his interpretation of The Who’s ‘The Kids are Alright’.  Let’s face it, this is not high art in the accepted sense but nor is it downmarket karaoke but something in between.  Mainly, it’s a fun record made by people with talent and a real love of their subject matter and one that I shall return to on a regular basis.

So with Volume 1 in the bag, I may well have to have a look at Volume 2 which majors on the 1970s.  I couldn’t resist having a listen to their take on a surprising choice of Yes’s ‘I’ve Seen All Good People/Your Move’, and am staggered to report that if Susanna Hoffs is not the next Yes singer, I’ll eat…something.  She really nails it.  Is there nothing she can’t sing?  And with Clapton’s ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ and ‘You’re So Vain’ on the setlist, I don’t think I’ll be resisting for long.