Eskimo Joe and the 200 Posts

Contemplating my Blogger Dashboard the other day brought to my attention the following astounding fact: this is my 200th Post! I can’t let this milestone pass without marking it in some way so I thought I’d have a think about what has happened since that long off day in May 2007 when I posted my first thoughts.


The impetus for starting my own blog came from my oldest internet buddy and cartoonist extraordinaire, TR1-guy, who became a blogger soon after I first encountered him via his ‘Fanny’ internet site (now FannyRocks) to which I contributed some content. Having just published my book, I needed an outlet for my writing without the commitment of another huge tome and so chose to start my own blog, ‘Music Obsessive’ and here we are 200 posts later.

The one thing that has surprised me about blogging is how much fun it has been to make ‘internet friends’ and how widespread geographically they are and how loyal they can be. One of the very first blogs I encountered and decided that I liked enough to go back to regularly was Jayne’s ‘A Novice Novelist’. We have been commenting back and forth ever since and she is a Top Commentator on this blog (see widget in right hand side bar). In fact, Jayne, you have two entries in the list so if you hadn’t changed your name, you’d be number one!

Others that I would like to thank for their support over the years include Charlie, Barbara (Layla), Jeff, Jennifer K, Perplexio and Alan, my one ‘freelance’ commentator.

I have also been lucky enough to connect with people who actually work in the music industry which has added a new insight into my chosen subject, people like Adrian du Plessis, manager of Canadian singer Allison Crowe, who is another regular commentator at this blog (check out Adrian’s own blog to hear tracks from Allison’s new CD, ‘Spiral’). Others in this category would be Doris Brendel, ex-singer with The Velvet Hour and now a solo artist, whose new album I intend to review as soon as it is available, and the two remaining members of Martha and the Muffins.

New friends continue to arrive. A new blog that I have found very entertaining is the Oz husband and wife team, YourZenMine who write great reviews of favourite albums in their collection and indulge in a bit of marital bickering on the side. Great fun! I’ve been a regular visitor to their blog and left one or two comments when the urge took me. In return and quite unprompted, I have been presented with a CD from their native land, ‘A Song Is A City’ by Eskimo Joe. And just to prove what impeccable taste they have, it is really very good. Whilst it has that slightly indefinable antipodean feel of a Crowded House/Savage Garden with added INXS, it is packed with great songs and rolls along with real gusto. So much so that my wife has purloined it to play in the car on the school run. Recommended.

So to everyone who has read this blog or commented or both, thank you very much for being around. I’ll try and make it worth your while for another 200 posts.

The 'Difficult' 3rd Album

Ok, new round, no conferring. What is it that links Siouxsie and the Banshees to Kate Bush?


No, not a shock of black hair, nor the fact that their best years were in the mid-1980s. In fact, you couldn’t pick a more diverse duo. The one, a classically trained Home Counties singer-songwriter given to strangely melodic ballads about Victorian heroines and the other, a band forged in the maelstrom of punk who eschewed virtuosity and created metallic anthems of isolation and horror.

But despite their obvious differences their career path was spookily similar, at least over their first 4 albums. Siouxsie and the Banshees initially produced a stunning debut, ‘The Scream’ largely in the punk tradition of pounding drums and sheets of angular guitar and followed it up with undue haste with a second album, ‘Join Hands’ in a similar style but containing inferior material. By the time the third album was in the melting pot, half the band had left and it was left to Siouxsie and Steve Severin to cobble something together on their own. The resultant release, ‘Kaleidoscope’ was a strange mixture of ambient music and pop songs under the guise of new wave experimentation. Having recruited a new guitarist and drummer who were more than competent players (what punk ethic?) their fourth album, ‘JuJu’ was a monster hit which showcased a newly forged Siouxsie style which would become the norm from then on.

Kate Bush’s first four albums followed a similar pattern. Her first, ‘The Kick Inside’ was a stunning debut of simple yet highly inventive songs. Her second, ‘Lionheart’ followed too close on its heels by order of her record label and was disappointing in as much as the material was a bit underdeveloped and the arrangements too conventional. By her third effort, ‘Never Forever’, Kate had won some hard fought control over her own artistic process and had acquired a state of the art Fairlight sampler. The result is a curious mixture of the type of songs she had written for the first two albums, but arranged in a far more interesting way and the type of songs that she would write later in her career but without the adventurous production. This change of direction culminated in her fourth album, the uncompromisingly left field ‘The Dreaming’ and the rest is well documented.

So the real link is the third and notoriously ‘difficult’ third album. Each of them, and for different reasons, produced an unexpectedly different, slightly hit-and-miss album which is clearly a transitional stage that links the boundaries of a vast chasm between what they were and what they were to become. Not many artists have a massive change in style so early in their trajectory and it is fascinating to have such a clear record of where their two styles clash warily.

Keep The Noise Down!

I see that the ‘Elf & Safety Brigade are at it again, this time having yet another attempt at getting us to turn the volume down on our ipods. This has been going on for years now in a constant war to save our ears. The usual scientist has been wheeled out to tell us that some of us are subjecting our ears to noise levels greater than those produced by a pneumatic drill. And do you know why we have to turn the volume up so high?  It is so that we can hear the damn thing over the NOISE OF A PNEUMATIC DRILL. Has this scientist walked around London recently? If so, he would realise that the Capital is a vast and un-ending building site where reconstruction and road works are a constant activity involving kango hammers and power tools of all descriptions and the noise is deafening.


Perhaps this scientist is not a commuter? Try listening to an ipod on the Tube and you will soon realise how incredibly noisy the London Underground is. Listening to music with a decent dynamic range is almost impossibility as you rattle and roar your way along dark tunnels between stops. No wonder we are subjecting our ears to in excess of 120Db – it’s because we can’t hear the bloody thing over the noise of the 21st Century!

Clearly, I am being flippant as there is a serious point to be taken on board to do with tinnitus and deafness generally so do be careful, but it would help us all if the world wasn’t so damn noisy in the first place.

In fact, all this makes you realise just how noisy our world has become. If we were to construct a telephone line that could reach back into history, say, 1,000 years and engage in a conversation with someone from that time, one thing would be immediately apparent: the world 1,000 years ago would be virtually silent. There would be virtually no music as this was largely confined to ecclesiastical establishments like churches and monasteries. There would be no radio, television, industrial machines, cars, aircraft, mobile phones, pneumatic drills, lawnmowers, chainsaws or anything that we today take for granted and which makes an almighty racket. All that would be heard would be the sounds of nature and the odd person killing another person with a huge sword.

Compare that with what the person at the other end of the line would hear of our world. What he would be utterly amazed to hear is an absolute cacophony of sound from a multitude of sources. So remember to speak up when addressing the fellow as he won’t hear you over the din.

Requiem For A Hammond Organ

I suppose age has a lot to do with it but as I have droned on about a million times before, when it comes down to brass tacks, I am a guitar man at heart. I’ve also said that I still cannot quite understand why today’s guitarists still carry the late 1970s stigma that soloing is a bad thing. The guitar is still the heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll so for God’s sake just get out there and make a racket. I won’t mind, honest.

But having said all that, why is it that when I hear a certain sound, my senses pick up and transport me to a time when I was just beginning to appreciate what popular music was really all about? Why is it that this particular sound is more evocative than my beloved guitars? The sound I am talking about is the immediately recognisable grinding swell of the Hammond Organ. During its heyday in the late sixties and early seventies it rivalled the guitar for the sound most associated with rock. From Procul Harem’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ through Stevie Winwood and Keith Emerson to Jon Lord and the progressive bands like Genesis and Yes, the Hammond reigned supreme.

Given the plethora of electronics we have today when no two bands have the same kit, it is almost laughable to remember that once upon a time the definitive rock band seemed to sport nothing more than a Fender Stratocaster, a Rickenbacker bass and a Hammond Organ (plus perhaps a Pearl drum kit and a trusty non-wireless Shure mic) – who needed anything else?

I was reminded about all this the last time I played ‘Woodstock’ by Crosby Stills Nash and Young when I was rather taken by surprise by the low level drone of a Hammond cutting through all those duelling Stills and Young guitars. I’d never really thought about CSN&Y being a keyboards band and of course, they’re not but anything recorded around about 1970 is almost bound to have one and there it is.

Since the seventies, the Synthesiser has made obsolete all the early keyboards and possibly the last post for the Hammond appears to have been during the mid-1990s when Brit-poppers, The Charlatans, built their brave new sound around the ancient instrument.  Since then I’ve not really heard its croaking drone too often so perhaps it has finally expired and been replaced by a microchip and some preset on a multi-functional synth.

What a way to go.

Cult Bands - The Violet Hour

The history of rock, it seems, is littered with so-called ‘cult’ albums. In order to qualify for cult status, an album needs to have been made by a little known band which forms, creates and then disbands in a flash after which the album is promptly deleted from the catalogue. This then allows a sort of underground swell of fandom to carry the word so that rare copies are treated like gold dust thereafter.


On this basis, an album that qualifies for cult status is ‘The Fire Sermon’ by Leeds-based band, The Violet Hour, released in 1991 and smartly withdrawn in 1992, soon after their break-up. The Violet Hour began life in 1988 when keyboardist Markus Waite met guitarist Martyn Wilson. Andrew Fox then joined on bass and Sean Holborn became the eventual drummer. But they needed a singer and one soon arrived in the form of Leeds University student, Doris Brendel and thus The Violet Hour was born.

Fast forward to 2010 and my link is formed when an email from Doris arrives in my inbox. It turns out that she is acquainted with my muso brother, Dave who has pointed her in my direction on the basis that I might like her music. To cut to the chase, she has sent me a copy of ‘The Fire Sermon’, which was finally re-released by Sky-Rocket records in September last year, and I am beginning to understand what cults are all about because this is one beautiful album.

Back in 1991, its sound was compared to that of contemporaries, All About Eve and there is definitely a degree of similarity but whereas AAE was Julianne Regan’s velvet claw in the iron glove of a macho band, The Violet Hour is almost the reverse – a sort of iron claw in a velvet glove. Doris’s vocals are much earthier and bluesier than Julianne’s and give an emotional centre around which the band’s complex arrangements swirl and glide. If anything, I would say that this album was released 20 years too late. It belongs to the era of blues and classically influenced progressive rock where bands like Jefferson Airplane, Caravan and early Renaissance stalked the earth. There are reminders of early Genesis in the use of flute and piano as well as injections of Celtic folk via violin and pipes. More importantly, it belongs to an era when bands comprised real musicians who wrote melodic, yet challenging music and then arranged and played it with genuine competence.

It is easy to see why the Velvet Hour was compared with their forebears from the 60s and 70s but they were also a band of their own time. In the late 80s and early 90s the music world was split between Grunge and Pop, yet there was a third genre underlying the main battle and it was the so-called ‘shoegazers’. My own favourites, Lush, were amongst their number which also included The Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and Ride. These bands were the aural architects, the dream-poppers and The Violet Hour has real overtones of this type of music. Personally, I liked this period in musical history and that is probably why I like this album, but then I Iike music that is well written and performed with soul – who doesn’t?

If you’d like to know more about The Velvet Hour and Doris Brendel, visit her site at http://www.dorisbrendel.com/ where you can hear excerpts of this album and all her solo work to date. Well worth a visit.  She also has a page at www.myspace.com/dbdriving where you can find more details about her solo stuff and up-coming album, 'The Last Adventure'.


Also, don’t forget that my brother’s band, The Yarmouth Honeys, are still operational and you can learn about them and hear tracks at Dave Warminger’s MySpace site.

Oh yeah, and if you'd like to read more about my views on music don't forget my book, 'Memoirs of a Music Obsessive'.

Enjoy The Silence

What makes a song one which everyone and his dog wants to cover? Why are some songs covered to death and others not? Presumably the quality of the song writer has something to do with it so that the covering artist can attempt some form of vicarious notoriety otherwise nobody would put out Beatles’ covers. I dare say that a universally successful song generates its own inertia and thus virtually puts itself up for adoption but these are not always the right choice. Comparisons with the original version can send most covers to the ‘seemed like a good idea’ graveyard unless it’s right on the money.


But there are other songs that generate a life of their own and artists fall over themselves to do a cover. One such song is ‘Enjoy The Silence’ written by Martin Gore and performed originally by Depeche Mode on their masterpiece ‘Violator’. It is one of those songs that people who like Depeche Mode know about as it was a reasonable hit, but is not a generally recognised song in the same league as ‘Yesterday’. However, it has a certain cache amongst artists in the industry and is more of a musicians’ favourite rather than a public choice.

The general consensus amongst those who comment on YouTube is that the best version is by Italian goth-rockers, Lacuna Coil and I would go along with this to a large degree. The style of the song lends itself to their rather noir performance and the interaction of male and female vocals works very well. But, it is pretty much a re-run of the original that has been put together well with great vocals.

Others who have attempted ‘Silence’ include Kim Wilde (as part of her live set only) and Keane and each has its merits but they are, again, largely recreations of the Depeche Mode style but with different instruments. In my book a good cover is one that makes you think about a song in a different way.

So I’m going to champion a version created by that ace song re-interpreter Tori Amos. Amos excels at this sort of thing as anyone who has her covers album ‘Strange Little Girls’ will know. By carefully re-phrasing the vocal lines and subtly changing the musical harmony, she has moved this song into a different sphere. It has real passion and strangeness about it that even the original version lacks. Check out the video and see if you agree.