T'was in the Year of '77

1977 was an interesting year.  It was the year that The Sex Pistols released ‘Never Mind The Bollocks…’ and bloated corporate rock was blown away forever…allegedly.  Just to underline the brutal military coup undertaken by Punk, Johnny Rotten sported a lurid ‘I hate Pink Floyd’ T-shirt and dared anyone to defend the old proggers.

1977 was also the year that the said Pink Floyd released ‘Animals’ and pigs flew over Battersea Power Station.  History shows that I bought and enjoyed both albums in equal measure in direct contravention of the Us And Them – Choose Your Side of the Fence Act 1976.  You see, musical genres never allow for this sort of thing.  Backed up by the music press with axes to grind, nobody with any street cred to protect was allowed to like, well, just music, you had to choose.  I definitely felt aligned with the energy that the New Wave brought and to a certain extent agreed that the mid-seventies needed a shake-up, but I still liked some of the bands that were in the firing line so I was a fence-sitter with interests in both camps – it gave you more options.

The reason for my musings on this interesting juxtaposition of styles has been brought about by the purchase of the Pink Floyd Discovery Box Set (all 14 studio albums remastered in a natty box).  Whilst I have many of the Floyd’s albums on vinyl, I never converted them to CD and have never owned, or even listened to, many of their back catalogue so a cheap eBay purchase seemed like the answer.  So here I am in 2012 listening to the Soundtrack album, ‘Obscured by Clouds’ (excellent) and ‘The Final Cut’ (dreadful) for the first time, well,  ever.

But more particularly, I have been listening to ‘Animals’, an album that I have not set on the old turntable since the 80s and my overriding impression is not one of bloated self indulgence, but one of anger.  It is a very angry album indeed, driven by Roger Waters various neuroses.  Which is somewhat ironic, for the punk movement that sought to replace the established bands was based almost entirely on anger.  Yet now by comparison, ‘Never Mind The Bollocks…’ sounds a little tame and its ‘anger’ just false political posturing.  On the other hand, the anger displayed on ‘Animals’ is very real.  The vitriol pouring from ‘Sheep’ and in particular, ‘Pigs’ reeks of a genuine hatred (especially against TV clean-up campaigner, Mary Whitehouse).  Frankly I find Waters far more scary that Rotten, and that’s before you get to Gilmore’s final solo on ‘Pigs’ which slashes at you like broken glass.

Yet, and this is the cruncher, I still find myself in the same position that I was 35 years ago and that is that really, I still like both of them.

Gerry Anderson 1929 - 2012

This is my 300^th post on this blog and it is perhaps fitting that it pays tribute to a man that looms large in my childhood – Gerry Anderson, who died over the Christmas period.

Most will know his work through the iconic ‘Thunderbirds’ but my link goes back further to the dimly remembered late 50s collaboration with children’s writer, Roberta Leigh that produced the strangeness of ‘Twizzle’ and ‘Torchy the Battery Boy’, made with puppets so weird that it doesn’t bear thinking about.  Although these shows were my initial contact with Gerry’s puppet world, it was ‘Fireball XL5’ that really captured my imagination.  I was besotted with this programme and although the delights of ‘Stingray’, ‘Thunderbirds’ and ‘Captain Scarlet’ were to follow, XL5 remains my first love.  Even today its shiny monochrome world of space adventure still beguiles me.

There is a definable element that pervades the work of Gerry Anderson, from the scariness of ‘Twizzle’ via the live action ‘Space 1999’ and ‘UFO’ to the hand puppets of ‘Terrahawks’ (a million miles away from Sooty) and that thing is integrity.  Everything Gerry touched was stamped with the motto, ‘If you are going to do it, do it well’.  All his products had a sheen of quality, whether it was the tightly drawn scripts, the truly awe-inspiring modelling or the cutting edge special effects.  The live action 2004 ‘Thunderbirds’ movie, which Anderson had no hand in and from which he rightly distanced himself, didn’t have it – and it shows.

This reach for quality can be seen again in the 2005 re-imagining of Captain Scarlet, created using CGI technology.  The series of 26 x 25 minute episodes cost an astronomical £23M but the end result is worth every penny.  The scripts are fast paced and the visuals as inventive and spectacular as always.  Unforgivably, ITV refused to promote the new show and list it as a stand alone but buried it in amongst an existing Saturday morning kids’ show which cut it into two halves with games and adverts between them.  It sank without trace.

Anderson was reportedly furious and I can’t help feeling that it was the beginning of the end for him.  It was desperately sad because ‘The New Adventures of Captain Scarlet’ (now on DVD) is Anderson at his best and a fitting epitaph to a man who had a real pride in his work even if they were ‘only’ kids’ shows.  RIP Gerry.

End of Year Report

2012.  So how was it for you?  From my viewpoint sitting here in the UK, it was probably an above average year as long as you looked in the right places.  Let’s face it, if you concentrate on the woeful economy and miserable weather you’d be marking it down quicker than a GCSE examiner.  So let’s forget all that real world stuff and focus on firstly…sport!

This year served up some bumper sporting moments if you were a Brit and this is something to be savoured as we, as a race, are not used to winning anything – at least since the rest of the world got to know the rules and beat us at everything.  There was Bradley ‘Wiggo’ Wiggins winning the Tour de France, Andy Murray winning his first Grand Slam Tournament, England’s cricket Team gaining World Number 1 status, the Ryder Cup comeback - and that was just for starters.

The jewel in the sporting crown was an amazing Summer Olympics and Paralympics which made household names of the likes of Ennis, Farrah, Wiggins (again), Hoy, Rutherford, Adams, Trott, Dujardin, Adams, Weir, Simmons, Brownlee, Ainslie, Pendleton, and many, many more.

Of course, nothing lasts for ever and it wasn’t long before the Cricket team lost their Number 1 status (but redeemed themselves in India) and inevitably here at the tail end of the year, the England football team continues to struggle in a poor qualifying group for the next World Cup.  Oh well, it was nice whilst it lasted.

But what about music?  Sad to say, I’ve found little to titivate my palette and consequently have bought very few CDs this year, preferring to pick up much improved remixed/remastered releases of favourite albums from my past.  If pushed to pick out a new album of the year, it would probably be Marina and the Diamonds’ ‘Electra Heart’ which has been on my ipod since release.  A close second would be either The Bangles’ ‘Sweetheart of the Sun’ or Doris Brendel’s ‘Not Utopia’, but other than these three not much else has really moved me which is a bit of a sad state of affairs and no mistake.  I might have to re-name this blog, ‘Sport Obsessive’.

So how does it all stack up when added together?  Well, on the music front, 2012 has under-performed a bit if you look at new music alone but if you argue that the art of re-mixing and remastering old albums has come of age then it has been a pretty good year with some stunningly revitalised stuff to the fore (yes, I’m looking at you, ‘Aqualung’).

But if you add in a massively dramatic sporting summer, 2012 acquits itself with flying colours and proves yet again that there is nothing quite like the real drama of live sport – there’s never a script and anything can happen.  Hoorah!

See you all in the New Year!

What Value Music?

The other day, in a moment of supreme weakness, I made the mistake of answering my phone without checking that the caller had WITHHELD their number.  This can only mean one thing; a cold call and if there’s one thing I hate it’s a cold caller.  I usually ignore such intrusions but this time I was caught and had to go through the rigmarole of politely telling them to bugger off.  This time it was from an on-line wine seller that I use regularly and whilst it started promisingly with the ‘only available off line to you, mate’ patter, it ended with a price that was no better than their normal on-line prices.  What was the point?

The trouble is, everyone wants something for nothing these days, including me, so ringing me up to offer the same price I could expect to spend elsewhere was never going to hold my interest and what goes for wine goes for music too.  Having said that, I am of a generation that at least expects to pay something for music, unlike many of today’s kids who seem to think it is their birthright to download everything for free, so cheap rather than free is always on the menu.

The old marketing hook of offering stuff at low prices can be a bit hit and miss.  For reasons that I don’t really understand to this day, back in 1973 I declined Virgin Records’s offer of ‘The Faust Tapes’ by Krautrockers, Faust for the miniscule price of 49p – an LP for the price of a vinyl single at the time.  Perhaps it was TOO cheap?  See how difficult it is?  In retrospect this was probably the correct decision as it is a jumble of live off-cuts but nevertheless, at that price who cares?

Yet some years before, in 1971, I had snapped up ‘Relics’ by Pink Floyd, a band I didn’t really know much about, but when it appeared on the cut-price Starline label, I couldn’t resist.  ‘Relics’ is a peculiar mixture of 1967-1969 period Floyd material bringing together the brilliant early Syd Barrett singles, atmospheric tracks from the soundtrack album, ‘More’, a collection of B sides and odd album cuts from their first two albums.  It was my introduction to The Pink Floyd and remains one of my favourite albums of theirs to this day.  As I have mused before, the late sixties was a strange period and the music created against the backdrop of social unrest and end of the Hippy dream still has a slightly haunted quality to it.  Certainly, this has an ambience that no other record I know of has.

So in the case of the budget label release, ‘Relics’ scored a hit and set me on the trail of proper grown-up Pink Floyd LPs.  Just let someone ring me up today and try and sell it to me…grrr.

Remixes - Should We Allow Them?

Let me pose you a question.  What would be your reaction if Van Gogh, assuming he was still alive, decided that his Sunflowers were all wrong and painted them out to be repainted as Lilies?  Or if Rodin were to hack off The Thinker’s arm in order to re-site it by his side rather than cupping his chin?  Established works of art should not really be tampered with, should they?  Although painting out details in ‘finished’ pictures is nothing new, it feels wrong somehow.  So what about re-mixing Classic Albums?  Hmm.

 Since the advent of digital music, engineers have taken the opportunity to re-master old analogue tapes for the new medium.  Up until now most of these efforts have been poor, in my opinion, but of late things have changed.  Recent re-masters have improved significantly and I cite The Beatles’ catalogue, Paul McCartney’s Archive series and Steve Hackett’s early albums as evidence.  But progress has now reached the stage where artists are re-mixing as well as re-mastering their old albums in a ‘this’ll fix what I didn’t do at the time’ sort of way.  Can they do this?  What about my memories?

I have three examples of this desire to tinker; Deep Purple’s ‘Machine Head’, Mike Oldfield’s ‘Ommadawn’ and Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’.  In each case, the original multi-track recording has been re-mixed using today’s technology in an effort to improve on the original.  In the case of ‘Aqualung’ I have to say that this has been a spectacular success.  The re-mix doesn’t really change the musical emphasis very much from the original but what it has done is breathe new life into what was a very stodgy final master.  Suddenly there is space around the instruments and their tonality bursts out of the speakers at you.  Drums sound like drums and less like wet cardboard boxes – hurrah!  Steven Wilson, who is the engineer responsible, has a magic touch with old masters as his work on the King Crimson and Caravan catalogues has shown.  His re-mixed ‘Aqualung’ is fabulous and I’d choose it over the original every time.

‘Mike Oldfield’s ‘Ommadawn’ also works well but to a lesser degree.  The re-mix doesn’t really alter the sound of the album too much but it does sound clearer and fresher.  However, I understand that his re-mix of ‘Tubular Bells’ does sound significantly different but as I haven’t heard it, I couldn’t possibly comment.  My real gripe is reserved for ‘Machine Head’ and that is because the modern re-mix uses alternative instrumental takes, such as guitar solos, that were not used in the original.  This is a step too far as it changes the music wholesale and I don’t like it – it has ceased to be ‘Machine Head’ and is now something else.

Whilst I object to the concept that once discarded music is now viewed as an improvement, I am disconcertingly aware that my attitude has been conditioned by the last 100 years, or since music became recorded.  Prior to then, all music only existed in written form and every performance of it was different, so there was no definitive version, just a series of interpretations.  Now that music is cast in stone for all eternity by the recording process, we are led to believe that there is only one interpretation, but perhaps that is wrong?

Re-mixing raises a whole series of ethical questions about art and it will take more than this post to get to the bottom of it.  I’m still unsure and will probably just take on a case by case line until someone can convince me one way or the other. 

Curved Air - The Lost Broadcasts

As a long time aficionado of the Progrock band, Curved Air, I am mightily relieved to report that my eye-teeth are all but safe.  No longer are they under threat of exchange for a sample of dodgy live concert footage from their peak period between 1970 and 1972 as freshly arrived from a well known on-line retailer is a new DVD; ‘Curved Air – The Lost Broadcasts’.

As far as I am aware, this is one of only two videos in existence which captures them during their golden period even if it is not real concert footage and it has its own idiosyncrasies.  The good news is that the two sessions on this disk, recorded in March and September 1971 for the German TV programme, Beat Club, comprise a total of five songs from ‘Air Conditioning’ and ‘Second Album’ including ‘Back Street Luv’ and the epic ‘Piece of Mind’.  The bad news is that for the second broadcast, session drummer Barry deSouza fills in for regular drummer, Florian Pilkington-Miksa and the obsession with weird TV effects (1971-stylee) with blue screen backdrops and the like, is mildly irritating.  However, the only other video from this period, from a 1972 Belgian TV programme, suffers even more from irritating effects and cutaways, so mustn’t grumble.

So in the scheme of things, this is gold dust.  Looking distressingly young – they were all about 22 at the time – the band demonstrates just what a talented lot they were.  The two aspects that drew me to them in the first place are still mesmerisingly magnetic.  First, the combination of Darryl Way’s electric violin and Francis Monkman’s (at the time) groundbreaking use of the early VCS3 synthesiser still has an oddness about it that time has not diminished.

Second is the female vocals of Sonja Kristina Linwood, an asset that most rock bands of the day did not possess and which added a third unexpected layer to the overall sound.  In fact, her performance is even better than I remember from numerous 70s concerts, especially on the atonally difficult melody of ‘Piece of Mind’ where her confidence is awesome.

Of course, the hairstyles and clothes are laughable (whatever happened to velvet loons?) but the musicianship is first rate as one would expect from a band of this vintage.  It would only be a few years before this type of competency would be derided by the first wave of punk.  Nevertheless, with only five songs on offer, it’s a shame that they chose to include Way’s elongated party piece, ‘Vivaldi’, a mass of electronic effects and cleverness, which only just works on stage but falls a bit flat on screen.  But we do have ‘Back Street Luv’ and mercifully in it’s original form with Sonja’s cool haunted vocal rather than the histrionics we got a few years later.  And we do get a slightly-truncated-from-12-minutes version of their masterpiece, ‘Piece of Mind’ complete with spoken verses from TS Eliot’s ‘Wasteland’.  Magical.

Admittedly, this is probably no more than a curiosity to most viewers, a rather dated snapshot of another time and place, but to fans, this is indispensable.