Playlists and the Ultimate Test

Eureka!  I have just discovered a foolproof way of discovering what you like, what you really really like.  You know how it is, there are always social occasions where you get asked what your favourite songs are by, let’s say for the sake of argument, Queen.  At this point, you are immediately on show and the choices you make reflect upon your standing in society, so you probably do the following.

First up, you pick a few popular titles so as to establish a rapport with your enquirer (Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are the Champions etc), then you add a few early titles so as to show that you’re not a Johnny-come-lately to the band (Seven Seas of Rye or anything earlier if you dare) and then pick a few obscurities to round off the list just to prove that you know all their albums and not just the singles.  Job done.

But do you actually like any of these songs?  At the time, you may think so but I’ll wager not all of them are true favourites.  The way to test this assumption is to create a playlist of about a dozen of these so-called favourites and then play them every day for weeks.  Very soon, you begin to realise that there are some on the list that you can’t wait to get to and others where your finger is itching to press the skip button.

I discovered this phenomenon when I complied what I thought were my very bestest loved Smiths songs into a playlist of about 15 culled mainly from ‘Hatful of Hollow’ and their four studio albums.  After a few days I’d already pared this list down to 10 and after a few more it was down to about half a dozen.  Interestingly, many of those songs that I would’ve sworn blind were my all-time favs fell off the list early on – and all of them were from ‘Hatful of Hollow’, still my favourite Smiths album.

Finally, the list stabilised for some days and comprised the following five:

1. Hand in Glove
2. The Headmaster Ritual
3. I Want the One I Can’t Have
4. Bigmouth Strikes Again
5. Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before

I think it is safe to say that these are my true favourites, born of trial by fire and Ipod playlist, but whether I would’ve come up with this list before is very debateable.  Interestingly, two of these songs have been covered by others and there is no doubt that the act of a new interpretation has elevated them in my estimation as a different side to their nature has been revealed.  The two in question are ‘Hand in Glove’ covered by Sandie Shaw and ‘Stop Me…’ covered by Sarah Blackwood of Dubstar and both show how the songs can live outside of the unique Morrissey/Marr environment.

I must try and remember these the next time I’m asked.

Marina and The Diamonds - Electra Heart

There was a time when I regularly bought LPs on their day of release, even to the point of waiting outside music shops so as to rush inside the minute they opened so as to be heading homewards with a brand new LP clutched in my sweaty paw by 9.01 am.  Happy days.  Since the advent of the CD and now Downloads that initial enthusiasm has waned for the most part although some items have been snapped up immediately but these days that just means clicking the pre-order button.

Despite my aging cynicism, there is one album that I have been awaiting for some few months and it is ‘Electra Heart’ by the strangely accented Marina Diamandis (or Marina and the Diamonds as she has styled herself).  When her debut, ‘The Family Jewels’ arrived in 2010 I decided to give it a listen despite the hype from the music press and found that there was substance to the hyperbole.  In fact it turned out to be one of my favourite albums of the year, melding astute lyrics to crafted melodies sung in that peculiar half Welsh, half Greek accent.  It sounded different.  It was different.

So her follow up album has been on my list ever since and as the months have passed, it has grown into a must buy.  Hence my first day of release purchase like the awe-struck teenager that I once was.  But was it worth it?  Now read on.

Well, after several plays I can report that the voice is still as beguiling as it ever was.  That low register growl that shoots up to a pure falsetto inflected with that kooky Welsh/Greek accent is one of pop’s most unique instruments.  Also present and correct are the thoughtful yet pointed lyrics.  I haven’t found myself really listening to what a song is actually saying since ooh…the days of Joni Mitchell in the 70s.  She really does have a way with words, this girl.

Nevertheless, as with many second albums, the music is not quite up to the standard of ‘Family Jewels’.  There are exceptions, like the storming opener ‘Bubblegum Bitch’ and the atmospheric closer ‘Fear and Loathing’ and one or two in between but generally, it is not quite as consistent, but this was almost inevitable given the quality of FJ.  My feeling is that Marina wants to be a star and is prepared to be drawn into the ‘star-making machinery’ (to quote the aforementioned Ms Mitchell).  There are no less than 8 producer/writers credited on this album, one of them being star-maker writer himself, Rick Nowells.  As a result, the album is all over the place, style-wise and struggles for consistency.  It lurches from crunching cutting edge synthesised ‘beats’ one minute to old-school rock arrangements the next.  Little Boots’ debut ‘Hands’ suffered the same way – it seems that the current music industry is so paranoid of failure that it will dress up all potential new talent with a slick everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production believing this will make them mass audience friendly rather than letting them breathe by themselves.

But in the case of Ms Diamandis, I can’t help feeling that all this paraphernalia is totally unnecessary.  The fact is that Marina has the most important tools required to be a star already on board – her unique voice and her undoubted song writing ability, both with tunes and lyrics.  The issue with this album is that both are submerged in a mess of over-production and too many song writing collaborations.  Aimee Mann and Nerina Pallot have also been pushed down the ‘must collaborate’ path and it didn’t work for them either.  ‘Fear and Loathing’ and the excellent 'Teen Idle' are by far the best songs in the set and she wrote them by herself.  QED.

Despite all this, I still like ‘Electra Heart’, and seeing the ‘acoustic’ versions of some of the songs on YouTube just confirms my views about production (see video attached to this post).  Marina, please just take a deep breath, write some great songs and find a producer who will set them sympathetically to show off your thought-provoking lyrics and that fascinating voice.  Those are your USPs - not an all-enveloping production.  You don’t need to be Katy Perry to succeed.

Queen - Now I'm Here

Looking through my motley collection of vinyl singles the other day, it struck me how different were their reasons for being there.  Some sit there anonymously as if I’d never bought them at all and they had just sneaked in by chance during a dark night, yet others are full of pride and bursting to tell their story.  One of those eager storytellers is ‘Now I’m Here’ by Queen.

In the early 1970s I had become a fully fledged album buyer after spending much of the late sixties amassing a small, yet top quality (ahem) singles collection but as I became a student at University in the autumn of 1974 the restrictions of a student grant (remember them?) meant that in order to satisfy my rampant music possession syndrome urge I had to reduce myself yet again to a singles buyer.

This was a pain in the backside yet it did lead to my purchase of Queen’s ‘Now I’m Here’ in early ‘75, which if memory serves, was the first Queen record I ever bought.  Now, the second issue I was faced with was this: not wanting to uproot my beloved stereo system, I didn’t have a record player with me – only a tape player and a load of LPs hastily transferred to cassette the previous summer.  True, my first year room mate had brought with him an ancient autochanger-in-a-box, the sort of kit that every sixties teenager owned in order to annoy the older generation with the new-fangled beat music.  But it was his, not mine.

So the reason this single has its very own back story is partly because it didn’t get played very much…until I went home for the weekend, that is.  In my first year, I went home for a weekend once or twice a term.  Of course this didn’t happen at all after the first few terms as life away from home became infinitely preferable to life at home but that’s another story and probably one that everyone knows.  I always managed to arrive home about midday on the Friday when the house was empty, all occupants still being at work or school and this was the moment that ‘Now I’m Here’ came into its own.

My own prized stereo system still sat in my room and I cranked it up to ‘11’ to play my still pristine Queen single.  It’s a great rock number in anyone’s book but at deafening volume in an empty house it sounded sublime.  You could even play a bit of air guitar and leap around without anyone seeing.  This is what teenage years were made for.  Brilliant.

Music and the Loss of Community

One of the inevitable consequences of age is that reflection follows.  Now that the popular music genre we call Rock ‘n’ Roll has staggered past its fiftieth birthday, television is awash with retrospective documentaries about this band and that time and so on.  In particular I have just watched a three part documentary tucked away on BBC4 about the attempts of British bands to crack the vast American market from Beatles in 1964 to the New Romantics of the 1980s.  All fascinating stuff, especially the bits where you try to work out who is being interviewed by matching up the fresh faced youths in the archive film to the ravaged face of the interviewee.

But more than anything else, I came away with a sense of loss for a musical community that seemed to exist in the 60s and 70s and has now dissipated.  Admittedly, because of the nature of the programme subject matter, most of the band names were British but the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the Animals in the 60s together with Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, ELP, Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd in the 70s are known to a generation of music lovers on a global scale.  Throw in the American contributions such as Neil Young, The Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan and so on and you have a community of musicians that is part of the life of everyone of a certain age.

When I converse with my Blogosphere Buddies throughout the world, it is obvious that those of us of a similar age have much in common whether we live in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada or even the non-English speaking countries in Europe and beyond.  For those of us born in the 50s and 60s when the musical community was much smaller than it is today, there are common touchstones that allow us to converse easily and understand each other.

I’m not convinced that this sense of commonality exits today.  Having rashly opined that many of my fellow bloggers have a common past, when it comes to today’s music, we have very little in common.  When I read blogs containing reviews of recently released music, I very rarely know of the artist, let alone the album itself.

Music today is a vast industry comprising numerous genres and sub-markets.  Unless you are Lady Gaga or Adele or similar there is no real global connection.  Most artists today work in a niche of hardcore fans, despite the efforts of the internet.  The singles chart, such as it is, is an irrelevance, changing almost wholesale week by week.  There’s no (adopts slightly nasal Fluff Freeman voice), ‘ and … moves up 6 places to number 27’ type jostling for position over several weeks – you get in, shine for a week and are gone.

I wonder whether today’s generation will be able to reminisce about the music of their youth en masse like we can?  I rather suspect not.

The Bangles - Sweetheart of the Sun

The one thing you could not accuse The Bangles of is being prolific when it comes to output.  Since their reformation in 2000 they have only managed two albums, the quite wonderful and still my fav Bangles album ever, ‘Doll Revolution’ (2003) and now ‘Sweetheart of the Sun’.  In fact, I nearly missed ‘Sweetheart’ completely as having been tipped off as far back as 2010, or was it 2009, that it was ‘imminent’, I’d mentally gone to sleep and only spotted that it had finally been released at the back end of last year when trawling through Amazon.

So was it worth the wait?  In truth, yes, but with caveats.  In a nutshell, it starts well with the mid-tempo ‘Anna Lee’, rather loses its way in the middle and then picks up again towards the end. So 8/9 of the 12 songs are fine but the remaining few are a bit under whelming.  Whilst this is undoubtedly a fine album, I can’t help missing the quirky and sombre-voiced contributions from bassist Michael Steele, who has retired from the music biz and does not appear on this album, the first not to feature her.  The result is that the remaining three chop up song writing and vocal chores amongst them and each gets a bigger slice of the pie.

Certainly, Susanna, Vicki and Debbi have more compatible writing styles which means that the album as a whole sounds more consistent and the majority of the songs are classic west coast jangly pop at its best, but it does miss the experimental and slightly more edgy contribution that Steele brought to the table.  Interestingly, it seems that drummer Debbi Peterson has taken on part of her mantle and produced some of the more interesting songs such as the delightfully poignant ‘One of Two’.  Elsewhere, you can always rely on Susanna Hoffs to produce a one or two decent ballads and Vicki Peterson to chip in a couple of individual efforts and provide those curious sub-Neil Young blustery solos.

In fact the self-written material is generally very good but it’s the covers that let the side down, which is unusual as the band are very adept at covering others’ material.  This time around, we have Todd Rungren’s ‘Open My Eyes’ (originally recorded by The Nazz in 1968) and Carter-Lewis and the Southerners’ ‘Sweet Tender Romance’ (from 1963) which are given the usual Bangles-o-risation treatment, but sadly these are not a patch on past covers like ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’, ‘Manic Monday’ and ‘If She Knew What She Wants’.

Musically, the album is dominated by two pervading influences: country rock and the aura of the late sixties.  Some of the songs have a countrified feel with pedal steel guitar and folksy harmonies; others have a definite psychedelic lilt with Indian tinged guitar figures and the ghost of Jefferson Airplane and Love hovering over them.  The penultimate song on the album, the beautiful ‘Through Your Eyes’ could quite easily have been lifted from the sessions for Crosby Stills and Nash’s 1969 debut such are the awesome vocal harmony arrangements.  Time has not dimmed those voices and they still harmonise with real aplomb.

So whilst not quite as diverse as its predecessor, ‘Doll Revolution’, this album is still a worthwhile addition to the Bangles’ catalogue.  It shows a determined move away from trying to ‘modernise’ their sound and instead it builds on their strengths of strident retro guitars and Beach Boy harmonies and reinforces their modern psychedelic take on today’s music structures, evoking a late sixties mood which I rather like.  In truth it is still growing on me.  A keeper.

The Who - I Can See For Miles

It has become apparent that, quite unconsciously, I have been led, as if by some unseen hand to post more than a few column inches about the so-called psychedelic era of 1967-8.  First there was the exotic ‘Paper Sun’ by Traffic, then the accordion infused ‘Reflections’ by The Supremes and finally, virtually anything by Cream, but especially stuff like the wah-wah drenched ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’.  This is not really something I’ve thought a lot about before, but now I come to muse on those years, there are some cracking songs to pick on.

There is something about that summer-of-love period and just after that threw up some really adventurous sounds, presumably prodded on by the studio trickery of ‘Sgt Pepper’.  Some very intriguing singles can be found amongst the output from the psychedelic period, like ‘Rainbow Chaser’ by the Anglo-Greek band, Nirvana (i.e. not Kurt’s lot) with its dizzyingly flanged chorus, virtually anything from The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and as early as 1966, the rush of jangly guitars that heralds the Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High’.

But having wallowed in a bit of strictly non-substance related nostalgia; I have come to a conclusion.  One song that, for me at least, has strong links to that time is from none of the bands so far mentioned, but from those mod-rockers, The Who.  Of course the song in question is ‘I Can See For Miles’.  Released in the relevant window of late 1967, it sees the Who on the rise to their creative peak probably around 1969/70 and uses so much studio enhanced ingenuity and complicated harmonies that, like many of its contemporaries, it was impossible to reproduce live without it sounding a tad on the thin side.

At the time, this was considered a bit inhibiting as most bands still went out on tour to hawk their wares instead of lounging around whilst their marketing company drummed up a bit of business (I know, what were they thinking?)  Whatever, it has a strange beguiling atmosphere that Who singles hadn’t had up to that date yet it still majors on the staple Who ingredients of the restlessly manic drumming of Keith Moon and the windmill chords of Pete Townsend.  Its almost whispered verse leading to a relentlessly rising chorus is one of Townsend’s crowning achievements.  There is a tension throughout the whole piece that is not fully resolved and gives it a twitchy, slightly anxious quality.

Whilst I am not convinced that any one decade is musically superior to any other in the history of pop music, there is an undoubted freshness about the 50s, 60s (and possibly 70s) born of charting new unexplored territory that is difficult to replicate now.  ‘I Can See For Miles’ has that new-born patina and listening to it even now allows you to feel it.