Overlooked & Under Appreciated: Master Works by Oft-Overlooked Artists – Sam Phillips

In today’s edition of this as-yet-non-existent series – this being the first in the series (ahhhh – now it exists)  – we are looking at 2001’s “Fan Dance” by Sam Phillips.

 

I could easily see myself writing any number of blogs with this title – and it may well transpire that over the coming time, I do just that, because I am listening more, and I am listening more often – and I am going back and listening to records that I loved ten, twenty, thirty years ago – and finding that in some cases, they are so much better than even I thought – hindsight, and the passage of time, reveals them to be absolute works of genius.  Which more often than not, comes as quite a surprise to me – OK, I knew it was good…but I had NO IDEA it was that good….

 

Maybe at the time I knew that it was something very special – or thought that – or maybe not – obviously, when music is new, you form an impression of it – you listen to it – maybe a little, maybe a lot, maybe obsessively – then time passes, you listen to other music – but eventually, you find yourself coming back to certain artists, to certain albums, to certain songs – to certain lyrics – to works of what are now, with the benefit of hindsight – clearly, far beyond other contemporary works by other artists – and these realisations just keep hitting you and hitting you and hitting you – oh my God, you wonder, how on EARTH did I NOT SEE (or more accurately, how on EARTH did I NOT HEAR) that this record is an absolute impossible musical miracle – like nothing before and like nothing since.

You can’t easily or readily see that or hear that when a record is new – and sure, some records instantly reveal themselves as having qualities that we love, that we know in time will just be more and more appreciated – but it’s still difficult – the work is NEW.

But this strange thing that human beings experience – the passage of time – well, for me at least, the passage of time changes my perception of music – and sometimes the changes are slow, gradual, and orderly, but in other instances – the new or changed perception LEAPS out at you and it’s almost a shock – here is a record I’ve heard dozens of times – maybe hundreds of times – that I’ve always loved, respected – but today, today, because of “the passage of time” – today that record is revealed in an entirely new light.

You see and hear it for what it actually is – and you probably unconsciously “knew” all along that it was significant or important or meaningful or all of the above – but it takes that additional trigger – time passing – usually, a LOT OF TIME passing…to bring the sudden realisation – that “oh my God, this is genius” moment – a moment that could be 30, 40 years in the making.

 

This morning, I sat quietly, doing absolutely nothing else, and listened to Sam Phillips’ mostly acoustic offering from 2001, “Fan Dance” – which, at the time, I liked it very much, it is clearly one of her best and most enduring works and it stands up really well now, some 18 years later – really, really well – it sounds like it could have been made yesterday – and in fact,  just after I listened to the entire “Fan Dance” album, I then put on a somewhat later work – 2013’s “Push Any Button” and while the music has changed – the messages – and the feeling of hope I get from the lyrics – remains – these are songs of hope.

 

A SLIGHT DIGRESSION – TRENDS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

Some artists who don’t have really sweet worldwide distribution deals, have no choice but to operate at the periphery of the “music industry” – which actually, I think is the better  place to be – because of the well-documented and really oppressive ways that companies control and manipulate their artists – time and time again we hear the stories of how artists were robbed of their royalties, given the worst deals imaginable, and the view over time of “record companies” and the “recording industry” has naturally, due to these depressing and oppressive facts, developed as a very negative view indeed – my personal view of record companies has undergone a massive transformation over the past 40 years – and my view now is that anyone who can operate OUTSIDE of the confines of the “music industry” – is the better for it.  Myself included.

 

When I was 16 – I wanted a record deal. By the time I was 25, 30 – I never ever wanted a record deal – because I saw how these “deals” negatively affected the musicians I loved and even some that are friends or acquaintances – it was heart-breaking to see what happened to them because of their “record deal” – but it was also a cautionary tale for me and for us all – be careful – be very careful – what you wish for.  An all-expenses paid trip to – being enslaved, being used or abused – and your music denigrated to the point of being a product and a product only – and when your music becomes a “product” – you know that trouble is with you.

 

A very large cross section of extremely talented and capable musicians have been burned, and burned again, by the music industry – and the horror stories go on and on, from the earliest exploitation of artists being given a few pennies for their work, while music industry “executives” and management skim 98 percent “off the top” and put it straight into their own pockets…to the lapses in good judgement and other “business practices” perpetrated by the music industry onto both artists and the record-buying public, too – just too many bad stories that I really am not sure I want to hear too many more of – we know what happened – so now – how do we move beyond that into a better future for musicians and for music lovers?  How does it work, now?

So – musicians made music in good faith, trusted their “record label” to take care of them, to promote their music – and to pay them fairly and treat them fairly – and in practice – that happened so rarely, that everyone just assumed the worst – and rightfully so – about the behaviour of the “greedy leaders” of the “music industry” – sure, there were always a few exceptions who really cared about music – but not many.

Meanwhile – the good faith of musicians, who trusted their record labels. …was rewarded with exploitation, outright theft – and the bad, bad faith of record company and music industry executives – who, sadly, it turns out, are as uncaring about music as many oil companies are uncaring about the environment – it just demonstrates one of mankind’s ugliest traits – greed, greed, greed – and more greed, and it becomes all about taking and taking and taking – and never about giving anything back or supporting the musician who creates this “income” in the first place.

 

It’s no wonder then, that so many musicians and artists have taken back their music and their art – sometimes at huge personal expense – being forced to pay to recover the rights to their own musical creations – and then re-presenting them to their fans directly, via direct-to-artist purchase websites and online stores.

I applaud this approach – I feel much, MUCH happier, giving £40.00 pounds directly to the artist who created the work – making sure they get PAID for the work they have done – I feel very uncomfortable and very unhappy when I realise how much of the money I spent buying records, cassettes and CDs over this past half a century – I regret how much of that money went straight into the greedy pockets of executives who created nothing, and who exploited, used and harmed the musicians who music they stole.

OK – the above is probably really a separate topic for a separate blog – but much is known about this now, thanks to the stories told by the artists themselves – who basically come directly to the fans and say “look – I am not on a record label anymore.  You used to buy my records from the record company – but now, I am making my own records without a label – or, on my own personal label – and I want to deal DIRECTLY with you.  I produce a CD of music, a DVD of a concert, or other media that you want to hear and see – and instead of giving 90+ percent to a record company, and a few pennies to me (if I am lucky) – you can now pay me directly for the CD or DVD that I created for you to enjoy”.  This makes ME feel very, very happy indeed.

It’s sad the reasons for it – as alluded to above – but in the end, it’s such a good, good thing – because it means I can SUPPORT the artists I love, by putting my money into THEIR pockets (so they can make more records, create more art – share more of their art with us) for the first time – I know where my money is going – NOT into a black hole or the pockets of a greedy executive who cares nothing for music or the artists that I really love, and whose music means very much indeed to me.

So that all being said – nowadays, many artists who used to be wholly captured by and in thrall to  and who were horribly used by the music industry – have freed themselves from that corporate grip, and now are dealing directly with the fans – which is probably, the way it should have been all along!

 

And it’s not any particular type of artist – I like a fairly diverse array of music, from pop to the heaviest prog metal and everything in between – and seeing the creative ways in which these very creative people have walked away from the traditional models and found other ways and better ways to share their art with their fans – it’s an amazing and remarkable phenomena – and it’s odd to think that it came out of oppression, out of being under the thumb of a record company, it’s due to being robbed and used by purveyors of corporate greed – and the artists have totally turned this around – and made it be about the ART again – the music, the songs, the films, the performances – the things that made them start out to become a musician in the first place. We are back to the source, to the root – to the music.

The approaches to rebuilding and reconnecting to their audiences are as varied as the artists who have freed themselves – on the one hand, you have highly organised individuals like Robert Fripp – whose highest level projects such as King Crimson, operated on the world stage, through traditional record company and music industry practices – with all of the infrastructure and the bad deals that came with it – and after being betrayed by his long term business partners – Fripp took the time to think this through, and instead of just going to a “sell direct to the fans platform” – as many, many other excellent artists have done – he decided to create his own label, DGM which might be easily called the “world’s first ethical record company”.  They don’t have written contracts – they work on the honour systems – a handshake is the “contract” and honesty and fairness are the terms.

DGM supports much more than just Robert Fripp and his side projects, so the creation of DGM and the fact that DGM could then become “home” to other artists – that’s a brilliant accidental by-product of the very negative impetus that drove Fripp to create DGM in the first place.  So now – instead of only having “traditional” record companies to deal with – musicians and artists can make an ethical choice, and go to a unique company like DGM and find success – and a direct connection to their fan base – so it is win-win-win in that scenario.

Other artists – I am thinking now about the remarkable cottage industry put together by singer / songwriter Sam Phillips – the actual subject of this blog believe it or not! – who has never been comfortable with the music industry – and once the oppression of regular record labels became too much – she left, and set up her own website and started selling directly to her fans via that website.

Initially, she did this via a subscription service called “The Long Play” which I wrote about in some detail in this blog here.

The positive response to “The Long Play” was so overwhelming, personally I think it is fantastic to be able to deal directly with the artist in these cases, and the way Phillips has developed her media and marketing is honest, straightforward and admirable indeed – and I feel happy, because the money I spend to buy her records – goes back into her industry, into her team – which will only bring more amazing records, DVDs and downloads – it’s now a very positive, good circle of fair commerce – rather than a negative record industry style experience.

 

AND SEVERAL DAYS LATER I AM MAGICALLY BACK ON TOPIC…DIGRESSION ENDS

As is my way, I have initially at least, really diverted away from today’s topic with my little discourse on independence from record companies – but that is the background from which today’s actual topic emerges – at last.

In recent years, with the emergence of artist-run and artists-selling-direct-to-fans sites, often that artist will re-acquire the rights to their entire catalogue (where possible) which means it’s easy enough nowadays, to go to www.samphillips.com and to purchase a CD or a download of a thirty year old record.  I know that Bill Nelson and other artists who previously had very, very complex and scattershot distribution – has made a real effort to bring back all of the earliest parts of his catalogue so his entire life in music can be viewed and heard and acquired in one place – his own website – and I am always very happy when I read that artists have managed to re-acquire lost catalogue items – and can hopefully, built out a full catalogue that represents the entire body of their entire life as a musician.

 

In this particular case, I already had the record I am going to discuss here, which is 2001’s “Fan Dance” by Sam Phillips but it was actually the fact of me going to purchase more recent works by Sam (in particular, 2018’s “World On Sticks” which I had just missed last year due to circumstances beyond my control; and even more spectacular – the audio and video versions of “Live At Largo” – fantastic recent releases from Sam)  – trying to complete my collection, which in fact goes way, WAY back to the very earliest days – in acquiring more recent records – it drew my attention back to some of her earlier works – so I have been  listening to a LOT of Sam Phillips lately, both modern and earlier works – and it’s been an absolutely incredibly enjoyable and joyous experience.

These songs – whether they be from last year or thirty years ago – these songs have something in them that is immensely attractive to me – and I think that just now, in 2019 – in going back and listening to a few key releases, that I have possibly figured out what it is that appeals to me with regards to the music of Sam Phillips – and it can be summed up into one very important word:

 

Hope.

 

Whether I am listening to “Love Is Not Lost” from “Recollection” (in that instance, going really, really far back into the mists of time) or the latest studio and live tracks just downloaded from www.samphillips.com – there is one common theme in this music – and it is hope.

I believe that subconsciously at least – I knew that already – and I have known it for a long time.  But it took that curious thing I alluded to earlier – the passage of time – to suddenly and very, very clearly show me that it’s HOPE that drives this artist forward – hope for something better, something beyond the ordinary – something beyond the hurt and heartbreak of life.

Like many singer / songwriters – Sam does write about pain – emotional pain – the pain of just existing in a baffling and inexplicable world – and that is one thing – but if you really listen, and if you then allow the passage of time to sink in – and then really listen again – you will hear it.

You will feel it and know it – that no matter how sad or depressing those real-life stories can sometimes get – in the uplifting way that Sam writes, and sings, and harmonises (oh my dear God, those harmonies!) and in the uplifting way that Sam presents her lyrics – you can clearly see and hear the hope in her heart – and for me, that helps me to realise that yes – there is hope – when I struggle – and I think that this knowledge is such a powerful thing.

Sam Phillips is a serious musician, who writes serious songs about many, many topics – some, the more expected or ordinary (for lack of a better word – there is nothing ordinary about any of Sam’s songs really!) “singer-songwriter” fare – i.e. love songs, songs of loss, songs of longing, wistful songs, and so on – but she also writes a lot of other types of songs – some of them, very, very dark indeed (I am thinking of “The Black Sky” now, from the remarkable “Martinis And Bikinis” album from 1994 – which, by the way, features a few tracks with Colin Moulding of XTC on bass guitar – don’t miss that one!) – songs about mankind’s ability to destroy and fuck up the world while we sit and watch in horror – so her writing runs a real gamut from being all about love to the most biting social commentary possible – but no matter what the song is about, for me, somewhere  in there, in some turn of phrase or lyrical invention – there is HOPE.  Or possibly, a warning that a lot of bad things are happening, and we NEED some hope.

Over the past 20, 30 years or more, there has been a LOT of music produced, by a lot of artists – that holds little or no hope whatsoever.  It’s all the darkest, most real, most terrifyingly true stuff – it’s real, it is happening:  and musicians and artists are looking at events and reporting them through their art – and it’s just terrifying because it’s TRUE.

And – in that massive outpouring of musical truth – there is a lot of great music, OK – it is true that lyrically some artists and some bands almost seem  to espouse or prefer a “THERE IS NO HOPE” kind of ethos within their music – and because that is also usually the absolute truth – it does appeal , it is of interest and I love a lot of that music – probably because it DOES tell the unvarnished truth – and I will always prefer hard, honest music over something less real…

However – within the lyrics that Sam Phillips writes – and it’s not often overt at all – I just get an intense feeling of hope from what she is saying.  A sense of hope…and this is the really important point here – that I do NOT get from many, even from most, artists no matter how good or how much I might really love their music – other artists rarely make me feel the way listening to the music of Sam Phillips makes me feel.

It took me a long time to realise that, and even longer to articulate it (until just now, in actual fact).

I think that the human being’s enjoyment of music is an incredibly complex, multi-faceted thing that it is not easy to understand, describe or understand easily.  For me, every piece of music has components that I listen to in different ways, for different reasons – there is no single standard “way” of listening because often, a certain element or elements leap out at me and attract me where for another listener – those same elements hold nothing for them, they do not move them or affect them as they affect me.  And there is nothing wrong with this – just as each human being is a unique individual, I think that each listener has his or her own “way” of listening to any particular song, album or artist – and the perception of each song is going to be different each time, for each listener – that’s what makes listening to music such a unique and such a very “personal” thing – because the same song – can have a huge array of very different effects on each different listener.

Some listeners will love a song because of the vocal.  Or the words.  Or the bass guitar.  Or the drum sound.  Or the way that one splash cymbal hits just before the vocal chorus begins…

Other listeners will find other components that stand out or appeal to them – and you end up with thousands and thousands of different yet all valid “reasons” why we like a song.

 

But beyond that personal interpretation – sometimes, there are globally available energies that we could ALL tap into if we were aware they are present.

I think that the quality of “HOPE” which is not tied directly to just one song or one lyric or one bass note or one piano chord – but in fact, this quality seems to exist ALMOST independently of the song itself (unlikely as that seems and as counter-intuitive as that seems) I think that the feeling of hope that I get comes from some underlying mechanism – something about the lyrics, the way she has written each lyric – and if you just judged them on the surface – you might not “get” the feeling of hope.

So while I am sure it (the hope) is mostly contained in the lyrics – I am also quite sure that (the hope) is NOT in the lyrics or rather, not in the lyrics alone.

 

 

Somehow – and this is the feeling I’m getting these past couple of days in revisiting the “Fan Dance” album of 2001 so closely – somehow it’s not just in the lyrics, but the hope I am now seeing, now hearing now FEELING properly and completely for the first time since 2001 when this record appeared – that hope is tied to the ENTIRETY of the performance.  I will try to say what I mean here:

It is in the warmth of the tone of Sam’s voice as she sings the melody

It is in the amazing blending of voices that occurs when Sam harmonises with herself

It’s also in the unique and lovely background vocals and harmonies which seem straightforward on the surface, but can be often quite sophisticated and complex – as one example, the song “Love Is Everywhere I Go” contains a lead vocal, a second, overlapping vocal “response” (“looking through you…”) and background vocals – and somehow – this is all woven into an incredible single vocal “tapestry” if you will – along with, an astonishing transition from the “bridge” back to the chorus – which I don’t really even understand how she DID that – but it’s amazing.

The vocal layering and complexity – with an ultimately very simple sounding and straightforward output as “the vocal” – of a track like this – it also contains a lot of this hope I am now detecting – somehow – woven into this elaborate and beautiful tapestry of interwoven voices.

 

It’s also in the CARE that is shown in the playing – in the deliberate, slow, precise strokes of the acoustic rhythm guitar – which is then mirrored in perfection by the deliberate, slow drum beats and then  to the details of that following percussion – when that crash or splash cymbals DOES hit just before the chorus begins again – the band is so tight, so together as to be performing as if one body – those drum parts mirror those Sam Phillips rhythm guitars which mirror the bass and atop which sits the Magic Vocal Tapestry Full Of Hope – it’s in THERE.

The HOPE I am hearing and feeling and experiencing now, that I did perhaps feel in a lesser, more clouded way back in the day – it’s so much a part of each and every song on each and every Sam Phillips record – it’s definitely there – but as you can see, articulating “where” it is within a particular song is very, very difficult, if not impossible!

 

So I know the hope is very real, I can feel it absolutely – but I don’t exactly (or even inexactly) know where it is “coming from” in any given song, or on any given album – but – one thing I do know –  it that it is definitely there – and it’s my hope – that if you like the music of Sam Phillips – it would be my hope that you have heard this feeling of hope coming through her music,  too.

 

For me, this quality sets Sam apart from many other musicians – where I don’t feel that hope in others’ music – I just don’t feel anything even akin to hope in a lot of modern music.  And maybe it’s there too, in the music of those other artists – but it’s harder to see.  Or will take longer to see.  The “passage of time” – that’s a variable that is not in my control – or anyone’s control – and in this case, a certain amount of “a passage of time” has allowed me to see, hear and experience something within this music that I already loved – that I had never really seen, heard or experienced until I listened again to the “Fan Dance” album yesterday and again, today.

I am very glad that this happened, because we can all always use a little more hope – and, I’m also happy to report, that it doesn’t feel like just a little hope – often with Sam’s songs and Sam’s records –  it feels like a great big, joyous, hopeful hope – and that has made me feel very happy indeed.  Now when I hear these songs – I am given an extra gift, I am uplifted – and you don’t get that every day.

 

What a remarkable experience this has been – and it’s all down to perception, the passage of time, and suddenly recognising something important – something very important – that was actually there all along but I just did not realise it.

It’s all about the hope.

 

Note:  for the purposes of this blog I listened to the “Fan Dance” CD a few times, but in terms of direct inspiration and for me, having the most readable, easiest to see, hear and feel – in terms of the hope theme I am talking about – I relied upon these particular tunes, with their particular lyrics – and it is upon these particular tracks that I formed the opinions expressed in this blog – and that is not to discount any of the songs NOT named – the entire album is a brilliant expression of not just hope, but of a visionary singer songwriter who writes with a rare, rare honest and forthrightness that frankly, I think – the world could use a lot more of.

 

My specific, particular song by song inspirations then – from the “Fan Dance” record – for this article – were:

 

Edge Of The World

Five Colors

Wasting My Time

Taking Pictures

Love Is Everywhere I Go

 

Also useful is this discography of Sam’s work…

I could cite any number of Sam’s lyrics (or songs or albums) to try and demonstrate that underlying hope – which perhaps, on the surface – when you just read it – flat, on a page – (as below)  – maybe the sense of hope doesn’t come through as strongly – but if you put on the record, and listen – I think that then – I believe then you will hear it, you will feel it – and the lyrics themselves will take on a new meaning  that comes from your deeper understanding of the song as a whole.

The lyrics alone then, are not responsible for the perceived sense of hope – it’s actually the entire construct of the song – the music,  the instruments, the rhythm, the harmonies – the singing, the phrasing – the feel – many intangible properties making up a whole musical experience that in these cases – also house the secret weapon of Hope – real perceptible hope – it’s there for all to experience – and I am so, so glad that I took the time to go back and really listen to these songs… because that allowed me to have this extra experience that I am not sure all listeners of “Fan Dance” have yet had.

 

It would then be my hope that what I have written, might help unlock that same hope for any or all of you wanting to experience more than just “listening to a few songs” – for me, this new hope has huge value – underlying or not, visible or not – I am so glad it’s there – and I am so glad I happened across it in my music listening experience.

 

“There is no end to the good”.  Just think about that one crucial line – which appears right at the start of the song – bringing so much positivity, so much real hope – there is NO END to the good.  It is forever – it is always there – it is always available – I think that is part of what Sam is telling us.  A big part of it – have hope, there is hope, I know there is hope – so – you my patient audience – please have hope too.

 

________________________________________________________

 

Love Is Everywhere I Go

Sam Phillips – 2001

 

 

Going down this road again
I finally know
There is no end to the good

Love is everywhere I go
Looking through you
Love is everywhere I go
Looking through you
Love is everywhere I go
Looking through you

Burning light inside my dreams
I wake up in the dark
The light is outside my door

Love is everywhere I go
Looking through you
Love is everywhere I go
Looking through you
Love is everywhere I go
Looking through you

Chasing every fragment I see
Looking through you
Love is looking for me
Breaking open the clouds
I’m not stranded in time

Love is everywhere I go
Looking through you
Love is everywhere I go
Looking through you
Love is everywhere I go
Looking through you

 

________________________________________________________

 

 

“There is no end to the good”.

 

 

Dave Stafford

September 1, 2019

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The Dreaded 1980s: Not So Bad After All

DECADE BY DECADE – THE LIVE CONCERT EXPERIENCE / OVERVIEW

Episode 2: 1980s

Most of the musicians I know, share with me, a general sense of … horror is really the only word that suits, although it’s not exactly the right word…at the memory of the music of the 1980s – which included but was not limited to – everything bad about the emerging synthesizer, synths badly played and not sounding very good at all – and all of the other early musical crimes of the early and middle 80s.

A lot of bad, bad music was made in the name of quickly producing a hit MTV Video – trying to cash in on the video craze – and things were decidedly NOT about the music, as they definitely HAD been in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

I try not to remember some – or even most – of those songs and bands, and when I hear them – they make me uncomfortable at best, and downright unable to listen in others – they are just not the best songs nor are they, for me, the best musical memories – those will always belong to the late 60s / early 70s when Prog ruled the land – and I looked out at the 70s Music Scene – my own “70s Scenario” – and saw that it was good.

Meanwhile, over on the hard rock scene, another disturbing trend was emerging, again, fuelled by MTV videos – albeit part of a different demographic – one populated mainly by teenage boys – within that demographic “MTV Video enthusiasts” –  and with a clear desire to cash in on the video craze – Hair Metal (later known as “Glam Metal” – fair enough) had arrived, and it looked like it was trying to stay (thankfully – it did not) – or at least – it did not stay for long.

Bands that I literally could not understand the appeal of, whose music was made so cheaply and nastily (and that was, unfortunately, reflected in the SOUND of that music, too!), just so another air-brushed group of four hooligans with MASSIVE HAIR could make a few million dollars at our expense – and the punishment for us, was having not only to hear this vapid form of “metal”, but to SEE these ridiculous “hair” bands, who were all clearly about the size and curliness of their perm, and definitely NOT all about their skill as writers or musicians – let’s face it, a lot of those bands – could not write a song to save their life, and their musicianship ranged from barely adequate to definitely sub-par.

With the emergence of a whole new breed of Hair Metal bands on the one hand, and the pop / synth / Revolution Of The Synthesizer that was coming to our TV screens and to our ears mostly from Great Britain – there was a lot to answer for “musically” during the 1980s.   Across the pond (where I live now) in this Synth Revolution – a similar and parallel activity was apparent – pop songs written just so a synth or synths could be used in the video, but which probably had no other good reason for existing.

Back in the 1970s (which suddenly looked pretty darn good to me) synths were used in the arena of Progressive Rock, but they were wielded by men and women of skill and talent, and used on songs that were finely crafted and worked on for often, many weeks or even months – until perfected.  Music created for the sake of music, of pure musicianship made by real artists – craftsmen – people who had studied their instruments and knew how to use them – finely crafted songs, that were challenging and often quite difficult to perform – but rewarding in every sense – there is nothing on earth quite as satisfying as a musical composition that works on every level – including, exciting to perform and hear, in live performance.  I missed that, especially within the recorded music of the 80s, I didn’t at first, feel there was much around of any real quality.

I got the feeling that with the whole Synth Pop Revolution (which, while it did have it’s roots in the late 1970s, to my mind, is mostly, a 1980s phenomenon) coming from Britain and the Hair Band revolution emerging from LA – that they would have spent just a few days on each piece, and no more – clock is ticking, time is money – and meanwhile, again mostly in LA “…and I have to go and get a new perm, so please let’s wrap this up”.  I can just about picture any session by one of these bands – where a lot of time is spent pouting into mirrors, and gazing adoringly at your own magnificent curly blond locks – or whatever it was.

But – as the 1980s wore on – there was a quiet musical revolution going on in the background.  It didn’t belong to any one group or any particular type of group, but rather, was a combination of a number of interesting events and occurrences in the 1980s, that were probably not brought to the fore in the news coverage (or, the MTV News Coverage) of the day.  This was not, however – a revolution of recorded music – but instead – of live performance.

I am thinking in particular of two cases or scenarios – or “types” if you wish – one, where established artists who had worked very hard in the 1970s or even 1960s, to establish themselves and their musical credentials – some of these artists, after being vilified and ridiculed by the punk movement – waited out the last few dismal years of the 1970s (as progressive rock was nearly wiped from the map by first, punk, in Britain, and then New Wave in the U.S) waiting for an opportune moment to put their head above the parapet to find out if they were still as resoundly resented as they had been…

But I think that those established artists, whether ordinary rock artists or progressive rock “musos”, it didn’t matter, they were all realising that they could not only survive in the unfriendly 1980s – but in some cases, in many instances – they could thrive.  In particular – on the live concert circuit.  And live performance is exactly what that first of two groups of musicians I am thinking of has in common with the second group – new emerging bands, who, while their music may have been “born” in a calendar year that indicated that it was in fact, still the 1980s – while that was undeniable, what was also very apparent, was that there was a kind of “backlash” – there was a hankering for the recently-departed 1960s and 1970s.

Some bands were not afraid to boldly embark on brand new careers, in the 1980s, playing music that on paper, did not and would not “work” in the wonderful “look ma I’ve got a synthesizer” world of MTV, or “look ma, I got me a perm and now the Record Company has given us a $500,000.00 advance on our album” heady days of the early Eighties – that was still going on, although perhaps to a lesser degree in the latter half of the 1980s – but at the same time, my two Secret Musical Forces – were also at work, working hard to bring out music of quality in the Decade That Quality Forgot.

And to their credit, they did it.  What tipped me off to it, was a strange but undeniable fact – OK, I had been fortunate enough to have seven years in the 1970s, when I was witness to some of the most amazing live music ever performed anywhere at any time in history – I was lucky enough to be alive and be old enough, to attend shows by now-legendary Progressive Rock and Rock acts – and there will never be a time like the 1970s again.  What I had noticed – was that, the quality and availability of good live music, seemed to be on the rise in the 1980s – NOT declining as you might have thought.

Punk gave us the good shake up we needed (in hindsight, that is undeniable), and as much as I resented the damage that punk and to a lesser degree, New Wave, did to Prog – I needn’t have worried, because not only was Prog alive and well in the 1980s, but there was also an entire parallel music scene, that you could choose to attend, so for every Eurhythmics show that I didn’t attend, there was a show built on the basis of quality music – whether that be Prog Bands from the 1970s, or other 70s act, adapting, surviving and even flourishing, during the musically-depressing 1980s.

 

I could, in the space of a few weeks, attend shows by Crowded House (the remnants of New Zealand progressive rock heroes “Split Enz”) – who I also happened to see play live in 1981 – one of the first shows I attended in the 1980s – and in a way, you could not really get more prog than that in 1981…

 

 

…despite the band making a very poppy record – 1980’s “True Colours” – they had a still-beating prog heart – and their natural successor, Crowded House, who later went on to even more dizzying heights of success – but – as a pop band – not a prog band – or – stalwart live performers like ex-Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson; or new bands like Marillion, whose music sounded like it was straight out of 1974 – and yet – strangely – it was 1985 – now that was a surprise!

A diverse and exciting mix of live performers then – all out touring, all bringing in large audiences, all being quietly successful while MTV continued to trumpet the “news” that the world was now ruled by Synthesizers, and informing us that “Don’t You Want Me (Baby)” (or whatever it’s called) was a really, really good song (it isn’t).

Brian Eno himself, the once-flamboyant feather-adorned synthesizer-player of the legendary art-rock outfit Roxy Music, stated that punk was “a breath of fresh air” and over time, while at first unsure – I did come to totally agree with that sentiment.  Prog was in need of a shake up – but the media portrayed it more like a death in the family, so for a couple of very depressing years – we were left with an apparent void, which was being filled by the practitioners of punk and new wave from say, 1978-1980.

 

But – once the air had been cleared, there was no reason in the world for the rock or prog bands that had been swept up in the Great Cleansing – to lay down their instruments and quit – and in fact – most of them did not give up – they may have taken time off during a period in which it might have been difficult to fare well, but…

…eventually – sometimes sooner, sometimes, much, much later – they would in fact, return – and, join a growing number of newly emerging 80s artists who were neither Synth-playing robots nor Hair Metallists – but in fact, were just playing different kinds of rock music – from an only slightly-disguised version of progressive rock (Marillion channelling early Genesis) to a band like Crowded House, who took their prog Split-Enz roots (see what I did there!) and mutated into one of the finest pop bands the world has ever known.

For me – I was even fortunate enough to see one example of these two “groups” of mine – the two Secret Warriors Of Quality Music – on the same bill at the same show – as I was fortunate enough one year, during the 80s, to see Crowded House playing – with the great Richard Thompson as “support act” (!!).  On paper – that just seemed all wrong to me – but as a concert – it was actually brilliant – Thompson is a guitarist extraordinaire, a consummate master, and to have someone of his skill and experience opening for the less-experienced but really, no less talented Finn Brothers (of Crowded House and Split Enz fame) was strange but wonderful – and actually, an inspired idea.

Even more remarkable was the fact that during Crowded House’s set, Richard Thompson came out with his guitar to play on one of their songs – so here we had a standard-bearer from the long-ago 1960s, an ex-member and founding member of the great Fairport Convention – on stage with a bunch of musical upstarts from New Zealand.

 

 

I got a genuine laugh at the time, from hearing young Neil Finn taunting Thompson verbally, calling him a “guitar hero” and so on – it was hilarious.

Some combinations of musicians, you think to yourself – “that could never happen” – and there I was, hearing Richard Thompson improvising a solo to “Italian Plastic” by Crowded House.  Very strange times indeed – but, at that moment – and during countless other 1980s concert moments – the quality of this live music – drove all thoughts of big hair and synth robots right out of my head – and I could live in the moment again, and experience quality live music again.

It was almost as if,  the 1960s and 1970s had just carried on without interruption. almost as if punk and new wave had never happened – and by the mid 1980s, I felt that the old bands were definitely on the way back “in” (I mean, just look at the massive resurgence of interest and huge popularity of both Jethro Tull and of ZZ Top – two bands definitely of the previous decade – yet, in 1987, 1988 – enjoying an immense and very real popularity that required no hype from MTV to propel it) – if anything, these bands began to turn the tables on MTV, and by 1987 – you were far more likely to see an awesome video by ZZ Top or Jethro Tull, than you were to see the dread “Don’t You Want Me (Baby)” video.

But what groups am I talking about here, in my two imagined groups?  Well, the easiest way for me to document that, is to turn first to my setlist.fm entries for the period of time, to get a sense of the shows I was attending – and once I have refreshed my failing memory there, I will be able to jot those down as I hope, valid examples of the two types:

Type Uno

– (Existing) Prog Rock or Rock bands and artists returning to music in the 1980s – at first, possibly more represented by concert appearances than by records, but by the end of the 1980s, they were producing smash hit albums that sold very, very well and were often award-winning and more popular than anything that we now consider to be “Classic 80s Rock” or “Classic 80s Dance” or whatever.  It was Jethro Tull, not Billy Idol or Gary Numan, scooping up awards for best album – and if that isn’t a shock result, I don’t know what is!

But what a brilliant result – I was very, very happy for Ian Anderson and co – to have survived punk, then, to have survived – and then, defeated the 1980s – that is testament to the commitment and vision of Ian Anderson – he managed, somehow, to keep Jethro Tull afloat through all that tribulation – and then, emerge successfully. at the end of their ordeal – with an award-winning hit record – I have to heartily congratulate him on that feat of persistent vision.  Brilliant work!

 

 

The great ZZ Top carved an equally impressive path through the myriad labyrinth of late 1980s music, and even did so with an only very-slightly updated sound – I remember seeing them in 1975, a raw, powerful blues band with real talent and skill – and here it was now, some 12, 13 years later, near the end of the 1980s – and they were back with…guess what – powerful, bluesy music – with several massive hit records included in their late-1980s successes.  Another brilliant success story almost exactly parallel to the story of Jethro Tull in the late 1980s.

But Jethro Tull and ZZ Top are highly visible, very popular groups – there were a surprising number of other bands in this category – and now I am referring to my setlist.fm listing for the 1980s – one of those bands, is the remarkable Queen.  1980 saw Queen produce an arguably very unique record in their canon, the much-overlooked “Jazz” album – and I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see them, very last-minute – and I am so, so glad that I did – again, it was in live performance where these rock and prog bands of the 1970s excelled, and Queen always put on an impressive performance.

Brian May to me, is one of the most interesting guitarists that Britain ever produced, with a very, very different and very, very unique guitar sound that no one else has ever really successfully replicated.  Queen built a whole new reputation during the 1980s – moving from the dramatic, prog-inspired heavy rock of their early and mid-70s albums, to much more sonically challenging records such as 1980s “Jazz” – and a host of other brilliant records – so again, very popular band in the 1970s – somehow managed to catapult themselves into massive popularity and success during the 1980s.

A First Time For Everyone

Split Enz – the precursor to the above mentioned Crowded House, Split Enz was New Zealand’s premiere progressive rock band in the 1970s, with a huge underground following and some of the most interesting and quirky music ever created in any country – by 1980, they had gradually been leaving the trappings of prog rock almost entirely behind, and by the time I saw them in in early 1981 – their “True Colours” album was riding high in the charts, a huge pop success thanks mostly to the tune “I Got You” – sung, incidentally, by Neil Finn, the future leader of Crowded House – rather than by Tim Finn – the actual (original) lead singer of Split Enz.  Well – one of two lead singers in the original band is perhaps, more accurate.

I will never forget being at that show, sitting there in the audience – I could clearly see the muscles in the then-very young Neil’s throat moving, moving as in a panic response – in pure fear, as he opened his mouth to sing this huge hit song – I believe this was the band’s first trip to America, and very possibly, their first show of the first tour of America – and the poor guy was scared half to death.  He needn’t have worried – the song, and the band, were received rapturously by the audience – I was absolutely blown away by the quality of musicianship (and, it was the first time I got to see the amazing Eddie Rayner on keyboards – the man is a genius) and seeing Split Enz – even in their later, “pop” persona – was a wonderful and utterly unforgettable experience – one of my favourite bands of all time.

(Note: Split Enz / Crowded House is the only band to appear in both the Type Uno and the Type Dos categories – because Split Enz was an existing Progressive Rock Band from the early 1970s, while Crowded House was a New, Emerging Band in the early 1980s that just happened to be made up of ex-members of Split Enz – so they get entered once – very early 1980s – as “Existing Prog band” and once again – early 1980s), as “New Emerging Pop band”.  A remarkable feat – being the only band that managed to straddle two very dissimilar groupings!).

A man who needs no introduction, the late, great Frank Zappa – I honestly don’t think that any change in musical styles ever affected the forward velocity of this man – one of our greatest modern composers, and a genius at getting bands to play impossible music with impossible chops – there is nothing on earth like a Frank Zappa led and directed live performance.

I place him in the “existing Prog” category although Prog isn’t exactly the right way to describe the sheer genius of Zappa – I really think he remained unaffected by punk, unaffected by MTV – unless there was some aspect of it that he could manipulate to further his own aims – in which case – he would.  I think of all of the “existing artists” out there – that Frank just sailed through the 1960s. 70s and 80s without batting an eye – all just water flowing under a large musical bridge – while Frank was busy composing, arranging, or playing the most amazing lead guitar the planet has ever experienced – only Fripp and Hendrix are in the same league – and he could have taught those two a thing or two I feel certain lol.

So while I include FZ in this category – he was gloriously unaffected by the basic stupidities of (most) 1980s music.  Lucky guy, I would say.

This list of Existing Prog bands that came back in the 1980s (that is, if they were ever really “gone” in the first place) would not be complete without both the redoubtable and resilient Yes, who continued to make music in the 1980s, undergoing a radical musical transformation that I personally, in the main, do not enjoy (I was left cold by the Drama album and tour – a 70s-meets-80s experiment that in my opinion, simply did not work) but I have to acknowledge, it gave them a new lease on life that carried them far into the future, while Genesis, the Hardest Working Band In Prog (maybe) were being led by their undeniably charismatic “new” lead singer, one “Phil Collins” – and the success that Collins and co enjoyed during this decade where Prog was NOT King – is undeniable – and must have been so, so galling to the various departed members of the band who had only been with the band during the years of debt – among those, being original lead singer Peter Gabriel and renowned but long departed original guitarist Ant Phillips.

Gabriel is another one on this list, who fits right into this category very comfortably – an ex-progressive rock lead vocalist, revered for his seminal early and mid-70s progressive output on classic Genesis albums such as “Selling England By The Pound” and “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” – leaving Genesis at the height of their then-success in early 1975 to pursue a solo career.  Said career definitely took some interesting musical twists and turns, sometimes veering sharply away from prog (the first “Peter Gabriel” album for example), other times, returning to embrace it once again (the second, Robert Fripp-produced, “Peter Gabriel” album) – but, by the time of the 1980s – Gabriel‘s solo career was in full swing.

He became a star in his own right, without  Genesis, and was extremely popular with prog rock fans plus a whole new generation of fans that came to his music first, through his now-famous series of eponymously-titled albums – the first three (or four – see below) albums all being entitled “Peter Gabriel” – the fourth, finally getting an “actual” title – “Security” – although according to Wiki – it’s actually called…”Peter Gabriel”.  So there are four – not three !

Note: the fact that the first four Peter Gabriel albums had no title beyond “Peter Gabriel” (with the exception of the final one, which was ‘sometimes also known as “Security” ‘), was apparently really just too difficult for some people to understand or relate to – so interestingly, to make it easier for those who found this concept (which was Gabriel‘s idea – he wanted it to be like a newspaper – the same paper, with the same headline – but coming out at different times with different stories in them) too difficult – so people invented “names” for the albums based solely on the cover art – so strangely, many people “know” these three classic records as “Car” (Peter Gabriel I”);  “Scratches” (Peter Gabriel II) and “Face” or “Melting Face” (Peter Gabriel 3).   For the fourth – well, it somehow acquired the “name” “Security”.

Personally – I like the original titles and the idea of it having the same title every time – that was unique – but – apparently this was too much of a stretch for some possibly less-pliant minds – so they invented these somewhat lame cover-art related “names” – for three albums that already had perfectly good names – or, rather, a perfectly good name.  It’s funny what lengths people will go to, to “force” something unusual or out-of-the-ordinary into terms that they are comfortable with – great lengths, it would seem, sometimes.

So along with Yes, Genesis, and Peter Gabriel, the 1980s was also an amazing time for one of the most underappreciated and hugely talented individuals that early 70s (or in this case, actually, late 1960s) progressive rock ever produced – and of course I am talking about the remarkable Peter Hammill, of the band Van Der Graaf Generator (which, incidentally, is still going strong after re-forming in 2005) – the 1980s saw Hammill evolving his solo performances, which were originally, just himself sat at the piano or sat with an acoustic guitar, singing “solo versions” of Van Der Graaf Generator songs (the bulk of which, were written by Hammill – the main writer and only lyricist in the band) as well as, singing songs from his rapidly-expanded selection of solo albums.

I was lucky enough to see Peter Hammill on several occasions, in differing musical settings, during the 1980s, and while I truly wish I had been able to see Van Der Graaf Generator play live “back in the day” – seeing these solo performances was actually, in a way, a far more powerful and intimate experience.  I have had the good fortune, for example, to witness Hammill, on his own at the piano, playing his remarkable suite of songs which make up the second side of his 1980 solo album “A Black Box” – a song called “Flight” – which is so difficult to play, that I was only able to work out, myself – on the piano – the first part of the song.

By far the simplest part of “Flight”- “Flying Blind” is the first of the several shorter songs that make up “Flight” in it’s entirety – whereas, Hammill reeled off the thousands and thousands of notes and chords of the entire 20 plus minutes long piece – as if it were nothing, all the while singing in that incredibly powerful, moving voice of his – seeing him play and sing “Flight” – live – by himself – as the encore of a remarkable live show – was an absolutely unforgettable experience for me.

A few years later, I was fortunate again, to see Hammill bring one of his small “ensembles” to Los Angeles, back to the Roxy which was where he always seemed to play when he was here in the US – this small group included just two other members, former Van Der Graaf bassist Nic Potter, and “pub musician” Stuart Gordon on violin.

But these two musicians – were no ordinary musicians, and I had no idea what an amazing musical experience we were all about to have – with Potter anticipating every phrase, every pause, in Hammill‘s incredibly strange vocal arrangements – and coming in on time, unfailingly – to Stuart Gordon’s “square wave violin” (my mental term for it – his violin run through guitar effects to achieve some unbelievably beautiful and/or dissonant effects) and the renditions that this band did of tracks such as “Cat’s Eye / Yellow Fever” – with it’s throbbing bass line, power chord guitar (provided by Hammill, of course!) and wild super-effected/treated violin gyrations.

I had never heard just three people sounding like a full on prog outfit on a tiny stage like the stage at the Roxy was.  What a show (you can hear a version of that show, on the Hammill album “Room Temperature” – Live – and well worth the investment I would say) it was – absolutely unforgettable – a brilliant experience.

In some ways, then, the 1980s portion of Peter Hammill’s career, moving through the amazing solo records of the early 1980s – starting with “A Black Box” (which, to give you some perspective, in 1980, this was Hammill’s TENTH solo album!) and then moving on to his very popular and quite hard rocking 1981 offering “Sitting Targets” – and then as the decade progressed, I saw tours for albums such as 1986’s “Skin” which was at yet a whole ‘nother level – the man is incredibly prolific, and each time, has a larger and larger back catalogue of songs to draw on – so that towards the end of that time, the range and power of songs that he could pull from that remarkable inventory of sensitive, emotional, moving songs became extraordinary in the extreme.

Each concert became the showcase for such a broad range of emotions and such an incredibly diverse and remarkable selection of songs, that it was just almost too much to take. What an extraordinary range and depth of feeling this man commands from the stage, with this intense and wonderful body of work that is “the Peter Hammill solo catalogue”…and it is still growing today (as of June 6, 2018 the count of his solo albums is 37 in Wikipedia), as he continues to produce albums regularly despite now being in his 70s.  What a remarkable character!

My 1980s was inhabited by all of these kinds of musical heroes – so my interest in, and my time spent listening to, what was supposedly currently popular “music” – began at a wane and pretty much disappeared completely as more and more of these amazing bands and artists from the 1960s and 70s, arrived in town in the 1980s to remind me that they were far from gone – that they were, in fact “alive and well and living in….” to phrase a coin (thanks, Ian!).

But the list is far from complete – Todd Rundgren, and, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia – the popular 1970s comedic band “The Tubes” (they of “White Punks On Dope” fame) – so many bands from the 70s, were doing so surprisingly well in the 1980s – and, were out there on the road – proving that their music was truly alive and was far, far more real than what MTV was presenting to us as purportedly, the music of the times – that was not MY experience of the 1980s.

 

It was only starting in 1981 that even more significant groups began to return, still working in Type Uno here – and this was a real surprise entrant – the return of the mighty King Crimson – after a seven year hiatus – Robert Fripp had returned, with only one former member of any former version of the band (Bill Bruford, on drums and electronic percussion) in tow – having created a totally re-imagined version of the band, and the success of their debut album (1981s total return to form, “Discipline”) and tour cannot be underestimated.

 

 

I can remember myself and the guys in my band, we were FLABBERGASTED at the idea that King Crimson was on tour, and was going to be playing in San Diego – at the UCSD gymnasium, of all places – but hey – we didn’t care – it was KING CRIMSON – alive and well.  This new version of King Crimson, featured bassist and Chapman stick expert Tony Levin, and the unstoppable Adrian Belew on lead guitar and lead vocals.

 

This “new” band, the utterly revitalised and recharged King Crimson – was nothing short of extraordinary.

To see a concert, in 1981, by what was supposedly at this time, a “dinosaur” band like “King Crimson” – a concert that had more musical quality in it’s worst moment, than some 1980’s “bands” could produce in an entire show – this concert was really, in comparison to most concerts – an experience of almost high art – rock music, progressive, intelligent music – elevated to a new plane of existence, with the interlocking musical gamelan of the Fripp & Belew Lead Guitar Axes Of Power – over one of the most powerful and unique rhythm sections ever envisioned – this was four of the best musicians on the planet, getting together to play a dozen or so of the most amazing songs that you had never heard.

 

The band did also include one or two “old” King Crimson songs, thrown in – probably more for the sake of nostalgia – or, more likely, because the new members of the band wanted to PLAY those songs lol – this concert was a sublime musical experience, that absolutely blew my mind – I could think of nothing else, for weeks, but that amazing, beautiful music I had witnessed – and I listened to the album constantly, trying (and failing, dismally) to unlock it’s musical secrets – what an extraordinary musical document.

I think for me – that was the turning point – seeing King Crimson play for the first time ever; and seeing Peter Hammill and Bill Nelson and Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel and Genesis and Yes – all playing music in the early 1980s – when television might have you believing that something called “Billy Idol” was ruling the video-waves – the air-waves having now been superseded by the medium of Music Television.

Or – by someone called “Gary Numan” who apparently, was the next big thing – and I am not in any way disrespectful towards these artists – I very much respect their achievements and enjoy their music, too – and yes, they did make records in the 1980s, and sell records, and become “very popular” and so on.

But behind the scenes, in the background – were truly great (often very under-appreciated) musicians, with far more experience (and skill, I am afraid, too) who were out on the road, proving that their music was very real indeed,  given concerts displaying consummate skill and musical vision – and perhaps – at least slightly more real, than the perceived vision of what music was as presented by “MTV” and “MTV News”.

But sometimes, you have to judge by a different yardstick, and increasingly for me, it was a very, very musical yardstick – i.e. did this concert move me to tears?  Was the guitar playing such remarkable work of impassioned quality, that it will haunt my memories for years to come?  Those were the kinds of questions that I was walking away from concerts asking myself – concerts mainly by the supposedly long-dead “dinosaurs” of music – the progressive rock musicians of the 1960s and 1970s.  It was no longer really about what was supposedly popular – for me, it was becoming just about music, quality music – and nothing much else mattered.

And that is how I have really remained, to this day – I am not interested in what band sells the most records.  I am interested in what band or artists or guitarist or other instrumentalist – can do something never done before, or something unique, or something truly beautiful or skillful or ingenious.  Or – in some rare cases – all of the above.

That is what I was already evolving into in the 1980s, because I was seeing all of these amazing bands, behind the scenes – behind the very false, fabricated MTV Video World of “Music” and the MTV “Video Music Awards” and so on – none of that was what was real – what was real, were the opening notes of the title track of “Discipline” – the first piece played by the new King Crimson at their concert here held at UCSD gymnasium.

To start a concert, with the final piece and the title track of your first album in over seven years – that is very probably the single most difficult to perform out of an entire album of truly difficult to perform songs – coming out and playing that song FIRST, makes a statement – that says “we can do THIS” – and “THIS” – is simply the part you had to hear, you had to be there – to believe – perfectly interlocking guitars over a sinuous and sliterhing bass part with an insistent, cymbal-less beat throbbing behind it – modern music taken to a whole new level, in a time-signature that I still can’t count to this day.

 

What a way to START a concert!

So it was truly musical experiences like this, that really take you out of yourself, and really make you consider the nature of what is beautiful, what is dissonant, how and when dissonance can be in itself, beautiful, and so on – music that MAKES you think – and think, and think.  That is how the music of “Discipline” made me feel at the time.  What a great way to celebrate the return of the much-missed King Crimson – we were SO glad they were back, and this career was to be short lived, but, would lead to ever-evolving versions of the band – this particular version, what has become to be known, curiously enough, as “the 80’s Crimson” did the bulk of it’s work, first as the band “Discipline” in 1980, and then, as “King Crimson” in 1981 – lasting just four years and producing three fine albums.

But there is still more to this story – still more former prog or former rock musicians, coming out of the woodwork now, re-inventing themselves in startling and remarkable ways.  Bill Nelson, former leader, lead singer, and lead guitarist of the 1970s prog/rock band “Be-Bop Deluxe” was out and about in the 1980s, fronting various versions of his 1979 creation “Bill Nelson’s Red Noise” and I saw one of these post-Red Noise concoctions play live at the Whisky in Los Angeles – and because it was the Whisky, and, Bill Nelson was one of my favourite English guitarists at the time – I took the opportunity to situate myself just in front of his pedalboard (which absolutely fascinated me, it was very, very long and thin and had about a dozen pedals on it, most of which, I was utterly unfamiliar with) and once again, I proceeded to have my musical thought processes melted away and re-formed several times during the evening’s proceedings.

Nelson is just one of those people that is ridiculously talented, and can make music with anything he turns his hand to.  Tonight though – it was all about the guitar, and actually seeing him play, at such close range, was a rare privilege indeed for me – to be able to watch how he created the chord shapes and guitar parts that made up these songs that I so, so loved – “A Kind Of Loving” or “Do You Dream In Colour” or even the bizarre “Youth Of Nation On Fire”.

 

 

He played an outrageously cool selection of songs from his first couple of solo records – and it was again, an absolutely unique and totally unforgettable musical experience.  What a show!

This show also included a real moment of drama, as Bill‘s beautiful pedalboard FAILED after one song, so, philosophically, he watched the technician hauling away his entire bank of effects – and saying something about how it may be difficult later on, when he gets into some of the more complex changes of sound… he then turned around, with a determined look on his face – plugged his guitar lead directly into his Music Man combo amp – tested a nice, chunky, distorted power chord – and launched into the next song – sans all effects.

Hearing that song played with raw, straight, unaffected guitar – was an absolute revelation for me – an amazing experience – of a true artist’s grace under pressure –  he handled it like a pro – no problem – just got on with the song, sang and played it beautifully, and then happily, took delivery of his now-repaired pedalboard just in time for the next song to begin.

They never really missed a beat – the whole “incident” only slowed the show by literally, two minutes – and what a unique and unusual thing to witness – that made it particularly unforgettable – getting to hear the absolutely raw – guitar-straight-into-amp Bill Nelson style – and it ROCKED.  He didn’t lean on his pedals for support to hide weak playing, as some players (myself included – I hasten to add) do – he used them to enhance and improve the sound of his guitar.   But – I could have happily watched and listened to the whole show with the guitar-directly-into-amp scenario, too – with – or without a big pedalboard full of exotic gutiar effects – either way is absolutely fine by me.

 

I would say that during the first few years of the 1980s, that Bill Nelson re-invented himself and his music, on a par and very much in parallel, with the way Robert Fripp re-invented and re-imagined his own role in the new King Crimson.  Gone were the trappings of “rock star” / Be-Bop Deluxe frontman Nelson – no more costumes or make-up or TV appearances were needed – no more limousines – just – music – music as experiment, and I can remember buying his first solo single, the aforementioned “Do You Dream In Colour?” on 7 inch vinyl which included two B-sides that I liked even better than the A side – and that was the start of a truly remarkable series of records – that moved through areas of music that I can scarcely describe using just words – those words would be “GO now, and listen, ye, to these two albums”:

1. Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam by Bill Nelson
2. The Love That Whirls (Diary Of A Thinking Heart) by Bill Nelson

See – now I don’t need to try and describe how incredibly diverse and musically amazing those two early solo records are – not to mention – some of the most astonishing lead guitar work I had ever heard Nelson play – even on the opening track of “Quit Dreaming…” a song called “Banal”, ironically enough – there is a solo so dramatic, so silken smooth and flowing – so, NOT “banal” in any way – and I think that is the point – you have this hard-edged, almost frightening riff playing throughout this song  – but when it finally bursts into this solo – you get a few moments of the old 1970s Be-Bop Deluxe sweet sweet flowing lead guitar on 1980s steroids – simply amazing guitar work on this record – other pieces of note include one of my personal favourites of Bill’s – another strange one, “U.H.F.” which has a beautifully-flanged lead vocal, and again, absolutely amazing, dissonant / unique lead guitar throughout – this one is another that is just astonishing in terms of the quality and passion of guitar playing – it’s off the scale, it really is.

So Bill Nelson – in the early 1980s – was in every way, an ever-exploring pioneer of new kinds of musics, and his bands were hand-picked to deliver that music with the greatest impact.  I was so, so fortunate that I was able to drive up to Los Angeles to see that gig – what an absolutely unforgettable night that was!!  Standing there, just a few feet away from someone with such consummate skill with the guitar – it seemed effortless to him – autopilot on, and now – play.  sing.  perform.

 

But – it was a faultless, unbelievably professional, polished performance – Bill took his bands and his music very seriously indeed, and this outfit was more than road-worthy – they played his music – the way it was meant to be played.

 

I have now, I believe, spent more than enough time talking about Type Uno artists – however – believe it or not, I didn’t even make it past about 1983 in assembling the examples above.  If I were to continue on in this vein for the rest of the 1980s, I would add in another dozen or so examples of Type Uno artists – those ex-rock or ex-prog musicians who, for the most part – trod a very different path in the 1980s, from what their previous careers back in the 1970s had been.

And sometimes, as in the case of both King Crimson and Bill Nelson – that led to some absolutely extraordinary music and, live concerts that represented that recorded music.  I felt so, so fortunate to have been there to witness that – especially the re-birth of King Crimson  – that was almost miraculous.

Crimson was one of several bands, that I literally thought I would never, ever get to see – because from my perspective – they had suddenly disbanded in 1974 – never to return as far as we knew.

So that was a welcome return to form – along with, experiencing the new musical directions of Bill Nelson, Peter Hammill or any number of existing, surviving rock and prog people – all of them, doing so incredibly well (who knew???) in the supposedly-musically-“dead” 1980s!  The more I thought about it – the more I realised, that in some ways, the 80s were almost MORE musically rich for me than the 1970s were – for one thing, I got in a FULL 10 years of concert-going, versus the seven I had managed in the 1970s (and that was only due to my age – not through choice) – so I had an “extra” three years in which to have even more incredible 1980s concert experiences.

For another thing – these artists – who were AMAZING during the 1970s – had come back, bringing new ideas; new technologies; new ways of thinking about music; new recordings; and most importantly to me – concert tours where their faithful, loyal fans could still go and see and hear them play – and as often as not, I was totally surprised by how much these artists had grown and evolved – always, in such a positive way – that I now view the 1980s as a really, really positive decade – in terms of my overall, over-time concert experiences.

Who else, then – would I place into the Type Uno category – before I delve into Type Dos – well, a quick further check of setlist.fm’s listing for user “pureambient” (that’s me, by the way) reveals that the illustrious company noted above would also be joined by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, populists Hall & Oates (who I only became interested in, after hearing Daryl Hall’s remarkable collaboration with Robert Fripp, “Sacred Songs” from 1980 – another overlooked Fripp-produced masterpiece – and Fripp was so insistent that Hall was so good – that I had to go and see for myself.  He was.  He was an amazing singer).

Then, there was the early-80s version of Roxy Music which, by 1983 when I saw them for the second time, had mutated so far away from their original Prog roots, that they seemed to be a completely different band – one that very well might have been better named “The Bryan Ferry Orchestra” and be done with it – with Phil Manzanera and Andy MacKay physically present at the concert, but, reduced to the roles of glorified sidemen by the rather large ego of one Bryan Ferry…

 

The only redemption, for me, was that Phil Manzanera was permitted to perform ONE of his songs – and chose to play “Impossible Guitar” which I absolutely love – so I was fortunate to get to see that rarely-performed-live piece of brilliant guitar work – made an otherwise difficult to stomach Roxy concert, much more bearable.  By way of contrast,  when I saw Roxy in 1979, four years earlier – they were then already on their way towards this not-so-good musical place, but – there was still some prog left in them, and they played a few good versions of a few older tunes back in 79.  Not so at the 1983 concert that I saw – which was pretty disappointing to say the least.

Adrian Belew – well, he was around in the 70s, although more in the role of very talented sideman to either Frank Zappa or later, David Bowie – and I felt very, very fortunate to get to see him with his original band, “Gaga” – at the wonderfully tiny San Diego State venue of The Back Door (a music venue so small, that even ***I*** have performed there in the past – lol).

Belew and his band were absolutely unbelievably talented, funny and skilled – and it was a truly memorable evening for fans of the eccentric electric guitarist – the only true successor to the performance spaces that Jimi Hendrix used to inhabit – Belew fills that void to some degree.

More gigs for guitarists – now this was another aspect of the remarkable, the impossible things that happened in the 1980s – that you would have thought, would either be impossible, or only could have happened in the 70s – but – not so – I am talking about now, one of the most incredible performances I have ever seen – Paco De Lucia, Al DiMeola, and John McLaughlin – what a line-up.  Three legends of the guitar – each with their own style – and the combination of the three together, performing a variety of impossible pieces – was like nothing I had ever seen before and I am not likely to ever see again – everyone I know who went to this – will know what I am talking about – this was about skill, passion and grace – and these three gentlemen had lots of all of those things.  It was…amazing.

A year later, the trio returned – and this time, joining them on steel string acoustic guitar – was none other than future Deep Purple lead guitarist and Dixie Dregs alumnus Steve Morse – a guitarist I have seen many times – with the Dixie Dregs (another group that is in this category, that I was lucky enough to see during the 1980s)

Later, Morse created the “Steve Morse Band” (yet ANOTHER group that is in this category, that I was lucky enough to see during the 1980s), I even got to see Morse performing at a guitar clinic in a local music store – an immensely skilled and talented player. Adding Morse to that trio (DeLucia, DiMeola, and McLaughlin) – created the single most remarkable mini-orchestra of guitarists that the mind could imagine – the Impossible Quartet – and that show was even better than the standard trio show that I saw the previous year.  What an experience!

And then – I went to see Allan Holdsworth.  I was beginning to get into jazz, a little bit – I’ve never really played it, but, I do have huge respect for those that play it well – the “Pat Metheny”s and so on in this world – but – Allan Holdsworth – who, again, was around in the 1970s, so he definitely falls into the Type Uno category – is a guitarist on an entirely different Guitar Planet.  To this day, I have never before or since seen a modern jazz guitarist, or in fact, any guitarist outside of the classical tradition, with the kind of a) encyclopedic knowledge of scales, modes, chords and….everything there is to know about a guitar fretboard and b) incredible, incredible, speed – I’ve never found another like Allan Holdsworth.

I can remember sitting on the edge of the stage, just watching his left hand, trying so hard to figure out what on earth chords he was playing – as he played through one of my very favourite of his pieces – “The Things You See (When You Haven’t Got Your Gun)” – and there is this beautiful beautiful chord progression, that he “swells” into a big delay and reverb setting – and it’s just sublimely beautiful,

And as I watched, I realised, that even with my twenty some odd years of guitar playing experience at that time – that I literally, had absolutely NO idea what those shapes indicated – I could not understand WHAT CHORDS the man was playing.  I knew one thing though – they are beautiful.  Still are.

Later, I found out why – when I got ahold of an Allan Holdsworth music book – and the title of the book pretty much explains why a guitarist of 20 years plus experience, had no idea what it was that he was seeing and hearing when watching Allan Holdsworth play – the book is called “Reaching For The Uncommon Chord”.  THAT is why.  Because he uses inversions that most people can’t even FORM with their fingers.  “Uncommon” is exactly the right word – and seeing him play, hearing him do this – live – opened my eyes to whole new UNIVERSE of sounds and ideas that I think, I am still absorbing today – almost thirty years later.

What a remarkable guitarist – and a really nice person too, very approachable. Sadly, Allan passed away very recently – and it was a huge, huge loss to the guitar-playing, and listening, community.  An absolute Hendrix-Order, Zappa-Order, Higher-Order guitarist unique in so very many ways.  Not, however…for the faint of heart – Holdsworth is possible a musician best appreciated by other musicians as his playing style may be too intense for the public to absorb or appreciate.  If there ever was a “guitarist’s guitarist” – it was Allan Holdsworth.

Every time I think I have exhausted the list of possibly Type Unos – I find still more to add to the list – the aforementioned Richard Thompson whose career soared during the 1980s – including a lot of excellent performances both on acoustic guitar and with full “electric” band – I was lucky enough to see both types – and also, the aforementioned band Richard used to be in, Fairport Convention, who also enjoyed a resurgence of their own during the late 1980s, possibly thanks to their close touring association with the unstoppable Jethro Tull.

At the end of the 1980s, re-emerged one of the first of the many, many, many different re-configurations of the band Yes – which featured the classic five man lineup of Yes without bassist Chris Squire.  I went to see this strange band in 1989, whose first and only album was pretty underwhelming, largely because of the possibility of seeing these four ex-members of Yes, playing older Yes material live in concert.

It was – interesting.  Originally, they had Tony Levin as their stand-in replacement for the very difficult to replace Chris Squire – and that was what I had been looking forward to – only to find out, that Levin had dropped out early on, and had been hastily replaced by Jeff Berlin.  Now – Jeff Berlin is one of the most amazing bass guitarists on the planet.  I’ve seen Berlin play in a tiny club with Allan Holdsworth and Chad Wackerman, and Berlin was actually, clearly, the bass-playing equivalent of Allan Holdsworth – they were a match.  How Wackerman ever kept up with those too, will always be a mystery – stunning musicianship.

But Jeff Berlin is more of an improviser’s improviser, so the idea of him playing Chris Squire’s very inventive but, very structured bass parts – well, to my mind, it just seemed like a WEIRD idea.  And in concert – well, Jeff was fine.  Jeff played all the right notes – but the feel, was all wrong – he played with a jazz, loose feel, which did not suit Squire’s intended style – so it just sounded so odd to my ears.  Not entirely successful – four experienced prog guys – with a super jazzy improvising loose bass player – no.  I wished I’d seen the Levin version…but alas.  ABWH were short-lived, and I think that is possibly a good thing.  Yes is just not Yes without Chris Squire – let’s face it.  It’s just not quite right without him.

Finally, again near the end of the 1980s, we had some glimpses of the future – Adrian Belew’s pop project, “The Bears” started making records and went out on tour, and I for one was very much enamoured of their approach – I loved the idea of two lead guitars, bass and drums, where often, both of the guitarists were playing “backwards guitar” as they sang and played live – I loved that.  I have always been a huge fan of reverse guitar, and seeing the huge grins on the faces of Rob Fetters and Adrian Belew while they were both playing backwards – it’s as much fun to do, as it is to hear!  I saw The Bears a number of times, and they are an extremely quality pop group as you would expect – excellent music.

And then – Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists – not a “band” in the traditional sense, this latest Fripp invention – was simply Fripp performing in public on acoustic guitar, with a group of the then-best Guitar Craft students.  The repertoire was written in part by Fripp, and in part by members of “the League” and it’s a most interesting presentation – playing in Fripp’s “new standard tuning” for guitar – this was a most inspirational group to witness playing live – but in one sense, it’s also one of the most radical of re-imagining’s possible – to get from King Crimson in the 1960s and 1970s, to the League of Gentlemen in 1980, to the League of Crafty Guitarists in the late 80s and also, on into the future – that was Robert Fripp – always moving forward on so many different musical planes.

Type Uno groups that I did NOT see – the list is just staggeringly long, I am sure, but while I am on the subject – Robert Fripp’s “dance combo” the aforementioned League of Gentlemen” were one of the hottest musical properties of the year 1980.  A four piece led by Fripp and ex-XTC keyboard wizard Barry Andrews – that is one band I really, really wish I had the opportunity to see play live.  Ach well as they say…

 

Type Dos

– New, emerging bands, or, complete rebuilds of older bands that mutated into new bands – so in this category the most obvious is the one I have already mentioned, Marillion, and, the other one I have already mentioned, Crowded House.

This category does include a few bands that may well have existed in the very last part of the 1970s, but I would still class them as new not so much in that they are brand new in the 1980s, but they were not necessarily full-established or very experienced when compared to most of the Type Uno bands – many of whose roots went all the way back to the beginning of the 1970s or even into the 1960s.

There is a huge difference in an artist who formed a band in 1968, coming back to perform live and make records in the 1980s, and a band formed in 1979 that then continues on into the 1980s as part of their natural evolution – those to my mind, are “new emerging bands” – I have just taken slight poet license on when they emerged – and if I were to just adjust the time period, this silly concept of two types would work a bit better – but for now, it’s what I am working with.

The first half of the 1980s, for me – according again to my setlist.fm list of concerts attended – was a pretty sparse time for new bands with new music.

I did see a few of the most important bands of the 1980s, most notably, the great XTC, but there were far far more bands that I never did see – because mainly, to be totally honest – I was spending my time and my money, attending concerts by Type Uno artists – artists I knew and loved, and, who I knew would not let me down by giving a poor concert.

So I continued to attend concerts with a definite 1970s mindset – and that worked for me – and if you look at the list above compared to this listing of Type Dos shows attended – it’s absolutely pathetic in comparison.  I was only making an almost-token effort to include Type Dos bands in my concert-going – but if truth be told – that was mainly because – there were not that many Type Dos bands that I really enjoyed the sound of.

In some cases, I wonder exactly why I went – for example, I attended an outdoor summer extravaganza, three bands playing live, beginning with Madness, then, Oingo Boingo, then, headliners The Police.  Now this was a competently-performed set, all three bands had something to offer – but, in hindsight – I believe I enjoyed Madness far more than I enjoyed The Police.  I was never that huge of a fan of The Police, and I think it was more about peer pressure – everyone at the place I was working was going to the show – so would I go?  Sure – why not?

I have never, ever been a fan of the music of Danny Elfman, leader and creator of Oingo Boingo, and I just think it’s absolutely silly music – not for me, at all – meant to be “funny” – but – it isn’t.  Madness were terrific – great energy, good chops – a lot of fun, and a lot of musical credibility.  Then I suffered through Oingo Boingo.  Then, I did enjoy the set by The Police but it was more about wow look at that drum kit or, wow, Sting really can play the bass AND sing at the same time – look – he’s doing it.

Or rather – doing part of it – they did have three background singers, which makes the whole idea of being “just a trio” a bit silly – and I felt it was really unnecessary.  It seemed to me, that it would have been much, much better if we could have heard what JUST the three of them could do, live – now that might have been interesting. They played a competent set, with songs from every album including the then-new “Synchronicity” which for them, was ultra-complex.  They did a credible job – but that’s what it seemed like, more of a chore, a task, a job to be done – they didn’t seem like they were having any fun at all – and their lack of enjoyment was contagious.

I hope that others will remember that concert more happily than I do, but my overall impression was of being underwhelmed by The Police, and not liking Oingo Boingo one bit (I still don’t).  But – every cloud has a silver lining – at least I got to see Madness – they were great – awesome performance.

Still sticking with the mainstream, again, not really sure WHY I went – outdoor show in summer time?  nice weather?  for some inexplicable reason, I went to see Men At Work.  It was not particularly memorable.  I still do not know why I went.  In this same category, I would place The Motels, a group I barely remember – and I don’t remember a particular song I like or anything – no idea.  Those two shows – which I did attend – just flew past almost unnoticed.

I did also, however, see some very real and very powerful live performances – the aforementioned XTC among them – but I would say one other of those, was Gang Of Four.  Now – this was a band I knew absolutely nothing about, I had not heard them play – and the other guitarist in my then-band, Slipstream absolutely INSISTED that I should go to this concert – so, we went – it was a long, long drive up to LA I remember – and I was absolutely transfixed and shocked by the band once they started playing.  I have never before or since seen a band quite like this one – dark, powerful, with a lot on their minds – and deadly serious about what they were playing, and what they were saying.

With tunes like “(Love Like) Anthrax” or “Armalite Rifle” and heavily politically inspired lyrics, I found it to be a very powerful and musical experience.  The music was  – jarring.  But – this “post punk” outfit – really stuck in my memory, and I am grateful to my pal in the band for being so insistent that I attend – because I am glad that I did.  I hadn’t seen much or many bands that had a political agenda (unless you count U2 – which come on, you can’t seriously count U2???) so it was a breath of fresh air in that sense – not you ordinary love songs here – but songs that meant something.  It was a really different musical experience too, and one that was thought-provoking at the very least.

Most important to me, was seeing XTC play live in what turned out to be, their last ever live performance – they played in San Diego where I saw them – and then, in LA the next night – they did not show up, because Andy Partridge was on his way home to escape a world of nightmares from touring and over use of prescription medications.

They never did really return to the stage – but – it also ushered in their “XTC’s Golden Age of Studio Recordings” – where, much like the Beatles – their music really, really changed once they left the stage behind for good.

XTC’s performance itself ,was absolutely amazing:  Andy was filled with so much incredible energy, and the band were animated and lively – Dave Gregory was especially amazing – bouncing back and forth between lead guitar and lead synthesizer – and the band’s vocals were also great – Colin and Andy sounded so, so good together.  I am so, so glad I went to this – I had been getting more and more into their music, and I thought why not – that should be a good show.  I never dreamed for a moment, that I would witness the last live concert by the band – wow.  What a shock to find out after the fact, that Andy had fallen very ill and returned to the UK – swearing that he would never perform live again.  Sadly – he kept that promise – mostly.

After seeing Gang Of Four first, and then, XTC, in the first part of the 1980s – was unfortunately, for me, the highlight – the rest of my Type Dos experience wasn’t quite so memorable – but I will have a go anyway:

Starting with Asia – now, in one sense, you could almost class Asia as a Type Uno band – except – what band would that have been back in the 1970s?  King Crimson?  Yes?  ELP?  Because they were not a direct descendant of one particular band – I have to class them as Type Dos – but the music they brought to the mid-80s, definitely had more of the feel of a Type Uno band.

Asia then – as a new “prog” band – with ex-Family, ex-King Crimson bassist and vocalist John Wetton on bass and lead vocals, with Steve Howe. ex-Yes on lead guitar, and with Carl Palmer, ex-Emerson, Lake & Palmer on drums – and, some guy called Geoff Downes on keyboards – this was a “new” band, playing “new” music.  Oh – I so, so wanted this band to be good…

 

Their debut album was a bit confusing – slightly proggy, but overlaid with a sort of sickly sheen of popiness that felt forced at best.  It was just – weird.  But I went to the show, to see the PLAYERS – not so much for the band, and certainly not for the album.  And – the players were good – again, Wetton is more than competent he played and sang well – it was fine.  Steve Howe did his usual high quality lead guitar work, nothing disappointing there – and Carl was a fine drummer for the outfit.

Perhaps it’s better if I just leave it at that – rather than try to analyse it any further – this SHOULD have been a great band, but I remember being so disappointed by everything – the album, the show – that I never bought (or heard) their second album, or anything they ever did after that.  I just lost interest immediately.  A missed opportunity.  A failed attempt at commercial success?  Something funny going on there – I don’t really know what.  But somehow – it just did not work.

On a couple of occasions during the 1980s, I went to see Elvis Costello play, usually with the Attractions in tow – and this was one of those weirdly unsatisfying things – it should have been excellent – but it was just OK.  They played well – very well.  The songs are good – but something about it – it just did not have the excitement, nothing urgent, in a lot of ways, it did not seem like “live” music – but more, an accurate re-creation of studio music.  I know that must sound weird – but I hope you can get what I am meaning.

On the surface – Elvis Costello and the Attractions put on a really good concert. But below the surface, there was something dissatisfying about the whole experience, that one could not put one’s finger on – I don’t know WHAT it was – but I felt let down, I felt disappointed – I think I thought that he would be amazing – and when he turned out to be just some guy with a guitar – well, I ended up feeling a sense of disappointment.

Then, things took a slightly upward turn, and the quality of the Type Dos bands I was going to see play, started to improve again – and that began with a gig by the revitalised Pretenders.  I am so, so glad that I got to see this band play in 1984, and I think that Chrissie Hynde is absolutely a musical genius – to write these songs, to go to Britain and put this band together – and then to succeed so well – I am so so happy that she did this.

It didn’t last long – my personal favourite record of theirs being the astonishing Pretenders II – I think after those first two remarkable records – that things began to go downhill a bit – but when I saw them – they were at the height of their powers – and those were not insignificant.  Chrissie herself, is a powerful performer, and her approach to her vocals and her guitar playing – stick in the brain, and she definitely left a good impression on me.  I am very glad that I  chose to go see this band play live – an awesome experience.

 

The Pretenders’ opening / support act, however, the much hyped The Alarm – left me pretty cold.  I felt like they were competing for musical space with U2 – and to be honest – no one was, or is, competing for that space (!) – it’s not really a desirable musical space to inhabit !!!  But they seemed to me, like a third-rate impersonation of U2 – and while that may be overly-cruel on my part – I cannot think of a kinder way to express what for me, is a true assessment of how The Alarm sounded – “68 Guns” – maybe – but none of them were loaded.  Or they only brought 49 of those guns with them on this night – I am not sure.

Another double bill of new, emerging bands was Big Country with support from the forgettable Wire Train – and I think that my interest in Big Country was probably almost entirely derived from the fact that Stuart Adamson had been a huge fan of Bill Nelson = something he held in common with me.  The band were fine, nothing wrong with them – but nothing hugely memorable, either.  I can’t really remember Wire Train at all – much as I would like to say something about them – I cannot – I have absolutely no idea.  So this was another one that just flew past me, almost unnoticed…

I have to mention (by contract I am afraid) that I did see the band Berlin, or at least, I saw part of their set – but I hasten to add this disclaimer – going to see Berlin was never my intention – I was going for one reason, and one reason alone – not to see Terri Nunn or hear her telling us about all the roles she could play – but to hear the opening act – Bill Nelson – with a full band, on the very short “Mountains Of The Heart” tour.  And Nelson was amazing – he was not happy that night, as Berlin had used up all of the sound check time, leaving Nelson NO time to sound check his own band.

So, as retaliation (which, while juvenile in the extreme. was actually, appropriate under the circumstances) Bill decided to extend his set by an extra six or seven minutes – making Berlin wait, making Berlin late to get on stage – and he did this, much to MY good fortune, by taking a super-extended, in the spotlight, energy bow guitar solo – which was extraordinary – I’ve never heard of Bill Nelson doing this before or since – the last song had ended – but he continued playing his beautiful, powerful sustained e-bow sound – and he played and played and played – I was absolutely overjoyed.  Eventually, he relented, thanking the audience and apologising for the short set – MADE short by the thoughtlessness of the people in the band Berlin.

So while I went to a Berlin concert – it was not to see Berlin, and I actually left during one of the first few songs of their unremarkable set.  Going home was preferable to seeing Berlin play live.  Seeing and hearing Bill Nelson play an amazing short set of fantastic songs, followed by a really long “spite” guitar solo – was absolutely astonishing.  A fantastic experience!

Perhaps the single most significant of all of the Type Dos bands – would be Marillion.  Bursting onto the scene in the early 1980s, but apparently believing that it was actually, still 1974 – this remarkable band of Englishmen led by one slightly mad Scotsman – became quite successful despite the fact that their music was a direct throwback to the 1970s – people didn’t seem to mind, because Fish and Marillion were brilliant on stage, Fish was incredibly friendly and personal both on and off stage, and the time that they flourished – up until 1987, when singer Fish left the band after the classic album “Clutching At Straws”.  This was a great time in music.

Fish, having his remarkable, very, very prog-sounding outfit out on tour, making retro-prog albums, playing retro-prog live and everyone loving it – what a fantastic and probably impossible thing to happen.

I really enjoyed the music of Fish and Marillion during the 1980s, and even though they SOUNDED like a Type Uno band – they are definitely the archetype of a Type Dos band – a new emerging band with a unique presence and quality music, too.

On a short trip to Britain, by complete accident, I happened to go to see a Japanese heavy metal band, Vow Wow, playing at the Marquee in London.  I wasn’t really meant to be there, I went almost by accident, but it was an enjoyable-enough experience – the band were OK, not great, but not bad – but for me, just being in the room where all of my Type Uno heroes had played – from the Move to King Crimson – was enough – at least I can say I’ve seen a show at the Marquee – OK, I wish it had been by a band that I knew, or that I liked – but – it was better than nothing lol.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. was another attempt at a sort of Asia-style supergroup, the ill-fated GTR.  Now – I never did get the first GTR album – because after I saw them play – I would not have, and did not, want to have it.  Again – this was touted as an amazing new group, led by two of the best guitarists in progressive rock – Steve Howe and Steve Hackett.  To me – that was an irresistible combination of talent and skill – it HAD to be good !!  It wasn’t.

There was nothing good about it – singer Max Bacon was so unremarkable, that all I remember is his name.  I also do not know who else, apart from the two famous guitarists – was in the band.  None of that mattered – because they just were not very good.  I don’t remember or know a single song by them.  It’s almost as if history, ashamed of itself, has erased most of the memories of this band – to hide it’s shame.  And I am part of that – eager to believe in these two superhero guitarists – in practice – it was nothing but a huge let down – a real disappointment.  Not recommended – at all.

Towards the end of the 1980s, I ended up seeing a truly mixed bag of new, emerging artists – Type Dos artists – which included the then-very-popular Suzanne Vega, a lesser-known but far more talented singer called Maria McKee, as well as, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum of female singers – the band X from LA.  I won free tickets to see X – which I enjoyed far more than I thought I might – I particularly enjoy John Doe’s singing.

Then came what I might term as the Unavoidable Event – part of you, really did not want to go – but – you felt like you were obliged to – everyone you knew – was going – so I held out for a long time – and then ended up getting really, really horrible seats for – at the back of the Sports Arena, in literally, the VERY top row – so far up, I am surprised I did not get nosebleed – and that didn’t help my enjoyment of the show.

Having a point of view from behind the stage did have advantages, I could see what The Edge was doing really well, and his confidence and obvious skill, along with his basic humility – well, his was an impressive performance.  But sadly, U2 is not really about The Edge – it’s about one man, who I shall call, for the sake of humour – Knucklehead Smith.  That guy – the leader of said band – was just as over the top, as loud, as not funny – as we all expected him to be.  For me – he was the low point of the show.  The band could play.  But could he sing?  Sort of.

It was OK.  I wasn’t bad.  Some of the songs were pretty exciting, and the guitar work could not be faulted.  I suppose I am glad in a way, to give me a more well-rounded view of what the 1980s were all about – that I saw U2 live.  But I could have done without Knucklehead Smith – he is one crazy dude.

The last concert I remember from the 1980s, was held in a tiny club, a concert given by a new guitarist on the scene, who was just releasing his very first album, which he called “Surfing With The Alien” .  Once again, not quite sure why I was there – but I am very glad that I was – because I got to see the original, the most humble, the most basic Joe Satriani – before he became a “big star” – and it was a good, good concert – very modern, the guitar sounds were great, it was clear he was a really good player – and I left quite impressed with this young man and his guitar.  The fact that he went on to such incredible heights of fame – and that it all began with that one album – and I was lucky enough to have been there, to see the birth – to see the very beginning of Joe’s very successful career as a guitarist – more power to him.

That – my friends – was my 1980s concert experience!

 

Never Thought I Would See The Day When…

I simply love live music, and really, there can never be enough good concerts each year – or each decade for that matter – there is always someone that I missed out seeing “back in the day” or newer artists that I want to check out live – there is always something going on.  I feel very fortunate indeed that I have been able to see so many great concerts.  Moving to Britain was also a hugely fortunate thing in terms of me being able to see bands performing live that did not regularly play in far-off San Diego, California (where I lived for the first half of my life) and so many bands that I never got the chance to see when I lived in California, I have not only seen but in some cases, I have been able to see performing live several times.

This includes bands or artists – and mind you, these are bands or artists that I firmly believed I would never, ever get to see play live –  such as:

• Caravan 
• Gong       
• Muse  
• Neil Young     

 

 

To my ever-lasting astonishment, I did eventually get to see these four bands – and it was difficult to believe it was happening until the actual moment – came – and for example, with Neil Young, whose music I had loved since I was a teenager – at age 13, two of his songs were among the songs that the very first band I was ever in’s repertoire, so I basically grew up with Neil Young as the soundtrack to my life – but everytime he played in San Diego, I couldn’t go, or I didn’t find out until too late, or it sold out or any number of things – and I ended up never seeing him play.

Little did I imagine that I would see him years and years and years later, in Glasgow, Scotland, playing one of the most amazing sets of original music I have ever seen, with his new band “Promise of the Real”.  It was an extraordinary night, and a long-held dream come true – and, he played so many of the songs that I truly, truly loved, including “Alabama” and “Words (Between The Lines Of Age)” from the 1972 classic album “Harvest”.  I just could not believe it was happening…I was seeing Neil play in this surreal situation, thousands of miles away from California where I would have thought and expected that I would see him play.  It’s funny how things work out.

I can’t remember feeling so happy, so very satisfied with a concert – the songs were all good, the band was extremely good and Neil was just Neil – a remarkable man full of the most remarkable songs but also, a world-class lead guitarist with a style that is as unique in it’s own way, as a Zappa or a Hendrix might be – there is only one Neil Young, unmistakable, as he takes “old black” through it’s paces – and I was lucky enough to hear and see him soloing quite a bit that night.  Really fortunate.

So in cases like these four, and others I mentioned in my previous blog – it seems that dreams really, really can come true.

 

Awesome Guitarists – one motivator for attending so many concerts

I was a guitarist then, and I am still a guitarist now;  so it’s only natural that I would follow and enjoy music by the world’s most talented and capable guitarists – and the list of guitarists that I was lucky enough to see in the 1980s is a pretty staggering list of remarkable, talented musicians:

 

• Frank Zappa
• Todd Rundgren
• Steve Hackett
• Brian May
• Steve Howe
• Neil Finn
• Andy Gill
• Roger Steen
• Bill Spooner
• Peter Hammill
• Adrian Belew
• Robert Fripp
• Andy Partridge
• Dave Gregory
• Elvis Costello
• Pat Metheny
• Bill Nelson
• David Rhodes
• G. E. Smith
• Phil Manzanera
• Andy Summers
• Paco De Lucia
• Al DiMeola
• John McLaughlin
• Allan Holdsworth
• Chrissie Hynde
• Stuart Adamson
• Steve Morse
• Carlos Santana
• Steve Rothery
• Bruce Cockburn
• Martin Lancelot Barre
• Richard Thompson

 

Forward…into the future!

So in conclusion – for me, the 80s were a far, far more exciting time musically, for me, than I actually had expected it to be – because I largely ignored what the media would have had me believe was “my experience of music” in the 1980s – and instead, I spent my time and money on going to live music concerts put on by both Type Uno and Type Dos artists – which gave me a great mixture of very, very experienced musicians from the 1960s and 1970s, updating and renewing their sound for the tech of the 1980s, while the Type Dos shows gave me an idea of what new bands were around, what they sounded like, and how they compared to the more familiar Type Unos that I knew so very well.

Starting my decade with the musics of Frank Zappa, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, Queen, Genesis, and Yes – and that was just in the FIRST 10 months of 1980 – on up to and including Peter Hammill, King Crimson, XTC, Bill Nelson, Allan Holdsworth, and Peter Gabriel – and finally, up towards the end of the decade, the Dixie Dreg’s, Adrian Belew’s “The Bears”,  Richard Thompson (electric band this time!) and Robert Fripp with his League of Crafty Guitarists  – and many, many more – once again, I had an enormous amount of fun – and I realise now that for me, that my idea of “fun” is quite different from that of most people – I have a lot more fun when I am watching and listening to an incredibly talented lead guitarist (or in some cases, a pair of amazing guitarists – like Robert Fripp & Adrian Belew of King Crimson – or Adrian Belew & Rob Fetters of The Bears), playing as part of an incredibly talented band that has worked out an amazing repertoire of impossibly beautiful, and possibly technically demanding songs – now – that’s MY idea of fun!

Until next time then again–

 

Dave Stafford
June 6, 2018

 

Next time on Decade By Decade – The Live Concert Experience / Overview:

The Sinuous 1990s – The many-headed stylistic beast

 

1980s Concert Ticket Stub Collection (courtesy Dave Stafford)

Concert Ticket Stubs – 1980s

pre-orders – remasters – alternative mixes – a boon or a curse?

Now that the good Steven Wilson has succumbed to the temptation to remix almost every important pop, rock or prog band that ever existed, in glorious 5.1 surround sound, with instrumental mixes, and extra tracks galore, I am afraid that I have succumbed to a new technological phenomena – the “pre-order”.

It was probably Amazon, bless their cotton socks, that started this trend (with my personal new favourite CD Store, Burning Shed, also well onto the pre-order bandwagon): order your favourite re-master or 5.1 expanded version of your favourite re-master, or an exciting new release, ahead of time, and you have the advantage of receiving it on the release date. That’s definitely a positive, it means you can get to the important bit all that much sooner: listening.

I mostly consider this concept a boon, my pocketbook, however, views it as a curse, especially since the advent of Burning Shed here in Europe, a specialist shop featuring all of the music candy that I cannot, cannot stay away from – so now, it’s a double curse – if Burning Shed don’t have it, Amazon probably do.

This is the problem though, another part of the curse, which might be labelled as “The Curse Of The Crimson King” because King Crimson (or rather, Robert Fripp) is guilty of this as much or more than many bands, as time goes on, they re-release their classic 60s or 70s music catalogue over and over and over again; on the one hand, taking advantage of the leaps and bounds of technological advance, so we can get ever-cleaner, ever more amazing-sounding renditions of our favourite music, on the other…making us buy it over and over and over again… Sigh.

At first, it made sense – so, using King Crimson as an example – I totally understood why: in the earliest days of the compact disc era, Fripp’s record company produced CDs of the original 10 King Crimson albums on CD when CDs came out, and they did a pretty poor job of transferring this very important music – so, Robert Fripp invented “The Definitive Editions” which were the first truly good-sounding versions of King Crimson CDs, and I had no issue at all with paying again, for something I had bought multiple times on vinyl, and then, on cassette, and then, on bad transfer CD, and finally, on Definitive Editions.

The problem is, more time passes, more technological leaps and bounds occur, and it’s that time again; time to remaster every King Crimson album yet again. Until finally, in 2014, we get what really is the definitive edition: the Steven Wilson remasters, in normal or deluxe versions. We get to hear the original multitrack tapes rendered into state of the art 5.1 surround sound, by someone who if he wasn’t already, is fast becoming the guru, the master, of the arcane science of 5.1 mixing, the remarkable Steven Wilson – who started out tackling one of the most difficult catalogues of all, the King Crimson catalogue; everyone held their collective breath, but, Steven was sensitive, understanding and very kind to these songs that we all grew so attached to in the early 1970s or even, the late 1960s.

This, begins to cost some serious money, and, I am not complaining, no one held a gun against my temple, but…if I had known, I would have just kept my chrome cassette tape of my import Crimson vinyl, until such time as the Steven Wilson expanded box 5.1 surround sound sets became available; if I had skipped the first three CD generations I would have saved, literally, hundreds of dollars / pounds i.e. a shed load of MONEY, on King Crimson alone :-(. I shudder to think how much money I lost across the entire Prog genre over the years :-).

But that brings me from one of the worst curses, which is not in any way limited to King Crimson, almost every prog band in the universe has immediately jumped on this same cash cow bandwagon, from Jethro Tull to Gentle Giant to Caravan, to one of the best boons – and that is the 5.1 experience itself. Now, when I was in my 30s, I decided to invest in a 5.1 system, mostly so I could watch films with their proper sound tracks, in theatre style. Audio 5.1 was a rarity for a long, long time, I was always interested in it, but, there really wasn’t much to buy for the longest time – so we had to be content with our wonderful sounding movies…

Of course, change is good, and the change came – now, 5.1 surround sound audio is becoming as common as nails, on both DVD and even nicer, on Blu-Ray (my personal favourite format) and I for one welcome it, and I say “boon”, it’s a good, good thing, it allows you to hear your favourite music in startling new ways, ways that can make you jump out of your seat they are so surprising and revelatory, ways that I cannot really describe using words – you have to hear it. I started getting into this seriously when the King Crimson 40th Anniversary / Steven Wilson editions albums started coming out, I got my 5.1 surround sound system back out of the box and set it up, because at last, I had something to actually LISTEN to on it….

And listen I did, and I do – and the Crimson catalogue is while an early triumph for Wilson –it’s still one of the very, very best jobs he ever did of re-configuring a strange and wonderful catalogue, into the 5.1 surround sound format, and of course, at the same time, unearthing all manner of remarkable rarities, from outtakes to alternate versions to previously unearthed live versions to, in one case, on Starless (either version, either the 2-disc Starless & Bible Black 5.1 package, 2 discs, or the new 27 disc version – yes, I said 27!) unearthing a live track that no one into the band could remember. Luckily, their lyricist did remember, so now we have the piece of Prog delight that is King Crimson’s “Guts On Our Side” – a remarkable track, rehearsed for a few days, performed once, dropped from the set, forgotten for 27 years, and now – it’s back!! You want to talk about bonus material – you need to see the new giant Starless box set, it is simply amazing.

But – also – see this brand new disc, just released on October 27, 2014, and arriving on that day via of course, my Burning Shed pre-order – the 1979 classic album “Drums And Wires” by XTC. Wilson already had one XTC disc under his belt, the most excellent 1992 album “Nonsuch”, but he was just using that to warm up, and now, in 2014, he has delivered what may be his master work – “Drums And Wires”. I sat down last night, and listened to the entire album in 5.1, plus, a generous helping of B-sides in 5.1 surround sound, and then, taking up over two hours of my evening, from the Blu-Ray edition, a massive number of “bonus tracks” – sessions, live tracks, and a full rehearsal session that is every XTC fan’s dream – including discussions, instrumental run-throughs, and a remarkable timeline of music that leads up to the recording of the actual album.

In the case of XTC, that series of sessions and rehearsals was really the sound of the band transforming, butterfly-like, from the “old” XTC of the madcap organ and piano of the ever so slightly deranged Barry Andrews, to the beautiful, all guitars attack of “Drums And Wires” – with new member Dave Gregory undergoing trial by fire, learning a massive number of songs – including some, from an early session, that sound very much like the “old” XTC, and it’s a wonderful thing indeed, to hear the band evolving at speed, and to hear Dave’s contributions to the songs – and, the leap of confidence that Colin Moulding underwent, with his song writing and performance “double whammy” of “Making Plans For Nigel” and “Life Begins At The Hop” – fronting the band, and changing the dynamic once again – his songs, of which there are several, suddenly leaping ahead into a new maturity that no one really expected, while Andy Partridge, as always, up his own song-writing game by several thousand percent – as always.

But if I leave aside the glorious batch of extra songs, including several I’ve never heard, and, including two wonderful promo videos that I’d never seen – and I just concentrate on the album itself – oh my. It’s a real beauty, it really is. Everything about this already amazing sounding record is amplified, enhanced, emboldened, and I nearly did jump out of my chair at several points, surprised, because I was for one thing, hearing this music in a way I never had done before, and, at the same time, Steven Wilson had pushed certain elements to the fore in the mix, making a lot of great choices on instrument placement in the 5.1 surround sound field – an amazing job this time, maybe his best (excepting the King Crimson catalogue possibly) – a lone tom-tom hit from Terry Chambers, bounces off of the rear right speaker, into a huge cloud of reverb that then pours across to another speaker…two astonishing, unexpected cymbal crashes during the first few notes of one of the songs, scared the life out of me – I swear I have never heard those in any other version of this album I’ve owned, or rather, I’d never heard them so well.

Then there was the instrumental version, and that’s something that over time, I’ve gotten really, really interested in, and I am so glad that apparently, Steven Wilson feels the same way – for example, the instrumental version of Gentle Giant’s “The Power And The Glory” is absolutely mind-blowing, it is so powerful, so precise, and yet, so full of the joy of music – Kerry Minnear is an incredibly joyful player – and that is the sound of a band at the height of their powers, captured perfectly across five speakers by the very talented Mr. Wilson.

Of course, there are others out there, re-mastering and re-mixing prog, pop and rock classics into 5.1 surround sound, including such luminaries as Jakko Jakszyk of King Crimson, but right now, it’s all about Steven Wilson – and who knows where he will turn his ‘magic 5.1 wand’ next?

Some bands don’t seem to want to go down the 5.1 road, at least, not yet, but, they are interested in re-masters, sometimes, re-masters that we the listeners have waited for, for a long, long time – and this time, it’s Mr. James Patrick Page that I need to wag my finger at, for making us wait until 2014 to hear the re-mastered Led Zeppelin catalogue! Torture. But, worth waiting for.

The first three albums arrived a couple of months ago, but, Led Zeppelin IV (an absolute classic rock album) and Houses Of The Holy (Led Zeppelin does prog – or something akin to it, anyway) – arrived as part of the October 27, 2014 pre-order event, this time, from Amazon, and while there are no 5.1 mixes to drool over, the re-masters themselves are absolutely pristine and exquisite, done only in the incredibly perfectionist / with painstaking attention to detail, and – lots of guitars – that Jimmy Page can.

Each re-mastered Zeppelin disc comes with a second disc full of out takes, alternate takes, and various other musical delights, and as the albums have been arriving, the quality of those bonus tracks has just improved and improved, with these two – “Led Zeppelin IV”, and “Houses Of The Holy” feature the most amazing bonus material of all, from gentle acoustic guitar and mandolin tracks for songs like “The Battle Of Evermore” and “Going To California”, to instrumental versions of “The Song Remains The Same” (replete with lots of extra lead guitar – as if the song didn’t have enough lead guitar in it already!) and “Over The Hills And Far Away” – a song I used to play in Pyramid, the band I was in when I was about 20 years old – hearing just the instruments, reminds me of the hours we spent learning the song, I had to do the solo, so I spent hours and hours with this track – and I know it backwards and forwards – so it’s great to hear it, with Robert Plant set to “mute”, and just the band, and of course, Jimmy’s many, many overdubbed guitars – the master of the overdubbed guitars if anyone is.

OK, I can forgive how long it took, regardless if this was due to a small, or even medium-sized monkey on Jimmy Page’s back, or just his loose, lackadaisical way of working – but I have to smile, when I hear the alternate version of the strange, disco-funk track that is “The Crunge”, the guitar part just cracks me up, it’s so unlike anything Page played before or since – and the rhythm section rocks, as Plant moans over the top of this funky mess – and then there are those amazing John Paul Jones synthesizers, sounding absolutely astonishing in this alternate version of the song – we all used to argue about this song, was it rubbish, was it great – I would tend to vote for great, myself, and it’s fantastic to hear alternate versions of all of these songs.

Hearing the multi-tracked lead solo of “Dancing Days”, the band are just kicking it, and such an unusual rhythm, too – I’ve always loved the odd “meter” of this track, and it sounds absolutely wonderful in this “new” version, in the vocal-less “No Quarter”, John Paul Jones’ keyboard masterwork, is brilliantly renewed in this alternate mix, I’ve always loved this song, I’ve played it on the piano or on electric piano or synth, for many, many years – another very, very progressive track – and Page’s sinister guitar riff is fantastic, while Jones plays wah-wah electric piano – fantastic, and, with the vocal focal point taken away, sounding absolutely remarkable.

I can still remember the day the original vinyl Houses Of The Holy was released, in 1973 – I went to the store, which was just a department store, that had a records section, that was nearest to my house, I was still in school at the time – the store was a White Front (because, the front was white) and I was there when the opened, had to wait while the staff un-boxed the album – and, there were a LOT of boxes – and a lot of us waiting to buy the album – this would be the per-cursor to the pre-order, back in the vinyl days – going to the store on release day, to get the record within the first five minutes of it being available. Fantastic. The strange Hipgnosis artwork fascinated me, it’s a truly beautiful record visually, too – and I took it home, and played it and played it, and then – played it some more.

What had happened to Robert’s voice? In the two years since Led Zeppelin IV, something happened, it just sounded so weird, until you got used to it. Pagey and the rhythm section, as always, made up admirably for any inconsistencies in Plant’s vocal performance, but in hindsight, I think he did a great job of the vocals on this record – they are excellent, especially on the rockers – like the wonderful “The Ocean”, another one that Pyramid learned and played, an absolute BLAST to play on guitar – what a rocker. “Got no time to pack my bags, my foot’s outside the door….”

The outro of the alternate UK mix in progress of “The Ocean” is absolutely amazing, with Plant singing in a very high register indeed – vocals that do NOT appear on the original album, but that are quite brilliant – so singing live, in this mix in progress, we catch a glimpse of the erratic vocal genius of Robert Plant – a great set of extra material this time, on both of these new Zeppelin re-master releases – they just get better and better and better. I am really amazed, and I really give Page a lot of credit for taking the time to produce this catalogue, and, to do such a meticulous, pristine, careful job of it – Jimmy Page is probably / possibly the 1960s equivalent to today’s Steven Wilson, maybe.  Or maybe, Steven Wilson is the 2010’s Jimmy Page – who knows?

I don’t know about you, but personally, I can’t wait for the re-master of Physical Graffiti – that should be another event entirely – and, for me, it’s the last “good” Led Zeppelin album – after that, they were never the same. But this period – 1971 to 1973 was awesome, two of their very best records, while really, from 1970 to 1974, was ALL sheer genius, on the road, and in the studio – well, really, starting with Led Zeppelin III – for me, this is the Holy Trinity of Led Zeppelin albums:

This is the 1970 – 1975 version, which does give a good overview of the changes the band went through…

1) Led Zeppelin III
2) Houses Of The Holy
3) Physical Graffiti

Or, the “Super-Purist” Led Zeppelin Fan version which covers the timespan 1971 – 1973, and this was an amazing short period of sheer creativity, on a scale that they never really got back to after delivering these three amazing records:

1) Led Zeppelin III
2) Led Zeppelin IV
3) Houses Of The Holy

It was at the end of this period, in 1973, that I saw the mighty Zeppelin, live at the San Diego Sports Arena, getting to delight in a tour that was half a tour in support of “Led Zeppelin IV” and half, the tour that saw some of the tunes from Houses Of The Holy being previewed for the first time ever. I then saw them again, twice in one week, remarkably (due to insane levels of ticket demand – on a Tuesday night, and then, on the Friday night of the same week – in 1975, which gave me the view from Physical Graffiti looking back). Both tours were amazing, and unforgettable, and the 1973 concert, also happened to be the very first rock concert I had ever attended, at the tender age of 15, but I was already rocking then, and starting out with Led Zeppelin live is not a bad way to start at all – it has stayed with me, and I try to remember that youthful energy now when I play the guitar – a few years on.  🙂

But, whether I like it or not, whether it is a boon, or a curse, or both (probably both, I am betting) the pre-order is here to stay, at first, I did tend to resist it, but now, I take advantage of it every time, so I can get that “waiting for the store to open to pick up my new album, by my very favourite band at the time” feeling again. Wonderful days, when I just had The Beatles, and then Led Zeppelin, and not a whole lot else, to listen to.

Starting out as a lead guitarist, for me, Led Zeppelin was a great grounding for the aspiring rock lead guitarist, learning all of those songs – some, simple enough, sometimes, it’s quite easy to imitate Jimmy Page (say, on “Tangerine” or “The Ocean”) – including some really difficult ones, like “Ten Years Gone” from Physical Graffiti, in trying to learn that bastard of a song, my respect for Jimmy Page went through the roof – he was really a very, very serious guitarist capable of a huge range of expression, and he wrote some cracking good songs, too!

Will we ever see or rather, hear, Led Zeppelin on 5.1? I don’t know. But I do know, now that I have a collection of 5.1 audio discs started, that I would probably be the first 15 year old kid, in line at a digital “White Front” called “Amazon”, no longer in 1973, to get my brand new shiny 5.1 version of “Houses Of The Holy”. I will be there.

Please.

 

Meanwhile, I would have to agree that pre-orders; re-masters with expanded bonus tracks, sessions, mixes, takes – are both boon and curse, the curse being, I haven’t really got the kind of money to buy all the AMAZING stuff that is coming out on CD – for example, I have my eye on the new five CD box from original Genesis guitarist Ant Phillips – but I don’t know if I can afford it, so I have not yet ordered it. I can’t decide, I know I would like it, that’s not an issue, it’s just the cost. So the curse, which started with having to buy multiple versions of the same King Crimson albums, over and over again, year after year – now continues with a positive river of reissues, re-masters, 5.1 expanded editions, box sets and rarities collections – and my mind says “I want it all, all of it” but my pocketbook does not agree with me, it does not automatically say “yes” to every new release.

Would that it would or could. But hey – if I skip one five CD set, maybe then I can afford a nice affordable 2 disc set? Or, I can save up to buy REV, the latest software instrument for Komplete / Kontakt, that I have had my eyes on for several months – I really should just lay off of CD buying for a while.

But – I probably won’t, because invariably, burning shed will send me an email, with just ONE thing I want, I will go to the website, and find another four or ten things that I really, really want – and I try to compromise, maybe buy two, or three, but not eight, or ten or 12.

This is so complicated. Almost like a Complicated Game. And then, you get pre-orders. Sure, they are handy; they mean you get the disc quickly, you can also get special promotional items if you are one of the first to order, I have both a beautiful “The Power And The Glory” postcard from the Gentle Giant set, and, a beautiful “Drums And Wires” postcard, personally autographed by the good Andy Partridge. That can go with my full set of autographed 2009 XTC re-masters, I suppose. Except…they are re-mastering them again. With the right music, with more of the music, much more, with the right artwork – I am so, so glad that Andy Partridge created APE records, and has put right the many questionable activities of his former record company Who Shall Remain Nameless.

And perhaps the one thing that APE records and Andy Partridge have “put right”, is in creating this absolutely powerful new version of “Drums And Wires”, which is visceral as all hell, and so powerful when rendered into 5.1 surround sound by the good Mr. Steven Wilson, I was truly riveted throughout both the 5.1 album version, and the 5.1 instrumental mix – utterly fascinating, and it really does give you an absolutely new appreciation for the songs, you really do “hear things you’ve never heard” when you hear a good Steven Wilson 5.1 mix.
In my humble opinion, not speaking as a musician now, but just as a fan of music, and a fan of the band XTC for many years – I was so, so lucky, to see the very last live show the original quartet (the one with Dave Gregory, so not the original, the almost-original, quartet) in San Diego, before Andy packed it in for touring – that this 5.1 version of “Drums And Wires”, is, to date, the BEST of the Steven Wilson 5.1 mixes.

He takes a great, well-made album, and turns it on its head, making you hear things that were there all along, but, that you never quite appreciated because you were too busy listening to Andy sing or listening to one of Dave’s incredible solos…but, the amazing musical touches of the original production team, and in particular, the power and majesty of the now long-departed Terry Chambers on drums, coupled with the rapidly becoming-McCartney bass playing of Colin Moulding, well, those two are an INSPIRED rhythm section, and you don’t realise just how good they are, until you hear this in 5.1 – providing the perfect rhythmic bass and drums “bed” for the two guitarists to work over – and, work they do.

A supreme effort for Mr. Wilson, then, (and a proud rendering of what is almost certainly the band’s masterpiece) and I for one, offer a tip of the hat for his amazing work on this disc, it floored me, I am so, so glad I opted for the Blu-Ray, it just sounds SO incredibly good – it really does.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming:

October 27, 2014

Three Pre-Orders Arrive in One Day:

1) XTC / “Drums And Wires” – The Surround Sound Series – Steven Wilson 5.1 Mix
2) Led Zeppelin / Led Zeppelin IV – Re-mastered by Jimmy Page and expanded with a full second CD full of alternate mixes and bonus tracks.
3) Led Zeppelin / Houses Of The Holy – Re-mastered by Jimmy Page and expanded with a full second CD full of alternate mixes and bonus tracks.

CDs for the collection, or rather, four Led Zeppelin CDs and one XTC Blu-Ray full of 5.1 mixes and bonus tracks, and one XTC CD – so, five CDs and a beautiful Blu-ray – not a bad evening at all, a very nice thing to come home to, I should say!

And I do say.

Let’s have then, next, along with the obviously-hopefully-forthcoming Physical Graffiti from Mr. Page, how about XTC – The Big Express – followed by XTC – English Settlement – two of my personal favourites, from Mr. Wilson?

This would be a boon to my ears, and a curse to my pocketbook – but never mind, it is all about the music – and it is the music that matters, as you will know, if you regularly hang around in the land of pureambient as I do.

I guess I will continue to do pre-orders; which means that more and more, I will be expecting x number of items to arrive on a certain date, which will mean then, an evening of listening, learning and exploring – for example, I saw two videos that I’d never seen, and I heard several XTC songs that I had never heard before, when I sat down to explore the “Drums And Wires” Blu-ray at some length – and that was a wonderful experience, the videos were hilarious, with our heroes goofing around in classic style, but again, it was hearing all that music, music I’d never heard, early sessions, a rehearsal – so much effort going into the preparation of the album – and finally, making the album, with a long series of abandoned tracks and ideas scattered in their wake – but, still ending up with a couple of dozen truly excellent, and often startlingly innovative, tracks, enough for the album and for any number of B sides as well – plenty of songs to go around.

Well – when you put it like that…OK, dammit, boon. Not curse, boon. Sigh.

 

[expensive boon?] 🙂

scorched !!

or – “Dave Gregory – home at last…”

I suddenly realised, after many months of hearing the name “Tin Spirits” (but never, sadly, hearing their music – until now, that is…) the penny finally dropped: this is DAVE GREGORY’S band. Yes – that Dave Gregory, the one who used to play stunt guitar in that little ole’ band from Swindon, the redoubtable XTC. For 19 years, across 12 studio albums, from “Making Plans For Nigel” in 1979 (from the remarkable ‘Drums And Wires (1979)‘), to “Senses Working Overtime” (from the remarkable ‘English Settlement (1982)‘) on up to the celebrated “Apple Venus (1999)” (the last XTC album that Dave appears on).

Dave Gregory established himself as a stellar lead guitarist capable of precision-engineered, well-crafted and very creative guitar solos, including some truly unforgettable ones all the way from “No Language In Our Lungs” (from the remarkable “Black Sea (1980)“) to “The Ugly Underneath” (from the remarkable “Nonsuch (1992)“) and all points in between.

If Dave was the “quiet Beatle” of XTC, he wasn’t so quiet when it came to his solos, and if Andy Partridge wrote the songs and had that crazy, boundless energy, then Dave was the thoughtful musical foil to Andy’s uh, “Extrovert” personality. Dave also has an amazing collection of legendary electric guitars, vintage guitars and amps, and always had a few amazing vintage guitars to hand at every session, always the right guitar for the right solo – always well prepared, and always sounding just right for the song in question – whichever it may be. Yes, that’s a lot of “always”, but you count on Dave to come up with a great guitar solo for almost any song, no matter how strange, or how beautiful…

Don’t forget, too, that Dave was also in “The Dukes Of Stratosphear”, along with Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding of XTC, and his brother, Ian Gregory, on drums, the amazing 60s psychedelic rock parody band, and later on, worked with Steve Hogarth (and was a regular member of his touring band, too) and Dave has also appeared on albums by the Bournemouth prog band “Big Big Train”, and of course, pre-, during and post-XTC, he has always been in demand as a session guitarist, too.

As the old reliable wikipedia put it: “Since leaving XTC, Gregory has been much in demand as a session musician with a number of artists, including Peter Gabriel, Aimee Mann, Cud, Marc Almond, Bingo Durango, Johnny Hates Jazz, Jason Donovan, Martin Newell, Louis Philippe, Lulu, Mark Owen, R. Stevie Moore and others. Gregory, who has been regularly involved in Steve Hogarth‘s h-Band, has also contributed to works by Porcupine Tree, including string arrangements on their sixth album, Lightbulb Sun, and for Dublin group Pugwash.

On 16 August 2009, English progressive rock band Big Big Train announced on their official blog that Gregory would be appearing as a guest musician on their sixth studio album, The Underfall Yard.^[1] Gregory subsequently appeared on Big Big Train’s Far Skies Deep Time EP and is listed as a full band member on English Electric Part One (2012)”

That demonstrates just how in-demand Dave’s services as guitarist, arranger and musician are – one of Britain’s “most desirable” guitar note-slingers.

Dave’s newest band, Tin Spirits, first got together in Swindon, UK in the summer of 2008, when Aussie import, guitarist / vocalist Daniel Steinhardt from TheGigRig invited former XTC guitarist (and musical hero) Dave Gregory to a local studio to video record an ‘amp shoot-out’ with Dan’s band The Hi-Fidels, comprising bassist Mark Kilminster and drummer Doug Mussard. The rest, as they say, is history…

Me saying “Stunt guitar” is absolutely short-changing him, Dave played a huge, huge part in helping Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding to create the “XTC sound”, and if anything, not nearly enough credit goes to Dave, for his outstanding contributions to both their albums, and to their live shows – for two decades.

I remember when I saw XTC live, show 9 of the “English Settlement” tour, and I recall watching Dave playing, off to the side of the stage; he was multitasking in a really cool way, and when he reached over to play the squiggly synth line that follows Andy’s lyric “just a spineless wobbly jelly fish…” from “When You’re Near Me I Have Difficulty” (from “Drums And Wires (1979)”) – Dave makes the “jellyfish” sound on his little synth – and then, right back to lead guitar…my jaw hit the floor, and I spent most of the night, trying to see around the incredibly energetic Partridge, to see and hear what Dave was doing back there – it all just sounded amazing! All good.

That show, XTC live at the California Theater in San Diego, California, (my then-hometown) on April 3, 1982 turned out to be the 9th and final show of the US leg of the tour, the rest of which was completely cancelled due to “illness”; but the well-publicised breakdown of Andy Partridge (just hours after young 1982 Dave Stafford saw them play live!!) was the real reason the tour was halted. The band never toured again, occasionally, some years later, doing a small number of acoustic shows on radio or television, or the odd TV appearance here and there…

Dave had joined XTC at just the right moment, just as they were breaking away from their frenetic “dance band” persona, and with the departure of the sometimes alcohol-fuelled organist Barry Andrews, they were, much to their own surprise, already becoming “serious musicians” – recording and touring behind “Drums And Wires” – an album that I still listen to often, well, for me, that’s where it all started.

I have been a fan of XTC since the late 70s or early 1980s, indeed, I was fortunate to be at that very last live show they ever did, in San Diego back in ’82. That’s the only time I ever saw XTC or Dave Gregory play live, but the experience stuck with me, and based on seeing them that year (they were AMAZING!) I continued to collect their albums, and to follow their progress, as they moved into their own version of the Beatles’ “Studio Years” – when touring becomes a burden, and the decision is, let’s (still) make records, but, not play live.

This was mostly down to bandleader Andy Partridge, it was Andy who ended up so stressed out that he called time on live performance just HOURS after I saw him play a blinder of a show, and everyone was disappointed, because XTC live was one of the most energetic and interesting bands you could see live, in the early 1980s – they didn’t really have a lot of competition, especially once they had delivered both the most excellent “Drums And Wires (1979)” and it’s excellent follow-up, “Black Sea (1980)” – followed by the very excellent “English Settlement (1982)” – by the next excellent album, ‘Mummer 1983‘, it was time for Terry Chambers the drummer to go – and go he did, to Australia to marry his girlfriend, and, after playing with the Australian band “Dragon” for a couple of years, after that, he never really returned to the music business.

Now drummer-less, it did not in any way phase the remaining three members of XTC, who were all long-time friends from Swindon, and Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory, carried on through the rest of the 1980s, and into the 90s, until eventually, Dave could stand no more, and he left – and, then, XTC was a duo – and Andy and Colin went on to make more albums, although for me, once Dave left – they were lacking that spark – sure, Andy is damn near as good a player as Dave is (they are both amazing guitarists, let’s face it) when he makes the effort, and, he did make more of a real effort with the lead guitar parts on the ‘post-Dave’ albums, because I am sure he was conscious of the shadow and the memory of Dave sitting there in the studio, quietly ripping through some more amazing lead guitars for the latest XTC disk. The amount of lead guitar on records post-Dave, is noticeably less – Andy plays a few good solos, here or there, but it’s just not quite the same….

But the eventual fate of XTC is a story for another time, for now, suffice to say, that Andy and Colin went on to create a very respectable canon of work after the departure of Dave, who suddenly found himself at loose ends – playing on sessions, playing wherever he could, for a quite a few years after he left XTC. Things were almost beginning to plane out, Dave was almost forgotten, and could easily have faded from the ever-quick-to-forget music fans, but luckily, a chance encounter with a trio of Genesis / XTC fans ended up in more invitations to jam, and over time, Tin Spirits, was formed as a four piece, two-guitars-bass-and-drums band – with Dave Gregory on lead guitar.

So – once I realised that I had been missing the boat completely for a few years, that this amazing band, Tin Spirits, had toured the UK (and I could have SEEN THEM live – extreme dismay!) and indeed, they had been, and, much to my eternal frustration, on their earlier tours, they did a lot of covers of prog and other music that they had a shared love for, including Genesis “Back In NYC” from “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” and other songs by Rush, Yes “Roundabout”) and even Frank Zappa.  You can view some videos of some of these amazing prog covers on the Media page of the Tin Spirits official website.

Of course, it will not bother me one bit, if instead of these covers, that if we do get to see them (and I really, really hope we can…) that we might have to “endure” listening to them play most of the tracks from their new disc “Scorch” – and I will tell you, much as I would have loved to see and hear Dave Gregory play “Back In NYC” with his new band, it would be NO hardship whatsoever to sit and listen to Tin Spirits play some or all of the “Scorch” album – no hardship at all. 🙂

I have heard Scorch about four times now, and each time I hear it, I just end up feeling so uplifted, and it really, really makes me want to play the guitar (and only the very best guitar albums have that effect on me); it also really makes me want to write on guitar again (not something I’ve done a lot of since ‘gone native‘) and one thing that Tin Spirits have been extremely effective at, is creating a very full, very prog sound, without the use of keyboards – none whatsoever were used on “Scorch”, it’s all guitars, bass and drums – as it should be, really.  Dave himself is an accomplished keyboard player, but I applaud their determination, and “Scorch” is proof positive that you can make a big, big prog sound just with two guitars, bass and drums.  Of course, guitar technology has come a long, long way, and the lines between guitars and synths, continue to blur.

But the main difference between Dave Gregory, amazing lead guitarist of XTC, and Dave Gregory, amazing lead guitarist of Tin Spirits – is that in the former, he didn’t really get to play much at all – a solo here, a solo there, a keyboard solo, the odd guitar bit here or there – but nothing that he could really get stuck into – whereas in the latter, he doesn’t just get stuck in – he excels, explores and explodes – you can hear that Telecaster cutting through the air during the epic “Garden State”, and the extended solos that Dave is now not only allowed to take, but should be legally REQUIRED to take, will knock your guitar-playing socks off.

This is really a master class for lead guitarists, and we could all learn more than one thing from listening to ”Scorch” – and the rest of the musicians in the band are not slouching, in any way – guitarist / vocalist Daniel Steinhardt (also a pedal board/guitar controller inventor – the inventor of the amazing TheGigRig) is damn near as experienced and as capable as Dave is, so it’s a remarkable pairing, almost, but not quite, like having two Dave Gregorys in your band – and that, my friends, is a VERY good thing.

Bassist / lead vocalist Mark Kilminster and Doug Mussard (drums and vocals) are one of the most experienced and adaptable rhythm sections I have ever heard, and the way they slot in their backing, providing rhythmic support for the two interlocking guitar wizards – this would be, a “sort of” analog / mirror of the prog / pop “version” of Levin and Bruford supporting Fripp and Belew – I cannot think of any other truly analogous pairing of “amazing rhythm section” with “two remarkable and innovative guitarists” – I can happily and honestly say that about both King Crimson, and, about Tin Spirits.

And, another thing – the “no keyboards” rule has been faithfully followed, so somehow, Tin Spirits have created truly Progressive Rock, without the use of the dread synthesizer, and to me, to use just the guitar technology available, to be able to write for two guitars, bass and drums, and create the complex, intricate and beautiful music that is contained on “Scorch” – that is quite an accomplishment.

I am absolutely gobsmacked by just how good “Scorch” is, to the point where I plan to sit down this weekend, and order their first album, so I can have their entire recorded catalogue :-). I know that the first album is not rated as highly as “Scorch” is – but I am prepared and ready anyway, open ears and mind, and I am sure I will enjoy it.  If this video is anything to go by (link below), it’s going to be excellent – a 13 minute plus epic from that first album, “Wired To Earth”; here is “Broken” – this bodes well, sounds good to me!

I bought “Scorch” without having heard one note by Tin Spirits – and, as sometimes happens, it was an incredibly GOOD ‘blind’ decision. This album is currently rocking my world, and finally, after 19 years of tantalising glimpses of Dave Gregory’s genius, from the guitar solos on “That Wave” from the remarkable “Nonsuch” to his brilliant work on “Drums And Wires”, “Black Sea”, “English Settlement”, and so many other brilliant XTC albums; “The Big Express” is a huge favourite of mine, really, I love all of XTCs catalogue, one of the most enduring in this genre (start out punky, and then gradually mutate into the new Beatles – you know, THAT kind of band!) not to mention the 1986 smash hit “Skylarking” album, produced by Todd Rundgren – an amazing body of work, but now, Dave has started another one – and this one is the guitar band for guitarists who REALLY LOVE GUITAR – “Tin Spirits”. Album Two, “Scorch”, is fantastic. I haven’t heard Album One yet (“Wired To Earth”), but, I will be ordering it this weekend.

From those tantalising glimpses of brilliance provided by a great solo from Dave on a really good XTC song, to this: where Dave is utterly set free, where he can solo for as long as he likes, and, this record is full of extended, and super-extended, and ridiculously super-extended guitar solos, many of them by Dave – and the range of playing, from Hendrix ballad style drenched in prog beauty to scathing Telecaster lead lines, I could just listen to the guitar solos, and duos, on this record over and over and over – and, don’t get me wrong, the band has EXCELLENT vocals, but right now, I am bathing in the glory of a finally-unleashed, finally-unchained, doing it the way HE wants to, nearly endless guitar solos from Dave Gregory – FINALLY !!!!!!!!! If only Andy had let Dave play like THIS in XTC, we might have seen them become a brilliant Prog band too…

This boy can PLAY. He can PLAY good. He knocks my socks off on this particular disc, if you haven’t picked up “Scorch”, I recommend it highly – it’s the guitarist’s guitarist guitar album of the future, and I love what I am hearing – finally, freed from the 30 second XTC mini-solo, when Dave stretches out on album closer “Garden State”, it’s like getting to hear Hendrix practicing beautiful guitar for “Angel” or “Drifting” or “Little Wing” that’s all I can think about, when I hear the fluid, sinuous, sounds of Dave’s guitar, and his tones are pure liquid fire, they are musically SCORCHING, there is absolute purpose, and serious musical intelligence there, and never has there been a more aptly named album.

I will let others do the song by song analysis of “Scorch”; I am really more interested in conveying what an extremely excellent album “Scorch” is, and, also, trying to give it the back story it deserves, and how it fits into the chronology of both XTC, as well as Dave Gregory‘s long and very distinguished career as a great guitarist, arranger, and all-round musician, vintage guitar enthusiast, and now, playing in the band of his dreams – Tin Spirits.  And for me, even though I’ve started at the wrong end of their short and sweet catalog, “Scorch” is an amazing musical document, and it is absolutely worth checking out.

I will say, the album opener, “Carnivore” sets the mood brilliantly, it’s a proggy instrumental with lots of great guitar, but it’s when we move into the next few songs, and you start to get to where there are well-defined guitar solos…and you suddenly “hear” Dave, you KNOW it’s Dave just by the sound – and to my mind, the only guitarist that I think is similar to Dave, is the late, great Jimi Hendrix (but probably, the gentler, more melodic “side” of Jimi) – who is clearly, clearly a huge influence on Dave.  So when that first “Gregory” solo hits your ears – you are suddenly really paying attention, and it does not disappoint – instead, it reels you in, you want more – and you don’t just get more – you get a LOT more – more Dave Gregory guitar on this album than you will find on any three XTC albums ! And that is saying something…

The gentle, pastoral guitars of “Little Eyes” from “Scorch”, take you everywhere from an almost King Crimson “Discipline”-style “interlocking” or what I call “gamelan guitars” to fluid, beautiful, liquid Hendrix guitar solos – the whole effect is so uplifting, positive sounding – a brilliant track, “Little Eyes” gives you a very good idea of the basic quality of the album – it’s just a perfect little song – lovely.  It’s long instrumental outro, is a great showcase for Dave’s amazing guitar style, and in this solo, you hear him reaching for the stars – and finding them, sparks flying – just one of those so-perfect solos, that then merges perfectly right back into the rhythm of the song…seamless, timeless – beautiful.

Take someone like Dave Gregory, with his massive collection of amazing vintage guitars, his knowledge of how sounds were created in the past, and his ability to recreate very specific guitar tones by using particular combinations of guitars, amps and effects, add in his many, many years of guitar playing, almost always, as a lead guitarists in one form or another – and you have a mature, powerful, guitar-force-to-be-reckoned with: Dave Gregory; in 2014 – suddenly, I can hear the culmination of that career, a player at the top of his game, the craft of guitar is relaxed, confident, powerful – you can hear it – in the beautiful guitar solos that are featured in almost every track on “Scorch“.  Remarkable!  And really, really beautiful, too.

Get “Scorch” now, if you love prog, if you love pop, if you love guitar music, if you loved XTC, if you love the guitar work of Dave Gregory – heck, just get it – I bet you will like it! In Europe, you can get it from Burning Shed, in America, probably Amazon. This be rocking! I’m going back to listen to it again right now…ah…sonic bliss 🙂

SKYLARKING – XTC – a mini review – yes, the polarity, and a few other things, have been corrected!

Hello. This is a review of the re-released ‘Skylarking’ CD by XTC, written in a new style that I like to call, ‘stream of consciousness’. In headphones, my very first listen to the ‘new’ ‘Skylarking’. I hope you enjoy it. 🙂

Ahhhh…..I am back now in “SUMMER’S CAULDRON” – drowning here, in actual, fact, sonically drowning in my headphones, at least! – with the insects buzzing in rhythm all across the sharpest stereo field of any version of “SKYLARKING” I’ve ever heard – from the moment the disc begins, I realise that ANDY PARTRIDGE is right – the original release does sound “thin and distant” – but that has now been sorted by original album engineer JOHN DENT, who, after discovering the album’s polarity issues, then applied just the right amount of 2013 technology to the problem, this strange problem of “incorrect polarity” – but whatever that really is, it’s been fixed, let me assure you – the backing vocals of “SUMMER’S CAULDRON”, so clear and clean, the vocal harmonies layered so beautifully, TODD RUNDGREN’S melodica part drifting beautifully through this wonderful, clear new mix – the insects and birds constant throughout, and then we are suddenly brought into “GRASS”, with its swaying, utterly beautiful violins introduction, one of COLIN MOULDING’S best pop songs, ever, from any album – and the guitars, finally, the XTC GUITARS have arrived – jangly, bendy, wonderful guitars – and there seem to still be some crickets lurking here and there in this song – with its double entendre about being “on grass” – lying on grass, or, is it lying on grass whilst BEING on grass – “the things we used to do on grass”…what a lovely tune, and when that big vocal harmony comes in near the end, and the violins switch back from pizzicato to legato – and then, the birds and insects return to help the feedback guitar to gently end the piece in their long fade out. Producer Todd Rundgren’s wonderful “musical” programmed birds and insects sound amazing throughout “SUMMER’S CAULDRON”, and then when they reappear at the end of “GRASS” in full, finally fading away so that we can all meet up in “THE MEETING PLACE” – this one is so, so quirky, but I love it, it’s just fantastic – with its gently moving up and down form, and that irresistible descending guitar riff, COLIN MOULDING supplying some wonderful PAUL MCCARTNEY style high register riffs as is his habit, and then “THE MEETING PLACE” gives away to ANDY PARTRIDGE’S ode to superwoman, “THAT’S REALLY SUPER, SUPER GIRL” – a fantastic and underrated piece of pop music, very complex background harmonised vocals, wonderful Electro-Harmonix phaser shifter style sounds, great effects on all of the vocals – this song is really all about harmony, and even counterpoint – the layering of main vocal, background vocals, and harmonising vocals is exquisite – and then, we get the first proper lead solo on the record, an absolutely snappy gem, ending with some truly sublime whammy bar bending, a super (sorry, there’s just no other word to describe it!) clean, super concise lead solo, the kind that XTC have become known for, ever since childhood friend and guitarist DAVE GREGORY joined the band, on their third album, the much lauded “DRUMS AND WIRES”. But now we are back to ANDY PARTRIDGE, and a song that has a very special place in my heart, as I spent many, many hours working up my own very special cover version of the song, for one of IAN STEWART’S wonderful XTC cassette compilations, this one entitled “SKYLACKING”. My version of “BALLET FOR A RAINY DAY” wasn’t meant to sound anything like the XTC version, I built the music for the song entirely out of ebow guitars, working in harmony, to emulate the pianos and guitars of the original – and then, I sang a very tenuous, uncertain lead vocal on top of the ebows – but, even if imperfect, working on this song just sent my admiration for XTC through the ceiling – the vocal arrangement, when those background vocals appear, and the amazing piano in the background, not to mention ANDY PARTRIDGE’S remarkable lead vocal performance – what an incredibly beautiful voice…and with the words “slow descending grey” a phalanx of violins introduces us to our next tune, “1000 UMBRELLAS” which features an all strings backing, very, very intense strings, which underpin Andy’s strangely agonised vocal, he seems at the point of desperation here, a huge contrast to the easy and beauty of the previous track, “BALLET FOR A RAINY DAY”, which just shows you how multi-talented he is – this vocal is practically a different persona – and then, hope returns at the end, the strings cheer up a tiny bit…Andy’s voice of desperation changes to beautiful pop mode again…and then suddenly, a slow ritard to our all-strings extravangza ending, and it’s the circus-accordion into to the bouncy, jaunty, and extremely fun “SEASON CYCLE” – “pushing the pedals on the season cycle – summer changed by autumn….” this piece is very, very PAUL MCCARTNEY to my mind, like something that belongs next to “GOOD DAY SUNSHINE” – but in this case, “SEASON CYCLE” has a curious central bridge section that is suddenly very solemn and serious, taking the mood down several notches briefly – before returning to the bright and wonderful refrain of this remarkable pop tune from ANDY PARTRIDGE. A very short silence now, for the first time, and suddenly, the incredibly powerful beginning of what may be my personal favourite track on the album, “EARN ENOUGH FOR US”, which every man seeking employment or a better job or a better paying job can instantly relate to, having a wife and family to worry about, but this age-old story here is told to the absolutely popping snare of ex-TUBES then-TODD RUNDGREN drummer PRAIRIE PRINCE, who plays drums on a number of these tunes (and completely kicks ass on this particular tune – it really is an amazing piece of drumming) – and this song, to me, is just THE perfect power pop song – it rocks, that’s all there is to it, it has a really strong drum part, and then, powerful, power-chording and lead guitar playing from both ANDY PARTRIDGE and DAVE GREGORY, a fantastic chord progression that the BEATLES would have been proud to use, it’s just an incredible piece of power pop / rock craftsmanship – and there a million reasons why it’s my favourite – COLIN MOULDING’S bass part is amazing, again, with those PAUL MCCARTNEY like high register sections, working perfectly with the drums – very REVOLVER-like at the end – this song just wakes me up, it’s bright, it’s message, while somewhat dark, is framed in the brightest of sounds – a wonderful dichotomy, and I can’t say enough good about this song. Amazing, beautiful vocals, too. “I’ve been praying I could keep you – and, to earn enough for us” – no sooner has it arrived, then the hopeful, beautiful pop masterpiece “EARN ENOUGH FOR US” has to end…leading into the a cappella start of “BIG DAY”, Colin’s foreboding warning to newlyweds everywhere, which while lyrically is not perhaps the most genius on this record, or as a song – this song still has a lot going for it, including that odd intro, which repeats during the song, which actually comes to a complete stop to allow this burst of harmonised “BIG DAY”S to repeat. I like the stop start feel of the track, it’s nice that it stops, and each time that vocal section plays, it gets odder and odder, the second repeat, a strong tremolo is applied to the vocals, and there are lots of lovely psychedelic sounds in the background…the tremolo then is applied to the verse itself – maybe it’s more of an auto-panner, difficult to tell sometimes, but a great effect nonetheless, this song is all about sonic imagery – and the sounds do evoke a lot of mental, visual images – so it succeeds wildly on that scale. The next song is one of the most eerie, beautiful songs that ANDY PARTRIDGE has ever written, with a vocal that is so remarkable, and has such beautiful effects applied to it – what an amazing piece of music is “ANOTHER SATELLITE” with it’s beautiful delay lead vocal, which then leads to other islands of different types of vocals, including some lyric-less “ta-ta” sounds, then, glockenspiel or similar arrives to accompany our spaced-out lead vocal, the rhythm is sort of drum machine, but with those big ringing, heavily chorused guitar chords ringing out in the background, it sound alive, not machine like – marimbas now appear, to tie up the verses – and then, a long outro of repeated choruses ‘don’t need “ANOTHER SATELLITE”…’ on and on into the distance, which then leads up to…the lovely (and for a time, the “omitted”) “MERMAID SMILED” a beautiful acoustic guitar number, with insane, high speed percussion courtesy of ex-TUBES percussionist MINGO LEWIS, another awesome musician who participates on this amazing album, due to the RUNDGREN-EX-TUBES axis of power. Meanwhile, muted trumpets, and intense bass part, and some just amazing melodic and chordal ideas, bring “MERMAID SMILED” inexorably to its all-too soon ending…but then, more MINGO LEWIS mad percussion begins another one of the albums standout tracks “THE MAN WHO SAILED AROUND HIS SOUL” – with its hippie flutes and jazzy piano and bass parts, this is just an odd, odd song, but somehow, it absolutely belongs here – and it also sounds incredibly “JAMES BOND” – high pitched strings, heavily-reverbed “spy” guitars – in fact a lot of cliché spy guitar here and there in this piece – and then back to those jazz breaks – it’s so odd – but I love it to bits, what an amazing and unique ANDY PARTRIDGE piece – MINGO LEWIS popping the fastest bongo solos you ever heard, PRAIRIE PRINCE’S drumming is insanely clever, a mad break in the middle, then, back to bongo’s and flute for the outro, with Andy singing a lone refrain of the title…an absolute classic, with a perfect spy ending. And then – the other controversial song on the album, the incredibly poignant, sad and musically perfect “DEAR GOD”, this song is the first thing I heard from this album, except, at the time, it was just a single, it wasn’t actually ON the original album, it has only been added in in later years (and some purists object to its presence on these later releases – this one included) but personally, I can’t imagine listening to the rest of SKYLARKING without it. In this short, pop masterpiece, ANDY PARTRIDGE has a long chat with GOD, and he challenges him on several burning issues, whilst amazing, Beatle-like TODD RUNDGREN strings drift in sheer beauty in the background, a great tune – fantastic string arrangement, and ANDY PARTRIDGE’S acoustic guitar and vocals are absolutely sublime – and then, a strident, powerful bridge, where ANDY PARTRIDGE seems fairly disgusted with GOD’S performance – and finally, to an ending that mirrors the song’s beginning, both the beginning lines, and the final line, both being sung by a young girl named JASMINE VEILLETTE that TODD RUNDGREN suggested for the part. The amazing GOD-questioning “DEAR GOD” is followed, suitably, by COLIN MOULDING’S remarkable song, “DYING”, which features among other things, a sort of clip-clop horse-like rhythm (but not quite) some fragmentary acoustic guitar chords, a serious bass part, and then, a beautifully arranged bridge, with lovely clean electric guitars, and a lot of beautiful ATMOSPHERE – and finally, a clarinet during the songs fade out, “DYING” is a song full of regrets, and a song full of forlorn longing, not wanting to end like his beloved relative did – “I don’t want to die like you…” – very, very serious subject, but a wonderful and rewarding song…sitting in the penultimate position on the album, “DYING” is followed by yet another COLIN MOULDING tune, the very unusual “Sacrificial Bonfire” – with yet another absolutely incredible, truly beautiful orchestral arrangement from TODD RUNDGREN, which in the middle part of the song, threatens to overcome the vocalist with its power and presence. Luckily, COLIN MOULDING holds his own throughout, the song is based around a very simple acoustic guitar and bass figure, but it then builds to a fantastic crescendo thanks to TODD RUNDGREN’S orchestral contributions. In 1986, when the album first came out, I admit, I struggled with both “DYING” and “SACRIFICIAL BONFIRE”, but over time, as is their wont to do, their particular magic has worked on me, and I eventually realised just how beautiful, and just how important they are to winding your SKYLARKING experience in just the right way – it can’t all be triumphant highs, and COLIN MOULDING provides just the right amount of sober realism to create a rounded, beautiful end block of two remarkable songs. The contrast between the writing and performing styles of ANDY PARTRIDGE and COLIN MOULDING has always been one of the most important aspects of why the music of XTC is so successful – they each write in a very individual style, but by gracefully peppering a bunch of ANDY PARTRIDGE tracks with a smaller number of COLIN MOULDING tracks – you end up with the perfect masterpiece pop album – and SKYLARKING is damn near perfect in every way – I can’t think of a more consistent, more creative, and frankly, more beautiful pop extravaganza – 15 remarkable tracks by two writers who over time, have become national treasures in Britain – I just wish they were still writing together. So – SKYLARKING – Polarity Corrected version – get it- you won’t regret it. A beautiful setting-straight of the record, this is the way it was meant to sound, and, the way it was meant to look – and now that Andy has the rights, he has set right a grievous error, the release of the thin and distant, incorrect polarity version, from 1986 through to 2014 – it’s now, in 2014, finally “right”. Enjoy the fruits of ANDY PARTRIDGE’S labours: a new, improved, thick and lustrous SKYLARKING. 🙂

sam phillips – a wizard, a true star

maybe that’s a strange title for an article about sam phillips, but I think todd rundgren’s well known album title / phrase (from the album of the same name, aka “AWATS”) fits sam perfectly.

sam phillips writes and performs pop songs of the highest quality, often using the simplest of tools, but there is definitely wizardry afoot (albeit of a different nature to todd’s) – and when she brings in other players to flesh out her acoustic guitar/voice or piano/voice compositions, a lot of really interesting things begin to happen.  first of all – only sometimes, do they perform the traditional roles of backing musicians, and as time goes on, they are called upon to contribute more and more unusual items – van dyke parks‘ contributions to “the indescribable wow” being the first of many.

THE EARLY YEARS

but I will start at the beginning.  once upon a time…there was a young singer who was part of the then fairly significant christian music scene.  at that time, sam was known as “leslie phillips” – and in 1988, roughly coinciding with a major change in her music, her fourth and last album for myrrh (purportedly one of the main christian labels responsible for what was known as contemporary christian music) delivered, and she wanted to distance herself from the “leslie phillips” persona – so her forename changed: from “leslie” to “sam”.

because of the timing of this, that actually makes it very easy to delineate the two main parts of her career – part one, leslie phillips, christian record labels, devotional/pop music, part two – sam phillips, secular themes with a strong undercurrent of faith – less devotional, darker, but still amazing pop music.

I don’t believe that I have every leslie phillips or sam phillips song in my music collection, but I have most of them, and I enjoy them all.  the oldest record I have is “dancing with danger”, which is from 1984 (this is her second album for the myrrh label – I was never able to locate a copy of her first album, “beyond saturday night”) and despite the sheer beauty of the then young “leslie phillips” voice – the arrangements cannot, unfortunately, help but sound VERY dated – not just because of the sound of 1980s synthesizers (mostly,  not good sounds) and string machines, but also because for some weird reason, “christian artists” were expected to sound a certain, very well defined “way”.  production values, on christian pop records from this era (not just leslie phillips albums, but pretty much all christian artists – with of course a few exceptions), are strange – well – just sort of stilted, predictable, as if every song is a power pop ballad whether it is or not, or worse, they take a smarmy pop song…and somehow, god only knows, they make it sound MORE smarmy…by (over) “producing” it (shudder).

leslie was never comfortable with the image that the christian labels had given her, calling her (bizarrely) “the christian cyndi lauper” – odd, since her music sounds NOTHING LIKE cyndi lauper.  but – that’s what they did – and I think she suffered it for four albums, and then finally said goodbye to myrrh and the idea of working as a “christian artist” – she needed to express herself simply and clearly, and for that, she needed a new partner in crime – and that turned out to be legendary producer t-bone burnett.

so on some/most/all of the earliest material, there are issues with the arrangements, issues with good songs being arranged with the “I am a christian artist” sound, which to my mind, unfortunately, makes what could have been quite beautiful, very, very difficult to listen to and enjoy in 2013.  of course, there were obligatory duets with male christian singers, and, nothing wrong with a duet, but that again, was part of what the christian labels expected, and possibly demanded, from many of their artists…

interestingly, “dancing with danger” ends with a special reprise version of “by my spirit” – the “radio version” – and instead of the routine, obligatory duet-with-male-christian-singer version – you get the whole song sung just by leslie (thank god, another chance to hear this song – without the annoying “duet” format!!!)

however – having said all that – I can still listen to “dancing with danger”, and it’s follow-up, 1985’s “black and white in a grey world” – which I prefer to “dancing” – in fact, really, sam is one of those artists that literally got better and better with each album.  but – be forewarned, if 1980s production values, PLUS christian-label production values drive you mad…you may have difficulty listening to these records 🙂  when I do listen to them, I have to ignore a lot, and concentrate on the quality of the songs, and sam’s voice – not the production values, which are downright upsetting in some cases, such poor choices are made, production-wise.  oh – they are slick, they are clever – but very dated sounding now, and I doubt sam phillips, 2013, would disagree…I do not know 🙂  I can tell you – starting with “the turning”, things begin to sound much, much better.  and, most of “recollection” does not suffer from overproduction.  all albums “the indescribable wow” forward have production values that you would expect of their time – not bad ones, just, of their time – and that is a good, good thing.

despite the very dated, very christian-label production values, there are some truly spine chilling vocal performances from sam on these early albums; and even the occasional great lead guitar solo (such as one of those aforementioned duets, an early version of “by my spirit”) – which also has a FANTASTIC vocal from leslie…really beautiful, and worth the pain of admission just to hear this track.  her voice is simultaneously the strongest, the most passionate, and at the same time, incredibly vulnerable sounding in the world – an extraordinary sound.  so if you seek this particular track out, ignore the obligatory male duet vocalist, ignore the arrangement, and just listen to leslie’s voice and the guitar solo.  goose bumps – almost guaranteed.

I should spare a few moments for 1985’s “black and white in a grey world”.  it starts with the almost funky title track, with leslie singing as if her life depended on it, with a strangely desperate / urgent sound to her voice – and, a really good lead guitarist, dan huff, trying hard to keep up with her vocal.  in some ways, this record is just a continuation of “dancing with danger” – it does share a very similar ethos, although the production values are better, less disastrous, which makes it simultaneously much less dated sounding than “dancing with danger” and therefore, a lot more listenable.

I personally really like this record, and it contains the early, “produced” versions of some of the very best songs on “recollection” (including “when the world is new”, “your kindness”, “walls of silence” and “love is not lost”), so it’s nice to be able to compare and contrast them – fully produced versions on “black and white in a grey world” – demo or alternate versions on “recollection”.  for me – the demos and stripped down versions are ALWAYS going to win – always.

what you are also witnessing, if you listen to these records in chronological order, is the amazing growth of sam phillips as writer, performer, engineer and producer.  with each step forward, slowly at first, but gradually gathering her own momentum, until she eventually broke her relationship with the christian record labels – I assume because she realised how much they were dictating, and that she wanted her records to express her personality, her writing, her songs – so she took action.  she moved to a different producer, and got away from the christian labels.  and that saved her career, if she had continued down that road, I believe that the christian labels would have just ground her down until she quit or gave up in utter disgust.

luckily for us, sam’s determination and will are strong, very, very strong, and once she moved from the christian music world to the “secular” music world – well, amazing things began to happen, and also, we began to hear the real sam phillips, rather than the leslie phillips trapped within a sort of strange christian…wall of sound – and that’s when and where it all starts to really happen for her…

it was in 1987 that she had her first breakthrough, still as leslie rather than sam, but a transitional record, perhaps – which is a very remarkable album – strangely, a collection of demos and early works, called “recollection” that finally brought the “real leslie phillips” to light.

LOVE IS NOT LOST

“recollection” is the record that made me sit up and say to myself – this girl has something special.  at first, it was little things that I noticed, such as the incredibly beautiful backing vocals on “love is not lost” (the version on “recollection”, I mean, not the one on “black and white in a grey world”) – this was the first time (and possibly, only time…) in my life that I ever felt chills from a BACKING VOCAL ! it was uncanny, and then I started noticing other very carefully worked out backing vocals on other tracks, and for myself, I found that the sound of this “leslie phillips” singing passionate melodies over the most incredibly beautifully crafted backing vocals in the universe – so five or more “leslie phillips'” at once…shivers, chills, and pure emotion put into music – incredibly stripped back versions, guitar, bass, drums, a bit of backwards guitar – and you have a work of true genius… “love is not lost”.  indeed.

the lead vocal of “love is not lost” was smoking hot too, it’s a beautifully concise, really driving pop song – and for me, the best of the leslie phillips era, is mostly encapsulated on “recollection” – a fantastic collection, and stripped of much of the unnecessary “production”, the songs are startling in their simplicity, straightforward, girl-with-acoustic-guitar who wants to change the world – and does. repeatedly. over and over again. if any song every could be described as having “pop urgency” it’s “love is not lost”…a pop gem, and the haunting voice of leslie-soon-to-be-sam is chillingly beautiful in both the lead and backing singer roles…like a wave of beautiful vocal energy.

while I may prefer the later records, if you like sam’s music at all, you owe it to yourself to seek out these older records, despite the best efforts of the christian record labels to bury sam’s voice in some incredibly overproduced pop monsterpieces, there is still a huge value to going back and listening to these early, devotional pieces – she means every word, and her voice is just an incredible instrument of beauty.

released as “leslie phillips” –

beyond saturday night (1983)

“dancing with danger” (1984)

“black and white in a grey world” (1985)

“the turning” (1987)

“recollection (best of / compilation)”  (1987)

which means that I still need to properly address both “the turning” and “recollection” – probably my favourite two albums made under the name “leslie phillips”.

THE BEGINNING OF THE CHANGE…THE TURNING

“the turning” is exactly that – her fourth album for christian label myrrh, but her first collaboration with producer, and future husband, t-bone burnett.  so despite still being on a christian label, “the turning” is a very, very different sounding album to any of it’s predecessors, burnett bringing out the very best in leslie.  no more over-produced christian label induced musical nightmares, the album seems (to me anyway, but I am an atheist, so I am probably incorrect about this) mostly secular in it’s themes, with a few obvious exceptions such as the not particularly inspiring album closer, “god is watching you”, which strangely, was penned by burnett.

besides that, the songs on “the turning” are once again, straight from the heart, straight to the heart, hard hitting, serious, beautiful pop music – the first of many successful burnett / phillips collaborations.  obviously, 1987 was a pivotal year for sam – she released two albums, began a relationship with burnett as both producer and romantic partner…change was in the air, and in my personal opinion – it was all change for the better.  leaving myrrh was the one of the best things that ever happened to phillips, from what I can tell…

the album also contains one of my favourite leslie phillips performances, the lovely “libera me” (also penned by burnett – but this time – a cracking little pop song) – a track that also appears on “recollection” in a different guise.

in fact, there are a large number of songs that phillips has recorded, re-recorded, and then released a demo or alternate of – as if she is never, ever satisfied – every year, she tries again, to see if she can get a “better version”.  but that “never satisfied” thing is good for us, the listeners, because sometimes it means you get two or three different great versions of a really good song – such as “love is not lost”, “libera me”, “walls of silence” and many others – she just seems to want to “better” the previous version each time, so I would count this obsession of hers as a positive…and I hope, for her sake, that if she has “re-done” one of her songs two, three or four times – I hope that she is happy with at least one of the versions!  my tendency is to like all the versions, but not equally.  when in doubt – the version on “recollection” will be the best 🙂 I can pretty much guarantee that !

“the turning” was decidedly different, it did very well both in the christian and the secular markets, and some folk feel that it is her “high point” – the album that she cannot “top”.  I am not sure I agree with that, I am mightily fond of certain later albums – in particular, “martinis & bikinis”, and, more recently, “don’t do anything”.  but if we are just talking about the leslie phillips era (and not considering her later output as sam phillips) – well, I would rate “recollection” as number 1, with “the turning” a close second.  which really makes “the turning” first – because “recollection” is, after all, “just” a collection / best of (but…what a collection it IS !!!).

as her final album in her “overtly christian” phase, as leslie phillips, “the turning” still contains songs of faith, but you can feel change in the wind, the songs have an edge to them not previously notable beneath the massed christian / production values.  as noted above, and there is some song recycling going on – notably, one of my favourite of leslie’s songs, “love is not lost” appeared first on 1985’s “black and white in a grey world”;  again, reworked, for 1987’s “the turning”, and, in still a different form, on 1987’s “recollection” – but I don’t mind that in the slightest – I absolutely love and adore that song, so I am happy because I have three versions instead of one!  the more the better, when it comes to leslie or sam phillips tracks…and on all of the versions of that song, the combination of her lead vocal and the flowing, liquid beauty of her backing vocals all melt together in one absolutely stunning pop confection – wow.  what a beautiful vocal arrangement.

“the turning” is also the only “leslie phillips” album that was re-released later under the name “sam phillips“, which is interesting, because that shows that, moreso than the first three records, that “the turning” is important to sam, or more important, than the first three – and she wanted it recognised to be part of the “sam phillips” era rather than the “leslie phillips” era – so to me, that says that in her mind, it was her first “true” record, the first one where she felt as if her personality and her actual self were finally coming through in the music the way she wanted. it’s also odd, because I personally always felt that “the turning” had more in common with the albums that came after it – “the indescribable wow” being the first one to follow it (the first for virgin, the first more secular album, the first where her name is sam not leslie) – than it ever did with the previous three records.  it just…belongs with the sam phillips (and therefore, does NOT belong in the leslie phillips) catalogue.  that makes sense to me, musically, too.

burnett’s production style, as we have learned over the past several years since he’s become much more high profile, was an absolute boon to phillips.  burnett instinctively knew how to get the best out of her voice, and his arrangements (some of which are quite strange and unorthodox) – were an absolute breath of fresh air compared to the first few myrrh releases.  suddenly…we could REALLY HEAR sam, and what she was saying, more importantly, we could hear her vision for her songs, as interpreted through burnett (who basically, I think, stood back and let sam do what she wanted…and captured it on rolling tape) and it all just became so much clearer…everything became clearer. not dissimilar to a famous 1968 david crosby moment, as producer of her first solo album, when crosby had joni mitchell play and sing for a few of his (very lucky) friends for the first time…saying to them “listen to THIS….” – a shiver and a sigh.  burnett would have known that with phillips, he was on to an extraordinary talent, while working with burnett gave sam the freedom to express her true self on record for the first time.  and what a powerful musical cocktail that is…shaken, not stirred 🙂

leslie’s lead vocals seem higher in the mix; the title track has a wonderfully stark feel to it, and burnett’s contributions (excepting the rather predictable “god is watching you”) – a co-writer on the beautiful album opener, “river of love” and the writer of the very poppy “carry you” – adds another element to a great batch, the final batch if you will, of ten songs from leslie phillips. from my viewpoint – well, there is value in all of the “leslie phillips” catalogue, but I can recommend first “recollection”, and then “the turning” – as the most developed, least overproduced of the lot – well worth a listen – recommended most highly.  “recollection”, in particular, is essential listening…

THE BIG CHANGE

and that brings us to the moment of the big change. 1988, free of myrrh, and newly signed to virgin records, “leslie” is reborn as “sam”, and sam phillips moves gracefully, almost unnoticed, from “christian artist” to mainstream pop artist on major label.   her first record for virgin, 1988’s “the indescribable wow” is a fantastic debut from what must have seemed to the world like a “new artist” – the leslie phillips persona played down completely, and sort of “starting over” with a new forename, a new record label, a new producer and husband in t-bone burnett, and, a new record.

ten new songs (no re-runs here!!), eight from sam, and two co-written with t-bone burnett.  burnett would, in the end, go on to produce every sam phillips album from 1987’s “the turning”, to 2004’s “a boot and a shoe” – and here was literally, a perfect marriage of producer and artist – in the studio, and in life – a fantastic musical couple.  I like this first album for virgin a lot, but I will say – it’s the same effect – beginning with “the indescribable wow” – each record just gets steadily better and better.

the urgency of the lead vocal on the second track on the album, an urgency that now seems purer, less desperate than before… “I don’t know how to say goodbye to you”, with yet again very beautiful backing vocals…is startling, her voice insistent, you can feel the sense of being ripped apart, the fact that she literally cannot say goodbye to someone she loves – for three minutes and nineteen seconds…you are there, you are feeling those feelings – everyone has lost someone they love – and letting go, as we know…is incredibly difficult.  sam takes that age old struggle – and turns it into a three minute pop masterpiece. to me, a song like “I don’t know how to say goodbye to you” is damn near as perfect a piece of pop music as you can get.  and her voice… indescribable, vulnerable, anxious, urgent, hurting…unable to let go…but knowing she has to.  awesome!

DARKNESS AND LIGHT

and that brings me to an odd observation about the music of sam phillips.  sometimes, not always, she does something that shouldn’t really be possible.  she takes a serious lyric, about a serious topic, that perhaps represents disappointment or fear or unhappiness – and dresses it into an upbeat, positive sounding (musically, I mean – major key, bright, etc.) pop song.  so the words are “down”, but the melody and chords and arrangement are “up” – so you get this weird, indefinable melancholia about some of the songs…a very sad lyric wrapped in a very happy “sounding” piece of music.  a wonderful musical dichotomy.

I think that’s a great quality, and not ever pop writer can do this – usually, pop songs are either up (think, the beatles, “ob—la-di, ob-la-da”), or down (think, the move, “blackberry way”) – more rarely do they embrace down lyrics with up music.  but somehow, sam does this not once, but often – and it’s just brilliant.  certainly “I don’t know how to say goodbye to you” falls into this strange “lyrics down / music up” container, with it’s uber thin beatlesque guitar figure and lush background vocals, and chiming finger picked guitars – and the most insistent snare drum beat – and when that bridge hits you, her voice is just so full of pain and hurt – and the music is…happy ! it’s the oddest thing, but I love it.

a few other tracks on this and on other albums – “I can’t stop crying” is another one, although it’s not quite such a dichotomy, it’s more like “down lyrics with neutral music” 🙂 but I think this is genius, when it hits the chorus, it’s a bright, positive melody as she is singing the words “I can’t stop crying” – brilliant!  dark against light, or light against dark…

“flame” is clearly the son of the beatles “and I love her” – and while this is a sam phillips tune, the arrangement seems pure t-bone burnett to me – and it’s a great atmosphere – first, just the verse, with only one voice – the percussion tapping gently away to sam’s strummed acoustic guitars, lead acoustic guitar, and then…the magic starts to creep in, first, a stunning bridge, with one of those goose bump-inducing vocal melodies…then back to our gentle chorus…with great guitar accents added in, a really, really beautiful song despite it’s strong resemblance to a certain beatles song !

and then we have something new, in a song like “remorse” – a rocking, hard hitting band – who play at speed – sam can barely spit the words out the tempo is so demanding – but the background vocals, again, steal the show – spine chilling beauty each time they appear…what an amazing vocal sound, so now we have really hard hitting power pop, flying bass, snapping snare drum – and sam – flying in over the top – and when those waves of backing vocals arrive – and later on in a really strangely syncopated break – wow, it really is the “indescribable wow” – a fantastic major label debut – “and me so sorry…”.

fantastic guitar, both rhythm and lead – take the song to a strange instrumental plane, there was NEVER a “leslie phillips” song as strange as this! really amazing guitar work from t-bone burnett, who is surely one of the most underrated guitarists around.  then, the last part of “remorse” is this strange, languid guitar instrumental – that’s just weird – definitely not part of any “formula” pop song with a verse / chorus / verse / bridge / chorus / verse arrangement.

“what do I do” is another oddity, super multi-tracked vocals atop a moving bed of strings – a hundred sam phillips floating above this strange bed of acoustic guitar and strings…I’ve never heard a pop song as odd as this before.  every song on this record is like a little mini pop symphony, but burnett always wisely showcases his new secret weapon:  the awe-inspiring vocal chords of ms. sam phillips or maybe I should say “ms. sam burnett” 🙂

once again, perhaps even moreso than on “the turning”, sam’s voice is front and centre, burnett making the most of her incredibly expressive pipes.  “the indescribable wow” is an absolute success – a fantastic achievement and a great introduction to sam “definitely not a christian artist anymore” phillips, and her beautiful pop songs – a really lovable record, and always a favourite.  it’s strange too, because while burnett produced both sam’s last christian record and her first “secular” record the next year – those two albums could not really sound much more different!  OK the answer to that mystery might be right there in the sentence, one of them is christian, the other “secular” – but even production-wise, they are very, very different animals – a lot of “the turning” is somewhat stark, while a lot of the indescribable wow is very lush, layered and sporting a new melodic and harmonic beauty that was only glimpsed before – now, it invades practically every song 🙂 – and that is a good thing

“the turning” is serious, moody, intense, while “the indescribable wow” is a bright, poppy, snappy kind of record – possibly the “most upbeat” record sam has ever made…but lyrically, still fairly dark and always inquisitive – always questing, always questioning – that’s always been the way. and this difference is just one example of sam moving from style to style, musical persona to musical persona – in an almost bowiesque way – well, perhaps not as extreme as that, but each new album brought something new to the table, as both phillips and burnett hone their respective roles as artist and producer…although t-bone really almost always seems to end up playing some instrument on some songs on his production projects.

having produced, basically, six albums over six years – five for myrrh, one for virgin, finally, a gap appeared between albums.  this is a healthy sign – no artist or band can produce an album a year for long, without burning out or becoming very repetitive – so I for one was happy to wait a couple years for sam’s next album to arrive.  and when it did, I was not disappointed – because once again, while “the indescribable wow” is a very good album, sam’s sixth studio album, “cruel inventions”…is even better.  well worth waiting a mere two years for.

POP INVENTIONS AND AN ELVIS SIGHTING

starting out with a truly awesome guitar riff, the lead off-track of sam phillips‘ sixth studio album “cruel inventions”, entitled “lying”, let’s us know right away that sam has undergone yet another miraculous musical transformation – on the first track, she starts out the lead-off song singing in a really strangely low pitched voice, which only rises up for the “I’d be lying…” chorus – then, more great lead guitar (this time, on this new sam phillips record,  it’s both burnett and the great marc ribot on guitar – but, as it turns out, it’s none other than elvis costello playing the awesome guitar riff on this track!!) – and then, suddenly, the very, very strange “bridge with strings” comes out of nowhere – but, those strings aren’t strings – well, they are, sort of – they are created from a keyboard called a “chamberlin” (a relative of the mellotron) as arranged by and played by the remarkable van dyke parks – and how burnett and phillps managed to get parks to not just arrange, but to actually play on their album – well, that ups “cruel inventions” musical ante considerably, as amazing “cellos” and virtual “string sections” appear from nowhere, not to mention eerie chamberlin flute and voice clones as on the title track…

and all over this remarkable record. the presence of parks, and the chamberlin, puts this particular phillips release into a class of it’s own – and the “string” arrangements here, are not like any others…beautiful work.

the chamberlin is a really lovely and unique, but little heard instrument that impacts the sound of this album heavily – giving it a character unlike any sam phillips album before or since.

the second track on “cruel inventions”, “go down”, is so incredibly wonderful and strange, I seriously doubt that I have words to describe this piece – which, strangely, among many odd musical events – features background vocals that are panned hard to one side (something I’ve never noticed before on any record – fabulous idea!!) and a circular vocal that can only be described as being like the sam phillips version of a gentle giant circular vocal – except instead of five gentlemen from portsmouth singing in a modern day “round”, it’s five sam phillips’, singing an incredible vocal creation – just fantastic.

more highly developed, circular and just plain beautiful vocal harmonies abound on this record, again, on the very catchy “standing still” (one of my favourites from the album) – this is an album of vocal and instrumental experimentation, and it’s wonderful hearing sam sing through a thick flanger, in the very cool “tripping over gravity”, which also features a very innovative vocal arrangement; where a chorus of “sams” is dropped into a huge delay over and over again – while the dry flanged lead vocal soars far above. “missing….logic….tripping over gravity” – a very atypical and very unexpected piece of music, unlike any song sam has done before or since.  if I didn’t know better, I’d almost think it was inspired by progressive music – but who knows what music sam listened to at this, or any time – you can’t really tell by listening to her records, because she is a force unto herself – she’s sam.

the presence of marc ribot also increases the musical cache of this record, his guitars are tasteful, beautiful, and essential to the success of this record.  “tripping over gravity” becomes a hypnotic, almost ambient ecstasy; the delayed voices joined by beautiful, beautiful chamberlin strings…a mesmerising chorus that seems to go on forever and ever and ever…which then suddenly ends with two or three very odd loops playing out the tune – absolutely bonkers arrangement, more science fiction than normal pop music…if there was such a thing as “progressive pop” – this song would probably qualify as the first proper example of the genre…

“now I can’t find the door” – a tale of insomnia, not induced by alcohol, but by some kind of night time anxiety – this is a straight ahead rocker – with it’s beautiful “away from you, comrade…away from you, baby”… fantastic lyrical imagery, delivered with a strange throwaway quality, but underpinned by the classic phillips vocal urgency.  sam’s voice, now more mature, so world-weary, always filled with passion, the human embodiment of the perpetually-broken heart – and this mostly drumless piece rocks, s0 when the snare does finally enter – more circular gentle giant style vocals appear on an unexpected, beautiful centrepiece / bridge – music magic from phillips and producer burnett.

“raised on promises” features a sinister spy movie / sci fi guitar riff, and a bittersweet voice that is possibly singing a bit autobiographically…with terrific “ahhhhh” background vocals – brash and impudent backing voices – then, as the song builds up, more and more vocal harmonies are added in, until the “massed sams” absolutely overwhelm the listener, with their insistent beauty.  when the bridge arrives, the secret weapon appears again – van dyke parks and his chamberlin – with 17 seconds of incredibly beautiful orchestral sound – and then he’s gone again, or at least, mixed back down…these sudden mysterious bursts of chamberlin just add to the mystery and beauty of this record.

the album’s closer, it’s the string-driven van dyke parks “miracle string sound” again, with “sam phillips pop song” dropped on top – it’s almost as if she wrote the songs to fit the strings, rather than writing the song and then having parks add the strings – this string arrangement is really cool, and the title-as-chorus really sticks in your head “that’s where the colors don’t go” – and another amazing bridge, with fabulous orchestrations – and then, van dyke parks “takes a solo” – and you get four bars of absolutely amazing orchestra (via the chamberlin keyboard, of course) including, a “penny lane” style “trumpet” as the chorus repeats in an endless, joyous fade out – an amazing juxtaposition of pop song, amazing pop singer, amazing pop producer, and genius string / orchestral arranger – working in perfect harmony.

THE BASS MAN COMETH – LIGHT INTO DARK

for the next album, 1994’s “martinis & bikinis”, the longest gap between phillips albums ever, a full three year pass before this masterpiece is unveiled. and that says it all – the album opener, a very short track called “love and kisses”, which contains the title in it’s lyrics (“martinis and bikinis for our friends…”, well let’s put it this way, I love that little song so much, that I actually did a cover of it on my TEAC 3340S, which has never been released.  that’s the only sam phillips cover I’ve ever done, and I did a very, very faithful rendition of it – all 0:56 seconds of it.  one of the most enjoyable mini projects I’ve ever had the pleasure to work on.

viewed by many as her musical high point (particularly, within the “sam phillips” years), again, some say that “martinis & bikinis” is the height of sam’s achievement, and in some ways, I can’t really argue with them. featuring an even more amazing band than last time, this time, there is no van dyke parks (well, one cameo role, he arranges the strings on “baby I can’t please you” – but other than that, nothing), but, along with phillip’s stalwart sidemen t-bone burnett (guitars, basses, and many others), mickey curry (drums), david masfield (violin, multi-instrumentalist) and jerry scheff on bass, is added the suddenly out of work colin moulding , of XTC (coming off of the 1992 pop XTC masterpiece, “nonsuch”), getting melodic pop bassist extraordinaire moulding was an absolute coup.  he was free – sam asked him to play on the album, so he did.

that might not seem like a big deal, but the bass guitar playing on this session, practically drives the entire album – it simply rocks, in a “I am the OTHER paul mccartney” way – moulding at this point, was a very accomplished bassist and writer in his own right, confident, melodic – and knowing a thing or two about pop music, too – and he also is the only other producer that sam ever worked with during the t-bone burnett years – colin co-produced the very infectious pop single “baby I can’t please you” – which, had it been sung by andy partridge or colin, would have sounded somewhat like a lost XTC track.

but the poppy then moves to the deadly serious, as “circle of fire” with it’s shockingly odd guitars, sticks in your brain, and the biting, deadly, sinuous vocals, with their tight harmony – followed by the most spastic slap back echo guitar solo I’ve ever heard – it’s absolutely over the top –and is PERFECT for the song – meanwhile, mickey curry on drums is working in perfect rhythm with colin moulding’s flying bass…it’s just perfect, the perfect rock vehicle for sam’s strident, serious tune.  her voice sounds quite brittle on this track, I love it when she really reaches for a low note – and nails it..fantastic.

then we have one of the most beautiful sam phillips songs ever, the delicate, heartbreaking “strawberry road” – which again, contains instrumentation that had not previously been featured a lot on sam phillips records: harpsichord, hammond organ, and cello – and used to great effect, I love the harpsichord part in this piece, and her vocal is heartbreakingly beautiful…leading us to the road – the “strawberry road, where the dream fades, down between our longing and desire…”

beautifully chorused guitars work with organ, and then cello, for a very serious, almost pseudo-classical coda, that gradually fades to nothing.  a pop gem, a really lovely little song…oddly peaceful, like a personal song about a place of sanctuary.

then comes what is another of my favourites from this record, or rather, (along with the aforementioned “love and kisses”), and that is the pop master class of “when I fall”. sam’s trademark “chorus repetition”, a constant ride cymbal, colin moulding on the bass…simple, straightforward guitar lines and leads, but it’s that voice, something about the way the second and third “when I fall” is sung, something catches in my throat, and I can almost feel sam falling – you almost feel how hurt and lost and frightened she seems, and her desperation to not fall, but she knows she is falling – but, “I think you’ll be there when I fall…” so there is hope…but it’s tenuous.  the sound of sam’s voice on this song is a heart stopping sound…really sensitive and really lovely.

amazing “ahhhs” appear from nowhere, more insanely beautiful backing vocals – for the lovely little bridge, which is followed by really beatlesque / xtcesque lead and reverse guitar solos…leading to the final verse and chorus, colin’s bass climbing around subtly in the background, the hammond reappearing to give it some glory, the beatle guitars chiming…it’s fabulous!

more beautiful backwards guitar in the repeating chorus coda, and a long fade with hypnotic guitar and organ finally takes “when I fall” to it’s lovely conclusion.

“same changes” is another real rocker, with colin’s bass pulsing and throbbing beneath another fabulous tight harmony chorus from sam, her voice so confident on this record, just singing her heart out, and making her songs come alive with the help of the best band she ever had – I mean come on, colin moulding of XTC on bass !!!!!, mickey curry on drums – and t-bone burnett – yes, there are additional players, but that “core band” – they just rock – and “same changes” is one of the best, love the drum part, love the bass, love the guitars, love sam’s massed vocals…including a strange circular bridge where the band hangs back, and then dives into a great lead solo, that just rocks – a fantastic tune – including some trumpets mixed in there for effect!  very strange.

ALL CHANGE

then…comes the moment of terror, with the truly frightening “black sky” – a flat out dirge/tirade against the culture of nuclear war, and “diggers, drillers and sellers…” – with the clear message of the chorus:

“we won’t stop…until we’re underneath the black sky”.

the ultimate destruction of mankind via the horrific weapons that mankind invented – missiles are mentioned, but the craziest thing is this “la la la” chorus that follows the chorus proper – it’s so dark, there is none of the characteristic sam phillips here, especially in a song that contains the line “the forest raped into desert” – you can tell that in this case, this isn’t a light pop song, but a deadly, deadly serious, questioning, warning song – utterly apocalyptic – that warns us, that if we continue down this path of weapons and oil, money and not taking care of our planet – that we WILL end up with nothing, having destroyed everything via our greed, and our desire for power.

against an eerie backing of strange, strange guitars and throbbing drums, and not much else, sam’s stark warning vocal just stops you in your tracks – the album having gone from pop / happy / light to darker than dark in the space of one song – “black sky”. heed it’s warning, there is nothing frivolous about this lyric, or this amazing vocal performance…and once again, sam has come up with a song unlike ANTHING she ever, ever did…before or since… a true one-off, an utterly unique song and performance, which I think is fantastic.

“the black sky” is so strange, so unique – and that’s the genius of sam phillips – you are listening to a great pop record, everything bright, happy and positive – and then suddenly, you are plunged into the pitch black darkness, the world ends with a black sky, the stars gone – and it’s of course, all down to what mankind has been getting up to…and sam’s voice is the voice of truth, chilling truth, and when you hear the condemnation, the summing up of the crimes – well, be prepared, it isn’t pretty – not at all.

TRIUMPHANT… JOYOUS… YET LONGING

sam then returns to pop mode with the most excellent “fighting with fire”, which is then followed by another real favourite track of mine, the obviously (at least somewhat) autobiographical “I need love” – which follows the sam phillips pop song formula perfectly, but the urgency of her voice on the “I need love” chorus grabs you right by the throat and doesn’t let go – and interestingly, we have one of the few open references by sam, regarding her departure from the christian labels when she sings “I need God…not the political church” – in a somewhat “telling” variation of the chorus.

“the wheel of the broken voice” to me is a strange choice of penultimate track, but over the years I’ve grown to love it – I think it’s more about burnett than phillips, but that’s just an impression I have – I could be entirely wrong.  it used to be my least favourite song on the record, but now I like it a lot, so – go figure.  it’s perhaps a bit rhythmically strange, so placing it that near the end maybe harms the perfect, driving pace of the record up till this point.

ALL I WANT IS THE TRUTH

then, to finish off this most remarkable of albums, sam does something completely unexpected: she covers a john lennon song, turning in what must be one of the very, very best covers of this song out there, the hard-hitting “gimme some truth” (from the “imagine” album) – which lyrically at least, fits right in with the themes of this record.  not an easy song to cover, and burnett wisely chooses to not even attempt to emulate george harrison’s amazing slide guitar parts, instead opting for a lovely, psychedelic pop version – and he let’s sam’s voice carry the arrangement.

which it really does, I mean, no one can hope to “top” the vitriol and anger that john put into his original version (which is purported to be about the vietnam war – which is believable, given the time frame of it’s writing, 1971), and I don’t think phillips and burnett are in any way trying to “top” it, but you do feel that sam agrees very much with the sentiment of the lyric – and when she gets to that chorus, practically spitting out the words, “just gimme some truth” – even though it’s the (normally) gentle, lovely voice of sam phillips – the anger at being lied to, by the government, maybe by the church, or by people she trusted who let her down – comes through loud and clear.  “just gimme some truth…all I want is the truth…”

indeed.

“martinis & bikinis” might well be my favourite sam phillips recording, and possibly my favourite sam or leslie phillips recording…it’s difficult, I change my mind all the time, one day it’s “recollection”, the next, it’s “martinis…” so I will just have to leave it open-ended for the time being.  but I do recommend this album to anyone who loves good quality pop music, and, the presence of xtc bassist colin moulding gives it that extra pop sheen that for me, is irresistible.

not to mention, it’s a collection of some of the very best songs ever written by sam, and it’s just outstanding in terms of composition, arrangement, performance and mixing – a great record, a classic pop masterpiece.  with one terrifying break in the form of “the black sky”, this is an album of urgent, driving pop music with some of the most beautiful vocals you will ever hear, underpinned by one of the masters of melodic bass playing – you can’t really go wrong.

FROM DARK…TO DARKEST

it was another two years to the next sam phillips record, during which time, once again…everything changes.  “omnipop (it’s only a flesh wound, lambchop)” has to be the oddest of the odd within this collection of pop albums.  it’s the most “difficult” of albums for me to connect with personally, it’s very, very much of it’s time, and it embraces technology as only an album made in 1996 can – wholeheartedly.  in an ever-not-so-slightly over-the-top way.  so for those of us who had grown familiar with the sam phillips catalogue – it was a shock to the system.  a complete change.

gone are the gentle acoustic guitars, the pianos, the lovely background vocals – and in their place, a stark sounding, almost alien sam phillips sings strange melodies over odd, electronic, robotic backings – album opener “entertainmen” is a perfect example…this is not the sam phillips we were just getting used to – this is yet another sam phillips, electronic music explorer extraordinaire.

now, if I detach myself from the history, if I set aside all of the albums from 1987 – 1994, if I put “martinis & bikinis” out of my mind, and I listen to “omnipop” as if I’d never heard sam phillips before – well, I would probably like it a whole lot better to begin with!  it’s not a user friendly album, and I’d be curious to hear what sam has to say about it now, in 2013.

the dissonant musical slap in the face that is “plastic is forever” is another strange entrant to this new “just how strange can this get” song writing competition, and while it’s clever, it’s not particularly melodic or memorable.  speaking of memorable, the third track, “animals on wheels” is certainly that, and the mental imagery that this odd song creates is certainly unique – and odd though it is, it’s quite catchy, and you do find yourself singing it for the next few days after listening to the album.  it’s the first song on the album that really appeals to me, so it’s a bit less strange and more recognisable – but just barely.  almost a melody…

the rest of this album is like a blur to me, when I play it, I remember the songs, but when I leave again – they are instantly forgotten, expect perhaps for the catchy “animals on wheels”.  even the jaunty rhythm of “zero zero zero” fails to move me, and I just find myself wanting to move on through the tracks – yes, there are some decent songs, some even great vocal performances, but overall – this album is just a bit strange for my taste.

“help yourself” is really, really too much for me – with a very, very dissonant arrangement of jazz instruments, that grow horribly out of nowhere, over and over again.  “your hands” has a beautiful vocal, but the melody seems flat, dead – terrorised.  on “your hands”, her voice feels choked and halted, and I just don’t connect with these rather strange arrangements of potentially good songs – it’s definitely a “kitchen sink” approach – they had all kinds of awesome new studio technology available – and by god, they were determined to use every bit of it.  and sometimes, sam’s lovely vocal, just gets swallowed up and lost in all the tech.

finally, “power world” actually sounds like a sam phillips song again – thank god, an ordinary pop song, with drums, bass, guitars and vocals – love it.  a bright spot in an otherwise odd sea of musical ideas -“our ideas of perfect are so imperfect…” – how beautiful is that?  I think that is a great line, a great lyric – so there is some redemption, but why do we have to sit through six very, very weird songs to get to something recognisable?  that makes “omnipop” hard going.

and then you get to something like the song “(skeleton)” – which, if it were on an adrian belew album, would make perfect sense – but as a sam phillips track, it doesn’t really convince…first of all, it’s instrumental, and I love it – but it just seems misplaced.

“where are you taking me” is another return to pop form (or at least, pop form 1996 style), and includes some great flute mellotron or chamberlin, but as a song, it’s a bit scary – sam sounds simultaneously terrifying and terrified – a very, very odd song – with some great guitars, but not a song you want to put on if you feel you need cheering up 🙂

then you get an odd little pop gem like the also out of place “compulsive gambler” – which at 0:48 seconds in length, is basically over before it starts – but I love it.

“faster pussycat to the library” is a cool and intelligent pop song (great title, too – I love the way she titles her songs), another improvement, with beautiful carnival chamberlin (or similar) sounds atop a sparse rock backing.  a lovely vocal, too, but as a tune – nothing you can whistle along to…”if you don’t know what to do, I’ll make it up for you…” – lovely strings and flutes, warped and crazy…kind of cool.

album closer “slapstick heart” is slinky, and features a beautiful vocal – in fact, even though I find this record to be a bit strange, I can’t fault the sound of her voice – which is always compelling, no matter what the musical context.

if you bought all of the other sam phillips records and liked them all – then there will be a lot for “omnipop” to offer you – but if you are not a die hard fan, this might be the one album you might give a miss – but you would be missing out on something that is utterly unique and of it’s time – and with a title like “omnipop (it’s only a flesh wound, lambchop)” – well, that should be warning enough not to expect a “typical” pop album – and indeed, this is about as atypical as they come.

COMPILING, COMPILING AND COMPILING…

a previously unreleased track called “disappearing act” starts us out on our first collection of sam phillips song’s, “zero zero zero” from 1998.  a strange reverse guitar, an oddly wailing female voice in the background, and sam’s voice with a lone bass and acoustic guitar…it’s a nice little song, a pleasant start to a somewhat odd journey through the last few albums.

moving from the new to the strong, the powerful “I need love” from 1994’s “martinis & bikinis” gets us off to a good start – a good choice from her strongest album.

this is followed by “holding onto the earth”, from “the indescribable wow”, another nice bit of phillips musical history.  this is presented in a very different musical arrangement from the original album version, although it’s not marked as “alternate”, I believe it is…another example of sam re-writing her own history, by making changes to songs over and over again, always seeking that perfect version.

next is another pop masterpiece from “martinis & bikinis” – the very catchy “signposts”, again with that trademark colin moulding bass line – brilliant.

an alternate mix of the lovely “where the colors don’t go” follows – but, not terrifically different to the album version – just subtly different, but again, she can’t resist to do something different with an existing song, which I think is so cool – and I’m very pleased to have two different versions of this lovely song, taken from 1991’s “cruel inventions” album.

next, representing 1996’s “omnipop (it’s only a flesh wound, lambchop)” is the very strange but very catchy “animals on wheels” – a very cool and very odd song.

leaning heavily on the brilliance of “martinis & bikinis”, a third track from that record, the previously described anti-war dirge “the black sky” – a chilling condemnation of nuclear war and other related sins of mankind.  this is an essential track, so I’m very glad it’s included on this compilation – a good choice.

next is another remix, this time, another track from “the indescribable wow”, the intensely beatlesque “flame”, and while it’s not miles away from the original mix, it’s great to have two different versions of this excellent early sam phillips track.

then we have something very, very unusual “ribot tripping over gravity” – “ribot” referring to her lead guitarist, this some kind of very cryptic, odd mix featuring his guitar, but again, at 1:15, it’s more of an impression of a song rather than an actual song – and it bears very little resemblance to the original “tripping over gravity” – an enigmatic, strange remix – just adding to the mystery and privacy that surrounds phillips’ music – closed sessions, no cameras – just musicians (which is really how it should be, probably…).

this is followed by an odd little song, “hole in time”, that I wouldn’t have chosen, but again, this is not your typical compilation, it’s very, very unusual, and the strange choices of songs along with the enigmatic remixes, alternates and altered versions – makes “zero zero zero” a must-have collection.

the next track, entitled “you lost my mind”, is another unreleased piece, with a driving drum beat, and a lovely fast shuffle feel, it feels more like a demo than a finished track, but it’s raw, it’s real, and it fits right in on this strange, strange compilation.  a great harmony vocal bridge graces the centre of the piece, which has a really snappy rhythm section – love the bass and drums, whoever they are played by…

the very poppy title track of 1991’s “cruel inventions” is next, with an almost fripp-like repetitive guitar riff, which is quickly overwhelmed by beautiful chamberlins and massed sam phillips background vocals – this is a great pop song, with it’s fabulous hand claps and melodic guitars…

another one that I would not have picked, “fighting with fire”, which is a great song, but it might not be my first choice for a “best of” – but “zero zero zero” is really not a “best of” – it’s a compilation, and these unusual track choices, odd remixes and so on, make this such a unique and excellent record.

an alternate version of “lying” is next, with that trademark elvis costello guitar, is an absolutely spot on choice, another one from “cruel inventions” – a great song in any version, fantastic lead vocal – love it.  happy to have two versions of this one, too…

finally, bringing all of these disparate musical strings together with one beautiful, anthemic song – the only song, the only possible choice for the final position – the exquisite “strawberry road” – just a lovely, lovely song, and a vocal to die for – sweet with a sense of longing – what a perfect way to end 1998’s “zero zero zero”, and the string arrangement is just heartbreaking, as are sam’s amazing backing vocals…just stunning song craft, I wish I could write a song half this good.

since “zero zero zero” was an “obligatory compilation” that was “owed” to virgin, it was not a real surprise when virgin dropped sam after the release of “zero zero zero”.

INTO THE VOID…

then…silence.  touring, living her life, no more albums from virgin, who had by this time, dropped sam – five years pass.

newly signed to nonesuch records, finally, in 2001, sam produced a new album – the much more personal, stripped down, acoustic-based “fan dance”.

after the odd mis-step of 1996’s “omnipop”, “fan dance” is a return to roots, a back to basics record if there ever was on, so now we have an almost complete absence of technology – it’s just lots of acoustic guitars, and sam’s now mature voice – a lot less vibrato, and a new purity – the lead off track, which is also the title track, is like a palate refresher, instantly washing away the excesses of the virgin years, and giving sam a fresh start – and it feels great, her voice is in perfect shape, and the stripped down arrangements really suit.  compared to the work of the late 90s – the albums made after 2000, mostly are much starker, the instrumentation is careful, never overdone, really appropriate and well-chosen.  sam obviously learned a lot from her long association with t-bone burnett, and she has put it to good use ever since.

this track has an almost oriental feel to it, “when I do the fan dance…” and I love the sound of it, it’s just so pure, and so real – it’s like we just got back the sam phillips of “martinis & bikinis” or “cruel inventions” – and it’s nice to have her back.

“edge of the world” starts with a piano, which leads the piece, an absolutely beautiful sound– an old upright (or digital version of an old upright) – and the chorus “at the edge of the world looking up…” a beautiful descending melody – I can’t say enough good about this fantastically beautiful piano and acoustic drama, great vocal, evocative piano, the simple arrangement – it’s truly, exquisitely beautiful – a hidden gem in sam’s catalogue – and the sudden, odd piano ending is breathtaking.  exactly three minutes long – the perfect quirky, wonderful pop song.

“five colors” is just bass and acoustic guitar – and that VOICE.  when the harmonies come in, when the “massed sam phillips voice choir” brings in that undeniable harmony – it’s just all about the shivers and the goose bumps, and it’s really more about these songs, which are so good – this song almost sounds like a beautiful crowded house or finn brothers song – and the vocal harmonies are absolutely exquisitely beautiful.  I can’t say enough good about this song or about this album – it’s back to basics, back to reality – and it’s all about the songs…and that voice.

a strange ambient non-solo takes us out, to the end of “five colors”, and onto the next track, which is the string quartet “wasting my time” – which again, is a great device, we’ve moved from acoustic guitar, to piano led, to acoustic guitar, and now, for the fourth track, it’s a string quartet – so a different approach for each track, but still a back to basics technique, and it works great – her voice sounds amazing atop the strings, and there is no other pop song in the universe quite like it – and the string arrangement, which is quite odd, a bit quirky in places, is a unique musical experience in itself…and the string outro is just the weirdest thing yet…

next comes “taking pictures”, which is dark and mysterious, with piano, guitar, some kind of leslied guitar or similar, this is quite beatlesque and is just pleasant and lovely – “places I go are never there…” and “nostalgia isn’t what it used to be” are just two of the lyrical ideas here, and the whole beatle-y mood of the piece is quite compelling – and, at 1:53, it’s gone before it really gets started.

“how to dream” – acoustic guitar and vocals, lots of harmonising vocals “when we open our eyes and dream…” – straightforward acoustic guitar song, with beatlesque over tones, bass guitar, minimal drum kit – it’s all about the voice, and when the harmonies are present, the voices – a really catchy chorus, and those “ahh, ahh, ahh ahh ahhs” are simply to die for…I absolutely love this song, with it’s weird guitar sounds, and super tight harmonies – it’s exquisite.

then comes something completely different, the very unique “soul eclipse”, an odd bluesy guitar atop a noisy plodding rhythm, sounding like a scratchy 1930s blues record, racing along, with some suddenly appearing then disappearing again, great fuzz chords dropped in – and all the while, sam’s voice floats over the top – calm, reasonable, questioning…a fantastically odd arrangement, but it works.  one of the very oddest of all sam phillips songs, but somehow, it works…

“incinerator”, a title I might expect from rammstein, but not from sam phillips – but there it is – another one with an odd, vintage, old-timey feel to it’s backing – which features a lot of stuff going backwards, while an oddly-thin-strangely-EQ’d guitar line travels along – the whole EQ of the piece is odd, with only sam’s voice sounding like it should – the backing is purely strange, but absolutely perfect for the song, I love this odd, odd track – which clocks in at just over two minutes and then is suddenly gone.

back to beatlesque pop, with acoustic guitars, bass and drum kit – the exquisite “love is everywhere I go” – a really, really beautiful song – possibly the most beautiful on the album – it totally channels late 60s beatles, really beautiful overlapping vocals, with a really simple chord progression – then, a mind-blowingly unique and wonderful bridge takes us right back to that irresistible chorus – genius, and again, at just over two minutes, nothing is wasted.

“below surface” is next, and it sounds like it’s title – tremelo guitars in a huge reverb room, and even sam’s voice is partially overwhelmed by the underground cavern feel, the entire song seems to be drenched in this wonderful reverb, giving it an odd other-worldly quality – and this one again, at 1:41, is gone before it gets started.

“wasting my time” returns in it’s “reprise” version, is the next to penultimate track on “fan dance”, which I tend to prefer to the “real” version, this time, no strings, but just a great straight ahead pop band: drums, bass, guitars, and reverse guitar I think – I love this version, it’s very beatles, and I think that this should be the real version, and the string quartet version should be the reprise – but it’s not up to me 🙂

the penultimate track, has a fantastic home made, demo feel about it, and a strange title to go with it, “is that your zebra” is a great little calypso / pop song, with a lovely whispered vocal, which is more about formless “ahhs” than actual lyrics, given this track a wonderfully unfinished feel – almost an afterthought – a great way to end the album.

the album closer, “say what you mean”, is a dark and lonely, sad blues song, slow, dirgelike, but utterly compelling – this reminds me of a song from godley & creme’s “consequences” – entitled “sailor” – which has a similar chord progression and lonely, sad, ethos – here, beautiful, clean, bluesy / jazzy lead guitars grace this very serious piece of blues music – something new for sam phillips, but she sings it like she’s a world-weary 1940’s chanteuse – with grace, passion and sorrow.

what a fantastic album, not a bad song on it, and yet, it remains one of her largely more-unheard works.  there is no other record like “fan dance”, which I cannot recommend highly enough – it’s a real beauty.

LOSS AND LOVE

“I was broken when you got me” is the opening line from “how to quit”, the first track from 2004’s “a boot and a shoe” – another low key, acoustic affair, three years on from “fan dance” – and sam is still, thankfully, staying away from the tech excesses of records like “omnipop”, and instead, still sticking to what she does best – sings.  so this record is mostly about acoustic guitars and vocals, both of which have come on from “fan dance” – a few more years’ experience, with every album, you can hear sam’s confidence grow, and both her ability on guitar (and piano) – not to mention orchestration, production, engineering… and her voice, just gets better and better each time.

the internet is not entirely forthcoming about the actual chronology of events, but it seems that phillips and burnett divorced in 2004, yet, he stayed to finish the album (“a boot and a shoe”) and they have worked together since the divorce, so while sam’s lyrics do suggest a painful, difficult separation – they still seemed to remain in contact.  it seems to be generally acknowledged that “a boot and a shoe” is her record about the divorce, but how much is autobiographical and how much is musical fiction, we will probably never know.  sam phillips is a private person, and I think it’s wise that we respect that privacy and not pick at the details of the divorce, except to say, she seemed very “broken” by it – hence a lyric like “I was broken when you got me…” which is heartbreaking on so many levels.  I have always tried to judge “a boot and a shoe” as the next sam phillips album, and not colour it as “the break-up album” but that’s not always entirely easy to do.

“all night” is a strange one, with it’s thumping bass, and sharply strummed steel string acoustic guitars, a sort of sordid tale of woe, “all night, all night, all night I’ve been looking for you” being the repeated chorus, a mysterious little pop song – full of desire, “ I’ve been wanting to touch you since we met – you don’t give a girl a chance to forget…” and longing.  this piece does take repetition to the very limit (if sam has a downfall, it might be, sometimes, just a little bit, repeating chorus a few too many times in one song…) but it’s still cool, with a great bass part, too.

“I dreamed I stopped dreaming” is a lovely, jazzy tune, with beautiful orchestration, a lovely, lovely piece – maybe my favourite track on the album – another short, enigmatic piece that clocks in at 1:51, but in it’s brief course, it moves you and touches you – and is gone before you know it.

“open the world” follows, another amazing harmony vocal – with the barest of accompaniment, acoustic guitar, bass, drum kit – and the voice from heaven.  her voice is so beautiful on this, any imperfections in the song are just overlooked, because of that voice…a great, slow, beautiful, reverberant lead guitar solo takes over briefly, before the incredible harmonies return – and again, before you realise, 2:18 – it’s over.

“red silk #5” is another one that seems almost unfinished, more like a thought than a song, and I love the fragmentary nature of this and some of the other pieces, almost as if it’s not quite a song, but it was too good of an idea not to put forward, so they do a rough sketch, and that gets released – although this piece is probably more finished than I think.  sam’s voice is sultry, dark, full of promise, full of mystery – “red silk five….” – talk about enigmatic!

“reflecting light” takes us back to the land of major key, pop, with lovely strummed acoustic guitar chords, a wistful vocal, “I’m reflecting light…” – accordion or something similar, sweeps along behind the mcartney-esque bass guitar and strummed acoustics – “now that I’ve worn out, I’ve worn out the world…” the imagery in this song is just gorgeous.  a string quartet enters to take the place of a “lead solo”, playing a lovely middle section, until sam’s vulnerable voice returns, full of hope and joy and fear and a little bit of magic – “stand alone and misunderstood…” – this is a beautiful, wistful, sad, joyous piece of music.

another one with a title that seems more rammstein than phillips, “infiltration” is a face paced shuffle, with string quartet shoehorned on top (somehow) while the drum kit drives the piece forward.  sam’s voice is somewhat overwhelmed by the odd instrumentation, but she holds her own – and somehow, this odd arrangement works beautifully, it’s inexplicable – it seems like it shouldn’t work – but it does.

“drawman” is next, another one that sounds more demo than complete, with a great, shuffling, bluesy acoustic guitar feel, and a thin, distant vocal – “hey baby, you’re a drawman…” this piece has a relentless beat, and a lovely 1920s feel to it, a lot of the songs on this record sound like period pieces from a long gone age of acoustic music, and this one has a bit of a shock – an utterly distorted fiddle solo – which is not what I would have expected, but fits in perfectly – it sounds like it came straight off of a 78 rpm record recorded in 1914, and was pasted over this decidedly more modern track – and it reoccurs near the end of the song again.

“I wanted to be alone” follows, a slow waltz with great stereo drum kit (including the best crash cymbal ever recorded – it’s just sublime), bass guitar and acoustic guitars – for this tale of lovers who want to be alone with different partners.  a formless, solo-less section forms the ending – and it’s gone.

“love changes everything” is an upbeat, pop song, with down lyrics “we can’t fix what’s broken…” and a great “ba ba ba ba” chorus, just irresistible.  another very straightforward acoustic guitar, bass and drums arrangement, as always, simple yet effective – and sam has clearly realised, during the course of recording both her last record, 2001’s “fan dance” and this album, 2004’s “a boot and a shoe” that it’s best to stick with what you are best at – and a straight rendering often is the key to the more successful sam phillips songs.

next comes the simplest arrangement of all – acoustic guitar, voice and later, strings, for “if I could write” – which has a great, simple vocal, and a lovely string arrangement…this could easily have been produced by sir george martin – and it’s a lovely, lovely song. “don’t think I’m coming back…coming back…coming back…”

next up is “hole in my pocket”, a modified waltz as played on acoustic guitar, which then mutates into a really beautiful pop song, the waltz figure starting out each verse, which then moves into time, and sam’s beautiful, clear voice really carries this tune, which is another incredibly short piece of music – gone before it really gets started.

“one day late” – another one of those sam phillips songs where you wish it had just a few fewer repetitive choruses, a lovely enough little song, light hearted, and with a beautiful vocal – but I do feel that the chorus outgrows it’s welcome, after about the fifth repetition, but other than that, I have no complaints, it’s a nice little song.

so as “a boot and a shoe” is the final album in a long string of sam phillips records produced by t-bone burnett, stretching from 2004 all the way back to 1987’s “the turning” when sam was still leslie phillips – a seventeen year collaboration between musician and producer – which is not something you see much of in the music industry.

SAM AS PRODUCER

an “a cappella” beginning, starts out the 2008 album “don’t do anything” – and, with another four years gone by, now divorced from burnett, this is sam’s first self-produced record, and this opening track “no explanations” has an ominous, marching drum beat, distorted guitars, and a creepy, sinuous vocal – a very striking song, and a great way to start the record – with ominous menace.

“can’t come down” follows with it’s fantastic “ I’ve got a great work to do, and I can’t come down” couplet, with sam using that lovely, deep, low pitched voice that she can now conjure up with such ease – acoustic guitar, bass drum, electric guitar – a pretty simple arrangement, but also a bit strange – some odd percussion sounds support more ordinary drum sounds – a non-solo takes the place of a guitar solo – and as with many of the tracks on her previous album, this one clocks in at less than 2:00 – just suddenly stopping at a point you would not expect.

next comes “another song” which starts out with a very distorted sample of a piano song – which then disappears, and turns into an “in the present” piano song, with it’s heartbreaking “did you ever love me” line – this is a really sad little song – and it has some odd time signature changes which are really lovely.

the title track, “don’t do anything” has the best lyrics ever, the amazing “when you’re useless – I love you more – when you don’t do anything” and as a song, it’s tremendous, with glorious strummed guitars, orchestra, and pounding drums, it’s an absolute triumph.

“little plastic life” follows, which is another piano tune, with a great vocal melody that then dissolves into the most amazing harmonised chorus ever, “burned it all, to the ground…burned it all..to the ground” – that is the most shiver inducing, goose bump causing moment, it seems like a jaunty little pop song – and then, slam, “burned it all – to the ground” flies out – and once again, I’m gobsmacked by the pop genius of the mind of sam phillips – it’s brilliant – with it’s telecasting guitars and final piano chord – wow, what a song.

“my career in chemistry” is even better – a rocking little song, with great lyrics, and a really exciting drum part, a drum part that seems to start up over and over again, but never really takes off – the lyrics are so clever, with another of those “ba ba ba ba ba” bits that just rocks – I’m not sure, but I think it might be sam herself playing the drums – and if so, it’s fucking genius.  even if not – it’s fucking genius.  I really love this amazing song – a show-stopper.

“flowers up” is the beautiful piano ballad, and is a song so beautiful, I don’t know if I have words to describe it, beatlesque, a perfect vocal, a perfect string arrangement, and a song that’s just pure beauty – with a “la la la la la” part that is again fantastic, this is a song you have to hear “diamond eyes spread in silk…” … “day palms and wind machines…” – imagery, vision, sound, beauty – maybe the most beautiful song yet from this remarkable young woman, fading out as the string parts overtake the rest of the song…

“sister rosetta goes before me” – another sam phillips acoustic guitar waltz, precedes the quite shocking “shake it down”, with it’s wonderfully distorted electric guitars and risqué lyric…this record is so personal, so real, that when I first got it in 2008, I really could not stop listening to it for many weeks…an unlikely banjo solo, then back to the five chord wonder that “shake it down” is.

next is “under the night” – more wonderfully distorted electric guitars follow the acoustics, and a low level, low pitched vocal is barely audible behind the wall of guitars, at least until the harmonies come in, when things become more audible.  this is a dark arrangement, dire, dreach, and moody – not to be trifled with.

“signal” is another hybrid string quartet/acoustic guitar waltz (which sam seems to really favour on this record – but not necessarily a bad thing!) with a lovely vocal, a really beautiful vocal melody against the acoustic guitars “I gave you who I am…” – wow, that’s fantastic “looking for a signal, underneath my face…” – beautiful string arrangement too.

“watching out of this world” – back to the distorted electric guitars again, a strange, up and down in mood, odd anthem, with a really catchy chorus – if you can make it out underneath the dirtiest electric guitars ever recorded on a pop album – the arrangement threatens to bury the beautiful vocal, but luckily, the vocal wins.

this is a moody record, a very, very personal record, and it finds sam exploring some new techniques, and using a lot more distorted electric guitars on her backing tracks, as well as work with strings and orchestration – but overall, it’s a very, very beautiful record with a lot of naked emotion, and incredibly moving vocals, with very personal arrangements from sam.

it was at this point in time, 2008, that I temporarily lost track of sam’s music, although I continued to play “don’t do anything”, which I picked up on a trip to california in 2008 (sam phillips CDs being a bit rare here in scotland), quite a bit over the past few years, and of course, I am always willing to dip into the back catalogue at any time too…

LONG PLAY

until a few days ago, when john relph, curator of chalkhills, and many others, casually mentioned that sam phillips “long play” subscription service was about to close down…and so many people responded, that the website actually crashed (it’s being rebuilt now as we speak…seems to be OK now) and I was one of those “better late than never” subscribers, I’d heard about “long play” back in the day, but hadn’t acted – but now, realising I might miss out on three years’ worth of sam’s work – it was a no brainer decision to download the “long play” series.

I downloaded “long play” but I’ve only heard it twice in it’s entirety – and all I can say is…it’s incredible, it’s beautiful, creative, and fascinating, and I am so glad I decided to get it….but, I will have to continue this dissertation on the music of “long play” somewhere down the road, once I’ve had a chance to hear and become familiar with the five EPs, one LP, and several singles that sam released to subscribed fans since 2009 – it was originally meant to run for one year, but ended up existing all the way up to may 1, 2013 – which is good, because that gave those of us who missed it the first time around, a chance to get “caught up” with sam’s music.  I for one am the gladdest of all – because while “don’t do anything” is a great, self-produced album, the body of work represented by “long play” is even more  musically rewarding – and best of all, there is no record company involvement.

you pay the subscription directly to sam – and she gives you…music.  funded by you, written for you, really.

my first (and second) impressions of long play is that it is gobsmackingly beautiful…it is really, really a remarkable body of work, and over the three years it was recorded, sam developed, and matured and grew as a musician in an incredible, but unsurprising way…it’s really so lovely – even after just two “listens”, I can absolutely recommend it so, so highly. a work of incredible beauty.

but I am not surprised 🙂 because, her entire career before her, where she progressed musically not in a linear way, but almost by leaps and bounds, embracing, then rejecting, technology, and always returning to what is key, what is at the heart of the music – her voice, the guitar, the piano – the simple arrangement, the honest song…so I am unsurprised now that the more mature sam phillips, is both master of her craft, and master of her instruments.

 

in the meantime, at least in this blog, I’ve thoroughly covered the records made between 1987 and 2008, and in part two, of course, I will cover 2009 to the present (whenever that might be) 🙂  I will see you some time in 2014 with the second instalment, I recognise that absorbing and becoming familiar with “long play” is going to take me some considerable time 🙂

starting out with “recollection” by leslie phillips, and eventually growing to a personal collection that contained the majority of her albums under both the leslie phillips and the “sam phillips” names, I’ve really enjoyed being on this particular musical journey…

to me, sam is both a serious songwriter, and a pop genius, with a truly unique and beautiful voice (not to mention great skill at vocal harmonies and vocal arrangements, too) and if you are a fan of quality pop music, then you will probably like some or all of her music, too.  her records are always engaging, interesting, covering a broad range of production styles and mixing techniques – and she is without doubt, one of the most unique and interesting voices, with a remarkable catalogue of music, in our time, that I know of.

please give her a listen if you get the chance…you may be pleasantly surprised!

released as “sam phillips” – the “secular phase”

“the indescribable wow” (1988)

“cruel inventions” (1991)

“martinis & bikinis” (1994)

“omnipop (it’s only a flesh wound, lambchop)” (1996)

“zero zero zero” (1998)

“fan dance” (2001)

“a boot and a shoe” (2004)

“don’t do anything” (2008)

EPs and LPS from “long play”:

“hypnotists in paris EP” (2009)

“cold dark night EP” (2009)

“magic for everybody EP” (2010)

“old tin pan EP” (2010)

“days of the one night stands EP” (2010)

“cameras in the sky LP” (2011)

“solid state: songs from the long play LP – compilation” (2011 – compilation of the best songs from across “long play”)

(see the full “long play” chronology below for “long play” singles’ release information)

“long play” chronology (in reverse chronology, most recent first):

October 1, 2011 plastic is forever – alternate version

2011 Single I don’t know why – what it all means – trouble live
August 11, 2011 “solid state: songs from the long play”
February 12, 2011 “cameras in the sky” – full length album
December 8, 2010 single it doesn’t feel like christmas

2010 single go on alone – when you’re down
August 24, 2010 “days of the one night stands EP”

June 18, 2010 “old tin pan EP”

2010 single heart on wheels
February 11, 2010 “magic for everybody EP”
November 24, 2009 “cold dark night EP”
October 1, 2009 “hypnotists in paris EP”

2009 single when you’re down

2009 single I need love – 2009 version

(thanks to john relph for the basis of the above)

what we’re listening to – wing beat fantastic – mike keneally (featuring the songs of andy partridge)

one of the most-anticipated albums of the year among fans of both keneally and xtc (and their ace songwriter, andy partridge), “wing beat fantastic” does not, in any way, disappoint.

 

this is the first batch of “new” andy partridge songs we’ve heard in a long, long time, even if they are delivered by collaborator and mega fan mike keneally, rather than partridge himself – who declined to perform on the record (even though some of his samples did survive the process), wanting instead to ensure that it is viewed as a keneally solo album.

the story of how this record came to be is well documented elsewhere, how whilst keneally was in frank zappa’s band, their bassist, scott thunes, had the audacity to invite partridge to a zappa concert in the uk – and much to their surprise, he actually turned up – and both a friendship and a writing partnership was born.  there were two discrete sessions where the two actually sat down and worked on these songs, but it was left to keneally alone to create “wing beat fantastic”.

it seems to me that this must have seemed like the most amazing opportunity in the world, similar to a scenario where lennon and mccartney said “here, take these songs, we can’t be bothered to record them – YOU DO IT” – and keneally not only rises to the challenge…he hits the ball out of the park.

first of all, it’s clear to me that keneally is not just familiar with xtc’s style, but that he must have studied it in minute detail, or else this record would not sound the way it does – as if it were the next XTC album.  and that is exactly what it sounds like, and at some moments, when the vocal harmonies are particularly sweet, you can close your eyes and EASILY forget that this is mike keneally, because what your ears hear, especially on a tune like “you kill me” – is pure andy partridge.

as with all zappa band alumni (such as steve vai, adrian belew, etc.) keneally has more than excellent chops on guitar, meaning that he has the skill to sound like a dead ringer for the very capable partridge OR xtc’s other (former) guitarist, dave gregory. But the real surprise here are the absolutely amazing vocal arrangements, and sheer beauty that keneally manages – that study paid off – and ALL of the trademark xtc vocal tricks are here, revolving vocals, beach-boys-like harmonies, delicate, beautiful solo vocals – we knew that keneally could sing, but we never knew he could sing like THIS.

so – partridge picked the right person, the exactly perfect person, to work up these demos into proper songs.  and what a batch of songs they are!

keneally has wisely interspersed the partridge songs with some tunes of his own, and I have to say, some of those are so beautiful that they easily rival the songs co-written with partridge, and they fit in perfectly.  the opening track, “the ineffable oomph of everything, part one” clocks in at exactly one minute, a keneally tune rather than a keneally/partridge, but it’s one minute of incredibly melodic, beautiful guitar music – including amazing slide guitar reminiscent of the master – george harrison.  so my first feeling for the first song, was that it was very harrison-like – a great way to start, and certainly a good indication of what was to come…

I’ve been a fan of mike keneally’s music for a long time, beginning way back when with his groundbreaking “hat” cd (“thank you for buying hat”…) which is utterly unlike “wing beat fantastic” – it’s more like a zappa album, lots of impossible guitar, funny vocals – but, with the occasional moment of sheer beauty.  those occasional moments have now, in this new album, been transformed into an ENTIRE ALBUM of sheer beauty.  I kid you not, this album is a completely atypical album for keneally, but oh my god, I wish he’d done this before, and I hope he does it again – perhaps with an entire album of his OWN pop masterpieces.

and when that first guitar solo comes in on the second track on the album, the gorgeous “I’m raining here, inside” – well, that’s it, it’s absolutely perfect, it’s beautiful, it’s seamless, flawless – and so very like the very best andy partridge or dave gregory guitar solo imaginable – it’s cut from the same cloth – just as the vocals are, even the bass and drum parts remind me of xtc – every song on this record sounds like an xtc song, or occasionally, a george harrison song or a beach boys song – hey, wait a minute, that’s just like you would get on an xtc album.

I do imagine though, that mike and his crew would have studied existing xtc album’s, because the production values, the use of phasers and flangers, the song arrangements, the guitar solos, the vocal harmonies – it just SCREAMS “xtc” – the title track, the third track, is a perfect example of this, it’s so much like xtc it’s not funny, acoustic guitars chiming, passionate, layered vocals, harmonies to die for, great chord changes…it’s perfect, an imitation maybe, but actually, a beautiful creation in it’s own right – as if keneally were some sort of musical genetics engineer, taking the xtc “dna” and re-arranging it into new, cloned musical lifeforms – xtc through the mind of keneally.

and then another amazing guitar solo, this one jagged, clean, lovely – comes flying through the song, as the flanged vocals build and build, a lovely descending figure that you can’t get out of you brain, amazing “oohs” – then, a serene, heavenly bridge ending in a beautiful high note – and it’s over.

next comes track four, a 30 second reprise of the opener, “the ineffable oomph of everything, part two” – which is even more enigmatic and beautiful than the first version – just beautiful, mike.

I can’t imagine how it must have felt, to have these songs in hand, in demo form only, and then sit down in your leucadia studio and say “right, how are we going to do this then?” – and the answer is the result – the album “wing beat fantastic” – IS fantastic, totally fantastic…and the next song “you kill me”, track five, is just staggeringly beautiful – even just the introduction is so beautiful I can’t believe it, a great guitar riff, followed by chord changes that you don’t expect, that give you the shivers before the song proper has even begun.  a clean pair of lead guitars leads us into the vocal – and those vocals – I would ask AGAIN – who knew that mike keneally could sing THIS beautifully?

the harmonies are straight from every xtc album from “skylarking” onwards – really, really complex, really, really beautiful vocal arrangements – and from a distance, if you don’t dissect it too closely, you would NEVER KNOW it wasn’t andy partridge singing.  an almost zappa-like “linking riff” repeats irresistibly in between the choruses, a tiny reminder that this is a zappa band alumni – but the sound overall, is not zappa at all – it’s PURE xtc.

in fact, I played the record for my partner, who doesn’t really know the music of xtc that well, and she said “that guy sounds EXACTLY like the guy in xtc” – and I could not agree more.

this album is an unqualified success for keneally, and I think that this album will do well for him, even if it didn’t have the songs of andy partridge, it would do well, but having that extra kick – not to mention many, many xtc fans ravenous for “new” andy partridge fans (myself included – and just about everyone I know pre-ordered the CD).

track six, “friend of a friend” is a very short little linking piece, 0:49 of acoustic guitars that works beautifully as a lead in to the next track…in fact, it almost sounds like the introduction of track seven, rather than a piece in it’s own right – the two fit together so well.

the album now moves into some really wonderful uncharted musical territory, as exemplified by a song such as track seven, “that’s why I have no name” – a song that is so very strange, with a lot of unusual reverse sounds burbling in the background, and a lot of wonderful clean jazz and reverse guitar (that is probably forwards guitar played through a reverse guitar patch, using something like a line 6 dl-4 delay modeller set to “reverse guitar”) as well, a very strange chord progression, very odd, almost dirge-like vocal, the whole piece is very…minor key, almost jazzy – but again, even though UTTERLY different from the preceding pop masterpieces – even this very odd songs screams “I sound like xtc!” at the top of it’s musical lungs.

I was not surprised to realise that this is a keneally song, not one of the tracks co-written with partridge, and I think all of the “solo” keneally pieces fit in beautifully with the co-written ones – a beautiful job of integration.

a remarkable, ascending clean jazz guitar solo is as startling in it’s appearance as it is in it’s intelligence, and then, it suddenly mutates into a reverse guitar solo of extraordinary beauty – keneally uses every bit of skill he has, but any very strange or very dissonant elements that we might have got on a zappa-influenced record like “hat”, have been replaced with a melodic sensibility of almost uncanny proportions – this solo just TAKES FLIGHT, and it’s the perfect vehicle for the song, drifting waves of reverse guitars float over the top of a steadily building background, the clean guitar returns for a moment – and then we are back to the verse once again.

the end section features all of it: the jazzy guitar, volume pedal guitars, reverse guitars – and it’s just perfect – and it then STOPS on a dime. perfection, but – strange perfection.

then it gets weirder still, with the very odd vocal melody of “your house”, track eight, and it’s incredibly melancholic mood – but very quickly, you realise, this is sort of like the “chalkhills and children” of this album, an odd, unusual vocal melody, which then moves into really beautiful moments “drawn by some strange magnetic pull…” it’s so weird, that you can’t get it out of your head “I know this is crazy, cause after all, it’s only…your house”.

this song sounds resigned, final, triumphant, sad, uncertain “I walked slowly at first, tried not to break into a run…I knew that was your house at the end of the road…”.

I feel like I already knew all these songs, because in a way, I have heard them all before – in those last ten or twelve xtc albums – because keneally heard those records too (in fact, he was in the studio during the making of “oranges and lemons” which xtc recorded in los angeles – which is where the partridge-keneally partnership really began to blossom), and he knew EXACTLY how to inject the magic xtc dna into these songs – and he’s done it!

then we have track nine, “miracle man and woman”, which has the most remarkable vocals, a very, very unusual vocal arrangement – and this is the weird thing, it features a lot of really, really good acoustic guitars – which remind me of gentle giant, the vocals too, are almost gentle giant-like in places – until you get to the godley & creme “deep”/”creepy” backing vocal – beautiful synths (which might well be guitar synths) accompany a strangely equalised vocal section…what a wonderful musical construction!

the middle section of the song is some sort of synthesizer duet, with tinkling piano in the background – and then, here it comes, the kevin godley vocal “ahhhh” from heaven (remember the backing vocals on “I’m not in love” by 10cc?? – like that) – a wordless vocal accompaniment to the middle section – which resolves into a synth-backed acoustic guitar solo, that is SO gentle giant it isn’t funny – like an odd outtake from an early giant album like “acquiring the taste” or maybe “octopus” – and then that crazy, ominous godley & creme creepy vocal returns to end the song on a note of pure creepiness – brilliant!

next is “inglow”, track ten, and it’s very serious indeed, a slinky rhythm overlaid with carefully bendy guitar notes, then, a cheerful, clean, simple melodic solo – a beautiful introduction, resolving on a really wonderful chord – and then starting again, this time with multiple lead guitars, the acoustics gently swaying behind them – a magical instrumental, that makes me think of tropical islands and sunsets and evening closing in – a slowly fading in, mysterious, wordless vocal appears and disappears – the clean melodic lead guitars continue their beautiful journey – what a fantastically beautiful composition, I just find the mood and feeling in this piece to be remarkable – a lovely interlude indeed, and one of keneally’s most mature and respectable guitar compositions ever.

eventually, the vocals begin, and if the first half of the song can be attributed to the genius of mike keneally – then the second half, the vocal section – well, that’s pure andy partridge, but realised by keneally – so they are both brilliant.

track 11 is one of my favourites, “bobeau” – which is a snappy little number with a funky horn arrangement, and a very complex layered vocal arrangement – not to mention great guitars and basses from keneally – then, a fantastic, sing along chorus, with great piano and horn backing – sort of this album’s equivalent to something like “extrovert” from the xtc canon, that’s the only thing I can even imagine I can compare it to – then, a very, very weird vocal melody, backed by ocean sounds and wonderful ghostly background vocals – leads us, via a very odd bridge, towards the song’s remarkable conclusion – which is all about the guitar.

after the final verse, we get another chance to experience the incredibly mature skill of keneally as a lead guitarist, or actually, in this case, as a slide guitarist – for me, the last section of “bobeau” is a huge highlight, during the second chorus, you start to get some lead guitar bits – but then, it starts, a sinister bass and drums, with creeping horns, backs an amazing, slapback slide solo, which is either double tracked or remarkably delayed – but it’s a scorcher, and then keneally really starts to mix things up, with a heavily syncopated guitar riff that is sinister, killer and fucking brilliant.  I love it!

then suddenly, it stops, the ocean sounds and seagulls return for a moment…

“land”, track 12, the final track on this amazing album, is another keneally-only piece, which makes a great end piece for the record, and it contains one of my favourite lyrics on the entire record “you understand, finally that, you don’t understand…” which I think is…fantastic.  wing beat fantastic, maybe…

it seems to be cut from the same genome that the keneally-partridge co-writes are, almost as if it were inspired by the other songs, it has a bit of everything, including some really beautiful acoustic guitar – short and sweet, just over two minutes, but a perfectly constructed finale for one of the most important pop records – ever.

“wing beat fantastic” is a remarkable achievement, I’ve never heard anything quite like it, where a well known ex-zappa lead guitarist takes away a handful of andy partridge songs, and creates an album that is so xtc-like as to be almost indistinguishable from the real thing – and that is clear praise, mike, you did an amazing job with this, you transformed these demos into a thing of real beauty, a succinct and very musical album that successfully captures the spirit of xtc beautifully, in a very respectful, and perfectionistic, way – every detail has been considered and reconsidered, the vocal arrangements, the vocal harmonies, are absolutely among some of the most beautiful I have ever heard on any album – and if keneally were now to switch hats permanently (no pun intended) and just make beautiful pop records, I would love every one of them.

I know that when andy partridge first heard the completed keneally project, he was absolutely overwhelmed by the result, in fact, literally moved to tears, and I understand why that is.  this is a gorgeous record, it would have fit seamlessly into the xtc catalogue anywhere between “skylarking” and “apple venus” (either part) and no one would have been the wiser – OK, you can tell it’s mike keneally singing, not andy partridge, but beyond that – the guitar work is top notch, the guitar solos are simply amazing, and the songs – wow, the writing, the lyrics, the tunes, the arrangements – it’s all good!

there is not a bad or even lesser tune on this record, keneally has done the impossible, he has almost “out-xtc’d” xtc themselves.  but it’s done so respectfully, so tastefully, it’s imitation as sheer flattery – but perfect imitation, glorious, beautiful, joyful music – music like the music that xtc themselves produce.

 

a pop masterpiece, not to be missed – genius.  “wing beat fantastic” truly is, fantastic.

I cannot recommend this album highly enough.