Category: [Music]

Don’t you wonder sometimes

After listening to the live album the other day, I had to pull this out for another listen. I really didn’t get this the first time I heard it, though now I place it as my second favourite Dave album after Ziggy; but I was in good company in not getting it at first, cos in 1977 a bunch of critics (and his own record label) didn’t get it either. I don’t entirely blame them (though Charles Shaar Murray’s description of it as “an act of purest hatred and destructiveness” was kind of ludicrous), cos I suppose it was a fairly what-the-fuck album even in 1977, especially coming after Station to Station. Side two in particular must’ve seemed just alien. Somehow the thing was still popular once RCA grudgingly released it…

Splendid production and a quite remarkable range of sounds at work, and it’s got “Sound and Vision” on it, which is only one of his best singles (the remix of the latter on the Ryko issue of the album is less so, shall we say). And that drum sound. I know Steve Lillywhite and Hugh Padgham get the credit for gated reverb, and Visconti didn’t actually do gated reverb as such on Low, but that harmoniser box he did use came up with much the same effect.

The cassette played… Eurotones?

In the most I’ll-be-damned music news I’ve heard in some time, John Lydon has announced that Public Image Limited are competing to represent Ireland in Eurovision.

John Joseph Rotten and Eurovision are two things I don’t think I would’ve ever expected to associate with, and I don’t suppose most people would either. So maybe, by doing the last thing people would expect him to do, John boy’s doing the most punk thing he can? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just trying to rationalise something that, on the face of it, doesn’t make a lot of sense me. At any rate we are a long way from Metal Box…

Also, another thing most people probably don’t associate with PiL is the word “lovely”, and yet, that is pretty much what the new single (the one they’re attempting to get into Eurovision with) is. Apparently it’s about his wife, Nora, who is succumbing to Alzheimer’s, and, well, it is confoundingly nice. I would never have thought Lydon would write the words “you are loved” with a straight face, but there you go…

This is all last-night stuff, folks

Revisiting this one tonight in belated honour of Dave’s birthday yesterday. I suppose this is a reasonably representative performance from the Isolar II tour, with the notable exception of “Sound and Vision” making its concert debut at the very end of the tour. George Murray is a pretty solid bassist here, isn’t he? And the intro on “Station to Station” is mad, markedly longer and noisier and more extravagant than the one on Stage.

Some of my best friends are Bengali

On politics, the singer denied he was far-right – a charge that arose after controversial comments on race and racism, as well as his support for now defunct far-right anti-Islam party For Britain.
“Although the left changed and deserted me many years ago, I am most certainly not far-right, and I have not ever met anyone who claims to be far-right,” he wrote.
“My politics are straightforward: I recognize realities. I am therefore sorry to report to some of you that I am absolutely not far-right.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jan/07/morrissey-says-miley-cyrus-exit-was-nothing-to-do-with-his-politics

Yeah, you know who else uses words like “realism” in this sense? Racists. Honestly, Steven Patrick has been dodging accusations of far-right sympathies since the 80s, you’d think he would know better by now than to think this would be enough to convince people. Especially after lending credence to the late and not especially lamented For Britain party, which even Nigel Farage, NIGEL FUCKING FARAGE, said was full of Nazis and racists…

Revolver ’22

Love the Fabs. Love Revolver (if not their greatest album, certainly the best thing they’d done by 1966). Still not 100% convinced by the remix, which I gave another spin this afternoon. I don’t think Giles did anything as egregious to this as he did to “She’s Leaving Home” (changing the speed/pitch of the stereo mix to match the mono version) or “Helter Skelter” (toning down Ringo’s blisters in the mix), but still. Despite the much-vaunted use of Peter Jackson’s audio technology to separate sounds out and all that, there’s still only so much you can do with four-track tape, and in the end it kind of reinforces my belief that you’re better off listening to almost anything recorded before 1969 on less than eight-track tape in mono.

Nada!

Miguel Abuelo et Nada were a group of Argentine expatriates who gathered in Paris in 1973 and lasted just long enough to record this one album, which appeared only in France a couple of years later. They had evidently listened to a certain amount of Led Zeppelin (Abuelo’s vocals display certain Plantisms) and Black Sabbath but also brought enough of their own stuff to the table (the cello is a particularly valuable part of the ensemble). Net result: a fascinating mix of psychedelia, prog and early metal that was perhaps doomed to the limited success it apparently achieved.

Also, if you’re going to listen to it, do so with headphones like I just did. This is one of those 1970s stereo albums.