dead brains don't dance

For no particular reason other than bizarre juxtapositions, this is what we’ve last scrobbled with the Roku on random play:

• Eat Static – Pupae (The Locust Song)
• Maria Callas – Bizet - Carmen - L’amour est un oiseau rebelle
• Mousse T. & Tom Jones – Sexbomb
• Maria Callas – Charpentier - Louise - Depuis le jour
• The James Taylor Quartet – Lausanne revisited
• Sting – Rock Steady
• Mary Black – The Crow in the Cradle
• Steve Hackett – Please Don’t Touch
• Suicide – Cheree
• Bill Nelson – Bill Nelson - The Strangest Things, The Strangest Times

My last post applies to music too: listening to Show of Hands’ treatment of Widecombe Fair made me want to read Margaret Elphinstone’s The Incomer.

ETA that the online post editor really is a heap of shite, isn’t it?

As ramtops said, a thoroughly horrid day. That it could have been orders of magnitude worse is only a small consolation.

So.

After much poking at a long list, here are today’s list of my eight desert island albums, as inspired by oldbloke via blue_condition. The list will change in large part tomorrow, but that’s inevitable.

• Captain Beefheart Trout Mask Replica As blue_condition said, it has to be in there doesn’t it?


• Henry Cow In Praise of Learning It was a toss up between this and Unrest, but the splendid Living in the Heart of the Beast clenched it; that’s the piece of music that most often manifests spontaneously in the canyons of my mind these days.


• Easy Star All-Stars Dub Side of the Moon It’s not often that reworkings of classic albums are in just about every way finer than the original, but that’s the case here. Lovely stuff.


• The Planet Wilson Not Drowning But Waving The best band never to really come out of Hull, they were killed by Richard Branson (signed, first album with all the stuffing produced out of it did nothing). This is the indie label second album that captures at least some of the live energy from Hallam and Lou out of the Red Guitars, and Grant Ardis, one of the finest drummers I’ve heard to this day.


• Philip Glass Songs From Liquid Days What’s not to like? Great music and lyrics performed and sung by great musicians and singers. Essential.


• Frank Zappa Thing-Fish Picking a Zappa album ends up being pretty arbitrary, but this insanity is probably my favourite at the moment.


• Gravity Fred Frith Proof, it were needed, that avant-garde guitar stylings can be fun and only as much hard work as the listener feels like devoting to them. Makes me smile.


• Michelle Shocked Captain Swing This makes me smile too; a truly joyous collection of songs from one of the best things to have ever come out of East Texas. I need cheering up, damnit.

Today’s The Beat on the World Service is worth a listen for Mark Coles interviewing Ry Cooder about his new album.

The album is about what, extraordinarily, is now the forgotten history of the US - collectivism, Unions, the people who built the country (as opposed to those who got rich from it); the programme is on at 9:30, 15:30, 19:30 and 22:30 GMT and, if IP blocking allows, you can hear the snippet I heard on Today here.

Thursday night, I went to see the Durutti Column at St George’s. I’d not realised until I read the handout (which, in turn, seems to have been a print of their Wikipedia article) that the misspelling was originally down to a 1961 SI poster. Now, was that carelessness or by design? A distorted reflection or a deliberate Spectacular introduction?

Anyhow, the night opened with Westcott and Rodway who, I must say, and in the absence of much of the audience who only turned up for Vini and friends, were for me the most interesting part of the night. They’re very young, and exhibit their influences in what was, to me, a charmingly naïve way; but what influences! They started with a relaxed soft jazz vibe with William Rodway’s piano sounding uncannily like Steve Miller (no, not that one) with Adam Wescott’s guitar resonating with Jukka Tolonen at his most laid back and pastoral. From there to flamenco, Philip Glass and Penguin Café and more. There was easily enough individuality and promise in there to carry the set off, and I look forward to hearing where they might go from here.

After the interval, Vini Reilly hit the stage, with Bruce Mitchell on percussion and Keir Stuart on bass. They presented in an engagingly laid back way, informing us that they hadn’t rehearsed at all and Vini starting the first song in the wrong key. That could have been irritating and arrogant, but it just felt relaxed and charming. The first few songs were fine, a nicely balanced stream of Mancunian angst above all showing off Mitchell as the very fine drummer that he is, and were followed by Vini swapping his strat for a Les Paul: he told us that it was new, and the song was a bit of silliness they were doing just as am excuse for him to play his new guitar. They launched into a full on British Blues Trio workout, and very fine it was too with the added edge of the archetypal emaciated Factory Records Existential despair survivor as full on guitar hero. Two couples got up and left in the midst of this that I could see (there may well have been others ;), but I must say that I enjoyed the irreverence immensely - as, by the signs, did Vini, Bruce and Keir.

Thereafter, though, things became less satisfactory for me: I was sat in the middle of row B, in direct line of fire for Vini’s guitar 4x12, and that fucker was, for the rest of the set, loud; to the extent that I could barely hear what was coming out of the PA. Vocals vanished, as did (mostly) the bass, and even the drum kit was subdued. As far as I could tell, the music would have been fine if it were even remotely balanced, but balanced is the one thing it was not. How much this was down to the St George’s acoustic (it really isn’t a good venue for amplified music) and how much unfortunate positioning on my part I’m not sure, but it did somewhat spoil what should have been a fine night. A pity.

ramtops and I are back from seeing The Blue NilePaul Buchanan at Colston Hall and, despite all problems, very fine it was too.

In their stripped down, lean configuration, they’re using a pair of keyboard controllers driving a pair of powerbooks for all keyboard sounds, and therein lied the rub: one of the macs was crashing with distressing regularity. We suspect a hard disk on its way out, but we didn’t venture on stage to do any diagnostics.

So, the set list went out of the window as Paul tried to stick with songs that put least strain on the software but, as far as I can work out, by the end and many reboots later we only lost one song out of the set. The (sadly small) audience was hugely supportive and after, finally, Tinseltown in the Rain was played through without a crash as the encore, delivered a well deserved standing ovation. I fear to think (as I suspect does Paul :) what will happen if things go Horribly Wrong in Glasgow at the weekend, so I hope that whatever the cause is, it’s fixed in the next two days :)

Sadly neither the hassles nor the size of the audience (I gather that none of the non-Glasgow gigs have sold out) is likely to make the next tour happen in the forseeable; I do hope that wasn’t the last time Paul will appear in Bristol. I wonder if the sparseness of the crowd was from not being able to call themselves the Nile, or if it runs deeper.