Cocktails and Records

Keen to broaden my knowledge of classical music beyond ‘populist muck’ opera and ’tiresome’ minimalism, I have been taking an evening class on ‘music appreciation’ on and off throughout the past year. Because it’s been by and large, a nice group of people involved, on more than one occasion we have found ourselves down the pub after.

So what’s the most obvious conversation subject in such a situation? Music. Fine with me.  And what’s the question that’s inevitably going to be asked at some point? What’s the question that I, as both a lifelong music fan and a dedicated Radio 4 listener, should have well and truly prepared for?

Yes, it’s ‘What are your desert island discs?’

The answers flowed forth with certainty from everyone else around the table: ‘Mahler’s 7th’, ‘White Man in Hammersmith Palais’, ‘Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 4′, ‘Miserere mei, Deus’, ‘Good Vibrations’, etc. etc. But not from me – for I was embarrassingly unprepared,  dumb struck by choice, overwhelmed by having to nail my colours to the mast with only eight songs.

Eight songs! I could think of dozens of songs I love and couldn’t live without. ‘Be ruthless’ I was told sternly.

Hmmm, ‘Wuthering Heights’, ‘Hot Burrito No. 2′ by the Flying Burrito Brothers, Philip Glass’ String Quartet No. 5, John Coltrane’s version of ’My Favourite Things’, Benny Goodman’s ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’, ‘More Love’ by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, The Go-Betweens ‘Streets of Your Town’,  ‘Eleanor’ by The Turtles, Acts I and II from La Boheme… all of West Side Story… and Forever Changes… and I still haven’t included anything by George Gershwin… or The Beatles…

So dear reader, could you have faired any better? Have you prepared for the moment when you are asked the ultimate question?

When we run events at work we always have a pile of evaluation forms available at the end should anyone like to a. sign up to the mailing list b. tell us how great we or, most commonly, c. complain.

How I wish I had an evaluation form on Saturday night – although, admittedly, it was partly my fault. We went to the wrong gig you see. We had tickets to see Matthew Shipp, jazz pianist extraordinaire (you can hear him here on an ancient Song of the Week). We’ve seen him before and he was very good, very good indeed. But it transpires that that was Matthew Shipp solo.

Unbeknown to us, Mr Shipp had a guest on Saturday night,  J. Spaceman – a.k.a Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Spaceman3 fame – and instead of the anticipated jazz piano gig we got an experimental jam for organ, guitar and effects pedals based on two chords, one tempo, no tune and 45 spirit sapping minutes.

If I was being kind, I would say that this was a ingenious combining of free jazz and minimalism to create a mesmerising and mind-bending piece of work. But I’m not. It was the tiresome result of what happens when a jazz musician wants to join Jesus & Mary Chain and a rock musician thinks that he is John Adams. It was the kind of boring, self-indulgent ramble where all attempts at musical sophistication are washed away under a sea of drone and audience yawns.

Thankfully two other musicians joined the pair for a second 45-minute piece and rescued us with some drums and additional chords. Audience appreciation of this sudden injection of colour was expressed by the almost instant cessation of texting and whispering. People even stopped checking their watches and turned their heads towards the stage.

Now, I know that I came expecting something different and a good music snob would accuse me of being a philistine, but god I was bored during that first half. I even had to resort to counting all the trendy Fleet Foxes style beards in the room (14).

So what’s the most boring gig you’ve ever been to and how long have you lasted?

I am not a huge fan of festivals. Standing in a field of mud, getting wet, getting sunburnt, queuing for hours for a drink, queuing for hours for the loo, your favourite band playing a remarkably average set somewhere in the middle distance, getting bored and leaving before the headlining act comes on… no, music festivals were never my cup of tea to begin with.

But what really stops me from going to festivals is other people. As a time-honoured music snob, I’ve been long convinced that most people who go to festivals do not actually like music. Festivals are just another item on the social calendar, another ‘experience’ that needs to be ticked off by the cool and the trendy. Why else would someone pay ££££ to see a load of great bands, then just proceed to talk/pass-out/take endless photos of themselves and their designer wellies through the gig? Basically, the kind of people who go to festivals are the kind of people I would prefer to avoid.*

So you’ll understand how delighted I was to see a new shop open in Spitalfields recently which is entirely dedicated to making the festival experience even easier for this kind of person. It is called the Marsh-mallow Festival Boutique.

This clearly much-needed addition to the cultural life of East London not only sells tickets to festivals, but all the festival accessories you could ever need – designer wellies and waterbottles, cool sleeping bags (as seen on The Apprentice apparently), ’stylish’ hats, ‘in’ umbrellas, eco-friendly plastic macs and limited edition Raybans – everything the cool, trendy person could possibly need to make their summer festival experience one to remember.

Except liking music perhaps.

* with apologies to all the people reading this who um, like going to festivals – I’m sure you’re all very nice really and didn’t buy a £129 pair of wellies especially for the occasion.

You know how sometimes, against all odds, you find yourself clinging to irrational beliefs? Well, I have this stupid and quaint notion that musicians,  scientists, academics, writers etc. should have some credibility, or at the very least pretend to have some.

This foolish, naive belief came into sharp focus over the weekend when I was watching the BBC4 documentary on the history of London based record company/shop/endless-pit-for-me-to-hurl-my-money-in that is Rough Trade. Although by all accounts, success helped turn this idealistic collective of music lovers into an unwieldly compromised mess, Rough Trade have still manged to hang on some semblance of integrity.

I’m not quite sure how they did this, mind you. Their mastering of the hype machine, although launching The Strokes and The Libertines on to the world, arguably helped turn old ‘indie’ into new ‘landfill indie’. Geoff Travis, the man behind Rough Trade,  ultimately embraced the ways of the major labels that he so hated. ‘Nice guy’, I found myself thinking during the programme, ‘I can see why he did it – more people needed to hear the music.’ But of course, the old irrational spark in me had to have the final word,  spitting out ‘He’s still a sold-out traitor though!’

And so, after watching this tribute to independent spirit, I switched over to More4 and what do I see? A head-shot of our second favourite tiresome rock ‘n roll crusader, Sir Bob Geldolf, talking about safe investment opportunities at NS&I (aka National Savings and Investment). He was  quickly followed by Stephen Hawking,  Germaine Greer and Alan Sugar, all extolling the virtues of  buying premium government bonds in a new ad bankrolled by the Treasury.

Now I know that there is every reason in the first place to doubt the ‘credibility’ of the man behind The Apprentice and the academic who appeared on Celebrity Big Brother, and that world-famous scientists still need to make a living just as much as starving musicians and Rough Trade label bosses, but I still felt that old inner turmoil.

‘Oh, they’re doing an ad for NS&I?’ I wonder ‘Perhaps they feel that they are coming to their countries aid in this time of recession? Maybe they were just offered a sack of money and wanted to buy a new HD-TV? Fair enough.’

But it isn’t long before my irrational mind boots its way in: ‘Sell-outs! They’re just as bad as Rough Trade employing swathes of PR people to package up rock rebellion for the yoof (no matter how good the bands might actually be). They’re all working for ‘the man’! And how much money could they possibly need anyway?! Tossers!!!’

See what I mean. Somebody help me. I need to kill my inner hippy and strangle its twin – inner marytred indie-kid. And anyway, it just doesn’t reconcile with my love of the truly credible Fleetwood Mac and lear-jet owning Eagles.

I could never be a rock star. Apart from having no apparent musical talent, I couldn’t stand people looking at me all the time. Oh, I could get used to the poncing around on a stage bit and repeating the same stuff over and over again in interviews, but what would be really bad would be having to look at racks of records and CDs with me on the cover.

Bunging a picture of yourself on your record sleeve, particularly in close-up, seems to be a prerequisite for being a solo artist; a strange piece of self-indulgence which appears to get worse with age and ‘going solo’.

Take Morrissey for instance. The Smiths had fabulous, brilliant LP covers, made even more compelling by the fact that they knew better than to ever grace the front of the sleeve themselves. Then bang!, as soon as Mozza embarks on his solo career then it’s all the way with ever-more wrinkle revealing close-ups. And look whose mugs are there on the cover of the first Electronic record – why it’s Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner (of similarly band portrait denying New Order). They clearly just couldn’t help themselves. See also: Ian Brown, Bernard Butler, Donald Fagen, Bryan Ferry, Peter Cetera, Bert Jansch et.al.

And then there are people who have long been hugely sucessful solo artists. Everyone knows what Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Madonna look like by now and we don’t need to be reminded. Same goes for the slightly less ubiquitous, but still ego loving Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Mary J. Blige and Patti Smith. But still they insist on plastering themselves over their covers. I suppose, at the very least, it’s a victory of some kind against age-ism.

I know there’s a marketing theory / ‘cult of personality’ thing behind this, but if you’re flicking through the CD racks at your local high-street record shop you already have to be in ‘B’ section to find Beyonce – you’re not just looking randomly through a pile of plastic CD cases for someone whose name you can’t quite remember, but that you think might be pretty good looking. And in these days of downloading, album artwork increasingly means nothing at all.

In any case, whether I’m under-estimating the record buying public or not, I just hope that Mark E. Smith* continues to plow his lonely furrow.**

*The Fall may as well be a solo project
**alright, apart from on a few occasions.

Well, the time has come to take down the Belle & Sebastian ‘A Toast to Glasgow’ 2008 souvenir calendar. And what a strange year 2008 has been (almost as strange as B&S claiming that Stow College is a highlight of Glasgow, up there with the Necropolis and Kelvingrove Museum).

Cocktails

This was the year that I discovered Green Chartreuse. It tastes good straight with ice, it tastes good with soda water, it particularly tastes good in a Bijou. And like advocaat and blue curaçao, Green Chartreuse’s lurid and unappetising colour keeps the picky house guest at bay from the cocktail cabinet.

Records

After too many miserable live music experiences my live gig ban came into effect this year. Fortunately I have no self discipline whatsoever or I would have missed the Portico Quartet, Pentangle, Robert Forster and Africa Now, all of whom were brilliant.

Staying on the stereo from this year:

1. The Last of the Shadow Puppets’ The Age of Understatement, Rachel Unthank and the Winterset’s The Bairns, Paul Weller’s 22 Dreams and Fleet Foxes were probably the only records actually released in the past year that I’ve really liked.
2. James Yorkston and the Athletes Moving Up Country. It’s taken 6 years for me to get around to buying this album and well, it’s so good I should have bought it 6 years ago.
3. The Nostalgia 77 Octet’s LP Weapons of Jazz Destruction came out last year but it’s ace ‘nu-jazz’ feel (cringe) is definitely staying fresh.
4. Strange Pleasures: Further Sounds of the Decca Underground. A 3 CD boxset featuring the likes of Caravan, Ten Years After and Genesis playing epics with names like ‘Space Shanty’ and ‘Cosmic Bride’ can only be good.
5. Still hanging around on the stereo from last year is the Carousel soundtrack. ‘June is bustin’ out all over’ might well be my favourite June song of all time.
6. Singles of the year include several songs of the week: ‘Divine’ by Sebastian Tellier, ‘Two Doors Down’ by The Mystery Jets and ‘The Promise’ by Girls Aloud. Also ‘Paris is Burning’ by Ladyhawke (as recommended by Hoops Hooley).
7. Old rediscovered singles of the year: ‘Look in My Diary’ by Reparata & the Delrons (thanks to BLTP) and ‘Cut Me Deep’ by the Jasmine Minks (thanks to Ill Man).

Everything else

Bad things

1. Financial meltdown. I have friends who’ve been made redundant and know plenty of other people who are worried. It makes all those news reports depressingly real.
2. Walthamstow Dog track closed for racing because it’s unprofitable, but is available for evangelical church services…
3. Humphrey Lyttleton and Rick Wright going to the great gig of noodly solos in the sky.
4. The continued woeful state of the music industry – music bloggers being harrassed, overpriced vinyl, under-investment in new music, EMI still being owned by a private equity company/asset stripper, DRM etc. etc.

Good things

1. Financial meltdown. Yes, there is a positive side. Firstly, our local council have abandoned plans to build some horrible high rise flats in our area and secondly, it has made Robert Peston’s career.
2. The 42 day pre-charge detention bill has been dumped. For the moment anyway.
3. At least two good films came out of Hollywood this year – No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood – that’s probably two more than last year.
4. I went to China. It was great!

Good-bad things/personal failings

1. I have become addicted to the ghastly, but amusing, TV programme Come Dine With Me.
2. After a year of reading books on religion, science and French grammar I still don’t understand any of it.
3. The fact that I actually heard the infamous Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand prank phone call on the radio and failed to be mortally offended, let alone realise that this was the start of a media furore. I just thought ‘that’s a bit nasty’, switched it off and went to bed. Just imagine what this country would be like if I ran it…

Happy New Year everyone!

Here’s an interesting question for you. What’s the most played album in your collection?

I overheard someone talking about this very subject this morning and although they were probably referring to the present time, it set my mind thinking. So during a bored moment at a conference today, I found myself speculating on what my most played records ever might be.

The following list is based on 25 years of accumulated music buying and listening, and comprises the records that I have probably put on the ghettoblaster / walkman / family hi-fi system / bedroom CD player / turntable / ipod most during that time.

So in no particular order of painful authenticity:

1. Colour by Numbers – Culture Club
2. Grand Prix or Songs from Northern Britain - Teenage Fanclub
3. West Side Story – Original film soundtrack
4. Whitney – Whitney Houston
5. Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
6. Liberty Bell and the Black Diamond Express – The Go-Betweens
7. My Favourite Things – John Coltrane
8. America’s Greatest Hits - America
   
9. Extricate – The Fall
10. True Blue – Madonna

And I still play all of these records quite a lot to this day. Yes, really.

It’s Friday. It’s been a long and annoying week at work, but I am happy. Last night’s Africa Now! gig was quite possibly one of the best I’ve ever been to, kicking all other contenders (oh, all right – that’s The Stone Roses, Franz Ferdinand, Steve Reich, The Go-Betweens and TISM) to touch.

It was just an amazing line-up, better than I ever anticipated when I first booked: Rachid Taha, Amadou & Mariam, Toumani Diabate, Baaba Maal, Daara J, Amy Sacko, Oumou Sangaré, Bassekou Kouyate, Souad Massi, oh and, Damon Albarn.  

From the very minute the show started, on the dot at 7.30pm, to when I left four hours later, it was brilliant. Time stood still, yet flew. There was no dross, no boring new songs, just roof-shattering tunes, riffs and jams with oodles of spine-tingling moments.

I don’t know how many of you have experienced a typical gig in the Barbican Main Hall before, a sit-down venue which usually manages to sap the soul out of everyone but the London Symphony Orchestra, but it is testament to the evening that by 8.30pm most people were up dancing, giving standing ovations, screaming and whooping. This never happens at the Barbican.

I cannot possibly do justice to last night with mere words, nor even with any music I could bung up by the musicians involved. I just hope someone plans on releasing a live album of it.

A few months back I deserted my old gym on the grounds that it played some of the worst music of all time – on repeat and at a quite frankly obscene volume.

My new gym is the exact opposite. It plays incredibly good music (and at a reasonable volume). For example, over the past few months I have regularly heard tracks like:

1. ‘Nothing but a Heartache’ – The Flirtations
2. ‘I Believe in Miracles’ – The Jackson Sisters
3. ‘Money’ – Buddy Guy
4. ‘As’ – Stevie Wonder
5. ‘Push it’ – Salt ‘n Pepa
6. ‘Black Gold of the Sun’ – Rotary Connection
7. ‘It Takes Two’ – Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

However, there is just no pleasing some people and the exemplary music taste of my new gym is beginning to disturb me (although not as much as the 10cc dance remixes and Pink albums favoured by the last one, don’t get me wrong). But this music is too good for the gym. By becoming the soundtrack to my showering and hair drying, it’s like the songs are being devalued and slipping away from me.

For the same reason, I am more than slightly perturbed by the fact that The Times is now giving away several of my very favourite albums of all time for free. For FREE!!!!  I don’t mind more people discovering the brilliance of Love’s Forever Changes through a national broadsheet rather than by some ‘cooler’ means, but there is something soulless about it being given out gratis to all and sundry with absolutely no emotional effort or expense from the listener.

I know I’m a music snob, but I don’t want soul classics becoming background music to sweaty bodies and stinky feet in the gym changing rooms, and the idea of someone hearing Joy Division thanks to a free CD give-away by The Times irks me. There is just no romance or passion to it – and that’s what music’s all about, isn’t it?

As much as I love this country, I have to admit that Britain has let me down on occasion. One of the things I’ve found particularly disappointing is the quite frankly boring ideas that pass for pop compilation titles and covers. I know they do as it says on the tin, but Now That’s What I Call Music 1 – eternity, Top of the Pops, The Hits, Hits, Hits Scene etc. etc. just don’t cut it.

Let me show you how it’s done, Australian style, with some favourites from my personal collection.

Ripper ‘76

This was the second in a series of Ripper albums on Polystar with similarly themed covers. I think we can guess why these might have been popular…

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Howzat – Sherbert
2. Right Back Where we Started From – Maxine Nightingale
3. Late Last Night – Split Enz
4. I Like It Both Ways – Supernaut
5. Convoy – C.W. McCall

Bullseye

Another Polystar favourite, this time from 1979, containing some corking tracks – none of which are even remotely related to darts.

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Hot Summer Nights – Night
2. Let’s Go – The Cars
3. Get Used It – Roger Voudouris
4. Halfway Hotel – Voyager
5. Are ‘Friends’ Electric – Tubeway Army
6. He’s the Greatest Dancer – Sister Sledge
7. Sunburn – Graham Gouldman

Bacon and Eggs: The Album

Similarly, if there is any correlation between the songs below and fried breakfasts, I’ve yet to find it.

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Knock on Wood – Amii Stewart
2. Chiquitita – ABBA
3. Shooting Star – Dollar
4. Lost in Love – Air Supply
5. On the Inside – Lynne Hamilton

Thru the Roof ‘83

This was one of the first records I ever bought with my own money. It was pink, had a top song about skipping and a strangely feminine sounding bloke on it called Mike Oldfield singing a song about a shadow – perfect for an 8 year old.

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Moonlight Shadow – Mike Oldfield
2. Maxine – Sharon O’Neill
3. Double Dutch – Malcolm McLaren
4. Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’- Michael Jackson

1984 Shakin’

This mid-80s crayon cover art belies a great album of Australian pop gems (and Cliff Richard).

Cocktails’ choice cuts:

1. Pseudo Echo – Listening
2. Daryl Hall & John Oates – Say It Isn’t So
3. Kids in the Kitchen – Change in Mood
4. Pat Benatar – Love is a Battlefield
5. QED  – Everywhere I go
6. Hoodoo Gurus – My Girl

With thanks to the K-Tel blog for the images