Apropos of absolutely nothing...

Just to say, for anybody who still looks in on this barely-functioning blog ( and that's probably just you, John Pitt )  -  I'm still here! The next scheduled but almost infinitely delayed post here will be about The Flaming Lips' psychedelic masterpiece The Soft Bulletin. One day. Definitely.

I was just thinking about all things cosmic after listening to Sarah's copy of the new Florence + The Machine album. I remarked that the last track, Mother, reminded me of the mighty Hawkwind. She asked me what Hawkwind sound like and I said "a swirling kind of song that goes on forever and sounds like a spaceship crashing." I think I nailed it!

BTW Hawkwind will probably never appear again on this blog :-)

Guest List

While the world waits with bated breath ( whatever that means ) for the next pulsating post on this absurdly inconsistent blog
( Album number 15, The Soft Bulletin ) I thought I'd share with you a favourite albums list from the mighty John Pitt. John has been a very generous supporter of my half-baked blogging efforts, both here and over at The Glass Walking-Stick, so it's a pleasure to present his rundown of Classic Rock, complete with liner notes. Take it away, Mr P...

The Beatles - the White Album
John Lennon - Imagine
Paul & Wings - Band On The Run
The Stones - Through The Past Darkly -( now I know this isn't a studio album, but a collection, but I chose this for nostalgic reasons )
The Who - Tommy
T. Rex - The Slider
David Bowie - Hunky Dory
Slade - Old, New,Borrowed & Blue
Queen - A Night At The Opera
Rod Stewart - Never A Dull Moment
Cream - Disraeli Gears
Led Zeppelin - II
Pink Floyd - The Wall -( I did have Hendrix's Are You Experienced, but someone beat me to it!)
Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends
Paul Weller - Stanley Road.
So there you have it - nowhere near as diverse a choice as yours, but, hey, I am an old-timer, after all!

I have to confess that I only own three of those albums myself
( Bowie, Zep and Floyd ) but I could certainly see myself parting with a few quid for a handful more  -  Band On The Run, Disraeli Gears and A Night At The Opera are all albums that I've always meant to buy but not actually got round to. Must try harder :-)

Thanks again to John for his list and if anyone else would like to comment on these albums or send me a list of their own faves please feel free to do so.

Abbey Road by The Beatles

What is there left to say about The Beatles at this great remove, fifty years since their glory days? Probably not much of any consequence, truth be told. Luckily, I only deal in the inconsequential...
As ever, this isn't some scholarly investigation into the Fab Four's art  -  just me rambling on about a favourite album and what it means to me. And it does mean quite a lot...

For most of my life I've only owned one Beatles album: a vinyl copy of Sgt. Pepper that my parents gave to me for Christmas when I was a teenager. That album is, of course, a thing of beauty and I always meant to buy more Beatles records but for one reason or another ( mostly the constantly high prices of Fab Four product ) I never got round to it. Until a few years back I discovered a box set of four Beatles CDs  -  Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road  -  going for the strangely sensible price of a tenner. Of course, I snapped it up, devoured the contents, and soon Abbey Road became one of these 'ere 15 Albums. All four would be worthy of inclusion but Abbey Road just edges out Revolver as my absolute fave and was the first that sprung to mind when I compiled the list, so it had to make it into the blog. Them's the rules. Anyway, with this one, I think I'll just dive in and play it song by song...

Come Together
What a way to start an album! Lennon's mid-paced, oblique R'n'B groover with a contrastingly clear message for the radicalised, post-hippie times: "One thing I can tell you is you've got to be free". Everything literally comes together ( see what I did there? ) on this track  -  great vocal interplay from John and Paul, soulful electric piano from Billy Preston and some wonderful drum patterns from the sadly much-maligned Ringo.
Something
George Harrison's crying guitar sound heralds his most beautiful, heartfelt ballad. "All I have to do is think of her..." Smooth, easy listening maybe... but none the worse for that.
Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Paul McCartney's tasteless but guiltily funny tale of an unrepentant serial killer, presented as a children's song. Only The Beatles could get away with such whimsical nonsense. Just. Love the "do-do-doo" backing vocals!

Oh! Darling
Paul again, but this time with a far superior song: a pastiche '50s / doo-wop rocker, harking back to the band's early days. McCartney's voice is raw and ragged, tearing the final "do you no harm" from his battered larynx.
Octopus's Garden
Another kiddies' song. Ringo's charming but inconsequential sub-aqua ditty is a close relation of Yellow Submarine and passes the time amiably enough.
I Want You ( She's So Heavy )
A slow, strangely menacing and bluesy examination of lust, John patently singing about his obsession with Yoko. The final guitar riff repeats and repeats, clanging into itself again and again, the band's new toy  -  the Moog synthesiser  -  churns out white noise... and then...
Here Comes The Sun
...the sun comes out. Clearly one of the greatest songs in all of pop history. Optimism, love and good vibes  -  the epitome of The Beatles' philosophy. "And I say, it's alright..."
Because
And the sun keeps on shining! Because is a beautifully summery example of the boys taking a fairly simple song and transforming it with soaring, ethereal harmonies.

The "Long Medley" ( 8 songs edited and sequenced together )
Pretty much the dictionary definition of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The medley, constructed by McCartney, takes up most of Side Two of the original vinyl album and consists of various scraps of songs which the band had kicking around, sequenced into one fantastic collage. Perhaps realising that Abbey Road would be their final creative flourish ( Let It Be was their last album to be released but had been recorded previously ) The Beatles went out on a sky-scraping high.
It starts with the mournful piano notes of Paul's You Never Give Me Your Money, a sad reflection on the band's long and painful dissolution which turns into a hymn to freedom: "but oh, that magic feeling  -  nowhere to go", with some scorching lead guitar, before drifting into the Albatross-like Sun King, all lazy Mediterranean siestas and nonsense lyrics. A quick drum-beat and we're into two upbeat, rockin' Lennon songs about two eccentric characters, Mean Mr Mustard and Polythene Pam, complete with some very self-aware "yeah, yeah, yeahs" and nostalgia for the band's early years. With an "Oh, look out!" the medley shifts back towards Paul with his strange tale of a persistent Beatles fan  -  She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, a jangly, quintessential Fabs song with some perfect harmonies. Then it's the high point of the medley: Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight, a staggeringly moving meditation on the band, the past, the future, with Olympian melodies and a red-blooded "boy, you're gonna carry that weight" from the full Fabs vocal ensemble. You Never Give me Your Money is reprised, this time with an orchestra in tow, before things get surprisingly funky and raucous as the guitarists duel it out for the last time. Finally, The End does exactly what it says on the tin and says goodbye to the band and the era with the sublime last line, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make..."

Her Majesty
Well, it's not exactly over as Paul's daft acoustic ditty surfaces 20 seconds after the end of The End to ensure we leave with smiles on our faces...

So, Abbey Road...It's all very wonderful and encapsulates everything the Beatles ( and all great pop music ) stood for: love, sex, fun, longing, freedom, mischief, melancholy  -  it's all here. And, of course, it all means different things to different people. On a very personal note, this album helped me immeasurably four years ago when my Mum was very ill. Things were as bad as they could get and then they got worse. The Beatles' wonderful music was there for support. The beautiful melodies, harmonies and awesome instrumental sounds were very resonant at this tough time and I took things from some of the lyrics that the writers surely never intended, but which gave me strength and spoke of love and history and peace. At the end of the day, music can be just music, a pleasant distraction, aural wallpaper, but sometimes... sometimes it's something more...

"Golden slumbers fill your eyes / Smiles awake you when you rise..."

( By the way... a special thanks goes out to new Follower John Pitt, whose recent comments inspired me to revive this 'ere blog. Cheers! )

Watch this space...

Deserter's Songs by Mercury Rev

"Bands, those funny little plans

That never were quite right"

Those sentiments can also apply equally to this perpetually-late blog. My apologies to all my legions of Followers ( seven makes up a legion, right? ) but the dreaded "real" world has got in the way of this blog yet again - not to mention my spending ( slightly ) more time over at the mothership.....

So, anyway, when Deserter's Songs came out in 1998 I'd only been vaguely aware of Mercury Rev. They had been around since the late '80s and I'd heard one or two of their songs, like Carwash Hair and Very Sleepy Rivers, but had just put them in a box labelled Self-Consciously Whacky American College Radio Bands and left it at that. But then I heard the fantastic Goddess On A Hiway single with its soaring, sky-scraping chorus, Neil Young-esque vocals and general awesomeness, and realised there was more to this bunch of Catskills misfits than was first apparent.....

Next thing I knew, that arbiter of good taste Noel Gallagher (!) was going around saying that the Rev's Holes was his favourite song of that year, which was unusual for the mono-browed Mancunian as the song wasn't his usual brand of warmed-over Beatles/Faces dad rock, but something entirely more subtle and magical.

Holes is where Mercury Rev set out their stall for Deserter's Songs. From a quiet, low-key intro they pile on keyboards, horns, strings and the eerie sound of the bowed-saw, to build up a warm but atmospheric sound collage, which doesn't once sound overdone. Jonathan Donahue's fragile, high-register voice leads us into the strange, uncertain world of the Rev, recalling ( for me at least ) the surrealism of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol.....

"Holes, dug by little moles

Angry, jealous spies

Got telephones for eyes

Come to you as friends"

More lush soundscapes follow in the form of such wonderful, dreamlike songs as Tonite It Shows and Endlessly, with its snatches of Silent Night weaving in and out of the melody. Backwoods neighbours Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of The Band show up to help cement Mercury Rev's membership in the lineage of what Greil Marcus called the "old, weird Americana". And for every ( almost ) traditional rock song, there is a fractured instrumental like I Collect Coins, which could almost be the soundtrack from some lost, experimental film from the 1920s.

And beneath the surface textures, the elusive, allusive lyrics hint at the hard times and virtual psychosis Mercury Rev suffered through on the road to this extraordinary album:

"Catskill mansions, buried screams

I'm alive she cried but I don't know what it means"

"You had to choose a side to lose and divide yourself in two

The way you were, long before, you were a walking civil war"

Finally we reach the catharsis of Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp, in which the Rev may be "waving goodbye ( I'm not ) sayin' hello" but they're doing it in the most exuberant, rollickin', bluesy way, in a track which almost lurches into a sun-kissed Balearic Beat vibe. With harpsichords.

Deserter's Songs ( named for some forgotten music critic's sniffy dismissal of The Band's 2nd album ) is a waking dream of Cosmic American Music from which you might not want to awaken.

Song to play air-saxophone to: The Hudson Line

( If you're interested - and why wouldn't you be if you got this far? - I mentioned the one time I saw the Rev, with the Flaming Lips, here as one of my irregular series of Favourite Gig Fridays. )

Are You Experienced by The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Unusually for me, I can pinpoint the exact moment I first, er, experienced the music of Jimi Hendrix. Well, I say "exact", but it was actually some time in 1980, so not that exact but I know it was on BBC 2, on the Old Grey Whistle Test and it was this awesome demolition of the Troggs' Wild Thing. What I wanted to know was - who was that flamboyant, exciting guitarist, and why was he shagging his guitar..... and not getting arrested?

I'm pretty sure that piece of footage showed up a few times over the years and I even managed to record it on audio cassette ( yes, it was the dark ages! ) and played it until the tape wore out. I had to find more of the man's music. Luckily for me Radio 1 produced a few documentaries like 25 Years Of Rock, which featured more of Jimi's music, and a special on the Hendrix story by legendarily gravel-voiced DJ, Tommy Vance. I was hooked! I went out and bought all the second-hand Hendrix singles I could find, then it was album time.....

Sadly, Hendrix only released three studio albums in his tragically short life. In reverse order they are:

Electric Ladyland - the ambitious, self-indulgent but brilliant double-album, showcasing Jimi's new-found recording-studio skills ( in his brand-new studio! ), long trippy jams, and lyrics about voodoo children and mermen.....

Axis: Bold As Love - Jimi as High Priest of psychedelia and Hindu love god (!) ( see album cover ) dispensing beautiful songs of love 'n' peace 'n' good vibes.....

Are You Experienced ( no question mark required ) - the album in, er, question, one of the greatest debut albums ever, the Experience seemingly fully-formed and firing on all four cylinders.....

Although hinting at the full-on psychedelia to come, with plentiful distorted, backwards and feeding-back guitar, this album is much harder and angrier than its successors, with a distinct lack of mellow good vibes. Hendrix was still indebted to his previous employers from his hired-hand days on the "chitlin' circuit" and beyond - Jackie Wilson, The Isley Brothers, Little Richard, Curtis Knight and more. From these hard-working days for tough bosses in front of wild audiences Jimi acquired his stage-moves, showmanship and an understanding of r 'n' b and the blues.

The blues permeates Are You Experienced, giving the album its bite. Song titles like Manic Depression, Love Or Confusion and I Don't Live Today tell their own tales, hard luck stories of the pitfalls of life and love. The classic Red House is an out-and-out blues, albeit one with a sense of humour - after returning to the "red house over yonder" to find his girl vanished, Jimi concludes:

"If my baby don't love me no more

I know her sister will"

Apart from hard times the other main preoccupation of the blues is, of course, sex. And this album has that in spades. From the suggestive album title itself, through Hendrix's sensual, smouldering guitar playing and on through his languid, laid-back vocals, this album is one big come-on, playing on Jimi's sex-symbol status and his perceived "threat" - at least as far as the institutionally-racist media of the day were concerned.

"Listen here, baby / Stop acting so crazy

You say your mom ain't home / that ain't my concern

Just don't play with me / And you won't get burned

I have only one burning desire / Let me stand next to your fire"

A melting-pot of soul, r 'n' b, blues and the new psych-rock, Are You Experienced was so far ahead of the rest of the rock world in 1967 ( yes, even the Beatles too ) that it was as if its creator had just landed from some distant, freaked-out planet in a far-off, multi-coloured universe. And maybe he had.....

"Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful....."

Song to remind you of Wayne's World: Foxey Lady