Aliens ate my blog post

It's taken me ages to get this post written as new information came up and new cds arrived. So this may get amended in time...

Back in 1979 I was dozing in front of The Old Grey Whistle Test when up popped a new band, Bruce Woolley & The Camera Club. This is best version I can find on You Tube at the moment...

The thing that attracted me was the keyboards, a young kid hiding behind a stack of synths, producing piercing solos and textures different to anything else about at the time. They appeared on Radio 1 In Concert a few weeks later (I wish I still had that tape) and I was a fan. I bought the album "English Garden", was initially mildly disappointed by the "pop" production, and that following another single "Trouble Is" was that.

I heard "Europa & the Pirate Twins" by Thomas Dolby and joined the dots. Windpower followed and the album 'Golden Age of Wireless'. As usual I followed him off and on for the next few years up to his single with Sakamoto, "FieldWork", still one of my favourites by either artist. 

I have just been listening to the Audiobook of Thomas Dolby's Speed Of Sound and now know the goings on behind that music. I'll explore the business aspects of Dolby's relationship with the music and I.T. industries elsewhere, but the book paints a picture of an artist whose life influences his art perhaps more overtly than others. The 'Aliens Ate My Buick' album was a sharp change of direction, a move to the USA, marriage and work with George Clinton brought out a more upbeat funky feel, although the lasting song from the album for me is the more atmospheric 'Budapest By Blimp'. Listen to Jazz singer Claire Martin's version of "Key To Your Ferrari", proof that Dolby's main skill is as a songwriter.

I missed 'Astronauts & Heretics' but will explore it now having read about it in his book and listened to "The Beauty of a Dream". Read his tale of dragging a contribution out of Jerry Garcia before you hear the song.

Included at the end of the Audiobook of Speed Of Sound is Oceanea from his most recent album 'Map Of The Floating City. I knew of the album/game concept but the music was a surprise. Burning Shed have the 2CD version in stock. Mine arrived as I was writing this, and on first listen* the rest of the album is up to the standard of Oceanea. The package is nice as well, the map has all sorts of nuggets for the Dolby fan to spot, in fact it now seems that he has been building a whole world all these years, even down to the landlocked boat for a recording studio. I wonder if he has read J.G.Ballard?

 I would recommend the Audiobook version of The Speed of Sound as Dolby's narration gives it a personal feel that enhances the story. Any or all of his albums are worth exploring, if you get his "comeback" live album 'The Sole Inhabitant' get the DVD for the between song chat and anecdotes. His instrument set up including bits of 1920's radios is also interesting, at least it was to me...

I wasn't aware of how personal many of his lyrics were, the "fun" nature of his early music masked that aspect of his work, but I am listening with new understanding to all his albums and enjoying the more introspective work on Astronauts & Heretics and Map.... Take some time to read or listen to his book and find new depths in his music as I have.

 * after a couple more listens Oceanea, & Spice Train are favourites but To The Lifeboats is creeping up fast. You need to see the video of "The Toad Lickers" too, bizarre to almost Douglas Adams standards.

One Of A Kind

Sid Smith has been talking about Bill Bruford's solo band from 1979 -80 on Twitter which got me thinking about them as well...

I came across Bill Bruford as part of U.K., although I didn't listen to them then. I may have mentioned before that I am very much of the curating style of music fan and I like to keep track of people so when two of U.K. turned up on Rock Goes To College sometime later I paid attention. Bill's clanging Roto Tom based drum sound was new to me, and they all seemed to be doing something slightly different with the sound of their instruments. Then I found the album 'One of a Kind' in a cut out bin for £1.99.

First track "Hell's Bells" still sounds like it's from another place, Holdsworth's opening solo with it's yawing vibrato and and the simple 11 note keyboard riff that repeats through the song set the tone for the rest of the album. One of my favourites has always been "The Abingdon Chasp", an Allan Holdsworth piece that was probably the first time I had heard bass guitar taking the lead in stating the theme of the piece, and to my mind is far more impressive than the slap bass solo at the start of 5G. For me the simplicity of the tunes allow the soloing space to expand to fill the gaps. Holdsworth complained in a magazine article that he hadn't been allowed to do much more than solo with U.K. and while Bruford were better he was still wheeled onto the mix to add flash rather than be integrated into the piece.

There had been an earlier album, with the same band 'Feels Good To Me', but the writing on 'One of A Kind had matured so far from this that it is odd that the Rock Goes to College show concentrates on it so much. There is a bootleg of the whole show that also features "Hell's Bells" and the two parts of "One Of A Kind", if anything Holdsworth's solo on the former is even more impressive than on record. Apparently it was the band's first gig.

In his autobiography Bill describes the trials of running the band, bringing bassist Jeff Berlin over from the US and carting Hammond Organs around, which explains Neil Murray's appearance on this OGWT segment promoting Feels Good To Me

I saw them play in Bath (The Pavilion?) in early 1980 supporting Brand X, who I hadn't learned to love yet. I was there for Bruford who were promoting their new album "Gradually Going Tornado". John Clark (the unknown John Clark) was doing a passable impression of AH and it turns out was his student. The band was good but to my recollection sounded like it was running out of steam. Not the band I had heard on TV the year before. Listening later to "The Bruford Tapes" a release of a radio show in New York reinforced this view of the Bath show. 

That third album with John Clark replacing Holdsworth and more vocals isn't one I listen to often, for me the high point of this band was 'One Of A Kind'. The writing, playing and arranging all aligned in perfect combination and is one of the highlights of improvised rock or jazz rock fusion. I still listen to it regularly and find it as fresh as in 1979.

I saw John Clark again about 5 years later when I was dragged to a Cliff Richard concert by my partner, and there he was adding Holdsworth style solos to "Wired For Sound" and "Bachelor Boy". Dave Stewart cropped up on Top Of The Pops with Barbara Gaskin, Jeff Berlin wandered off into the darker reaches of Fusion, and I next saw Bill Bruford at Moles Club, Bath in 1981 with a band called Discipline who shortly after became the next iteration of King Crimson. My remembrances of Allan Holdsworth are here.

For a view from the trenches of life in music from the 70s to the new century I unreservedly recommend Bill Bruford's autobiography. The fact that he has played on so much of my favourite music and played with people who I like may influence that view. He has some interesting opinions on the business of music as well.

There is a great acoustic version of One Of a Kind rounding off the Earthworks album 'Random Acts of Happiness' which I almost love more than the original.

Buy Bill Bruford's music at Burning Shed 

Reading Matter

I have always been a big fan of music magazines. Back in the beginning there was Sounds which always had a wider range of music than NME. NME was always a bit intimidating, out in Keynsham we never felt quite cool enough for it. Sounds spoke to the kids in out of the way places, like Keynsham!

About 1978 there was a short lived glossy magazine called, Rock On. This was what would today be called a legacy magazine (Mojo, Classic Rock) and had articles on the history of bands like Pink Floyd, Status Quo and Fleetwood Mac, with reviews and posters. Terrible writing and worse editing (I know now) but for the information starved teenage budding rock fan, absolute gold.

Later on there were sneaky reads of my sister's Smash Hits and buying Sounds International and Musician, but until Q, started up in the mid eighties there was a drought so far as informative magazines were concerned.

Recently I read Mark Ellen's memoir of his magazine days "Rock Stars Stole My Life!" A great read (or listen; I did the Audiobook), which tells you a lot about the business of music writing as well as the gossip. He tells of leaving Mojo when the corporate world became too much and the life and death of The Word, a magazine I read from first to last issues and loved for the quality of it's writing and depth of knowledge. In fact my reading journey seems to have followed Ellen, Smash Hits, Q, Select, Mojo, The Word...

So today following the collapse of Team Rock at the end of 2016, the general decline in readership and the advertising revenue that supports it, we have the general reads like Q, the legacy mags, Mojo, Classic Rock etc forever looking over their shoulders, and increasingly niche publications aimed at ever tighter segments of the market. Country, Prog, Blues all have their own, and now Planet Rock Radio have started a new competitor to Classic Rock. The downside is that the really good niche rock papers, Fireworks and Powerplay will likely lose sales to it as well. As both these but particularly  Firworks are written with care, knowledge and an understanding of the reader's expectations they need to survive, if nothing else to ensure we aren't just fed magazines that are aimed more
at the needs of advertising than written for the music fan.

What do I read currently?

Fireworks, AOR, Hard Rock, increasingly drifting into other related areas. If this is your thing buy it.
Mojo If it has something on the cover that interests me (about twice a year)
Uncut Ditto
Shindig Back when it was quarterly it was a brilliant on 60s, 70s and obscurities that you had to rush out and listen to, now Monthly there has been a slip in quality. The recent article on Be Bop Deluxe was such a car crash that I haven't been back, although when something interesting appears on the cover I will doubtless buy it. Reviews section always has something good in it.
JazzWise best Jazz magazine by far.

Online magazines are getting better all the time, I like Louder Than War and Paste

And then there are Blogs, but that's another kettle of worms altogether...

Mixing It...

A while back I touched on mix tapes. This weekend we went to see Guardians Of The Galaxy 2, good fun film as was the first one. The music and mix tapes are a key part of the film and I got wondering what makes a good song for a tape, or playlist.

In High Fidelity Nick Hornby gives all sorts of rules for creating a tape,the only one I have ever followed is not to have two tracks from the same artist consecutively. Like many people I was making mix tapes and playlists long before the iPod and long before they were a fashion accessory. I just made them to listen to. Oddly many songs that make it onto a playlist aren't ones I would pick out as favourites. There needs to be a rhythm to a playlist, a flow that carries you through the songs. The Cinema (Curzon in Clevedon, visit it) played the first Awesome Mix CD before the new film and it struck me that following 'Fooled Around and Fell in Love' (pretty much the perfect mix tape song with Mickey Thomas' soaring vocal and a cracking guitar solo) with 10CC 'I'm Not in Love' broke up the flow so badly that even 'I Want You Back' one of those songs around the top end of happy, couldn't rescue it. Playlists do need a couple of harsh transitions between songs to make sure the listener is awake, 'Cherry Bomb' does that just fine on the Guardians Of The Galaxy CD, but that needs to reset the mood not stick out like a sore thumb. 

Damn it I do have rules after all, and here are some more, Pop, Rock in all their forms go together, some country, you can add in most Soul or R&B, the mainstream end of Reggae perhaps, but Jazz, most Folk Music or anything Avant Garde are a step too far, especially if you expect to play it in the car with civilians present. If you are reading this I sort of take it for granted that the latest Rap & Techno probably aren't on heavy rotation on your iPod. 

The second Guardians of the Galaxy CD is far more a soundtrack than a mix tape, the songs work well in the film but hang together far less well as an album. At the end of the new film Peter is given a Zune "with 300 songs on it!", which will make the soundtrack to the next film a doddle.

Paying The Cost...

It's Record Store Day and amid the celebrations of all things vinyl & CD, there is the ever present dischord of the difficulty of making a living from music in 2017.
  
I wrote about Over The Rhine recently, and how difficult it is for people like them to make a living from their music.The financial risk in running a tour in Europe is huge for an independent artist. The costs of travel, and the fact that ticket sales can be a lottery at best mean budgeting a 3 week plus stay is next to impossible.

Allan Holdsworth passed away recently. A guitarist of prodigious talent feted by his peers who copied his style, admired by fans of Jazz & Rock, and who died in a financial position that left his family needing a Go Fund Me campaign to pay for his funeral. The question for me is where were all the fans who have mostly donated about $20, the price of a cd, when he was alive? His recently released compilation is £17 on Amazon. The carelessness of the online stores in pricing is highlighted by the fact that one had his career box set as a download for £6 for a while rather than £60.00. Who suffers? The artist.


I was lucky enough to meet Kim Edgar last year. A Scottish singer with 3 great albums, she was doing a short tour of the Highlands and came to Crianlarich. Her audience? Two. The Reasoning were a highly regarded Progressive Rock band from Wales. One of the factors causing their demise was the imposition of VAT on downloads in the U.K. The accounting costs moved their Bandcamp sales from acceptable to untenable.

Why are we in this position? Is the music not good enough? Hardly. If you don't like any of the above, and please try them, then there are hundreds of other artists who in a better time and place would be selling records by the boatload. Poor promotion? Possibly in some cases, but getting your head above the noise on Twitter is a struggle, the cost of physical product and distribution is a risk too far in many cases. The real answer lies in the culture of the music industry; exploitative for so long and now unwilling, or unable, to make the radical changes needed to move past the short-termism of the X Factor model and nurture artists for rewards in the future. Vinyl won't I'm afraid save the industry, it is a fad, and will fade. CDs still sell to some extent, but digital formats are where the world is going. The major streaming portals need to engage with the industry outside the few remaining major labels to achieve an equitable share out of the revenue. I recognise that they can't deal with every artist one at a time, but working with Bandcamp, CD Baby and their like would bring enough artists into the fold to encourage others to join in. Will it happen? Something has to. Something also has to be done to make music vital to teenagers, as it was in my (long ago) time. How? New music that energises and excites them as happened in the 60's, punk and grunge. We aren't going to find that on reality TV.

Part of my business Selling Service is helping artists find an audience. Talk to me if you want to learn more about getting your message out. tim@selling-service.co.uk

Allan Holdsworth

 

I said when I wrote about John Wetton that I wasn't one for marking every musician's passing, but now this...

In the late 70s Virgin Record stores published a magazine. In among advertorials for whatever they were selling that month was the occasional article that piqued my interest. One of these was on a new supergroup U.K. I was just starting on the path away from Top Of The Pops and the "previously with..." list read well. I didn't buy the record then, but a couple of years later saw Bill Bruford's band on 'Rock Goes To College', and discovered the world where Jazz met Rock. the guitarist stood out of the limelight, but something interesting was going on. At much the same time (or very close, memory may be faulty here) I bought my first guitar magazine, Beat Instrumental and read about Edward Van Halen's love of Allan Holdsworth.

So armed with 'One Of A Kind' and the first U.K. album I learnt more. The solos on 'In The Dead of Night', and  'Hells Bells' opened new views on what was possible with the electric guitar.

Sometime later BBC Radio 3 (yes 3) broadcast a session of Holdsworth's new solo band I.O.U. Recorded without the vocals of Paul Williams from the album it remains some of my favourite pieces of his playing and deserves an official release. I have followed him intermittently ever since.

'Road Games', 'Metal Fatigue', 'All Night Wrong', and 'Blues For Tony' are my favourites. If you are new to his music get the new compilation Eidolon, but be prepared to end up buying the new very suitably named 'The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever!' 12 cds of solo albums heralding new improved versions of his work.

In 1990 he joined Level 42 for a tour and part of the Guaranteed album. The only officially released live work is on a box set, the solo on Love Meeting Love is sublime.

Now too soon and suddenly he has gone. The crime that has artists of his quality leaving their family's needing Go Fund Me for funeral expenses is a subject I will come back to in a later post but for now I would suggest buying the new compilation, Bruford's One Of A Kind and reading Bill Bruford's autobiography which describes his time working with Allan Holdsworth, who comes across as someone unwilling to compromise his work, possibly a little difficult at times, but commited to his vision of the guitar and its possibilities.

Bill Bruford said on his Facebook page
With enormous sadness I write to express my condolences to Allan's family on the loss of a much-loved father and grandfather, my friend and colleague. For several years in the 1970s, through my own band and 'UK', I listened to him nightly, launching sheets of sound on an unsuspecting audience, changing perceptions about what guitars and guitarists should or could be doing, thrilling me half to death.I would have paid to be at my own gig.

Allan wasn't easy, but if it was easy it wouldn't have been Allan. Like all creative musicians he was restless and relentless in pursuit of 'the perfect sound', the one that he couldn't get out of his head, the one that would never leave him alone. Now he will be at peace. Still, my guitar gently weeps.

Over The Rhine Live in London

Busy busy at the moment. My review of Over The Rhine was published by Americana UK recently. If you read my piece on them you may find this interesting as well. Click HERE to read the review.