Grateful for Brent.

Every November for some years now the Grateful Dead have given away a free mp3 each day. there is a sort of competition attached to it for those who can identify every note the Dead ever played. Me I'll just collect the freebies thank you.

Writing this in November 2018 I have come to a realisation. I don't actually like the Grateful Dead much. What I do like are two Grateful Dead albums "Without A Net" a live album picked from shows in 1989 & 1990, and "In The Dark" their best selling 1987 album. Other than that I'm not bothered. Without a Net showcases the Dead's peerless ability to improvise, pushing Branford Marsalis hard on Eyes Of The World, and on the best moments of Franklin's Tower they manage to create a wall of sound that Spector would have envied, firing on all cylinders each in their own improvising bubble, while perfectly meshed together. The songs are shortish and sharp with the interminable Drums and Space segments cut out. There are enough of their best songs to make it pretty much a best of. The only songs I miss are Shakedown Street and Sugar Magnolias and maybe a couple of the songs from In The Dark. Speaking of which, it is really about four songs on that album, Touch of Grey, Hell In A Bucket, West LA Fadeaway and Throwing Stones. The rest are fairly disposable for me.

What makes the difference on these albums compared to the thousands of hours of recorded Dead that clogs up the internet? Brent Mydland. The Grateful Dead went through keyboard players the way Spinal Tap used up drummers. Brent replaced Keith Godchaux, strictly a piano player and sent the band off in new directions, ultimately bringing in digital synths, and samplers adding dense layers behind the guitars and textures that shifted the improvisations away from mundane soloing to a more collective sound.

When he passed away in July 1990 something went out. Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick who followed him were very much bolt on players rather than integrated into the fabric of the music as Brent was.

So The Grateful Dead; pointless noodling? Certainly. Self important? Definitely. some gold buried in the mountains of music? Seems like it.

Excuses, Excuses

  A long gap between posts I'm afraid. Brought on by the busyness of business, but there have been some goings on in music recently that I felt compelled to comment on so...

Bill Nelson

No secret that Bill is a huge favourite of mine. He is also someone who seems to reflect the ever increasing trend to stumble into the future focussed relentlessly on the past. He writes a regular journal on his website. the latest (as I write) is here. Bill is producing more and better work than he has ever done but is again being forced to revisit work that he regards as juvenalia - Be Bop Deluxe were a good band but a recent article in Shindig and doubtless the upcoming one he refers to in Classic Rock will pick over their bones and pass over the subsequent 40 years and hundreds of recordings with barely a nod. I sympathise with Bill and wish that he and other artists could be allowed the spotlight for their current work that it deserves.

I suspect (as from his comments I think Bill does as well) that the power of Facebook may have helped sell this event out in record time, and given that the Facebook groups that helped the sell out seem to have the same myopia about anything other than Be Bop Deluxe, then he may be right that there will be some disappointed fans clutching armfuls of 70s LPs to be signed. This means that many of his very loyal current following go without, me included. While I think some of the comments being expressed on the website message board are a little OTT, it would be nice for Bill to have a supportive crowd, especially if there is a question mark over him playing live again.

Over The Rhine

Another favourite. Sometime ago they did a a crowd funder covering three new albums. While I'm of the persuasion that would listen to Karin Bergquist sing a shopping list, I was pleased to see that there will be a new piano album from Linford included. I recently bought the only one of his earlier ones that I didn't have, "Unspoken Requests" and it's now a fixture on the iPod. If you don't know about Over The Rhine, catch up here. Hopefully more shows in the UK at some point. St Georges Hall in Bristol would be a great venue for them. HINT!

Steely Dan

Or the Donald Fagen band as it should really be now. While I could care less about current goings on, the hope that DF's chase for dollars will also include some expanded reissues and some more proper live albums, rather than bootleg radio shows, is on. As a side note Jazz Journal, which I read occasionally, but is very much stuck in 1966 made a comment in it's blurb for last months issue that Steely Dan had no place in a Jazz magazine. Oh come on! Surely we are past that! The irony that this comment was supporting an interview with guitarist Steve Khan (Aja, Gaucho) and that elsewhere in the magazine was a report on new interpretations of some of Donald's songs and a feature on Chris Potter, stalwart of the 90s band is clearly lost on whoever wrote that.

EMusic

I have winged about the demise of this once great service before, but have finally paused my membership to give it three months to get it's act together. Not going to happen I'm afraid but as most of my saved for later list disappeared months ago, and Frontiers Records vanished in September I struggled to use up my allocation last quarter. So bye bye EMusic, fun while it lasted.

There got that off my chest, back to work.

Kids today...

My daughter (19) listens to at least as much music as I did at that age. There is a a subtle difference however. She doesn't care about it in the same way. Partly this is about availability, the quantity of the stuff and the ease with which it can be consumed, and that is the operative word, make music as much a disposable as a plastic water bottle. Music's ability to move the majority of people faded away sometime after the turn of the century. The arrival of cheap internet connections, and zero cost streaming made it possible to plug in your headphones and never hear the same song twice. The view out of the bus window, or at the gym turns into a video soundtracked by a revolving door of rap, r&b and pop/punk bands that will get their 15 minutes but not much more. If the daughter has a favourite band it is probably Green Day, but she spends most of her time with a background of vacuous production line dance, rap and pop that must gladden Simon Cowell's heart and leaves mine cold.


What brought this grump on? I had been aware of Sleaford Mods for a while, but discounted listening to them when Mojo anointed them the next big thing a few years ago. However I drifted past a video of them on Later recently and found I should be taking notice. Reading about their most recent album English Tapas it seems they were looking to move on musically and lyrically and they have. I can take or leave most of what's gone before but "B.H.S", "Army Nights" and "Stick In A Five And Go" all have something to say about the state we are in. I'm not the first to compare them to John Cooper Clarke but I'm listening to Beasley Street as I write this and remember the effect of this in 1980 and how it helped shaped my thoughts about politics.

The fact that music doesn't shape thought and feelings as it used to is a loss, not only to the young folks who don't seem to have replaced it with anything else, but also to society which misses out on the prod to the conscience that politically aware music has given since "Strange Fruit" and “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". That the most thought provoking current music is being made by two blokes in their forties and speaks more to me than my daughter is disheartening to say the least. Whatever your party colour, or lack of it, you are unlikely to feel that we are in a golden age of  political thought and action. The world needs to find a way to engage with my daughter's generation and music still has the potential to shift opinions and mould minds.

The best thought provoking songs

Cleaners From Venus: Living With Victoria Grey
Peter Gabriel: Biko
The Specials: Ghost Town
Neil Young: Rockin In The Free Wold
Nerina Pallot: Everybody's Gone To War
The Clash: Clampdown
Public Enemy: Hell No, We Ain't All Right
Labi Siffre; Something Inside So Strong
Frankie Goes To Hollywood: War 
B52s: Channel Z
John Cooper Clarke: Beasley Street
Sleaford Mods: B.H.S.


Yes I know, no Bob Dylan, CSNY, etc. While great songs they don't speak to me. For once I'm too young.

Real Record Shops...

It started with reading "Going For A Song: A Chronicle of the UK Record Shop" by Garth Cartwright. Yet another purchase prompted by listening to the Word In Your Ear podcast. This started me thinking about Bristol's record shops and Richard King's book Original Rockers about Revolver Records, the coolest record shop in a city stuffed with cool record shops.

I've just written a long paragraph about local bands & the live music scene, but have put that to one side for a separate article so I can stick to the point...

Which was record shops. The British Record Shop Archive lists lots, some I remember, some I don't. Living in the wilds of Hanham off to the east of Bristol, record buying was mostly about a record shop in Kingswod High Street, which I can't remember the name of, or trips to HMV in Broadmead to spend my paper round pay on whatever John Peel had played that week. My best ever record buying experience was when a boutique (clothes shop) on Hanham High Street which had tried to sell records as well for a few years gave up and sold boxes of singles for 10p and LPs for £1.50. I bought dozens, lots of punk and post punk including some that are real rarities now... I also discovered Plastic Wax Records happily still going and the world of second hand records. I can still remember buying an import Stranglers E.P. because I hadn't heard of it and literally running to buy The Ramones Rockaway Beach after it was on Radio 1.

Record shops are on the up with the "vinyl boom", and that's a good thing, even though I suspect that a good number of the discs bought are for display rather than playing. The new shops that pop up (and down again) are nothing like a "real" record buying experience though. Have you read High Fidelity? The book describes a real record shop, and that is what I loved, and indeed still do. Grubby, probably fairly disorganised, and don't bother talking to the staff who will either ignore or ridicule you. Nick Hornby and Giles Smith both had that right. The aforementioned Revolver Records was the archetype in Bristol, I went in once, and was too intimidated to go back for ages. But when I realised it was the only place to get some of the stuff I wanted I was hooked. Rival Records in Park Street with it's racks of cheap discs to flick through. Music Market in Bath a shop so small 3 people had to leave if you took a record off the rack. There was Record Fayre above a camping equipment shop which sold imports at £1.99 that were so rubbish half of them didn't have grooves deep enough for a stylus to find. 

All this may sound like I'm a vinyl fan. I'm not, it was rubbish. I don't doubt that the new 180gram collectors discs are better, but seeing people in their twenties rooting through boxes of vinyl in a charity shop recently getting all misty eyed about them reminded me of using Mark's sister's Nolans singles for airgun targets. The vinyl was useless and the music was crap. When I worked for my Dad selling 78rpm records and gramophones in the eighties the question of collectability came up all the time. How to make a Bing Crosby record collectable? Throw it away. White Christmas sold 100 million copies on 78 alone so to make it rare we'd have to fill up a lot of landfill. Same applies to vinyl,. In 1977 there were 15 million LP's & singles sold in the U.K, so questions about rarity and value are to say the least spurious. 

Does the real record shop still exist. Yes it does and here are my recommendations. 

Plastic Wax: Cheltenham Road Bristol BS6 5QU - Lots of vinyl and cds. the hours I have spent scanning the shelves since I was 14 are beyond counting. Always something new, always a bargain.

Missing Records: 247 Argyle St, Glasgow G2 8DL - Under the railway bridge hidden away. A recent discovery and one I'm still digging into. Another small shop, and there is always a Glasgow "character" on hand to liven things up. 

Musical Box: 457 W Derby Rd, Liverpool L6 4BL - Friendly owners, I made his day when I asked for Jazz cds, went out with armfuls. 

Record Collector: 233 Fulwood Rd, Sheffield S10 3BA - Closed Wednesdays as I found out. Separate cd & vinyl shops so I don't have to walk past any of that nasty black plastic. second best record shop in the world. Totally impossible to find anything, just browse and have fun.

My tip for collecting by the way is buy cds. They will come back. The special editions and longer playing times will attract people. When downloads start to die away over the next few years, and they will, cds with their currently low prices and superior digital reproduction will be the new vinyl.

Aretha Franklin

I'm not even remotely qualified to pronounce on the career of Aretha Franklin, but for me Soul Music begins and ends with "I Say a Little Prayer For You" and later on her performance of "Think" in The Blues Brothers. Lou Marini's sax underpins the domestic row to end them all in the latter, just brilliant. So I won't say anything, but just watch these again.

Podcasting -

Last September I wrote about how to do Podcasting. The latest RAJAR figures, which document all sorts of listening behaviour, have just been released. The BBC news website has made this the top news item on the entertainment page. Now admittedly this is a slow news Sunday at the start of the summer holidays, but Podcasting really is big news. The BBC article however draws some very odd conclusions that obscure the proper headlines.

1. They suggest that those listening to Podcasts has jumped from 3.8 million to 6 million since 2016. This is true but misses the fact that it has been a steady climb in listening every quarter.
    
2. Based on research by Acast the BBC claims that "Millenials" (16 -34 age group) make up the bulk of podcast listeners. A quick look at the RAJAR figures suggests this doesn't tell the whole story. Yes the two demographics that make up this group are the largest share of users but the 35-54 age band are on a par with the 15-24 & 25-34 ranges. 55+ lag behind but is a growing market. Let's remember that Acast want to sell advertising to podcast listeners and that their document reflects this.
   
3. Quoting Hannah Verdier who reviews Podcasts for The Guardian and Rowan Slaney, who writes The Guardian's Podcast column (spotting a theme here yet?) The BBC article the proceeds to recommend a very narrow range of podcasts aimed squarely at the young folks while protesting that their recommendations aren't part of the "London media bubble". 

All this totally fails to grasp the true impact of podcasting. I'm 54, subscribe regularly to ten Podcasts and listen occasionally to at least another ten. I won't suddenly stop next February when I turn 55. Rajar point out that 72% of listening is on a phone and over half consumed while traveling or working. So Podcasting is supplanting "live" radio, and the BBC itself recognises that and can take a large share of the credit for Podcasting's growth. The charts quoted in their own article miss the BBC's dominance of the medium, it is their future as well as ours. The highest placed non BBC show (4th) is "My Dad Wrote a Porno" which is very funny, but run by a BBC DJ. ITV's Love Island is next, with the long running Joe Rogan show after that.

The point of Podcasting is choice. Choose when you want to listen, choose your subject, choose often from multiple offers within that subject. The Tour De France is on at present, my preference is for The Cycling Podcast, but I'm also listening to the BBC's Bespoke and Eurosport's Bradley Wiggins show on occasion. Recent proof of the way that Podcasting is changing the landscape comes from another BBC Podcast. the Grenfell Tower Inquiry reports every day that the inquiry sits. Providing this depth of reporting on a news show would not be possible, but as this inquiry may be one of the most important things happening in Britain at the moment it deserves to be heard widely and often.

So, the BBC reports on Podcasting, a genre it dominates and does brilliantly, misses the point that ANYONE can Podcast, if it's good it will find an audience, if it isn't it will wither quickly. They also fail to spot the depth and breadth of Podcasting. As reported by Podcast Insights there are over 550,000 Podcasts and more than 18.5 million episodes on iTunes, if you can't find something in that lot you really are hard to please.


I will post some of my favourite Podcasts on Twitter. Follow me @sellingservTim to pick up some places to start your Podcast journey.

The Magic of YMO

Kraftwerk get much of the credit for the rise of electronic music in the early 80s & beyond, but for me Yellow Magic Orchestra are at least as influential. Their career started with computer game noises and you can hear their influence in game soundtracks and woven into a diverse range of artists music. Between the bands own albums and the myriad related artists they are a collectors dream.

Wikipedia is fairly good for once on the history. One thing it does highlight is how many of their songs have advertising connections. Fuji cassettes, Seiko watches and Kirin beer are just a few brands that have had the YMO touch. One of their best known songs, "Behind The Mask" (yes Eric Clapton via Michael Jackson) started as a Seiko commercial in 1978. This a version recorded by Sakamoto with Jackson's lyrics.

Never heard that before, very Eighties!

Where Kraftwerk pioneered Techno, YMO started off as kitsch lounge/exotica practitioners and progressed to more dance synthpop based material influencing bands like Human League & Depeche Mode. Early adopters of the Roland TR808 & TB303, they got their shot with Afrika Bambaataa two years after he sampled Trans Europe Express and that introduced them to the Detroit crowd. From there YMO influences crop up everywhere, often second or third generation but there nonetheless.

My favourite YMO homage is on a Vicious Pink 12" from 1984. A Side "CCCan't You See" is fairly standard synthpop, the B side "8:15 to Nowhere" is pure YMO, and the cover of "Great Balls of Fire" would have been at home on a Takahashi solo disc of the time.

From YMO's group albums you inevitably get drawn into their solo albums, and from 1979 to about 1984 they can do little wrong for me. They played on a huge number of other artists albums, but I'm going to save talking about them, the band Japan, and acts like Akiko Yano & Sandii & The Sunsetz for another post as it is way too much for now. I will give a recommendation for Nicholas D Kent's comprehensive site Technopop which will give you plenty to investigate.  It hasn't been updated in a while but as an archive you can't beat it

Where to start with their music?
My favourites are Solid State Survivor, home of Rydeen, Technopolis, and the original Behind The Mask and Technodelic, Kraftwerk lite synthpop with some innovative early sampling. Unlike the Dusseldorf crew* YMO were a good live band, Fakerholic, if you can find it is the best of their 1979/80 world tour, avoid 'Public Pressure' like the plague, Kazumi Watanabe's guitar replaced by extra synths - horrible. There are some good live albums from recent years, try them online & pick the one you like best. Compilations? YMO have been badly served there. 'YMO Go Home' & 'Kyoretsu Na Rhythm' are the best of an unsatisfactory lot.

Why choose YMO?
I love Kraftwerk but they can be a bit po faced & joyless at times. YMO are fun, they have a uniquely Japanese sense of humour that is frankly odd. If you get the Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy you will get YMO. If you listen to nothing else by them try ×∞Multiplies , but make sure it is this version , ignore the stupid Amazon reviews and get it. You will still be laughing in a week.

 
*Kraftwerk of the 80's that is, now they are different, the Manchester Velodrome is in my top 5 ever shows, but was it a live show or an experience?