Tag Archives: journalism

Dylan Days

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Spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks listening to this "new" Bob Dylan cd "Tell Tale Signs" which is proving a very worthwhile experience. More than anything this compilation of outtakes from 1989-2005 has made me realise how much I appreciate Dylan’s back catalogue. I have a fairly unusual take on Dylan’s albums in that against the prevailing trend I see a lot of worth in his albums of the early to mid Eighties – seeing only the period around "Down in the Groove" as the time that he really lost his vision of his music. Couldn’t choose which of his albums I’d take to a desert island so here’s a complete list of what I think of as his crucial records, in chronological order:

The Times They Are A-Changin’
Another Side of Bob Dylan
Highway 61 Revisited
Blonde on Blonde
Blood on the Tracks
Street Legal
Slow Train Coming
Saved
Shot of Love
Empire Burlesque
Oh Mercy
Time Out of Mind
Live 1961-2000 (Japan only)
Modern Times

If I was going to round it out to 15, then the contenders would be "Bringing it All Back Home", "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid", "Infidels", "Knocked Out Loaded", "World Gone Wrong", and "Love and Theft". Oops, that makes it 20. Really poor Dylan albums: the aforementioned "Down in the Groove", "Desire" (sorry, awful production), and a number of the official live albums.

More on Tell Tale Signs when I’ve lived with it a little longer – and yes, I do have the three cd set and don’t feel I was robbed……..

Anything Goes Where No-one Knows Your Name

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It’s been a quiet year on the live front for John Foxx. That’s why it was doubly good to catch him and Louis Gordon and Steve D’Agostino at the Cargo in Shoreditch, London last night.
John dipped deep into his current songwriting and back catalogue last night. A handful of songs from his days with Ultravox! all those years ago including  Young Savage. It’s brave to attempt this on synthesizers and I’m not sure it quite works but it sure was fun. As John spat out the lyrics with gusto you could forget that punk was thirty years ago and that Johnny Rotten now advertises butter.
Loudest cheers of the night were reserved for Underpass and No-one Driving from Foxx’s debut solo "Metamatic" but musically the high points may have been the rarely-performed "The Garden" and another Ultravox! classic "The Man Who Dies Everyday". Particular credit also goes to encore "Broken Furniture" which debuted on John and Louis’ "Crash and Burn" in 2003.
The evening coincided with the release of two new limited edition Foxx / Gordon albums – the studio set "Impossible" and a live document from last years gig at the Luminaire entitled "Neuro Video".

Set List:

WALK THIS WAY
A MILLION CARS
DISLOCATION
THE MAN WHO DIES EVERY DAY
CAMERA
UPTOWN/DOWNTOWN
UNDERPASS
NO-ONE DRIVING
BURNING CAR
SHADOW MAN

THE GARDEN
TRAVEL
BROKEN FURNITURE
YOUNG SAVAGE
MY SEX 1/
MY SEX 2
ENDLESSLY
SHIFTING CITY

Footnote: Foxx is usually pretty considerate of his audience but last night a show that was billed on the website to begin at 7 pm saw John take the stage at 9.15 – a tactic which is perhaps best avoided in future as the natives were getting restless by that time. Interestingly, following Shifting City the house lights were left down for what seemed like an interminably long time given the impression that an encore was coming which never arrived. Wonder what was going on backstage?

Louis Gordon had been kidnapped and replaced by that guy who used to play Nigel in Eastenders………..

Post-Season blues

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No, I’m not griping about the Yankees not being involved in this stage of the season. We had a good and interesting season but we weren’t quite good enough but there is much reason to be optimistic for 2009.
No. At this time of the year, my problem is always the same. This wild card system doesn’t seem to work. Too often the wild card team gets through the short 5 game series which begins the post-season and then goes on to more success than they deserve. I was very glad last night that the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (boy, that’s a mouthful) managed to bounce back and at least take Boston to 4 games and hopefully the full 5.
Solutions? Don’t really have any – take the leagues to two divisions each and eliminate the need for a wild card? Make the Division series seven games and at least introduce some equity in making that first round as difficult to win as the others?
No, this isn’t me trying to desperately prevent Boston making the World Series again. As I said, I have this problem every year. Too often the Wild Card team from one or both of the leagues, who really are an also-ran in my mind, find their way to the Series in a way that their performance during the 162 games, which is the real meat of the season, doesn’t merit.
Anyway, I hope Anaheim pull it off. Both Los Angeles teams have impressed me this year and deserve to make their Championship series.

One more last night

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Had a good night at Dingwalls yesterday. Arrived in time to see Deviant UK who I really enjoyed even if Jay Smith does wear his Numan influences just a tad too heavily. Good performer, good set.

Next up was the reason for being here – Swarf. Another great performance. Ms. Green really grows when presented with an enthusiastic, reasonably-sized audience and the two guys are a moody and talented presence who are a very large part of everything the band does. So good I bought the t-shirt. But how could they drop "Supine" from the set? This was the song that really turned me on to Swarf. The fall e.p. was good but all the pieces didn’t really fall into place, for me, until I heard "Supine". Swarf, you may be near the top of my personal listening class but restore that song to your live performance. Now, write 500 lines, "We must perform Supine every time we play, regardless of how long a set we are allotted".

Third act up were Adoration who have that guy from This Burning Effigy and precious little else. I really would have stayed for Diary of Dreams but I couldn’t be bothered to wade through this monotonous wall of sound for as long as it would have taken. It’s a shame because on their myspace their sound manages to have interesting layers and all kinds of things going on but all this was lost in the boggy mire they delivered last night.

Diary of Dreams? I guess we’ll never know

.

Deviant UK

1,2,3 Swarfs

Questions…. always questions

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It’s been a good month for getting to talking to some of my favourite musicians. As I have mentioned before I’ve been working hard on an interview project with Richie Furay (Buffalo Springfield, Poco, Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, solo career etc. etc.) We had just about finished this when I mentioned to Richie, it would be nice to get an alternative view on some of the key periods in his life. We came up with the idea of getting Bernie Leadon (Hearts and Flowers, Flying Burrito Brothers, Eagles, Bernie Leadon-Michael Georgiades Band, solo career etc. etc.) to comment on rivalry and admiration between Poco and the early Eagles. I was expecting a few words, enough to mould into a paragraph of the article. Bernie went to town and has written an article of his own about his admiration of Poco. Great stuff!
I’m also hoping for a contribution from Al Perkins who played a particularly important role in developing Richie’s musical and spiritual life.

Next up to the plate is Michael Georgiades who was Bernie’s partner-in-crime in the aforementioned Bernie Leadon-Michael Georgiades band and in the short-lived spin-off, Zoe. I’m going to be speaking to him next Saturday. His album, Natural Progressions, is a particular favourite of mine and interviewing him is the realisation of a long-held ambition.

Looks likely then that the next stage in the on-going project that I have rolling with Mr Leadon will be in August as we talk about his period with Hearts & Flowers.

These articles will appear in Cross Rhythms magazine and Natural Progressions Magazine. The first of these can be located on the web, subscription information on the second can be obtained from me.

What I do……

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I’ve mentioned before that I write about music. In a way the internet has made it much more simple to produce articles. It’s way easier to do research. On the other hand there is something about the tone of pieces on the internet which I find very strange. Too much writing is not about the music anymore. I’m glad that some of the musicians feel the same. This from Donald Fagen of Steely Dan:

“I don’t like to visit the fan sites because there’s something creepy about the whole thing to me. I remember when I was a kid I was a big jazz fan and later on there were a few popular singers and groups I liked but I was always interested in the music; I never made a fetish out of their personal lives. I never really got that, you know? I appreciate whatever they do to keep the interest in the band and all that sort of thing but it’s really not part of my world.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

People are crazy, times are strange…….

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When I’m going through difficult times (like now) I tend to rely on music to get me through. One album that’s carrying me along at the moment is a Bob Dylan cd which has had a limited circulation. Although released as recently as 2001, it was only made for the Japanese market at the time that Dylan was about to tour there. Entitled Bob Dylan Live 1961-2000 – Thirty Nine Years of Great Concert Performances, it culls tracks, many that have not been on cd elsewhere, from all across his career.

 

So what’s on here?

Somebody Touched Me. Country gospel hymn recorded in 2000. His current set list could do with some of this kind of innovation to break it up a little.

Wade in the Water. More traditional gospel but this time recorded in 1961 – a long, long time before anyone was asking about his religious beliefs. Acoustic folk.

Handsome Molly. From 1962. The lyrics have echoes from something from Modern Times. Part of the Gaslight Tapes.

To Ramona. From 1965. Dylan works words like no-one else and this has him at his youthful best.

I Don’t Believe You. 1966. It used to sound like this…….. Dylan has gone electric and one of my favourite songs from the 1964 period is reworked and sent soaring.

Grand Coulee Dam. 1968. Recorded as a tribute to his mentor, Woody Guthrie.

Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. 1974. One from an album that has been available forever. It was originally on “Before the Flood”. Along with the version on the “Hard to Handle” video performance this is my favourite of the live recordings of this classic track.

It Ain’t Me, Babe. Recorded during the filming of Renaldo and Clara and filled with all the ramshackle glory and energy that dominated the Rolling Thunder Revue.

Shelter From the Storm. 1976. Again commonly available on Hard Rain but let’s face it that’s an album you’re never going to need all of. This is one of the better moments from that album. I’d have gone for “I Threw it all Away” or “Idiot Wind” but this will do.

Dead Man, Dead Man. 1981. Everybody now realises that for an established artist to go on stage with a setlist made up entirely of new songs virtually never happens. We have realised too late that Dylan live during the Slow Train / Saved period was simply amazing. It’s time for a full release of one of those shows in the Bootleg Series. Until that happens, then a performance of this song from Shot of Love from the following tour will have to do. Very cool indeed.

Slow Train. 1987. Originally released on “Dylan and the Dead”, the live album from his tour with the Grateful Dead. No-one needs that whole album but this proves that if you dig deep enough there are golden nuggets even there.

Dignity. 1994. From “Unplugged” which is another album that you don’t really need. This song was originally left off “Oh Mercy”. Now for a song to be left off a Dylan album is the recipe for it to be regarded as a work of genius. For someone that his fans call a genius, they sure don’t trust his judgement. Indeed, this is a very good song but I’m not sure it would have added to the album. Great performance here.

Cold Irons Bound. 1997. The studio version was on “Time Out of Mind”. Here, it seems a little rootless but it is still a fine reading of this vital song.

Born in Time. 1998. “Under the Red Sky” is a neglected album which whilst some songs were under-realised,  is still a very worthwhile record which Dylan obviously rates. This is a fine performance of a great song.

Country Pie. 2000. Just proves that Dylan songs don’t have to be profound and mean something. Originally on “Nashville Skyline”, this song just argues for the virtues of country music. You don’t have to agree with him to enjoy hearing the old guy having fun for once.

Things have Changed. 2000. Classic song. Like on the 1979 album, Dylan is waiting on the last train. Like in 1980 he tells us what is going to happen if the Bible is right. But times as well as things have changed by now and so this time we gave him an award. The song deserves it. The live performance shows Dylan working out the truth in his own words.

This Japanese album is difficult to find. You can get all the songs on iTunes but only if you buy all their Dylan collection. I can only say that, even so, they are well worth seeking out.

Reason to Believe

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Music plays a fairly substantial part in my life in all kinds of shapes and forms. I listen to it, I write about it. Amongst the cds on fairly regular rotation over the last few days have been discs by Tom Scott, Danilo Perez, JD Souther, Rubicks and Mark Colby. A fair percentage of jazz mixed in there. All this while doing the final re-writes on my interview project with Richie Furay which has come together really well and about which various editors are proving very enthusiastic.

However, the album which has really been catching my attention today is an obscure disc by a band called Hearts and Flowers who had their moment in the sun in 1967-68 and are best remembered for being the second stopping point for Bernie Leadon. I think this was the second band of his illustrious career. He joined them for their second album “Of Horses, Children and Forgotten Women”. The band couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be The Byrds, early Simon & Garfunkel (think Wednesday Morning Three A.M.) or straight country. Folk-rock, then. Consequently, the albums are eclectic and a lot of fun with great harmonies and bags of energy and youthful enthusiasm. The songs include a cover of the Tim Hardin song I’ve used for the title of this journey entry, and bizarrely a version of “Two Little Boys” which was made famous a few years later here in the UK by wobble-board-playing Australian, Rolf Harris. Eclectic indeed.

Mostly the albums have been making me sit up and listen for all the right reasons but there are a couple of moments which have touched my funny bone. The guitar on the track “Now is the Time for Hearts & Flowers” and the backing vocals on “The View From Ward 3” (both on their first album) put me very much in mind of the vocals and guitar on that other forgotten classic of the ’60s “(Listen to) the Flower People” by the quite wonderful Spinal Tap. It’s hard to keep a straight face. I seem to have that clip from the rockumentary on regular playback in my head.

Seasons of Change

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So I’m in the midst of an interview project with Richie Furay (former vocalist with Buffalo Springfield and Poco). Sections of this will appear here and in Natural Progressions Magazine and Cross Rhythms magazine.

Received the new albums by Al Green and Walter Becker . I’ve done some promotional writing for these so I hope they live up to what I said!

The Merchant of Venice

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Well, back from 4 days in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

What can I say? The town is a mess. The unnecessary vigour to tear down the old theatre and replace it with a new one as now spread to the Bancroft Gardens. Every inch seems to have been dug over and turned to mud. Fences and scaffold surround everywhere in sight and I felt sorry for those who had travelled from France and Japan (seemed like the only two kind of tourists in evidence!) who had made a long journey and who were missing the old town at its best.

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