Well, the office is full again, but I feel much the same as yesterday. Tired, a little soft around the edges. There are a multitude of tunes zooming around my head today...some Ray Baretto, maybe a little Belle and Sebastian (not too much, don't want to weep in front of workmates) and some George Clinton. Feeling flabby as well, might get down to the gym tonight, then ruin it all with a feast to follow. All in all, i'm happy, but teetering on the edge of all that's unknown. Mind you, that's just the way it should be isn't it?
*sighs, gathers up paperwork and heads for the studio*
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Monday, August 30, 2004
Bank Holiday Blogging......
...In a deserted office. It's been a rather tiring weekend, chiefly due to my being at the Reading festival on Friday night. It's just an excuse for a giant lig, but it was really rather good. Great to see so many people I've know from the music business across the years. I love you all.
Want some fun on this overcast Monday? OK then, try downloading this gem from The Helio Sequence. Guaranteed to make you feel better.
...In a deserted office. It's been a rather tiring weekend, chiefly due to my being at the Reading festival on Friday night. It's just an excuse for a giant lig, but it was really rather good. Great to see so many people I've know from the music business across the years. I love you all.
Want some fun on this overcast Monday? OK then, try downloading this gem from The Helio Sequence. Guaranteed to make you feel better.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Records that mean the most to me: Pt. 3 : "Tubular Bells" Mike Oldfield (Virgin Album, 1973)
Ok, I know it's not really all that cool, but that's missing the point. These tunes that define me can never seem just to be a hipsters bible, or a distillation of musical excellence. They are, simply, the records that occupied my time, kept my company or my counsel throughout my life. I've always believed that the tunes choose you as opposed to the other way round; this was definitely the case with "Tubular Bells".
I grew up in Wiltshire, my parents were, at the time of this episode, a nurse and an officer in the Royal Air Force, I was at a primary school in a tiny village near Salisbury Plain. I suppose I was what you might call a "Latchkey Kid". After school, my sister would visit friends in the village whilst I would walk home, sit on the sofa and watch TV. In the corner of the living room sat my Dad's stereo: at that time, he was the only person I knew who had all this stuff, there was a pair of reel-to-reel tape recorders, a tuner, a cassette deck (in 1974-5 this was positively revolutionary) an enormous amplifier and a gorgeous old Dual record player. All this stuff sat proudly on a set of non-more-70's Ladderax shelves. I didn't ever really use the stereo, I didn't have any records of my own. "Tubular Bells" was the record that changed all of that.
At this point, and despite my protestations above, I'd like to point out that my first real vinyl purchases are actually infused with punk-era zeitgeist: first single "In the City", first album: "The Clash". But "Tubular Bells" was probably the first record I owned, a Christmas gift from my grandfather in (I think) 1975.The reason I actually requested it as a Christmas present is worthy of discussion itself: I was just fascinated by the sleeve. At that time, I was a passive user of record shops: I was normally being dragged around them by my Dad, who had a major vinyl addiction. He would trawl the racks looking for trad jazz, Dylan, Miles Davis or Simon and Garfunkel, while I would patiently kill the time until he'd finished searching (and sometimes it was hours) by absentmindedly flicking through the racks myself. This process was subconsciously filling me with information; I was starting to recognise certain sleeves: Wishbone Ash, Free, Sandy Denny...And all those compilations! Top of the Pops, Hits in Super Stereo Sound, Party time with Mrs Mills. Most of the time, I could at least make what I believed to be an educated guess as to the contents of these records: This was the era of progressive rock with all it's pomp and bluster: some of this pomp naturally spilled over from the vinyl to the cardboard that surrounded it; gatefold laminated sleeves were everywhere. Most seemed to have been designed by the bloke who'd done the artwork on the Yes albums. If I looked at a copy of a Fairport Convention album..Well it just sort of looked like a folk record. The sleeve advertised the sound of it's contents. But this wasn't always the case.
I was aware of Virgin records: I'd actually got the poster of the logo on my wall- a slightly risque thing which involved a naked woman with two bodies sitting on a hill which was encircled by what looked like a giant lizard. The script was in this luscious cherry red and swirled and bulged like over-ripe fruit, almost dragging the poster off the wall. It was rather salacious to be totally honest: I'm not even sure why my parent actually allowed me to have it. So I knew what to expect from a sleeve from Virgin : mysticism I supposed, maybe some stuff about dragons and naked girls. Hippies and CND badges, folk music, perhaps even pot. Hippies did that didn't they? I was so clued in.
So, anyway,I stood there in a record shop, sometime back in 1974 or 1975 and looked at this album, "Tubular Bells". It just had a picture of the sea on it. But it seemed weird, not really....Real. But the thing that befuddled me most was the big Tubular bell in the middle. It was sort of.......Well, it just looked odd. It was bent into a shape which looked more like a metal puzzle, the sort that fell out of your cracker at Christmas. It seemed to be floating in space, not really connected to the seascape which surrounded it ( I actually found out years later that this was down to the image having been created by cutting out the Tubular bell, gluing it to the photo of the sea and then taking a photo of that to make the final image...Virgin started with a fairly small art department). I tried to imagine what it sounded like, but nothing happened. My curiosity began to grow, over the next year or so, the album began it's journey to iconic status, it topped the charts for what seemed an eternity and was pretty much everywhere you looked. But I'd still never heard it. So, I asked for the album as a Christmas present.
Finally listening to it for the first time, that Christmas day morning (my Dad played it for me as I sat under the tree) my initial reaction was to cackle with laughter: it sounded like an army of weirdos had all got together for a laugh...Nice little piano riffs would suddenly and inexplicably morph into great walls of clanging guitars which suddenly cut to what sounded like Doctor Who landing his Tardis in the corner of the room. I had no idea how to grasp this record I now owned, it seemed to large, too impersonal, too impenetrable. It was only after about six months that I finally started to get it. As I said, I was a latchkey kid and now, when I got back from school to an empty house, I had something to do: I could play my record. So I did. Again and again and again. "Tubular Bells" became like a surrogate friend, a companion through seemingly endless wet autumn evenings. As the light faded and the clouds gathered over the hills I looked out at, the album kept me company. Now I understood its ebb and flow, the way the piece built up and then fell back, as if it were drawing breath. I learned to whistle and hum its many melodies, air-guitar to those huge chopping riffs..Even the ending became an education in itself. After all, who else among my school friends could tell the difference between an acoustic an electric and a Spanish guitar? The real importance of the record to me was that it shaped the way I evaluated music: change and invention became what I looked for: stasis was no longer an option. The myriad of styles in "Tubular Bells" meant I was never ever going to be just a hippie, or a punk or a pop fan or a Folk-rocker with a finger in my ear. I wanted to be everything. "Tubular Bells" is, for me, the sound of limitless possibility, of striving to be different, of the search for individuality. It was my first real music lesson.
And it's got tunes.
What more could you want?
Ok, I know it's not really all that cool, but that's missing the point. These tunes that define me can never seem just to be a hipsters bible, or a distillation of musical excellence. They are, simply, the records that occupied my time, kept my company or my counsel throughout my life. I've always believed that the tunes choose you as opposed to the other way round; this was definitely the case with "Tubular Bells".
I grew up in Wiltshire, my parents were, at the time of this episode, a nurse and an officer in the Royal Air Force, I was at a primary school in a tiny village near Salisbury Plain. I suppose I was what you might call a "Latchkey Kid". After school, my sister would visit friends in the village whilst I would walk home, sit on the sofa and watch TV. In the corner of the living room sat my Dad's stereo: at that time, he was the only person I knew who had all this stuff, there was a pair of reel-to-reel tape recorders, a tuner, a cassette deck (in 1974-5 this was positively revolutionary) an enormous amplifier and a gorgeous old Dual record player. All this stuff sat proudly on a set of non-more-70's Ladderax shelves. I didn't ever really use the stereo, I didn't have any records of my own. "Tubular Bells" was the record that changed all of that.
At this point, and despite my protestations above, I'd like to point out that my first real vinyl purchases are actually infused with punk-era zeitgeist: first single "In the City", first album: "The Clash". But "Tubular Bells" was probably the first record I owned, a Christmas gift from my grandfather in (I think) 1975.The reason I actually requested it as a Christmas present is worthy of discussion itself: I was just fascinated by the sleeve. At that time, I was a passive user of record shops: I was normally being dragged around them by my Dad, who had a major vinyl addiction. He would trawl the racks looking for trad jazz, Dylan, Miles Davis or Simon and Garfunkel, while I would patiently kill the time until he'd finished searching (and sometimes it was hours) by absentmindedly flicking through the racks myself. This process was subconsciously filling me with information; I was starting to recognise certain sleeves: Wishbone Ash, Free, Sandy Denny...And all those compilations! Top of the Pops, Hits in Super Stereo Sound, Party time with Mrs Mills. Most of the time, I could at least make what I believed to be an educated guess as to the contents of these records: This was the era of progressive rock with all it's pomp and bluster: some of this pomp naturally spilled over from the vinyl to the cardboard that surrounded it; gatefold laminated sleeves were everywhere. Most seemed to have been designed by the bloke who'd done the artwork on the Yes albums. If I looked at a copy of a Fairport Convention album..Well it just sort of looked like a folk record. The sleeve advertised the sound of it's contents. But this wasn't always the case.
I was aware of Virgin records: I'd actually got the poster of the logo on my wall- a slightly risque thing which involved a naked woman with two bodies sitting on a hill which was encircled by what looked like a giant lizard. The script was in this luscious cherry red and swirled and bulged like over-ripe fruit, almost dragging the poster off the wall. It was rather salacious to be totally honest: I'm not even sure why my parent actually allowed me to have it. So I knew what to expect from a sleeve from Virgin : mysticism I supposed, maybe some stuff about dragons and naked girls. Hippies and CND badges, folk music, perhaps even pot. Hippies did that didn't they? I was so clued in.
So, anyway,I stood there in a record shop, sometime back in 1974 or 1975 and looked at this album, "Tubular Bells". It just had a picture of the sea on it. But it seemed weird, not really....Real. But the thing that befuddled me most was the big Tubular bell in the middle. It was sort of.......Well, it just looked odd. It was bent into a shape which looked more like a metal puzzle, the sort that fell out of your cracker at Christmas. It seemed to be floating in space, not really connected to the seascape which surrounded it ( I actually found out years later that this was down to the image having been created by cutting out the Tubular bell, gluing it to the photo of the sea and then taking a photo of that to make the final image...Virgin started with a fairly small art department). I tried to imagine what it sounded like, but nothing happened. My curiosity began to grow, over the next year or so, the album began it's journey to iconic status, it topped the charts for what seemed an eternity and was pretty much everywhere you looked. But I'd still never heard it. So, I asked for the album as a Christmas present.
Finally listening to it for the first time, that Christmas day morning (my Dad played it for me as I sat under the tree) my initial reaction was to cackle with laughter: it sounded like an army of weirdos had all got together for a laugh...Nice little piano riffs would suddenly and inexplicably morph into great walls of clanging guitars which suddenly cut to what sounded like Doctor Who landing his Tardis in the corner of the room. I had no idea how to grasp this record I now owned, it seemed to large, too impersonal, too impenetrable. It was only after about six months that I finally started to get it. As I said, I was a latchkey kid and now, when I got back from school to an empty house, I had something to do: I could play my record. So I did. Again and again and again. "Tubular Bells" became like a surrogate friend, a companion through seemingly endless wet autumn evenings. As the light faded and the clouds gathered over the hills I looked out at, the album kept me company. Now I understood its ebb and flow, the way the piece built up and then fell back, as if it were drawing breath. I learned to whistle and hum its many melodies, air-guitar to those huge chopping riffs..Even the ending became an education in itself. After all, who else among my school friends could tell the difference between an acoustic an electric and a Spanish guitar? The real importance of the record to me was that it shaped the way I evaluated music: change and invention became what I looked for: stasis was no longer an option. The myriad of styles in "Tubular Bells" meant I was never ever going to be just a hippie, or a punk or a pop fan or a Folk-rocker with a finger in my ear. I wanted to be everything. "Tubular Bells" is, for me, the sound of limitless possibility, of striving to be different, of the search for individuality. It was my first real music lesson.
And it's got tunes.
What more could you want?
Monday, August 09, 2004
Wanna know why?
Well, I can trace it back to a dream I had about ten years ago. I can remember waking up and knowing exactly what had happened. I was in a youth club, or a village hall- a venue which wasn't actually a real gig. I was standing in front of a PA system. I can remember (in my dream) placing my hand on the speaker grille: feeling it's contours, the spaces between the grille and the cone of the speaker. I can still feel the texture of the plastic covering on the speaker casing, the worn metal corners. I'm fast asleep, deep in dreamland, when the PA comes to life.
It's loud: really loud. I can feel every beat of the song in my bones. And the song? Well, it's "Another Girl, Another Planet" by the Only Ones; but in truth, it could be any one of a hundred thousand songs. The amazing thing for me is that even while I'm fast asleep, I can recall a song like that in absolutely exact detail. Every note, every nuance, every rise and fall of the song is there. I'm asleep, but, for all it matters, I could be awake.
And that's when I knew. If the tunes have gone that far in, then they're going to run my life.
And that's what's happened.
I'm not complaining.
Well, I can trace it back to a dream I had about ten years ago. I can remember waking up and knowing exactly what had happened. I was in a youth club, or a village hall- a venue which wasn't actually a real gig. I was standing in front of a PA system. I can remember (in my dream) placing my hand on the speaker grille: feeling it's contours, the spaces between the grille and the cone of the speaker. I can still feel the texture of the plastic covering on the speaker casing, the worn metal corners. I'm fast asleep, deep in dreamland, when the PA comes to life.
It's loud: really loud. I can feel every beat of the song in my bones. And the song? Well, it's "Another Girl, Another Planet" by the Only Ones; but in truth, it could be any one of a hundred thousand songs. The amazing thing for me is that even while I'm fast asleep, I can recall a song like that in absolutely exact detail. Every note, every nuance, every rise and fall of the song is there. I'm asleep, but, for all it matters, I could be awake.
And that's when I knew. If the tunes have gone that far in, then they're going to run my life.
And that's what's happened.
I'm not complaining.
I'm beginning to suspect a conspiracy....I'm uploading "3 Feet High and Rising" in itunes and after an initial ripspeed of about 11x, it's slowed to 0.9x! Damn! Wasn't the aforementioned album the one which kicked off all the sample wars? Are they still pissed?
Friday, August 06, 2004
Get yourself some of this, it's great. Another sunny morning, listening to Fairport Convention and getting ready for a weekend back in Brighton with my folks.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Records that mean the most to me Pt 2.
The Pursuit of Happiness "Beautiful White" (Chrysalis Records Album Track 1989)
It's an odd one. I'd never heard anything by the band at all, ever. But, we were put on the same bill at a rock festival in Ghent, Belgium, early in 1989. We actually played about two bands after them, so I suppose that made us bigger than them at the time. The Stone Roses were headlining, they turned up about ten minutes before playing, surrounded by a huge crowd of hangers-on and were among the most distant musicians it ever been my displeasure to meet.
Anyway, back to TPOH. I'd got changed into my stage clothes somewhat too early and had a bunch of time to kill. The festival was organised so that there were two stages next to each other at one end of the hall. One band would play on one stage whilst the next band on would soundcheck behind a curtain on the other stage. Once the changeover was complete, the curtain would open on the other stage and the audience would shuffle 20 yards to the left or right. I wandered out into the main hall to see what was happening. Not a lot, is the short answer. I think RDF were playing, or if they weren't, it was someone scarily like them. It was awful. Then, to what seemed like complete indifference from the crowd, TPOH came on stage. I only knew it was them because I had a copy of the running order in my pocket.
What were they like? Well, a lead singer with big glasses and long hair, really dorky. A female guitarist with Stevie Nicks hair. A bass player who looked as though he'd just come from Bryan Adams' band. The omens were not good. And then, they started playing.
TPOH's sound is hardly revolutionary, it's a little bit Stones, some Faces, some big chords and some obvious melodies: I wasn't really hooked. But then, they played "Beautiful White" .It's a simple little song really: it sound a bit like "Start Me Up" but with a more yearning minor chord in the main riff..It surges and builds in a wonderfully organic way. The song is about being with a woman who doesn't really care about the clothes her lover gives her: she tosses them nonchalantly to the floor, leaving her naked: "Beautiful White". And that was it. I burst into tears, it was utterly perfect.
I finally got a copy of the album it comes from ("Love Junk") about two months later, and there wasn't a day that I didn't play it for at least five years. Even now, I play it at least once a week. It's perfect. And it makes me thank god that I'm alive. I actually realise that some of you reading this will never even hear it and probably won't even care..But you know what? I don't care. It's one of the most perfect songs ever, and I'll love it till the day I die. Game over.
The Pursuit of Happiness "Beautiful White" (Chrysalis Records Album Track 1989)
It's an odd one. I'd never heard anything by the band at all, ever. But, we were put on the same bill at a rock festival in Ghent, Belgium, early in 1989. We actually played about two bands after them, so I suppose that made us bigger than them at the time. The Stone Roses were headlining, they turned up about ten minutes before playing, surrounded by a huge crowd of hangers-on and were among the most distant musicians it ever been my displeasure to meet.
Anyway, back to TPOH. I'd got changed into my stage clothes somewhat too early and had a bunch of time to kill. The festival was organised so that there were two stages next to each other at one end of the hall. One band would play on one stage whilst the next band on would soundcheck behind a curtain on the other stage. Once the changeover was complete, the curtain would open on the other stage and the audience would shuffle 20 yards to the left or right. I wandered out into the main hall to see what was happening. Not a lot, is the short answer. I think RDF were playing, or if they weren't, it was someone scarily like them. It was awful. Then, to what seemed like complete indifference from the crowd, TPOH came on stage. I only knew it was them because I had a copy of the running order in my pocket.
What were they like? Well, a lead singer with big glasses and long hair, really dorky. A female guitarist with Stevie Nicks hair. A bass player who looked as though he'd just come from Bryan Adams' band. The omens were not good. And then, they started playing.
TPOH's sound is hardly revolutionary, it's a little bit Stones, some Faces, some big chords and some obvious melodies: I wasn't really hooked. But then, they played "Beautiful White" .It's a simple little song really: it sound a bit like "Start Me Up" but with a more yearning minor chord in the main riff..It surges and builds in a wonderfully organic way. The song is about being with a woman who doesn't really care about the clothes her lover gives her: she tosses them nonchalantly to the floor, leaving her naked: "Beautiful White". And that was it. I burst into tears, it was utterly perfect.
I finally got a copy of the album it comes from ("Love Junk") about two months later, and there wasn't a day that I didn't play it for at least five years. Even now, I play it at least once a week. It's perfect. And it makes me thank god that I'm alive. I actually realise that some of you reading this will never even hear it and probably won't even care..But you know what? I don't care. It's one of the most perfect songs ever, and I'll love it till the day I die. Game over.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
It's now a truly lovely day, i'm suitably energised after my first visit to the gym in a week (!) and i'm just updating the blog before I head off to the Tube. I'm still loading up the itunes as well..currently rocking a little bit of Johnny Moped. There's a wonderful picture of the band, playing in a feld, throwing some serious rockstar shapes, as a herd of cows look on with utter indifference. Will see if I can find it online.
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