Wartime radio

When the country is facing difficult times, the radio stations play sad or thoughtful songs, ignoring all the raucous material that they might normally play. As a result, there have been several songs played that are also in my personal playlists, something that normally occurs extremely rarely.

About once a month, the 'Unhalfbricking' version of 'Who knows where the time goes?' gets played, but recently I heard what must be the original version from 'Sandy and the Strawbs' as it was only Sandy playing acoustic guitar and singing the original arrangement. I wonder how on earth the station managed to lay their hands on this version - it didn't come from me!

Nick Drake also gets played about once a month; normally this is 'Northern Sky', but over the past few weeks I've heard 'Day is done', 'Way to blue', 'Riverman' and 'Saturday sun' from his first album; 'At the chime of the city clock' from his second album was played last night, and 'Pink moon' from his eponymous third album has also been played.

Maintaining the Joe Boyd/Witchseason connection, I also heard a John Martyn song one evening. I didn't recognise the song (I wasn't listening closely) but it sounded like the style of 'Bless the weather'.

Yesterday I heard 'Colours of the sun' by Jackson Browne; I don't think that I've ever heard him on the radio here. We do occasionally hear Joni Mitchell - apart from the favourites 'Big yellow taxi' and 'Both sides, now', I heard 'California' recently.

Randy Newman also gets played occasionally. Twice I've heard 'In Germany before the war', that presumably was chosen because of its melancholy violins and clarinets. It certainly wasn't chosen because of its lyrical content, and I imagine that the song would be dropped should someone listen to the words and understand them - they're about a child killer.

Yesterday was played The Beatles' 'The sun king' followed by Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross'. I couldn't hear if the presenter (if there was one) talked about the connection between the songs, but it would be better if 'Albatross' were played first followed by 'Sun king' as the latter was influenced by the former.

I did hear one Saturday morning a somewhat upbeat tune: at first this seemed to be a typical 'soul' number alternating between the I and IV chords, but suddenly the song took an extreme left turn into the sort of chord progressions that I write. I had enough presence of mind to whip out my phone and record part of the song for later identification (I don't have Shazam on my phone). When I listened to the recording, I guessed that I was listening to a song titled something like 'something to talk about' and indeed this was the title of a song by Bonnie Raitt (not someone who I have ever consciously listened to). What are the chords: A D A D (this is the straight part) F#m G F#m G C F C E. In Roman numeral form, this is I IV I IV vi bVII vi bVII bIII bIV bIII V. The second half of this verse is straight out of my songbook.

I want to finish this blog entry by quoting the words to a song that was played a few weeks ago; it's a song whose opening verses I have often sung to myself this year.

Many's the time I've been mistaken

And many times confused

Yes, and I've often felt forsaken

And certainly misused

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered

I don't have a friend who feels at ease

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered

Or driven to its knees

But it's alright, it's alright

For we lived so well so long

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on

I wonder what's gone wrong

I can't help it, I wonder what has gone wrong

("American tune" by Paul Simon)

Fortunately this war seems to have consigned the 'judicial reform' to the dustbin where it belongs. Nothing so unites a fractured society than a war ... although in America of the 60s, a war caused the society to fracture.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
141	11/11/2008	Accident	Motorbikes

Busy morning

Despite today being Saturday, and thus my one day off from work, I was up and awake at 6:45 am. The first item on my agenda was to watch something which I had taped yesterday on the video. During a few idle moments on Friday, I had turned on the tv and was pleasantly rewarded by the sight of Paul Simon; judging by the mustache and the song he sang ("Loves me like a rock"), I had tuned into a repeat of "Saturday Night Live" hosted by PS circa 1975.

After that song, there was a comic interlude with Simon playing one on one basketball with some pro from the NBA who was about two feet taller. Amusing but predictable. Then cut to Simon singing a song which seemed familiar but wasn't one of his ... wait a minute, it's "Marie", by Randy Newman. After one verse of this, Simon says that it is indeed "Marie", written by one of his favourite songwriters, and he so much liked Newman that he (PS) was able to persuade him (RN) to appear. Cue to Randy Newman playing "Sail away"!

Continuing this level of surprise, next on was Art Garfunkel for two duets, "The Boxer" and "Scarborough Fair". Simon put in a few "friendly jabs", like asking whether Garfunkel was done with his film career and whether he would be upto singing a few songs. I've never been too fond of "The Boxer", probably because of its over-dramatic arrangement, but with just the two of them and one acoustic guitar, the song was much better. It was very easy to hear what each was singing, which was a revelation as I've never heard the harmonies before.

The next item on the agenda was to master a live recording of Randy Newman made only a few days ago. RN is currently on tour in North America, featuring some new songs, and someone had uploaded a recording of his appearance in Toronto a week ago (14 Oct). I had downloaded it and intended to check volume levels before burning some audio copies. It's been my experience that such recordings, if not edited, tend to have very loud applause and very quiet music. This was indeed the case: the applause was approximately four times as loud as the music, and overloading the audio.

After a few experiments, I decided to boost the non-applause sections by 100% (ie make them twice as loud) and compress the applause sections to 50%. Whilst there are some small patches with audible volume changes, these are very short and don't distract from the performance.

New songs! One is called "I'll Never Get Over Losing You", which has nice lyrics but not an outstanding tune. The other is called "(A few words) In Defence of My Country", which is very topical and very funny. It accepts that America's current leaders may not be much, but they're nothing compared to some of the kings, dicatators and leaders that have existed over the past thousand years. Supposedly the new album will be released sometime during 2007, although no one knows quite when.

Finishing up an early morning full of activity, I set to work programming, adding a new feature/report to a program which I have developed to aid a clinical psychologist. This new report used some nice SQL features and looks very nifty! I imagine that the general public doesn't appreciate the niceties of programming, but I certainly enjoyed myself, and the results are pleasing.

That's enough for one day. Now I can rest and shore up some energy for the coming week.

The Equatorial Stars

I've been listening to this cd by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno frequently since I bought it a week ago. It's not really my kind of music; in fact, it's not really music, as far as I understand the meaning of the term. I bought the disc because I was fascinated by the descriptions of the sounds contained within, and the only way that I could really listen was by purchasing.

If it's not music, what is it? Maybe the cure for insomnia, the slowed down, spaced out rambling musing of two musicians who have done better. If the whole thing were speeded up by two, it would sound like the adolescent rambling which I used to make on a nylon string guitar. Random and directionless. Had it been played at twice the speed with electric guitars and a rhythm section, it might well have been described as musical wanking. I don't live my life at the ponderous rate required to make this interesting (and by comparison, neither do I live fast enough to make punk rock or high energy rock or hip hop interesting).

It really is not my kind of music. I need a strong harmonic base, followed by a melody and then rhythm. That's probably why I'm so at odds with current "music", which seems to be based on a strong rhythm, followed by a minimal melody and no harmony.

The only disc which I have that is connected to Eno is his production of Paul Simon's latest, 'Surprise', and whilst Eno's contributions are ear-tickling, they send Simon's songs into a direction which I don't like (see above paragraph).

Fripp, on the other hand, is well documented in my discography. Well, the younger Fripp is, at any rate. It's a curious relationship that I have with his music (when I write "Fripp", I generally mean "Fripp's music" and not Fripp himself), which is probably due to the circumstances in which I first heard him. Being of the age that I am (or was), "21st century schizoid man" was the first track that I ever heard with Robert Fripp playing, and of course the guitar playing within is at a very high level. This was early 1970, and the King Crimson which produced the first record no longer existed; the only musician who had a visible profile left was Robert Fripp (well, so did Greg Lake, but he was only the bassist and didn't seem to have much to do with the first album apart from singing on it). The miraculous playing on 21CSM and the group's virtual disappearance caused Fripp the man to achieve almost mythical status, and when he reappeared in the flesh (touring with Keith Tippett's Centipede in 1971), it became almost a pilgrimage to see him.

I liked Fripp's contribution to two early VdGG albums, and especially what he played on Hammill's contemparaneous "Fool's Mate"; I loved KC's "Lizard" (although Fripp doesn't actually play that much on this disc), whereas its followup "Islands" left me fairly cool. In 1972, Fripp and King Crimson dropped off my radar until 1976 when I purchased "The young man's guide to King Crimson"; my jaw dropped open whilst playing side two (of the four sided vinyl set) which consisted solely of "Red" and "Starless".

I bought "Exposure" when it came out in 1979, as much for Peter Hammill as for Robert Fripp; this was very much a hit and miss record which made me finally realise that Fripp and I were not a marriage made it heaven. It wasn't until 2002 when I started reading Andrew Keeling's analyses of King Crimson material that I started listening to the old records (even buying some on cd) and searching out the material that I missed. Whilst this adult listening to the music of my youth increased my appreciation of what I liked before, it didn't extend to enjoying music which I hadn't heard before. "Discipline" (with the exception of "Matte Kudesai") left me cold and disinclined to investigate anything more modern (and that's 1982!).

It's a lesson which I've attended several times, but not really taken to heart: most of Robert Fripp's music is not for me, despite however seductive the writing about it may be.

Incidentally, neither do I like very little of Peter Hammill's post VdGG output. Whilst I religiously bought the vinyl records until the end of the 80s, I rarely played them and I haven't bothered to replace many of them on cd. I did buy 2003's "Incoherence" (the album which he had just finished prior to his heart attack), but I don't recall actually ever listening to the disc all the way through.

There is a dichomoty at the bottom of my heart: always looking for new music, but not necessarily liking it when I find it. I prefer to explore and discover new things within music to which I been listening for years. For example, my sequencing work on "Scorched Earth" brings my admiration for VdGG's music to an even higher level (it's a shame that "The Book", the VdGG biography, didn't go into any technical detail about the music in the same way that Sid Smith's book on King Crimson did). For example, I only belatedly realised something the other day about Crimson's 21stCSM: the instrumental material which is not based on a one chord modal workout is actually based on the 12 bar blues!