Japan and David Sylvian blew my mind. I used to listen to Obscure Alternatives, an album I disliked intensely, just so I could then play Gentlemen Take Polaroids and sit and wonder how the fuck they got from there to here. With just the stepping stone of Quiet Life between the two.
Bowie, at least in any serious way, was still a year or two down the line for me. Bryan Ferry, too. And Lou Reed and Eno as well. Maybe if I’d arrived at Japan and Sylvian chronologically they wouldn’t have seemed so other worldly. Who knows? Who cares…
But all my retrospection had been duly done by the time this came my way and still it hammered me. Like something from the great architect of the musical universe himself. It was something that shattered expectations, conventions and understandings.
And even the music itself, eerie & aching with all the yearning of one soul reaching out towards the rest of us, was still less than the sum of its parts. Not since Miles Davis did a musician understand the power of absence like Mark Hollis; the devastating impact of emptiness and the transforming force of the note unwritten; the note unplayed; the note unheard but always felt. But it had to be that way. Those big, haunting spaces made room for all the humanity he crammed in.
R.I.P. Mark Hollis. The world just got that little bit darker.
I bought this purely for Child’s Play. A spirited & infectious freewheeling work-out with Byrd and Coles; both of whom are clearly having a high old time.
The Duke himself, however, always passed me by. No doubting his lyrical feel & melodic sensibility (still less his skill as an arranger) but his improvs too often erred on the side of caution and in a time and place crammed with so much incendiary talent his minor status was pretty much assured.
This, though, is a delight and offers more than just the Byrd/Coles showcase. The short format suits Pearson perfectly and, the irritating fade-out on Angel Eyes aside, represents one of his most enjoyable sessions.
Conventional? Yes. Predictable, even. But a tight, compact session fizzing with energy and high on melody.
This is a brave, imaginative and superbly-executed piece of work. The young band deciding, in the middle of the digital, disposable, attention-wrecking noughties, to release a concept album inspired by the great dinosaur rock acts of yore. The listener, therefore, will find a deliberate and brilliantly-wrought homage to Queen, Pink Floyd, ELO, Yes and others.
Turbo-charged 70s stadium rock via post-911 armageddon emo and a nutty vaudeville workout sounds an unlikely, if not horrifying, amalgam. Yet its genius is not merely the audacious musical alchemy that the band deploy to stunning effect; it’s the humanity. And it rises, defiantly, from the cracks, between the charred and cancer-ravaged corpses that litter the album, like spring flowers defiantly in bloom; it’s the powerful and distinctive voice of a young band at their peak that really scores. All the Emo stereotyping and scorn heaped upon the band’s collective head count for nought in the face of one of the very best albums of the last thirty years.
Gerard Way, far too frequently maligned as a self-indulgent, self-pitying emo poster-boy, turns in a career-defining performance and the lyrics, all bitter asides, witty irony and biting cynicism, nestle snugly with moments of real heart, real beauty and an empathy that moves.
Once described as The Dark Side of The Moon for the Tim Burton generation, The Black Parade is angry and celebratory, tender and bitter and very special indeed. The listener will wade through death before the epiphany arrives; this album is life. And it is beauty unbound.
Haters gonna hate, of course, but listen without prejudice, my friends. The Black Parade deserves nothing less. And so do you.
There has been some controversy regarding Blue Note‘s Rudy Van Gelder remasters but they work brilliantly for most listeners. The thing about the horns, and, of course, it’s purely subjective, is that these editions actually improve what many thought was a slight imbalance on the original recordings. Yes, we know Rudy liked to shove the brass right up in your face and, especially with a swaggering, incendiary player like Freddie, it’s great. But it often seemed as though the keys, in particular, and the bass, were low in the mix, rather than the horns being high, per se.
This 1962 set is a classic from Freddie, his sixth for Blue Note. Apart from the stellar contribution of Spaulding on alto, a nice alternative to tenor, and Herbie Hancock repaying Hubbard’s favour for Maiden Voyage, the confidence and mastery evident on Lament for Booker from the 24 yr old Hubbard is worth the price alone.
Miles Davis, for all his trailblazing vision and imagination, wasn’t even half the technical and physical horn player of Hubbard.
Stumbled over a couple of drafts of old reviews, earlier today, of Evil Scarecrow gigs from a few years back. I can’t recall where they originally appeared (or, frustratingly where and when the gigs took place) – Powerplay Magazine, perhaps, during my two-year stint with the mag – but on re-reading them I was immediately reminded of what a really great band they are.
They’ve had some well-deserved success, over recent years, including appearances at Bloodstock, the Metal Hammer awards and much else. All the while, bafflingly, remaining unsigned by a major rock or metal label. Such as they even exist these days.
News of the ‘Best Black Metal Parody Band from Nottingham, in The World, Ever’ appearing at this year’s Download Festival is both welcome and, hopefully, an opportunity for them to catch the eye of a decent label talent scout.
So no further excuse needed, then, to share their excellent new video and the very best wishes to the band and their lovely manager, Jen Hill, for Download ’15.
If you’re new to the band, here are those aforementioned reviews which will give you some idea of what you’re getting into…
As the Dies irae from Verdi’s Requiem filled the venue, Evil Scarecrow ascended the stage to a furious roar. Possibly Black Metal’s best kept secret, the parody band achieves the seemingly impossible task of combining a deep respect for extreme metal while mercilessly taking the piss.
Sixty Six Minutes Past Six, Vampire Trousers and Blacken The Everything contained enough blast beats, death growls and bowel-churning riffage to satisfy even the most po-faced of Norwegian Church burners, while simultaneously serving up a large side order of pure comedy genius.
Main man, Doctor Hell’s, famous 4 Note Solo triggered laughter all over the venue while Ashes induced moshing of such intensity that bodies crashed over the monitors and onto the stage, with wince-inducing regularity. Bassist Kraven Mordeth, skinsman Papa Bongo and keyboard player Princess Luxury played on, unconcernedly. Just another day at the altar. Lead guitarist, Brother Pain’s end of show crowd surf to the strains of the “…best Black Metal cover of The Final Countdown, in the world, ever” had to be seen to be believed.
Superb stuff and the best metal theatre since Alice Cooper exchanged guillotined babies for God and golf. Peerless.
And…
Pantomime metal mentalists, Evil Scarecrow, can seemingly do no wrong, currently. Their well-deserved and hard-earned rapidly ascending star shows no signs of dimming and their first visit to the MFN facilitated an enjoyable deflowering for many scarecrow virgins.
Architects, not so much of songs as comedy sketches of ironic invention, everything that is brilliant about this act was, tonight, on vibrant and multi-sensory display.
Morbid Witches kindly purchasing pints of mild, fashionistas sporting Vampyre Trousers and “…the most evil, most metal, most violent cover of a cartoon theme tune ever” (Thunder Cats, natch) were just some of the attractions on show at the Evil Scarecrow circus of comic madness.
Robotatron worked it’s failure-proofed, nutty magic, Dr Hell and Brother Pain each had their very own face-painted mini-me and a guest appearance by celebrity-groupie, Slagbot, ensured everything that was needed for the most fun to be had since, well, the last Evil Scarecrow party, was present and correct.
Dr Hell, even by his own particularly high standards, was on singular form and his doomed attempts to conjure the mass-sob fest that was Blacken The Everything were hilariously subverted by Brother Pain leading the rest of the band into an impromptu hoe-down.
His crazed rush around the venue, dispensing high fives along with the licks, kept the grin-quotient high while new drummer Ringmaster Monty Blitzfist’s manic and tireless theatrics, it has to be said, have raised the Scarecrow game to even greater heights.
The icy beauty of Princess Luxury thawed several times to reveal delighted grins while Kraven Morrdeth, all hearty Viking machismo, hammed it up marvellously. When a band is having as much fun as the crowd, magic happens. And it did.
Fast becoming an institution that is virtually criticism-resistant, Evil Scarecrow delivered yet another outstanding slice of tongue-in-cheek metal theatre that still, somehow, retains freshness, vitality and sincerity.
Six hundred and sixty six out of six hundred and sixty six.
Find out more at http://www.evilscarecrow.co.uk/ and https://www.facebook.com/Evil.Scarecrow?fref=ts
Mozart is reputed to have considered rhythm to be the most important element in music. One might wonder if the idiosyncratic, mercurial genius that was the late Glenn Gould would have agreed.
What prompted this train of thought was an early morning listen to Bach’s Italian Concerto. I’m a harpsichord snob but, on this occasion, I’d picked out a recording by Sokolov; purely for the rip-roaring final presto. I was taught that presto means to play as a quickly as possible. Far too many recordings of the the Italian Concerto fall apart when the musicians hit that all-important final movement. Instead reconfiguring it as a stately mid-tempo dance. This is to wreck some of JSB’s most exhilarating writing. The right hand should be a blur; hence Sokolov. But then I remembered I’d got Gould doing the thing. Now this is how it should be played. It’s executed at a, frankly, insane pace and is all the more grin inducingly-enjoyable as a result.
On this evidence, Gould must surely have considered tempo to be the most important element in music. While never, for even a moment, sacrificing melody or rhythm.
The presto kicks in here at 10:06. Put your seat belt on.
It’s the Michael Schenker-era UFO that garners all the plaudits. Fair enough. From 1974’s Phenomenon up to its valedictory triumph – Strangers in the Night – Schenker-driven UFO is one of British rock’s most celebrated bands. And rightly so.
But there’s so much more. A renaissance given birth by former shredder’s shredder Vinnie Moore resulted in a string of high-class albums from 2004 onwards. Even before that there have been highs the equal of anything achieved on Schenker’s watch. Take the bafflingly underrated 1992 offering, High Stakes and Dangerous Men (just prior to Schenker rejoining for a second shift with 1995’s Walk On Water).
It’s an album packed with great songs. As with a lot of late-period UFO, there is a tenderness and wry acceptance to much of the material. Mogg, sounding even better than during the band’s commercial peak, is partnered beautifully by Laurence Archer on guitar and the embarrassingly-talented but criminally-underemployed Stevie Lange is drafted in to lift the arrangements to divine heights.
You’d be hard pushed to name one song better than another, all killer no filler being the operative maxim here, but Love Deadly Love is a strong contender. It’s easily one of the best songs ever written by the band. Lyrically, Mogg’s cinematic tale of love, infidelity and revenge is a masterpiece of musical short-story telling and from the opening piano shimmers to the addictive drive of Archer’s guitar; all the way through to one of the band’s finest choruses, there is nothing in the Schenker-era that’s any better. As good, certainly but better? I don’t think so.
A mate of mine, Nottingham poet Neil Fulwood, got a few of us talking about Herbert Von Karajan, recently. With tongue firmly inserted in cheek, I referred to the late HVK as the ‘Nazi conductor.’ Not, as it quickly transpired, a particularly wise move as one devotee of the departed maestro quickly took up arms – figuratively, that is – in defence of his hero.
For the record, Von Karajan’s membership of the Nazi Party is generally accepted by most historians and musicologists to have been prompted by an amalgam of self-preservation, expediency and shameless opportunism, rather than any sort of ideological commitment. Certainly, his biographer Richard Osborne goes into fascinating detail about this period of the great maestro’s life and does not spare his subject. There is no one more authoritative than Osborne and he also tells of Von Karajan very courageously resigning his Party membership during the war, following his marriage to second wife Anita, who was of Jewish heritage (as an aside, Osborne’s book, at a gargantuan 900-odd pages, is simply fascinating and well worth the parting of a few of your readies).
So, with that potentially divisive issue behind us, our attention turned to HVK’s legacy. Positioned by Neil’s friend as that of, “… a great conductor whose musical legacy continues to inspire listeners the world over some 25 years after his death?”
Now I’m a man of peace and my ways are the ways of peace but somethings simply cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. My own take where HVK is concerned is a tad more qualified. Certainly, he had greatness within him and some of his contributions to recorded music are peerless. Both his Mahler 9ths are probably the best ever recorded by anyone, Strauss (another Nazi, by the way. JOKE!!!) never sounded better than via Herbert Von Karajan and his ’63 Beethoven set is, for my money, still the best recording of that over-recorded ubiquitous symphonic cycle ever committed to vinyl, tape or disc (I think Herbert recorded the complete cycle an astonishing five times, too).
He also deserves huge respect for his humility and good judgement where Mahler is concerned. Too many maestros assume they need to record the complete cycle when they just aren’t up to it. HVK, at least, eschewed such arrogance and the Mahler he did choose to tackle is amongst the very finest you will hear.
However, he suffered from Deutsche Grammophon’s (successful) efforts to market him as classical music’s first rock star. There are dozens of howlers forced out to make a buck and to hear him rushing an under-rehearsed, lead-footed and elephantine BPO through the Brandenburg Concerti is to know pain at its most real and acute.
I can live quite happily with Neil’s counter-take when he said, “I can happily write off the baroque stuff for the utter majesty of the Bruckner cycle, the ’63 Beethoven set (only Bernstein’s VPO cycle on DG really compares), the Strauss (his Vier Letzte Lieder with Janowitz is the finest I’ve heard), the Schumann (a composer HVK never got the due credit for his recordings of) … the list goes on. Sure, he was (and still is, in terms of reissues) DG’s licence to print money. But if some dodgy baroque recordings were the quick buck that got the magnificent symphony cycles recorded, then who’s counting?”
Whatever your take, there is no doubt that Von Karajan was responsible for some of the greatest interpretations of some of the greatest music ever written. So, with that said, here he is doing what he did best. And better than most. Enjoy.
As all fathers know, life affords few opportunities for deep satisfaction comparable to embarrassing one’s spawn. My love for My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade being a particularly apposite case in point.
My sixteen year-old son, Satanicus Maximus, seems to find no contradiction in his recent worship of Black Veil Brides while pitilessly mocking his auld man for numbering The Black Parade among his all-time favourite albums.
Lurch, however, the Elder Spawn, at a Methuselahian twenty-four might, you’d think, be above such things. You’d be wrong, of course. He is still unable to restrain the sardonic curl of his upper lip when, on a visit to his old home stead of Patersongrad, he encounters my bad self happily spinning the offending disc.
Such genre snobbery is, of course, not new. I well recall my early 80s self keeping my passion for the work of Marc Almond firmly in the closet, lest my teenage metal creds be dashed forever. The admiration I had (still have) for the supremely talented Mr. Almond and Soft Cell being, to continue the rather tasteless metaphor, very much the love that dared not speak its name.
Be all that as it may, to return to the album in question, I will say this: it is a brave, imaginative and superbly-executed piece of work. The young band deciding, in the midle of the digital, disposable, attention-wrecking noughties, to release a concept album inspired by the great dinosaur rock acts of yore. The listener, therefore, will find a deliberate and brilliantly-wrought homage to Queen, Pink Floyd, ELO, Yes and others.
But it’s the powerful and distinctive voice of a young band at their peak that really scores. All the stereotyping and scorn the too-cool-for-school poseurs heaped upon the band’s collective head count for nought in the face of one of the very best albums of the last thirty years.
Gerard Way, far too frequently maligned as a self-indulgent, self-pitying emo poster boy, turns in a career-defining performance and the lyrics, all bitter asides, witty irony and biting cynicism; nestle snugly with moments of real heart, real beauty and a humanity that moves. Once described as The Dark Side of The Moon for the Tim Burton generation, The Black Parade is angry and celebratory, tender and bitter and very special indeed. Haters gonna hate, of course, but listen without prejudice, my friends. The Black Parade deserves nothing less. And so do you.
Chatting to my good friend and fellow music journo, Ian Winwood, recently, the aforementioned phrase cropped up (widely attributed to long-gone-to-seed purveyor of embarrassing dross, Paul McCartney, if you’re interested).
If true, then Dutch symphonic gothsters Within Temptation are surely occupying the same cerebral plane as Stephen Hawking. Covered in Roses, from the current album Hydra, is little more than a cheeky reworking of a tune from their preceding album, entitled Faster. Which itself was a homage to Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game. Still with me? OK, but it gets better because said homage was actually inspired by HIM’s cover of Wicked Game. Confusing, I know, so allow me to sum up; what we have here is a band ripping-off their own song, which was a rip-off of a cover of someone else’s song. A rip-off of a rip-off of a cover. Cheeky, eh?
Personally, I don’t really care. Sharon den Adel has one of those voices that simply slays any objectivity to which I might aspire. Add in a canny and shamelessly commercial melody, a move-your-feet-now-muthafuckers rhythmic sensibility and a perfectly-judged tempo and your argument is invalid. As the kids say.
Harry Paterson 