Waffle

Gjallarhorn are a Finnish World Music group whose second record, Sjofn, I've been playing non-stop for over a week. Like Hedningarna, they keep a nice Shamanistic pulse going over which to sing and play those odd Finnish harmonies. They are a little more New Age oriented than Hedningarna, but in a good way: they create a soothing atmosphere which at any time
can start getting under your skin, usually just before it is interrupted by a Banshee shriek or a subtle but menacing mood change. (Gjallarhorn have a website, but it's not very good so I've made the link go to Amazon.com's information page about the album. )

This is a backdated entry from before I started this blog. It was originally posted on rocr.net.

Finntroll make a pretty good metal noise. Their singer sounds like he has gargled sulphur dioxide and is very angry about it. The drums are at times like a carpet bombing, and the guitar alternates between furious rhythms and deep droning chords over a menacing keyboard backing. You've heard all that before, of course, but you probably haven't heard the accordion, banjo and Sami joik-singing that make Finntroll more than just a good metal group. Their album Jaktens Tid has livened up my drawing sessions lately - it's at the same time hilariously over the top and really very good musically. The songs, in Swedish, are mostly about fantasy subjects, particullarly trolls. Their rhythm guitarist is quite an accomplished fantasy artist, so you get some evil-looking monochrome paintings in the booklet. And don't they look natty in their furs?

This is a backdated entry from before this blog was started. It was originally posted on rocr.net

Whitestripes.net, the semi-official fan site for the White Stripes, has a bunch of Peel Sessions by the popular beat combo. Plus a Saturday Night Live skit which is not very well-written but the way Drew Barrymore as Meg whispers "meesh meesh meesh" at the guy who plays Jack cracks me up.

I'm a reluctant White Stripes fan... cmkaapjes had to practically cram their music down my throat, but once I got to know it better I learned to love the writing, and the duo's manic energy even at slow tempos.

Currently playing obsessively: Lionheart by Kate Bush. I'm a huge fan of her eighties output, but coming back home from the pub late last night, I put this, her second album from 1978, on and it brought back all sorts of memories. It's a lot less MOR than I remembered as well, with the orchestration and synths on "Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake" giving us a taste of the eerieness she'd later perfect for tracks like "And Dream of Sheep" on Hounds of Love.

Unfortunately my copy is an old, cheap, much-battered vinyl edition and sounds like it was recorded by a campfire. Needs cleaning up or replacement.

These great music blogs: I Hate Music, Popular and The Naked Maja are all too sexy for an RSS feed, and won't be added to my blogroll for that reason. I can blogroll manually *or* depend on Bloglines to automate the process, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna do both, and Bloglines is my method of choice for now.

Too bad really. I Hate Music is a hilarious expose of all that you already knew was awful about even the music you like; Popular is a wonderful project to review every UK number one since the dawn of time, or the 1950s, whichever came first; The Naked Maja is an in-depth look into one writer's tastes in pop music. I recommend all of them.

After going to two nearly-identical concerts by Kaizers Orchestra on two different tours six months apart, I was a bit concerned that their second album, Evig Pint would also be a repeat of their first. Instead, we get a record that, while still resting heavily on the mid-tempo, 2-beat tunes with punky energy and gipsy gangster-themed lyrics in Norwegian, is a lot more mature. Compared to the first album, it's darker, but without losing its humorous touches. The tunes are still instantly hummable, even if you don't know the language, and there is a bit more adventure in the instrumentation (not that the first album was lacking in that). Highly recommended.

From The Highway Star:

Deep Purple announce new release schedule
"In the future, Deep Purple will only release new music on current and past members' birthdays."

... could be any day of the year then.

Peter Gabriel's soundtrack work can now be had for cheap at Plato stores in the Netherlands and quite likely elsewhere as well. I'm now listening to The Long Walk Home which I expect to be hard to get into but worthwhile after a few playings, just like Passion was when I got it from the library a few months ago.

...is hearing a lot of music from the Baltic and Eastern European countries on the radio. Just minutes ago, I heard a track from an Estonian group whose name I missed, but they'll be in the Eurovision Song Contest this year. OK, so that's not much of a recommendation, but despite being a EuroSong contribution, it actually sounded great, with all the hallmark touches of Finno-Ugric music: powerful female voices in daring, harmonies, with a touch of accordion. If that is Estonia's trashy pop music, I would love to hear the more authentic stuff!

I love reading alternate history, especially of subjects I know a little about, and The Naked Maja's "had he lived" account of music producer Joe Meek's career after 1967 does a pretty good job of it.

"One day Syd came in with some funny-looking pills which he said some German mates had given him. I took one look at them and immediately flushed them down the toilet. Syd was just about ready to take a swing at me, but ever since then he's thanked me for doing that, almost on a daily basis."

It gets a bit silly towards the end though.

Kieran of Crooked Timber is a sad, obsessive man. Where would we be without him? He has created a statistical analysis of geo-political favoritism in the Eurovision song contest, complete with confusing but convincing pictures.

However, Kieran's premise is flawed:

...Eurovision songs are (to a first approximation) uniformly worthless, [so] we can assume that votes express a simple preference for one nation over another, uncomplicated by any aesthetic considerations.

Eurovision songs aren't uniformly worthless; instead, mediocrity is the order of the day. There is usually something to enjoy at Eurosong: last year I thought the Belgian entry was quite good (it made number 2) as well as one song from one of the Baltic countries. I'd need to look that last one up. And there are some spectacularly crappy ones each year, like the dreadfully unfunny spoof inflicted on us by the Austrians, or the English entry which was only saved from getting negative points by the bassline at the start.
But most songs are like last year's Dutch entry: bland, mediocre, destined to end one step below the left column in the final tally (considering the Dutch' track record in the years before, that's a pretty good score). I remember that by the time the contest was on, I had rather learned to like the Dutch entry; I thought the tune was more memorable than many of the others' and that the production value was better. But even then, I suspected that this was the result of having been brainwashed by it on the radio in the preceeding weeks. A year on, I'll be damned if I can remember how it went.

Last year was the first time in a decade I watched it. I got together with some of my buddies (Danny, Sidsel and Jeroen, I think. Possibly my brother as well) to watch the ghastly spectacle unfold. The blonde Eastern European starlets, the cheesy touristy shots of the host country, the cooked-up controversy, the key changes, everything. How did I survive? The answer is very simple.

Alcohol.

Lots of it.

If you want to survive Eurosong without mind-scarring, make sure that you're at least into your second drink before the first song starts, and keep up the pace. I know that that's not good for the brain either but you will need the soft blanket of hazy good-cheer to protect yourself from the three-hour bombardment of saccharine mediocrity that is the contest. Naturally, there's a drinking game to help you keep up the pace, but it has far too many rules. You need only one event to guide your drinking: the Key Change.

Key changes are a tried and tested device for giving a song a bit of extra "lift" and make it seem catchy. It's particularly useful when a song is so badly written that it can't go for three whole minutes without running out of steam. The hallmark of a good Eurovision Song Contest entry is that the key is shifted up by a full tone or more (not a semitone. Semitones are scary and Goffic) around the 2:20 mark. The hallmark of a great Eurosong entry is that the key is shifted up twice in the three minutes allowed for each song. In fact, during that other song that I liked last year, I told my buddies "you know, this song is so good I won't even mind a key change." The Key Change occured immediately afterwards. So I said "see? I'm not bothered by it at all? The only thing that can ruin it now is another key change!" The second Key Change occured immediately afterwards, and I decided not to tempt fate by suggesting that there was still time for a third. If there had been a third, the song would surely have won.

Drink two fingers' worth of booze for each time the key is shifted up and you'll be too plastered to remember your own name before the judging even starts. So you can, indeed you will, forget those other complicated rules in the official drinking game.

The judging is pretty dreary and repetitive to watch although possibly not compared to the songs. It becomes fun if you've kept a ranking of your own, especially if you've fought with your buddies over it. Keeping track of who gives points to who is also a good idea - and you can print out Kieran's graphs and pretend that they represent your analysis of the year's vote. You will be the life of the party!
One other great aspect of the judging is that you get to see the performers waiting for the outcome, penned up like sheep and drinking rather faster than you are. They will pick their noses on camera, talk to their families at home on their cell phones and generally look like cattle waiting to be slaughtered, which is exactly what they are at this point. Last year's winner, a Turkish singer whose name fortunately escapes me, was interviewed during the final moments (it was a fairly close race with the Belgians) and revealed herself to have all the wit and composure of a plucked chicken. It was much more entertaining than hearing her sing.

POSTSCRIPT: I see that those perfidious Brits are still trying to tie last year's execrable performance by Gemini to the war in Iraq, and are already using the Abu Ghraib torture scandal as a pre-emptive excuse for a new humiliation. Knock it off, lads! Never was the Eurosong Jury process as fair and objective as when it returned no points at all to Gemini.

POSTSCRIPT no. 2: A few days ago I mentioned hearing and liking the Estonian entry, without knowing that it was in fact an entry for the contest. Turns out it hasn't made it past the semi-finals that were held for the first time this year. Bummer.

Ah, the new BBC Proms schedule is out, and once again, Gilbert and Sullivan have lost out. Whereas Elgar will get no less than 7 appearances in the proms, each of which will be 15-30 minutes long, Holst four of similar length, and even Handel (who's rather out of favour nowadays) gets one 12-minute composition, Gilbert and Sullivan get one two minute song, which, coming as it does on the last night of proms, and being the little list song from the Mikado, will, if past years are anything to go by, have the lyrics rewritten and, in all likelihood, the performer won't have practiced enough to sing it at patter-song speed, so it'll be sung too slowly.

Why?

Is it, as Loweko speculates, because many G&S songs take horrible amounts of training and rehersal, whereas a little Elgar just requires an hour or three of tuning?

Or is it something more? After all, they included a Gilbert and Sullivan concert for decades before dropping it suddenly a few years ago.

Is Gilbert and Sullivan not upper-class enough for the BBC Proms? Has it been tainted by popularity, in the same way that an independant artist who starts making money loses all street cred? Does the spirit of snootiness haunt the BBC, forcing them to push everything that's popular into the Last Night of the proms, where they put all the things that aren't good enough for the rest of their lineup....

Somehow, I suspect so.

FCC Song all fucks by Eric Idle.
President's Day by Loudon Wainwright III.

I saw Loudon in concert in Groningen yesterday, and the response then was pretty much the same as at the in-store performance at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California where this recording was made.

Commentary by Loudon:

Due to its particular timeliness with regard to our nation's impending electoral decision in November, I have made the rather unusual (for me) decision to cast it into the ether of cyberspace, there to be had gratis(*), absolutely free of charge for citizens armed with an MP3 player and a taste for broadside material. It is my sincere hope that those of you who like the song and approve of my plan will assist me in spreading the word about "Presidents' Day" in order to inform and/or inflame any swing voters out there who remain at all ambivalent or apathetic about the current administration and its reckless, dreadful policies.

(*) Indeed, Loudon has made his opinion about MP3 downloading known in the song "Something for Nothing", off the So Damn Happy album he is currently promoting. If you can still see him on his tour, don't miss him.

After posting those songs in the previous entry, I decided to check if Richard Thompson had weighed in on recent world events. If he has, he hasn't posted the results yet, but I did find this on his website:
Dear Janet.

Thompson's albums tend towards the serious and bleak, but he has lighthearted pieces like this in his live shows, and it is these tracks that end up on his website. It, and I Agree With Pat Metheny, aren't representative of his body of work as a whole. I expect that if and when Thompson writes about current events, the result will be much more stinging and philosophical than the songs in the previous posting, and that they will be part of his next album, just like the title track to Shoot Out the Lights (inspired by Russia's invasion of Afghanistan), "Psycho Street" off Rumour and Sigh (inspired by the Salman Rushdie affair, but far removed from it by the time it appeared on record) and "Outside of the Inside" off The Old Kit Bag, a haunting, scary track exploring the mindset of Islamic fundamentalists. Those tracks take work but they're more than mere throwaways or protests.

(By the way, all the links to Thompson albums above go to Amazon in the US, and I get a kickback if people buy them, or if they continue to browse from them and buy something else. So you can familiarise yourself with Thompson's work, and supplement my income at the same time! Sounds like a deal to me.)

The always excellent Naked Maja counters the Observer's list of 100 best British records with a list of his own.
The point of reading these lists, of course, is to go through them and test how good your taste is by checking off records that you actually own. By the Maja's standards, I'm doing appallingly badly, with only 4 records from his list in my collection. The Observer's list flatters my taste a little more, allowing me 7 matches, but on the other hand, that list has not just two Radiohead albums but two Oasis albums on it, which ought to tell you something about how seriously we should take that one.

So go on, go through these lists, and tell me how good your taste is. And if you'd care to guess which of those albums on either list appear in my collection, be my guest.

Yes, I'm a nerd about music. Shoot me.

As Fred Goldrich pointed out on Savoynet today...

Robert Browning in "Pippa Passes", wrote:

presumably under the impression, encouraged by mischievous
friends, that a twat was a sort of hat worn by nuns.

...I don't think I can add anything to that.

I just saw The Apers at Vera Groningen as part of Vera's series of summer gigs. In these gigs, well-known underground bands get to play cover sets of a band of their choice. The Apers did a great job with their set of Rip-offs covers, but kind of lost me when they started playing a mix of their own songs and classic punk repertoire after that. Their presentation is energetic, they have a powerful sound and they know their stuff, but there's only so much punk I can take in a single evening before I want to hear something else. No punk group should be allowed to play 35 songs in an evening no matter how short the songs are.
So I left them without hearing them play "The Ace of Spades" which people in the audience were calling for. Bummer. I hate walking away from a good band.

I saw this backpacker guitar from Martin in one of the local music shops, and couldn't resist playing a few chords on it. It has a surprisingly good sound, a bit like the parlor-type guitars that Ian Anderson plays. In fact, I think if you fit it with a pick-up, it would work well in that sort of context: an acoustic guitar in front of an electric rock band. The lack of bottom end wouldn't be noticeable at all, and the volume would be amplified anyway. I wouldn't mind having this one to carry along with me while traveling at all. It's not quite as good as IA's parlor guitars, but certainly acceptable for the campfire, especially if like me, you have a... let's say a powerful, vigorous playing style.
What did they economise on to make such a light-weight acoustic guitar? Solidity, mainly. The label warns to only use ultra-light strings. No problem, that.
The model in the shop differed from the one in the picture because the head was smaller, by the way.
Update: I didn't know that Amazon sold musical instruments including the backpacker guitar. I suppose adding it to my wishlist (see this post) would be too much of a long shot.

Wow. I really should go dumpster diving some time:

Many times records in the trash belong in the trash—they’re scratched so badly it would be impossible to listen to them. Other times, though, they’re salvageable (just a bit dirty and easily washed, or not in as bad as they look). Judging the condition of records and how salvageable they are is something I could write a whole other essay on. I’ll just say that things are not always as they seem, but with experience one can learn what’s really OK and what’s beyond redemption. Still other times, records are in virtually mint condition, but are not the genre or format that is readily saleable by the person who until recently had them. Typical situation: an old person dies, and their heirs have no interest in the deceased’s music. Thus, one often finds such things as cantorial records, easy listening, big band jazz, ’50s pop vocalists, the Harmonica Rascals, Jerry Vale, and schmaltzy Christmas music in the city’s trash. Much of this is of no particular interest to me, but there is plenty of interesting listening to be culled from it, including lots of what would now be called Space Age Pop. (Easy-listening versions of hard-rock hits of the ’60s are a particular fave of mine.) Classical music is by far the most common thing to find in large quantities, and it’s often in tip-top shape. I daresay that if I started from scratch today, I could have a large and varied collection of classical LPs in less than a year’s time at absolutely no cost. A few weeks ago, for example, I took home about 100 more or less mint classical LPs, many of them on Deutsche Grammophon; I had to make two trips from the Dumpster.

[...]
And then there are 78s, which most people don’t have the machinery to play.
[...]
The trash has yielded a number of outstanding finds. (Just how, where, when, and why piles of 78s, as well as LP records, 45s, and even CDs, end up in the trash, is something I must keep to myself--but know that they do.) Last winter I actually had to hail a cab, even though I was only a few blocks from home, in order to carry home the stack of 78s I found (book after book of near-mint Artie Shaw records, as well as Mel Torme, 1950s mariachi bands, some other odd Latin stuff, etc.—the fact that they were in such great shape had a lot to do with my taking them). And the other night I found another great stash. This one is mostly jazz—much of it by well-known artists such as Count Basie, Lester Young, and Coleman Hawkins, and some fine work by them indeed. And while I’m certainly glad to have copies of such classics as “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry (Over You)” by Roy Hamilton (Epic), “Caldonia” by Louis Jordan (Decca), and “Santa Baby” by Eartha Kitt (RCA Victor), once again it’s the oddball stuff that captures my fancy.

And I just might find a nice deskchair there as well. Or some original H.G. Kresse pages.

(Via Electrolite's sidebar.)

Why didn't anybody tell me that today was Drs. P's 85th birthday? Belated congratulations to the great Dutch/Swiss songwriter and light versifier. Met jouw verjaardag zijn wij heden blij, knolrapen, lof, schorseneren en prei.

Fledg'ling records have reissued Henry the Human Fly, which is great news. Richard Thompson's debut solo album from 1972 had been kinda-sorta available since 1991, but I for one had never seen it in the shops before. I had a copy burned for me from vinyl by an acquaintance, but it's just not the same. The remastered edition is a huge improvement on that copy, with Thompson's acoustic guitar and the other instruments coming through with great detail and presence.
It's one of the best Thompson has made in a long and illustrious career. In every decade since the 1960s, Thompson has come out with at least one album that ranks among the best made that decade, and occasionally with more. Henry the Human Fly is a bit difficult to get into but once you get past the sound of Thompson's voice on this first attempt, you will hear great songwriting with the deceptively simple tunes and gut-wrenching lyrics that have been his trademark ever since.
The guitar playing is also beautiful, effective and mature. Mojo listed the record as one of the 20 greatest guitar albums ever, but don't expect a record driven by guitar pyrotechnics. Thompson's guitar playing, even then, served the songs, and not the other way around.

Singer Andre Hazes, one of the Netherlands best-loved singers of popular song, died today aged 53. I was never much into his style of music but over the years I've learned to respect him for his professionalism and the care and enthusiasm he put into his work. He was easily the best at what he did. About a year ago I saw part of a TV broadcast of one of his gala concerts, and was impressed by how perfect everything was. At the time, the singer was suffering from hearing problems, and his phrasing had become jerky as a result, but the (huge) band was dead on and the crowd was nuts throughout the 3 or 4 songs that I saw.

From Expatica:

Hazes, 53, was rushed home from holiday in Spain in a serious condition. He was admitted to intensive care suffering from a high fever and pneumonia. He died of a heart attack at about 9.30am on Thursday, his family confirmed.

Hazes was a diabetic and battled with alcoholism for several years. He was born in the Pijp district of Amsterdam in 1951.

The popular singer was discovered by a television presenter some eight years after his birth when he was singing at the city's Albert Cuyp market to earn money to buy his mother a present. Hazes' family was very poor as a child.

He had several hits in the 1970s and 1980s and despite a turbulent career — due in part to his alcohol addiction — he has always been much loved by the Dutch public.

I got a mix CD in the mail the other day, from my brother. The best tracks on it are three by TV Eyes who sound more like an eighties pop group than any eighties pop group ever did.
Two of the members were part of Jellyfish, which also spawned The Moog Cookbook. These guys can, and eventually will, play anything.

My one vice, the one bad habit that will one day be the ruin of me, is buying much much more music than I can afford. One day, I'll go too far, and end up homeless, or crushed under the weight of a falling cupboard full of CDs... or worse, I could end up a musicblogger. I've noticed that quite a few people who write about music in weblogs are desperately unhappy, and although music can help people remain sane, writing about it often allows writers to wallow in whatever their problem was in the first place.

For now, though, I can buy CDs and vinyl and pay for them out of my tax refund, which was a big'un this year. It's irresponsible, but it won't actually bankrupt me... yet.

I have some time to spare right now, so here and in the next few posts will be a roundup of stuff I bought in the past couple of months weeks.

Today, I got Want One by Rufus Wainwright, now marked down at the record store. Rufus is the son of Loudon Wainwright III, one of my favorite singer/songwriters.While he does have some of his dad's melodic sensibility, the music on Want One sounds more like a cross between Muse and Jellyfish, with traces of Roy Harper. The lyrics are less anecdotal and poignant than dad's, and more existential. Not sure if I like the lyrics, and his voice can grate a bit after a while, but the tunes are strong and the big production is just gorgeous. The layered instrumental work keeps it interesting. One to play a few more times before I can tell if it has any staying power. Update: after three listenings, I can say that the answer is no. Rufus's vocal mannerisms annoy me and the orchestrations get in the way of the songs.

I also got Smoke and Strong Whiskey by Christy Moore. Moore is the older brother of singer-songwriter Luka Bloom, and the similarity is clear in his voice and songwriting approach. I was very much immersed in coloring Friday's comic while I listened to this for the first time, so I can't say too much about it, other than that it was rockier than I expected it to be. It's very much an Irish record, but a folk-rock one instead of the folk that I expected. Soft folk-rock, mind. It has electric guitars and hammond organs, but doesn't get very loud, mostly because Moore's voice is very quiet. Smoke and Strong Whiskey is pleasant enough, but nothing stuck out. There's a cover of the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" on the album, but while it's better played than the original, it lacks the original's energy and the cattiness that you got from the duet between Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl. Moore's own songwriting is pretty good though, and I'll probably end up loving it when I've heard the record more often. Update: on repeated listening, I like about half the songs. "Scapegoats" is a particularly good one. It's odd to think that 14 years on, there is once again a need for songs like that.

They rocked.

Shot by Both Sides never fails to deliver good snark:

Meanwhile, Mark Chapman has been refused parole after a "review of records". Clearly they didn't review any of John Lennon's post-1973 records, otherwise they'd have granted him an official pardon.

I may well be the only person in the world who gets a bit nostalgic about Laibach. I can still remember the day I first heard them: some time in the late 'eighties, I was browsing at a record store when I noticed that the urgent, militant rhythm that was playing over the speakers had the chord progression and tune of Queen's then-recent hit "One Vision". The words, however, were rumbled in a sepulchral bass-baritone, and were in German! Queen's Live Aid-inspired paean to world unity was transformed, simply by literal translation, into something much more sinister. I went to the checkout to ask who had done this, and found the checkout guys puzzling over the same thing, and wondering if these lyrics were even legal to publish!
I didn't buy the record then, but have always remembered that it existed. Last year I bought Laibach's latest album W.A.T. and found that a decent but not particularly innovative industrial dance album. It's very listenable and somewhat menacing, but lacks the edge of that earlier work. Laibach's albums are hard to get around these parts, and I have not seen the Opus Dei album that that Queen cover, known as "Geburt Einer Nation", first appeared on in the shops since then*). Now at least, there's a good career-spanning compilation out: Anthems.

The first time a saw M.A.S.S. play it was unexpected. They were opening un-anounced for The Datsuns and were taking the audience by surprise. I remember distinctly thinking "W.T.F.?!" when walking into Club Vera's main hall - "this band rocks!" They didn't have an album out then, and I learned they made the trip London- Groningen, just for that one gig, for a fee of €100... This band, at the very least, had their heart in the right place!

Now they have their first album out, which is called "Revolution." Is the album revolutionairy? Not in my opinion. But that doesn't matter at all, because it contains some of the best kick-ass Rock'n Roll tunes I've heard in some time. They're touring like mad at the moment, so if you live in the U.K. or mainland Europe, you have a good chance they're coming to a place near you. And you *do* want to check them out!

Hayseed Dixie's cover of "The Ace of Spades" is purty durned good, if a bit on the slick side. Download it. (17 MB Quicktime video)

I like listening to metal records, but I rarely go to metal concerts. Strangely, it's mostly the idea of having to endure the music at ear-splitting volumes that turns me off. The dirty secret of metal records is that most of them aren't actually that loud. If I were to play a Finntroll record at home or in the studio and follow it up with an acoustic record by, say, Dave Swarbrick, the first couple of seconds of the Swarb record would have me running to the deck to turn the volume down.
Metal producers create the illusion of loudness by using heavy compression and saturating the mid-to-high range. Soundmen at metal concerts do the same, but also turn the volume way up.
Tonight, though, I went to a metal gig at Vera. I wanted beer, Jeroen wanted to see a gig, so we quickly arranged to combine the two. And it has to be said, metal is always good for drinking beer to. The acts on display were The Ocean (warning: Flash-based site with sound), supported by The Helsinki Suicides.

A pleasant little soiree at Finntroll Manor, with chamber music and polite conversation.

Back in 2001, I reviewed Humppa-black-metallers Finntroll's second album, Jaktens Tid, giving it a big thumbs up. This year, the band released an acoustic album Visor om Slutet, and an electric album, Nattf�dd, both of which I snapped up when they came out. At the time, though, I wasn't too keen on either of them, but I've been listening to Nattf�dd while drawing lately, and it's actually almost as good as Jaktens Tid. That's quite an achievement if you realise that the band has had what amounted to a brain transplant between those two albums. First, vocalist Katla developed a viral tumor in his throat and had to stop singing or die. Visor om Slutet was recorded with Katla sharing the vocals with his hand-picked successor Wilska. Then, guitarist Teemu "Somnium" Raimoranta, while drunk, fell off a bridge and didn't get up. Katla and Somnium were the originators of Finntroll's combination of Black Metal, polka-like rhythms and ethnic Finnish instrumentation, so this was a bit like James and Lars dying in Metallica's 1986 bus accident, leaving Cliff and Kirk to soldier on as best they could.
Against the odds, Nattf�dd is a fine album, and every bit as good for drawing by as Jaktens Tid. The remaining original Trolls have stuck with the concept well, with keyboardist Trollhorn writing most of the music. What makes Finntroll so much more fun than other Black Metal bands I've heard (and thanks to my headbanging buddy Danny I get to hear a lot of them)?

Playing at the studio now because Jeroen brought it: Appetite For Destruction by Guns'n'Roses. Fuck, they were a great band at that time. Must have taken them a lot of work to hush that up later on.

A sad day for music: Discjockey, concert presenter and host of the Peel sessions John Peel has died aged 65. From the classic rock era to the heyday of The White Stripes, Peel's voice has graced hundreds of concert and radio session recordings. Peel was consistently on top of the latest developments in rock music, and remained committed to seeking out the best right until the end.

The Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt said: "John Peel was a broadcasting legend. I am deeply saddened by his death, as are all who work at Radio 1.

"John's influence has towered over the development of popular music for nearly four decades and his contribution to modern music and music culture is immeasurable.

"Hopeful bands all over the world sent their demo tapes to John knowing that he really cared. His commitment and passion for new music only grew stronger over the years.

"In fact, when I last saw him he was engaged in a lively debate with his fellow DJs over the state of new music today. He will be hugely missed."

Update: I've been looking at the tributes that have poured in just about everywhere remotely connected to Britain. I think Pete Ashton has one of the best, explaining why people took to him and going beyond the (true but not all-explaining) "he was like a friendly uncle who knew cool music" line:

Throughout the 90s I tended to be the only person in my immediate group of friends that listened to him. As time has progressed this has changed as when that identification is made one tends to have made a friend for life and this evening nearly every weblog I read has a post like this on it. I don't think he has fans as such or followers. Rather he made a certain frame of mind acceptable and this, I think, is his real legacy.

In fact I'll go out on a limb and say it's not really about the music. The music is a conduit for something else, something quite intangible which I think comes down to that fucked up sense of juxtaposition he imposed on us. He made having an open mind cool, which is saying something when you think about it. Once you'd accepted that you could listen to every form of every form of music and appreciate it on its own merits then you could apply this to everything else in life. Any form of creative endeavour is worthwhile. The fact that someone, anyone, is doing something different and interesting becomes vital.

On the whole fans (for want of a better word) of him tend to be sensitive folk who just want things to be nice, who feel beaten down by the relentless enforcement of mediocrity. He not only provided a place on the radio for us to retreat to, his spirit encouraged others to do the same. Every small club, fanzine, website, setup of any description that implicitly encourages people to just do stuff owes him a debt, and they know it. The generation, generations really, that grew up with him learned something important and it stuck with them. We're the ones who smile when we see enthusiasm, who know that there is so much more to life...

My own personal memory of Peel, by the way, started with his radio show on Dutch VPRO, 20 years ago. I didn't always get the music, but I loved the sound of Peely's voice and his outspokenness about his likes and dislikes (he did have dislikes, Bruce Springsteen being one of them), the strange items such as reviews of mix tapes sent by him to critics in Senegal or what have you, and the fact that he hardly ever played anything twice on that show. What a guy.

My head-banging buddy Danny pointed me to this: Information SuperhighwayStars II. I'd been playing with the idea of setting something like this up myself, because the first version of this project was so cool. The name is pretty quaint by now though. Who even remembers the phrase "Information Superhighway"?

Now, to think of a track to cover...

I'm really happy that bands like The Apes exist. They convincingly take you back in time all the way to 1971 or thereabouts, playing music that owes as much to Uriah Heep as the Doors, with a stage presentation to match. The main difference is that Apes keyboardist Amanda Kleinman is a lot cuter than Ray Manzarek or Ken Hensley were even when they were in their prime. Whenever singer Paul Weil, clad in ultratight, low-slung pants, showed a little too much bum cleavage, my eyes darted to the left side of the stage... but let's talk about how they sounded. I think they could have been a little more together as a band, but each of them individually had the 1970-era stylings down pat. The only thing that was missing was a Ritchie Blackmore-caliber guitarist.
I only saw part of The Apes' set at Vera tonight because I arrived late expecting them to be the main act when they were in fact opening for Weird War. Weird War didn't do that much for me. From a strictly musical viewpoint they were better than The Apes: tighter, more technically accomplished, more adventurous. Their white-boy funk was the the sound the Talking Heads would have made in their early days if the Talking Heads had been able to play their instruments properly. However, I couldn't get past their singer. He seemed to want to be Prince, and while he got pretty close with the sound of his voice, his stage presentation resembled Mick Jagger, circa 1988; in other words he looked a bit of a pillock. That spoiled matters for me a bit although closing my eyes helped. Weird War are a very good band indeed — just not for me.

I left Vera with a 10" by The Apes. Review to follow.

Pete Ashton (again!) linked to this Guardian article about Creative Commons UK. That's pretty interesting stuff, but what struck me was the introductory paragraph:

In the summer of 2002, Steven McDonald, the bass player with American punk-pop band Redd Kross, had an idea. Listening to White Stripes - the minimalist Detroit duo who produce their stripped-down garage sound with just a guitar and drums - he wondered what it would sound like with a bass track. So he downloaded a White Stripes tune and tried it out. He liked it so much that he did their whole album, eventually uploading the new bass-laden tracks to his website, complete with a Photoshopped cover featuring himself as third band member.

And this is exactly what I've been suggesting to my friend Danny that he should do sometime. Lucky for us that neither of us had time to spend on that (I'd have helped him with the recording, and making tea).

Rented from the public library (because I can't afford to buy as many CDs right now as I've done in the past few months):

Genius by Warren Zevon. I'm a bit disappointed by this one, to be honest. Zevon has an excellent reputation as a songwriter, but on the basis of this nearly career-spanning retrospective, I don't think he lived up to it. There are some good songs on there, especially 1988's "Boom Boom Mancini" with its bluesy touches, 1991's carnivalesque "Mr. Bad Example" and 1978's "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" but like the Bruce Cockburn retrospective I rented a year or so ago, many of the songs are marred by sugary arrangements and the limitations of Zevon's voice. I'll explore his work a little further by listening to the albums that the best songs on this record came from but I don't expect to discover another artist of Richard Thompson's caliber.
Little Ship by Loudon Wainwright III. I'm a huge Loudon fan already so I was bound to like it. It's not his best: both the album's predecessor Grown man and the recent Last Man on Earth are stronger overall. The songs repeat themes Wainwright has visited time and again without adding much in the way of new ideas, and the arrangements are at times a little too clever for their own good. Indeed the two songs from Little Ship that made it to the live album So Damn Happy, "So Damn Happy" and "Primrose Hill", sound much better in the stripped-down, guitar-and-vocal version offered there. Nevertheless, Little Ship is well-crafted, pleasing to the ear and recommended for anyone who likes Wainwright's other stuff. And "What Are Families For" is a great, great song.

My vinyl copy of the remastered version of Burn (Amazon UK link) has finally arrived. The point of the remaster program was to put out CD editions that sound better compared to the original CD editions released between 1984 and 1990 (many of which sounded appaling), and getting a vinyl edition to replace a pretty decent and not yet worn vinyl pressing sort of defeats the purpose. But what the hell, I like vinyl, it's a Deep Purple album, and I wasn't going to get the CD ShinyDisk for reasons I wrote about earlier.
The 2LP edition isn't as lavishly packaged as the CD ShinyDisk, but it has all the historical information and photos on the inner sleeves. No lyrics, alas. The disks are solid to the touch but not as heavy as I like them. It's a good, clean pressing free of noises in the lead-in groove.
Musically, of course, it's all familiar stuff. This music has been with me for the better part of two decades. It's not sophisticated songwriting, but the band had a powerful, driving hard rock sound with elements of big band swing in Ian Paice's drumming and classical touches from guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and organist Jon Lord. A new departure at the time of release were the double vocals from new bassist Glenn Hughes and new lead vocalist David Coverdale (later to make a big pillock of himself in Whitesnake). Hughes' voice was high and soulful (at least on studio recordings - live, he'd often over-scream himself); Coverdale's dark and smoky. This took the music in a more bluesy direction although the title track and "You Fool No One" still qualify as out and out rockers that wouldn't have been out of place on earlier records. It's great stuff.
The remastered edition doesn't sound too different (on vinyl at least) from the original — a little more mellow perhaps.
The second disk contains four remixes of tracks on the album, plus a remixed non-album track. Splitting the remixes off from the body of the record is a great idea. They now make for a short album in their own right instead of a bunch of bonus tracks tacked on to the end, coming up after you've just heard the original versions. Ant they're very listenable. The changes aren't great - the remixers have shot for mostly matching remixes using new technology to improve clarity rather than for revisions like with the Machine Head remix disk (Amazon UK link). No alternate solos here — just slightly improved sound and some changes to beginnings and endings. Nice work; I'll be playing it regularly.

Working my way up to getting some proper writing done on this day of low productivity...

A while ago I noticed that having some good, nasty metal music on the discman helped me focus on my work better. To test that, I went to the library and rented four metal CDs. All of them were recorded after 1995, had promisingly tasteless cover art and had a name and reputation that I was familiar with. Unfortunately, that didn't stop them from being mostly awful, making this experiment a failure (that is, I still don't know if metal is better at keeping me focused on my work than other genres because I found listening to them too much of a chore to play the records repeatedly while working).

Beyond the Veil by Tristania is weepy Goth-metal mixing grunted male vocals with an operatic female soprano. There wouldn't be much wrong with that if the group, like many other weepy Goth-metal groups, hadn't forgotten to write coherent, comprehensible songs and resorted to stringing together riffs and fragments of music. I don't expect John Hiatt-level songwriting in a metal record, but I do have some minimal standards. Bleah.

Stratovarius, who had been recommended to me in the past, do have coherent songs, but that didn't make Elements pt.2 any less of a chore to listen to. If I'm in the mood to put on a metal album, the last thing I want to hear is life-affirming, optimistic lyrics. I want anger, hate and agression; get with the lootin', pillagin' and settin' fire to churches already! Seriously, Stratovarius' sub-Helloween Happy Metal got on my nerves. A lot. So did the guitar solos. I'd have enjoyed this one when I was 14 years old, but now it just sounds empty and air-headed.

Pro-bot by Dave Grohl and guests, is better. It's a tribute to the underground heavy metal of the 1980s with a wide range of vocalists from that era providing lyrics and vocals to music that Grohl wrote especially for them. It does emulate the pedestrian playing and indifferent production quality that I remember from 1980s underground metal, and some of the guest contributors are reduced to schtick — Lemmy from Motörhead in particular sounds like a shadow of his former self in "Shake Your Blood". Even Lemmy's bass playing sounds thin and distant. But it has some memorable songs, particularly "Ice Cold Man" with Napalm Death's Lee Dorrian guesting. It sounds more like Soundgarden than Napalm Death, but that's a good thing. In all, a decent effort that I could bear to play again.

Finally, Godless Savage Garden by Dimmu Borgir is an odd one. It's got a couple of re-recorded songs from a previous album, some live stuff and a ridiculous cover version of Accept's "Metal Heart". The live tracks are a blinding racket, worth listening to only for the opportunity to hear the "singer" pronounce the band's name. The studio tracks, however, are more disciplined and worth listening to. In fact, they energised me rather nicely and came closest to realising my aim of having some music to keep me awake and focused while working. That Accept cover is really really silly, though, especially the interpolation of one of the most appalling pieces of kitch found in the classical canon: Für Elise. I wonder if that was in the original. It's kept from going over the thin line between the clever and the stupid by the sheer apblomb with which it's delivered. I should probably have picked a later Dimmu Borgir album (indeed, I've got one album in MP3 format courtesy of head-banging buddy Danny), but the first five tracks on this one were quite enjoyable.

It was probably afternoon in Cleveland, but we were several thousand miles away in Groningen, where it was, in fact, night. Weary of touring, probably, Rachel Nagy, lead singer of retro garage rock band the Detroit Cobras greeted the audience thus, with a wink and a smile, and a puff of her cigarette. Smoking incessantly, drinking steadily and looking almost bored, her performance was nevertheless entertaining. The Detroit Cobras are a coverband playing '50's Rock 'n Roll and Soul in their unique garage rock way. Standing there looking so blas� I sometimes wondered how Rachel Nagy would sound when actually interested in singing: though her attitude is more likely a pose and her singing was pretty amazing as it was. At times raw, sometimes suave, often beautiful.
In that light it is worth mentioning the opening act of the evening, studio-mate Josje's band the Monroes. Same genre, '50's and '60's inspired Garage Rock, Josje's voice has less range than Rachel Nagy's, though is somewhat sexier. Also Josje's stage appearance is far more enthousiastic. That she's having fun on stage was obvious and this being their first major gig, they did great. If the Monroes manage to get their sound right, they'll be a band to watch. Go Josje!

Absolutely not!
I just heard that Queen (meaning Brian May and Roger Taylor - the writer of "I Want to Break Free" has been written out of history) are going to tour with Paul Rodgers on vocals. Online news reports quote Brian May as saying

We were both so amazed at the chemistry that was going on in All Right Now, that suddenly it seems blindingly obvious that there was something happening here.