Wyatters delights (what are you listening to?)

[Max_Gate]

It's a tragic Saturday: I've run out of Emerson's 1812 Pale Ale and now have to slum it with Monteith's Black; my unipivot is pivoting when it shouldn't (but a minor adjustment that I'm slightly too 'happy' to attempt yet will fix things); there are two filthy terriers coating my antique sofa in hair and preventing me from settling. The only good news? A German copy of John Martyn's 'Bless the Weather'. This album is the precursor to 'Solid Air' and I find it equally haunting; indeed, it's closer to Nick Drake in its rueful tenderness than the later overt tribute to him:

Looking at me, never find out what a working man's about
Raving all night, sleeping away the day
Something to ask, something to say, something to keep the pain away
Something I'd like to see if it's alright

Life, go easy on me
Love, don't pass me by

One way for me, one way for you, one way for all of us
To get back home, do whatever we want to do
Nothing to tell you, nothing to show, nothing that you don't know
Something to play, something to say for now

[theallgolden]

not in the mood to search for the correct english wording to describe the music  i just list my faves of the past weeks:

jenny wilson - love and youth (highly recommended swedish musician, one of my favourites albums this year)

johnny cash - american v a hundred highways (great)

the fall - perverted by language (my introducing to the fall)

scritti politti - white bread black beer (polite, a little bit of beach boys a little bit of the magic of his early eighties lp's, wyatter's could love that too)

neil young - living with war (first i thought that this is his best since a long time, now it seems that it isn't a big one)

john fahey - days have gone (since i discoverd john fahey a few months ago i am a big, big fan, wonderful music)

justine electra - soft rock (australian girl, living in my hometown berlin, making singer/songwriter stuff with electronics, sounds good)  

with a lot of greetings

theallgolden

[Jaakko]

Hopper & Klossner
Mike Westbrook's Metropolis
Pere Ubu: Folly of youth
Hatfield and the north: Hatwise Choice
Quiet Sun: Mainstream
Catherine Jauniaux: Fluvial
Hopper & Sinclair: Somewhere in France
Neil Young: Living with war
Frank Zappa: imaginary Diseases
Lindsay Cooper: Small screen
Thom Yorke: The Eraser
This Heat
An Evening With Wild Man Fischer
Hugh Hopper: 1984

j.

[Max_Gate]

Having worked late yesterday, when I helped an armchair to observe the law of gravity, I have knocked off early this afternoon. Already the turntable has thrilled me with:

Vincent D'Indy: Poeme des rivages/Diptyque mediterranean (Georges Pretre & Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo) - a French pressing from Pathe Marconi/EMI 1986; proto-Delius, yet more assured in his orchestration.

Gluck: Danses (Kurt Redel & Pro Arte, Munich) - another French pressing, this time from Erato, 1973; my tomcat, Signore Dante Fluff, purred along to these thus proving that cats are classicists.

Franck: Sonata in A Major for Violin & Piano (Kyung-Wha Chung & Radu Lupu) - Decca, 1980; the music is as exquisite as Chung's features.

[Max_Gate]

On this, the morning of my 47th birthday, I've begun a retrospective session of albums that served to mark stages in my uncertain progression uphill to - it is rumoured - maturity:

David Crosby: If I Could Only Remember My Name. I first purchased this on LP from John Ford of Mousetrap Records, Christchurch, in 1974. Only an aging bachelor could recall such trivia. But Jerry Garcia's guitar still lifts me.

Neil Young: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Apart from the searing accuracy of the title track, the lyrics are absurd - however the band's lumbering brilliance lets me forgive every extraneous "la la la...."

Talking Heads: More Songs About Buildings & Food. The remake of Al Green's 'Take Me To The River' is a more intelligent coda to Young's 'Down By The River' than anything in the latter's catalogue.

Hawkwind: In Search of Space. Proving once again that drugs do not inspire but they do delude: "Adjust me, adjust me..."

Now, having started on the bottom shelf, I reach for the sonic champagne -

Arthur Bliss: The Colour Symphony (Sir Charles Groves/Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), EMI 1985 LP.

Pierre Certon: Messe 'Sus le Pont d'Avignon' (Joel Cohen/Boston Camerata), Harmonia Mundi 1980 LP.

Henry Purcell: Birthday Odes for Queen Mary (David Munrow/Early Music Consort), EMI 1976 LP.

- As the grey spreads over my head it's difficult to be interested in popular music. The most recent release from a younger artist to enchant me was the watercolour-gorgeous 'Venice' by Fennesz.  I guess, with a decreasing interest in the body, I'll become even more intolerant of songs that gush on about endless love: "Baby, make it last all night..." Any girl with that request will be referred elsewhere.
__________________

[theallgolden]

i have not quit, just limited time and holidays. but as a matter of course i just want to congratulate max to his birthday (belated) and wish you all the best.

a few delights to which i listened the last few weeks , especially in austria where i hiked throgh and on the top of the alps.

handsome family - the last days of wonder
woven hand - mosaic
jenny wilson - love and youth
tv on the radio - return to cookie mountain
johhny cash - american V a hundred highways

[Max_Gate]

Thanks to theallgolden. While, at 47, I frequently feel like giving up I haven't; this is a sign of obstinacy rather than intelligence. But music continues to give me a glimpse of what contentment might be....

Paul Motian: Tribute (ECM, 1975) CD reissue - after I wore out the original vinyl. This album has been alongside me for thirty-one years; it has outlasted adolescent fears/sporting victories, sexual misadventure/romantic bliss, financial embarrassment/autumnal windfalls...I expect Carlos Ward's transcendent alto sax on 'Sod House' will call out over my coffin. Glorious.

[theallgolden]

i have my the allman brothers band weeks:

live at the fillmore east and eat a peach both in remastered glory and as deluxe editions. wow, sounds great and duane and dickey done a fantastic job.

beside ABB the new YO LA TENGO album is an eclectic highlight.  this album summarize their whole career maybe their masterpiece until now.

i bought my first dylan album since 1980! modern times is a fine one.

some more eclectic band: espers. they made folk in the tradition of fairport convention , but don#t forget to put some psychedelic drone into the mix.

[edgar22]

Right now my favourites are:

Ben Weaver - "Stories under Nails"
Jolie Holland - "Springtime can kill you"
T Bone Burnett - The True False Identity"

[Max_Gate]

Good morning (sunshine) but a bad afternoon: one semi-beautiful diffident girl within but really out of arm's reach. Cure: none. Consolation: one deceased heroin-addicted ex-model, Nico, with her gothic 'Camera Obscura'. Ah, Vinyl - if only that girl would wear it.

[theallgolden]

another girl.

nina nastasia enriches the day, the week. what a perfect album 'on leaving' is. spare, beautiful melodies. a girl and her guitar. some drums, some piano, some cello. alltogether pure rcichness. it is a gift.

[theallgolden]

and by the way edgar, a big welcome and jolie holland's 'springtime and ben weaver's 'stories under nails' are favourites of mine.  

[Max_Gate]

David Fanshawe: 'African Sanctus' (1994 version) - Fanshawe may be a visionary but a visionary without the talent to match is reduced to an enthusiast. The highlights are provided by the (taped) African material rather than Fanshawe's interventions. If his notion was striking it remains a notion. Like a panto God with a white beard this score fails to incarnate. But there are memorable passages: some for their beauty, others because they sound like a provincial school music teacher's attempts to approach Beethoven's 'Missa solemnis'.

[Max_Gate]

This weekend I've been revisiting Steely Dan. My favourite album is the one, predictably, that AMG rates lowest: 'The Royal Scam' - DF's gritty double-take lyrics have never been more adroitly set, although the early digital mastering is too strident so I prefer the more subtle remaster.

Agents of the law
Luckless pedestrian
I know you're out there
With rage in your eyes and your megaphones
Saying all is forgiven
Mad Dog surrender
How can I answer
A man of my mind can do anything

CHORUS:
I'm a bookkeeper's son
I don't want to shoot no one
Well I crossed my old man back in Oregon
Don't take me alive
Got a case of dynamite
I could hold out here all night
Yes I crossed my old man back in Oregon
Don't take me alive

Can you hear the evil crowd
The lies and the laughter
I hear my inside
The mechanized hum of another world
Where no sun is shining
No red light flashing
Here in this darkness
I know what I've done
I know all at once who I am

CHORUS

Then there's its successor, 'Aja', which is the sonic equivalent of a sustained seductive smile from a delicious waitress.

[Jaakko]

Henry Cow's studioversion of "Viva Pa Ubu" on
www.pandora.com, I've got the first cd of Western Culture and now there's this one out (I think it's been
out for years) with these marvellous bonustracks.

What a revolting tune it is!

j.