hidden tracks and bits that don't fit

Some say the music album as we know it is not going to be the way of the future - that as we download songs one by one, we don't have to buy albums, and we make our own playlists in whichever order and with whatever mix of songs that we like.

This is true for me when I hear a song I like but don't really think much of the rest of a bands material. But where I love a band, I tend to love their albums. Maybe not all the songs on the album equally, but there will be something about the album, and the order the songs are placed that is special. So I say, the album won't be dead for some time yet.

However there is one thing that has thankfully gone out of fashion with albums and that is the hidden track. I know many bands did this in the 90's, and I never encountered one that bettered the album from being there. Do you know what I mean? you have the disc with the song list and the length of each track displayed on the album cover, but when you'll be listening to it, tacked on to the end a hidden track kicks in. The one that comes to mind right now is Crowded House's "Woodface" which has "We're still here" kick in at the end of the album after a considerable gap of nothing. Dreadful song. Unlike anything else on the album. You wish it wasn't there. You have to stop what you're doing at the end of the CD and stop it before the hidden track starts to play. A little annoying.

This brings me to an album we got this week - brand new. Fleet Fox's 2nd album "Helplessness Blues". I love their first album - it grew on me rapidly after it became something we could reliably play at my daughter's bed time, and it seemed to calm her down. Then I realised it was really very good. Then I found I didn't get sick of it with countless listens, then I became a Facebook fan and searched youTube for released live footage and then I realised I was hooked.

So along came their second album and I knew the band had spent a long time perfecting the album, and I'd read a positive review in the UK press where prior to release, and I expected a good album.  And it is a very good album - as good as their first. I liked it on first listen. However, there is one flaw with it. It's not quite a hidden track. They have quite a few songs that have 2 or 3 distinct parts, like is common in classical music. And usually it works fine. But there the 10th track on their new album has what sounds like freeform jazz in the last 90 seconds of the song. Before this track, and for the majority of this track, the album is one style, then there is LOUD freeform jazz style, then back to the original album style.

It really doesn't work. Someone should have told them before the album was released. I get the feeling we may be editing out that section ourselves...

Otherwise, love the album, look forward to what the band does in the future, and will certainly listen to this album a lot too!

Lighters out! (the album that taste forgot)

Here's a compilation we put together to amuse ourselves for a long car trip. A compulsion to air-drum is almost a pre-requisite for this list. Unfortunately, you end up skipping through most of the tracks after the first chorus. Still amusing, though. Here goes:

1) Livin' on a Prayer / Bon Jovi (Karaoke favourite of the 90's)
2) I'm not in love / 10cc (Just a silly phase i'm going through)
3) I want it that way / Backstreet Boys (perplexing - which way exactly?)
4) Total eclipse of the heart / Bonnie Tyler (nothing I can say...)
5) More than a feeling / Boston (power ballad meets catchy, toe tappin' riff, but you wish it didn't...)
6) I've never been to me / Charlene (she's been to paradise, but she's never been to songwriting school... *the* worst song of all time)
7) All by myself / Jamie O'Neil (immortalised by the opening air guitar and drums sequence at the start of the first Bridget Jones movie)
8) Stonehenge / Spinal Tap (deliberatly silly, unlike the others in this list, but still funny)
9) I want to know what love is / Foreigner (Can't stop now, I've travelled so far..... I wanna know what love is.... I *know* you can show me....)
10) I should have known better / Jim Diamond (I remember this being number one and being shown at the end of Countdown for many weeks.... aay ay ay aay aay, ay ay ay ay ay I looooove yooooooou....)
11) If you like Pina Coladas / Rupert Holmes (cheesey, dodgey, and so wrong it's almost right. Thank god you don't hear this playing in the supermarkets any more)
12) Paradise by the dashboard lights / Meatloaf (I can't stand Meatloaf, but by all accounts, this is a bit of a teenage boy all time favourite)
13) Africa / Toto (they've bless the rains down for years, but to no effect except for tears of boredom)

Coming soon - song list with blatant use of children's choirs

Transformative cover versions...

I get tickled pink when an artist takes a song, gives it a thorough makeover, and ends up with another version of the song that makes you think about the intended meaning of the lyrics, laugh with delight, twists the gender around or is just a damn lot better than the original.

Here's a few cover versions that stand out to me - feel free to add some of your own...(and here's hoping I don't break any of Betty Sue's reviewing rules along the way):

Winners!

Stop! in the name of love: Bang Gang recently did a version of this 60's Supremes hit. Instead of a soul music style, it's got a jangly guitar and folky voice; and the lyrics don't change, but it's sung by a man. Result: you're not sure if the male singer is in a relationship with a bisexual male or female. I find this version catchier than the original, and have sung along to it in the car many times.

Respect: Imagine my suprise when I found out that the first to record this song was not soul diva Aretha Franklin, but soul king Otis Redding. The original version was a bit of a suprise to me: imagine a bombastic fast paced soul track, with fast trumpets and trombones in between phrases, with words along the lines of: "you betta show me some respect woman, havin' dinner ready when I get home late at night..." (making it up here, but you get the picture - this guy was stuck in the Dark Ages...) Then along comes Aretha. Loosens up the song, slows the tempo, adds some female backing singers.... Transforms the whole song into an anthem for the feminist movement, that sticks two fingers up at the original version of the song. Pure genius.

Comfortably Numb: Never was much into "Prog Rock", therefore only have some vague memory of the original Fink Ployd version of the song from some long distant ex-boyfriend's CD collection. I think it was a bit slow and guitary, with smokey vocals. Enter the Scissor Sisters, with their fast castrato vocal disco Bee Gees style version that makes you want to dance around the lounge room (well if that's the only place you tend to dance these days).

Ticket to Ride: This Beatles classic was always about someone worrying that their love was one-sided; that any minute, their lover was going to take off with someone else. But it was somewhat disguised by the edgy rock and roll beat, and managed to sound almost euphoric. Then along came The Carpenters*. Piano background, slower pace, and Karen Carpenters' perfectly enunciated, pure as snow melancholic voice... "I think I'm gonna be sad, I think it's today... the boy who's driving me mad is going away... He's got a ticket to ride, and he don't care...". This version is perfect for rainy afternoons spent reminiscing about relationships of yesterday...

Hard Rain: This straightly-delivered, folky song of Bob Dylan's was given a good going over by Bryan Ferry. You'd never notice it was written as a protest against the Vietnam war - instead, this version of the song is done in a kind of glam/doo-wop style. With electric guitars, female backing vocalists, and an even 4:4 beat. Kind of in the same style as Leonard Cohen's "First we take Manhatten".

One Man Guy: Loudon Wainwright wrote this song about being his own man. A generation later, his son Rufus Wainright recorded the song, but Rufus' sexual orientation lends a new meaning to the words, implying that he is singing about fidelity; not being the type to sleep around.


Duds

Something: We were rifling through C-chan's father's Frank Sinatra record set and found a record from later in Sinatra's career where he murders I mean covers this Beatles song. It's plain awful. Treacley, pompous and stilted. Shouldn't have messed with the original, which captures beautifully the feelings and insecurities of being in the earlier phases of a love affair. Perhaps Sinatra was too big and famous at this stage to remember what it was like to be insecure?

I Got You Babe: I've added this one only because I want to have a whinge about UB40. I don't think the original Sonny and Cher version of this song is anything to blog home about, and hence don't think that UB40's version is comparatively worse. It's just that UB40 got away with being a $100-an-hour reggae style party band and not writing any of their own material. Well nothing that became a hit anyway. They do so many cover versions in this style that it becomes unimaginative (red red wine, I can't help falling in love with you etc etc).

*(we are not ashamed of our CD collection!!)

Welcome to the house of fun!

We are slowly going through our music collection and playing E-chan things to see what he responds to. Hard to tell what he actually likes... I think at his stage of life, it's all about people's faces... ie if I sing to him and look happy, he'll make happy faces and noises back at me. If you go by his response only, you'd conclude that he has exactly the same tastes as us. Might have to try putting on something that I can't stand but C-chan likes and see how E-chan really reacts.

Yesterday, a cheesy Stevie Wonder song came on, and I started moonwalking to it (as you do), and E-chan was delighted and entertained! So last night during the Witching Hour, C-chan and I put on Divine Madness (ie the best of Madness), and danced away to Baggy Trousers, House of Fun, It Must Be Love and the like. Our best fake braces wearing (as in the keeping your pants up kind), cockney-style stomp*. Result: One mesmerised baby!


Oh well it works for us... "Flood" by They Might Be Giants is another good one.

* I know accents don't translate to dancing styles, but you know what I mean? Madness, Dexy's Midnight Runners etc

late 80's early 90's flashbacks

C-chan - ever the hobbyist compilation maker - has just made a compilation or two of late 80's early 90's songs, catapulting me back into the middle years of high school with a thump.

Ah - PM Dawn, with "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss"... one of the first songs I remember with a recognisable sample (Spandeau Ballet); "Busta Move" by Young MC; "Push it" by Salt-n-Pepa; "Fight for your right to Party" by the Beasties; "Insane in the Membrane" by Cypress Hill; and "Trout" by Neneh Cherry and Michael Stipe. To name a few.

Takes me back to days of bludging school (insert sharp intake of breath)*, getting pretend drunk on alcohol-free wine purchased from the supermarket, or later, potent cocktails of whatever we could safely raid from the folks' liquour cabinet, or strongbows if our big brothers were willing to buy it for us, roaming the neighbourhood with friends at night, and sneaking for walks along the train tracks (not too dangerous in 'delaide, because in off-peak trains only come every hour anyway).

Ah, those were the days... were they? Happy to be without the teen angst and puppy fat, but I note that there aren't that many daring boundaries I am even interested in pushing at the moment. I have a different concept of boundaries I'd like to push these days I suppose...

Must check on the baby... who'll be going through a teenagerhood of his own in 14 or so years time. I wonder what boundaries he'll be trying to push? and what limits C-chan and I will be trying to set?

*nb I did this to see if I could get away with it, not because I particularly hated school or was cool

Revenge of the geeks

When I was a kid it was kind of geeky to take piano lessons and be interested in science. I guess that makes me a geek!

Boosting science enrolments - check out this article, if you sympathise with issues surrounding science. If you want my opinion (and if you don't, click off!), it has a lot to do with high school science teachers like my yr9 teacher - Mr Pavlowsky, who seriously wore socks, sandles and shorts, and whose lips didn't move beyond a circle shape when he talked in his monotone. Rote learing is probably a bit of a fizzer also, instead of fostering curiosity.

Now, onto piano... lately have seen 2 concerts that have rocketed up into my "top 5 concerts".

1) Ben Folds @ the Enmore Theatre (Sat night)
This was a seriously fun concert. Consisted of him + piano, bassist and drummer. Raced straight into a version of "in between days" which was a suprise. Played tracks from his new album which are growers. Had amusing anecdotes about what inspired the songs ("This really happened, I promise..."), jammed at the end of songs, and somehow incorporated a few minutes of "popcorn" into one of them. This guy seems to be able to do anything with 10 fingers and a keyboard.
The most fun was had with songs from his first album and from his former band (Ben Folds Five). In some of the songs (such as "Army"), he taught the crowd 2 or 3 part harmonies to make up for a lacking horn or vocal section. The musical talent in the audience was such that it worked well! He did a version of "Bitches ain't shit" (written by Dr Dre) - the lyrics of which are awful, but came across as just hilariously lame when played with a 3 piece band instead of rapping.
What got me was that he is a REALLY talented piano player, and that I have never had so much fun at a concert. GO SEE HIM WHEN HE TOURS HERE NEXT.

2) Rufus Wainright @ the Basement in Sydney (a few months back)
Played his (slightly dramatic) songs in a one-man show, either on his piana or guitar. This son of 2 prominent 60's folk artists belted his voice out to perfect pitch, improvised, and charmed the audience with his camp, witty humour. Had a little story to tell about many of the pieces he played. (ie no "1.2.3.4 waaa"). You left the concert wanting to become his best friend. Better to see live than to listen to on CD (his pieces are a bit distracting on the home stereo, due to very dramatic phrases that interrupt your thoughts/discussion etc). A mesmerising show in intimate settings (shame we didn't have a seat, though).

Fey and whimsy - concert review

We went to see Belle & Sebastian on Sunday night.  Some reflections on the experience:

The Music
I can say that they lived up to my expectations.  While I reckon ½ of what they played was material I didn’t know, I could still nod my head and tap my foot in time.  Mid-way through the concert, 5 or 6 of them stayed on stage while the rest had a break, and they mucked around with an ACDC track.

The Musicians
Like a Mini-orchestra – very talented bunch, but not surprising given they formed as part of a music college project.  12 people on stage most of the time, with a core group of 7 that were on the stage all the time. Everyone on stage seemed to be really into the music they were playing.

They spared no effort in reproducing the sound they create on the albums, using trumpets, French horns, shakey things, recorders and other unnameable instruments.  Apart from the drummer and main keyboardist, most of the musicians swapped instrument at least once during the concert (acoustic guitar, keyboard, bass, electric guitar, aforementioned novelty instruments).  5 strings players (1 cellist, 4 violinists) came on and off the stage as needed. Three of them sing, with Stuart Murdoch taking the lead in most instances.  Only thing we could complain about is the bass, which wasn’t mixed very well and vibrated just a bit too much.

The Stage Antics
The lead singer is very funny, in a likeable, goofy kind of way. They all had fun, showing off, mucking about, and joking with each other and the crowd.  At the end, they let some people get up on the stage and dance, and the concert ended with the very accessible B&S band members posing with the fans for their cameras/mobile phone cameras, which was a bit of a different way to end a concert. 

The Fans
As I always find with concerts, there are fans that spend so much time thinking about their fave band that they seem to think they have more of a relationship with the band than they actually do.  They shout out obscure references to lyrics or things that go over most people’s heads.   There were a few more people like this than usual in the crowd. 

Boogie-ability
As I alluded to earlier, most of their work is foot-tapping, head-nodding stuff, with possibly the exception of “Boy with the Arab Strap” and “Seeing Other People”.  The lead singer boogied away most of the night when he didn’t have a guitar or keyboard in front of him, and his dancing style reminded me of Ian Curtis’s or a less drugged-out version of the dancing guy from the Happy Mondays (Bez).

Rating – 8/10

Some musical selections for March, 2004

Thought I'd share some things we have been listening to that might not be so common. You can read more about the particular album or artist by going to the All Music Guide, which my Mr refers to for most music purchasing decisions, and I'd recommend to any music buffs.
My choices today are not particularly contemporary...

"Five Leaves Left" by Nick Drake:
This was released in the late '60s, and is kind of a melancholy folk music.
Perfect for grey, rainy days. Also perfect for putting on late at night when you are trying to get to sleep. Evokes all sorts of images in my mind, but mostly of country manors and green English fields.

Serge Gainsbourg (a compilation called "Initials SG"):
Think Austin Powers, only French!! I am choosing this mainly for novelty value, and am not sure if this album will be a stayer for me. His most famous soing is probably "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus", a very raunchy song that must have been outrageous when released in the 60's. Gainsbourg was an Anglophile, and tended to use English words in his songs, which are quaintly spoken with French accents in amongst the rest of the French Lyric. He often does duets with women, such as Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin. Listen to this album, and you'll instantly recognise a few more recent bands that have been influenced by them: Blur ("Parklife"), Air ("Moon Safari").