Newark Thrill Pt.2

I'll be doing my vinyl thing in Newark again this Sunday, Newark folk. It would be great to see you there.

By Chance Two Separate Glances Meet

I've been listening to the 40 minute cover version of Echoes on Crippled Black Phoenix's new EP.  I think the CBP EP - which has a running time of an hour, so hardly an EP - has done more to restore my faith in the music of Pink Floyd than the miserbalism of The Final Cut, the Floyd-by-numbers of A Momentary Lapse of Reason and the borefest of The Endless River ever will. As I'm on a mid-period Floyd tip at the minute, I've been watching Pink Floyd in Pompeii. It's such a shame that this is the only proper visual live record of the Pink Floyd lineup of Waters, Gilmour, Wright and Mason. When you think about all the gigs they did in support of Dark Side of the Moon, Animals and The Wall and it's a wonder none of it was captured properly on film. I know that it is something that irks members of the band. Mind you, they had such difficulty around the cinema release of ...in Pompeii that they were probably put off. And who would have foreseen Imax or hi-def Blu-Ray with a 5.1 surround sound mix in the mid-70s?
Watching Pink Floyd in Pompeii also served to remind me how good Nick Mason was before he became the world's most bone idle drummer.



Any road, my I point you in the direction of Crippled Black Phoenix's version of Echoes? It has a total running time of about double the original and takes in some interview audio with the band (which I think is from the documentary footage of ...in Pompeii. The bit where Mason asks for apple pie with no crust being a highlight. "They've only got round apple pies left, Nick". Anyway, who wants apple pie with no crust? Bloody freak), a dollop of The Tornados' Telstar and finishing up with a version of Childhood's End from Floyd's most underrated LP, Obscured by Clouds. It really is a very good thing from a band who've had their ups and downs recently but who have come storming back with this.

Stand still, laddie

I've been thinking of doing this for ages now: songs that first made me sit up and listen to what was coming out of the radio. Obviously I can remember the hits that everyone else was listening to, as well as more kiddy-friendly fare like the dozen records Junior Choice trotted out every week, but these are the ones that really stuck with me and had some bearing on the music that I would come to love later in  life. I think I'll split it over different posts rather that do it all in one. Besides, I need to get my hand back in to blog posts as I've had two, yes, count 'em, TWO!, people over the past couple of weeks tell me I don't post enough.

So, Part 1 in a Ken Bruce Tracks of My Years style series is:
Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall Pt.2

The last number one single of the 1970s and first of the 1980s then. I don't seem to recall that there was all that much of a fuss about the Christmas number one when I was growing up. If there was then this surely must have ranked alongside Rage Against the Machine's protest no.1 from a few years ago, and Mr Blobby, as one that the bookies probably didn't see coming.
I think what first struck me about this song was, like everyone else, the "We don't need no education" refrain. I was eight, going on nine at the time and while I wasn't much of a fan of school, probably viewed it as a necessary evil. So who were these people who were telling me that they didn't need no education? At the time I thought they were some of those punk rockers I'd heard about. People said these punk rockers were troublemakers. How wrong I was in Pink Floyd's case. But there was something about that vocal performance and those horrible-sounding kids that made me think that these people were to be avoided at all costs.
Then there was the video. The band didn't appear in it themselves, of course. That mixture of panning camera shots of a pre-regeneration London, animation, those ruffian kids again and the teacher led me to be even more fearful of this band of punk rockers. Who were these people? Why didn't they want us to see them? Were they so disfigured by years of being evil that their faces were a diabolical mess of vein and pus with bulging eyes? I didn't know. I don't think I wanted to know.
And those kids, they sounded hard, didn't they? What with their 'fort cont-roal' and everything. And according to the video they lived in council flats. No good ever came of anyone who lived in council flats. Not if a kids' show at the time, The Latchkey Kids, was to be believed.*
Coming back to that teacher, that bloody teacher**. This band were so evil they thought it was okay for their song to be depicted by this horrible teacher pushing these poor schoolkids into a mincer while his eye turns into a magnifying glass. A mincer! Kids in a mincer! That could be me! No, no, no, Pink Floyd, with your weird name, please spare me the mincer.
Anyway, this song, despite it being evil incarnate, stuck with me. And I didn't even know what 'dark sarcasm' was. It might be that I like being scared out of my wits, I always have and probably always will***. Of course now I know that the producer, Bob Ezrin, knew exactly what he was doing by giving it the standard disco beat with Nile Rodgers' style rhythm guitar guaranteed it tons of airplay. Good job he did because a near bankrupt Floyd were desperate for the cash that a hit single could knock on to sales of a double album.

Now fast forward to the mid-1980s. Settling down to watch Saturday teatime telly and on comes Mike Read's Pop Quiz. One of the team captains is this guy called Dave Gilmour (before the law was changed in 1988 and everybody had to address him as 'David'). Well this Dave guy was incredibly well-spoken, nicely turned out, was witty and quite handsome. Can you imagine my surprise when it turns out that this Dave bloke was a member of Pink Floyd? What had happened to his punk mohican? Where were the safety pins? Why wasn't he snarling? Of course, that was before I knew about the band, who ended up as one of favourites. But that, my friends, is a story for another day.




*Now I know that the kids in the video aren't the kids in the song. The kids in the video are stage school kids, as evidenced by the girl in the 'Number 32' top who walks like a trained dancer. My wife is convinced that one of the kids is Terry Sue Patt who played Benny Green in Grange Hill. I'm not so sure.
**Who, I think, bears an uncanny resemblance to BBC arts editor Will Gompertz.
***Some music still frightens me. Check out Black Mass from Delia Derbyshire's band White Noise. While Black Sabbath's eponymous track is the sound of suffering and is immensely disquieting, even to a 44 year-old.

The first rule of Glossop Record Club is...

I read a magazine article a couple of years ago about a record club that met on Sunday afternoons once a month in a room above a pub in London. It existed solely for people to go along and listen to a whole vinyl LP. Just listen, perhaps have a bit of a chat about it and then go home again. I thought to myself at the time that I'd quite like to go to this club but decided that a) was a four hour round trip to London to listen to someone else's copy of Liege and Lief an entirely constructive use of my time and b) did I want to sit with a load of blokes in corduroy jackets stroking their beards?
The idea of it kind of stuck with me though because I love listening to, and talking about music, and like book clubs (which I've never been a part of), thought it would give me a chance to experience  something that I wouldn't normally choose to read or listen to.
So it was handy that last week I happened to see a retweet by the DJ Marc Riley about a record club being set up in the Derbyshire town of Glossop, with the first meeting being set for the 12th of September. I live in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire is right next door to my home county. So I thought - and with a lot of encouragement from my wife - I'd take a trip over just to see what it was like, as one likes to try new things. Anyway, turns out that my initial suspicion that Glossop was near Manchester was correct. Although in Derbyshire, it's way over to the north west of Derbyshire, and I live in the east of Nottinghamshire, just a spit away from Lincolnshire. It's 68 miles away. Now, the way this country is set up for travel, if you want to go or north to south, you're laughing. 68 miles on the A1 would take me less than hour. However, travelling east to west is not so easy. To get to Glossop from here, you must negotiate Sheffield, and then brave the notorious Snake Pass. Up until yesterday, I'd never driven on the Snake Pass before. It's well named as it twists and turns like a...like a...twisty turny thing. Oh yeah, it twists and turns like a snake.
So I set off straight from work, the journey took me about an hour and thirty five minutes. A quick look at Google Streetview a couple of nights before led me straight to the door of the venue where it was going to be held (after a crafty trip to the toilets in quite possibly the world's swishest branch of Wetherspoon's. Yes, it really was swish), namely the Glossop Labour Club. It was an evening of firsts for me as I'd never been in a Labour club before either. I was expecting union banners and portraits of Keir Hardie to be decorating the walls while there'd be very uncomfortable stools to sit on to constantly remind you of the struggles of the workers. But not a bit of it, there was a Tolpuddle Martyrs poster and some collieryana (is that a word?) but other than that there were watercolours on the walls of the surrounding Peak District, carpets, a tastefully appointed bar area and cushioned seats.

I walked in a bit unsure of myself but spied a friendly-looking couple sitting on a banquette. "Is this the record club?" I enquired. They both smiled and said yes. So, I got myself a drink (85p for a Coca Cola - club prices, very handy) nodded to the
guy running the show, Simon, and sat down.
So, at 8.30, the first LP of the evening was started - Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure. Which was chosen as the theme for the evening was 1973. And very good it is too, I was only previously familiar with Do the Strand (which I think is one of the few songs where the vocal and instruments start together. Weezer's Buddy Holly and Squeeze's Pulling Mussels... being the only other two I know of) and In Every Dream Home a Heartache, which is a heart-warming tale of a very wealthy but ultimately very lonely man who spends his evenings making love to an inflatable sex doll. Listening to it in those surroundings where you're just concentrating on the music is terrific. I mostly listen to music while I'm doing something else so it was great to just sit and listen. I play the drums so usually listen out for drums on records. It soon became obvious that while Roxy's drummer at the time, Paul Thompson, isn't the most technical and precise drummer, he's quite inventive but at the same time keeps it simple. There's a drum fill at around 2m 20s of the track Editions of You which is just an elongated single stroke roll, but boy, does it work. And what is it with art rockers using gruff Northerners like Thompson and Woody Woodmansey as drummers?
So, Music for Pleasure came to its Brian Eno curated end and we sat and had a bit of a chat about it. One of us had even seen Roxy Music on the tour to support the LP at Nottingham University in 1973. Fancy!

We then had a comedy record interlude, which featured a Bruce Forsyth track with the most unbelievably funky Hammond B3 solo. Didn't the organist do well? The organist do well, didn't he?

LP no.2 was a based on an internet poll. All the LPs in the poll were from 1973, a list which included one of my favourite albums of all time by Pink Floyd. Now I've heard that LP thousands of times, and as I wanted to go to this record club to learn about stuff I wouldn't normally listen to I decided to vote for David Bowie's Aladdin Sane. This Bowie chap gets a lot of hype and it struck me that I'd never heard a complete album of his, just greatest hits. Anyway, Bowie got beaten in the poll by Stevie Wonder's Innervisions. All good, as I wouldn't normally choose that. Again, a superb LP. It's amazing to think that this burst of creativity he had during the early 70s produced, on just one album, tracks like Higher Ground, Living for the City, Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing and He's Misstra Know-It-All, stuff you still hear regularly on the radio today.

Us, the non-paying public, were then allowed to showcase any records we'd brought along. But time was marching on, and at about 11.20, I decided that I couldn't put the return journey up Snake Pass off any longer and decided to scoot off.
So, would I go back? Yes. Would I submit an idea to the suggestions sheet? Yes, but my natural shyness and lack of actually owning the stuff I'd like to play on vinyl is holding me back. Was it full of men stroking their beards? Yes, but I'm a man who strokes his beard anyway.



Fortunately, my trip home was incident free. Although Radio 2 was on the radio but with Steve Lamacq and Janice Long, not Brian Mathew.

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The (nearly) perfect Storm

I know everybody says this but it really was with genuine sadness that I read last night of designer Storm Thorgerson's death. Liking the kind of music I do then it seems as though the covers he designed, or co-designed, are also are part of the story. If someone mentions The Dark Side of the Moon then even people who haven't heard the record will almost certainly know the cover.

 

My first introduction to Storm, and his company, Hipnogsis - apart from the DSotM cover which, along with Tubular Bells was seemingly in every home in my childhood, except ours - was when I got a copy of Led Zeppelin's fourth LP.



 

It's clearly a gatefold with the main cover image on the right. It's supposed to convey the ripping down of the old and the development of the new, which seemed like a pretty neat idea when the album was released in 1971. I think it shows a certain melancholy over that 'neat idea'. I've always loved the painting, that man crooked over with those bits of coppiced birch on his back. Apparently the painting was picked up in a second hand shop in Reading, fancy! I wonder how much it would be worth now?

 

You don't need me to tell you that his most famous work was with Pink Floyd. Not all of which was a success, I think. Ummagumma looks rushed while Meddle just looks incredibly brown. The cover of Meddle is an image taken of sound waves in the ear, it just looks more like a blob of earwax to me. I reckon Storm, and his company Hipnogsis, first truly successful design was the cow on Atom Heart Mother.

 

 

No, I don't know what it means either but I suppose a cow with a full udder has to be a mother, doesn't it? I also find it incredibly English, rather like early Pink Floyd music.

 

Coming back to Ummagumma, I've always quite liked this back cover photograph of all their instruments, stage gear and roadies laid out in front of their van. It's based on a photo of a jet fighter with its armaments laid out in front of it. But these are weapons for peace! Geddit? No, oh. I'll get my Afghan coat...

 

 

Back to Zeppelin and while this isn't one of my favourite covers by either the band or Thorgerson, the trouble with getting the colours right on the image caused the album's release to be pushed back by months. For any fact fans, one of the children - and there are only two, their image kept getting reproduced - is Stefan Gates who now presents food programmes on the telly. The other child is his sister. At the time they both child models, in particular on knitting patterns

 

 

These two Peter Gabriel covers are also some of my favourites. The first one for Peter Gabriel I love because he almost looks like he's dead behind that windscreen and with no colour in his face. The rain on the car is also effective. Shame the car's not taxed though, naughty naughty, Pete. Perhaps the Genesis royalties were drying up in the punk era when this was released. There was an image of the usually anonymous dubstep artist Burial a few years ago. It showed his hooded head reflected in a puddle, it must have been inspired by this.

 

This one for Peter Gabriel 2 is just brilliant, I think. A simple idea that's well done.

 

 

Now, his best cover for Pink Floyd. Unfortunately due to an accident with an inflatable pig, the pig here had to be added on to the photograph later. Obviously it refers to 'pigs might fly' but why Battersea Power Station? I dunno. Like the Dark Side of the Moon cover it's passed into public consciousness as a standalone work of art, often imitated. Not least by tribute act The Australian Pink Floyd Show where the pig is replaced by a pink kangaroo.

It's not all great of course. I suppose this cover image reflects the music contained within: sexist pap. The reverse image shows the woman laughing as she holds a framed photo of Scorpions. I don't blame her, I always laugh at Scorpions.

 

 

This is a good one, How Dare You! by 10cc. The image here is the wrong way around though, sorry. The main cover image is the man in the office/drinking woman. Quite a few questions asked on this sleeve: who are the people in the photo on the desk? Who are the people climbing out of the Austin Healey? Why has she been crying? Why is Dudley Moore making an obscene phonecall?

 

I'd like to point out here that I'm not a 10cc fan, but I got my girlfriend a vinyl copy of the LP as a present and I was quite taken with the cover and wasn't surprised to see that it was designed by Hipnogsis.

As for more Pink Floyd, I'm really NOT fan of this LP but no trickery was used in this photograph. Every one of those beds is real and were placed on a beach in Devon. The government keep thousands of beds in storage in case of an emergency and they were borrowed for the shoot. Again, I haven't got a clue what it means. Thorgerson suggesting Dave Gilmour should give Pink Floyd a rest perhaps, given the rottenness of the music contained within..?

 

 

 

This one I find quite sad. On the surface it's bog standard artist shot, I guess. But everyone knows of Syd Barrett's mental torment. He seems to be detached in this image, almost pushed away. The fuzzy resolution of the photo reinforces that, like the fuzziness of his mind at the time. The alternately painted floorboards also act like a barrier, like he's pushed away but also doesn't want to let you in. The wilting flowers also perhaps show his once fresh talent is now withering. I dunno, that could all be bollocks and it is just a simple artist shot. What do I know?

 

I've not been massively keen on Thorgerson's recent works with the likes of Biffy Clyro, Muse and The Pineapple Thief. The stuff he did with The Mars Volta has been good though. What I did recently enjoy was the work he did to mark The Dark Side of the Moon's fortieth anniversary. He recreated the cover image forty times in forty different styles. I liked this Roy Lichtenstein styled one, amongst many others.

But my favourite Thorgerson cover has to be this one - no, not Dark Side of the Moon, that's more like a trademark these days - it's Go 2 by XTC. I love the idea of it, and the text continues on the reverse of the sleeve. I know it's a bit monochrome, but hey. For me it just works. I love the idea of it. They proved that new wave acts could also get in on the Thorgerson/Hipnogsis magic and that sometimes, classic album covers aren't beautifully, and expensively, shot photographs or paintings.



Desert Island Cobblers

Our kid's done this Desert Island Discs thingy, so I thought I'd nick the idea and give it a go. You can take albums, right?

First up, the whole album, mark you, not just these two songs.



Perfect indie pop.



An-gus!



Perfect, er, pop.



Two for the price of one here. Going to see this lot a week tonight.



Dave Grohl never bettered this. Recently covered by Glen Campbell.



Doesn't outlive its welcome.



Genius.



Luxury - an iPod to render this whole exercise pointless.
Book - The Deeper Meaning of Liff. I've read it hundreds of times and it never fails to make me 'LOL' (eergh). It'd make me realise how much pleasure used to be had by laying on a settee on a Sunday afternoon, absent-mindedly picking yourself.

Richard Wright

Please humour me while I go on about a band that nobody who reads this blog probably gives a toss about...
I think I must have had my head stuck up my arse for the past few days because the death of Rick Wright completely passed me by, only hearing about it today on the weekly music news segment on Ken Bruce's show.

I'm not normally one of those people who makes a song and dance over a musician's death - I'm not going to indulge in a Classic Rock mag-style 'he's joined the great band in the sky with Hendrix etc' post - but this one drew me up short as it was completely unexpected. Pink Floyd have for a long time been one of 'my bands', and to have them lose a member so suddenly made me feel especially sad today. I don't know why that should be, I don't recall the death of, say, Kurt Cobain to fill me with shock - probably because his death wasn't exactly unexpected.

Anyway, as a member of Floyd, Wright was completely understated, always letting the others shine while he remained in the background. Even on his most famous composition, the awfully-named Great Gig in the Sky, while all the plaudits go to Claire Torry's orgasmic wailing, Wright's always there with his understated piano and rumbling, but never obtrusive Hammond organ. He is completely responsible for the Hammond organ being my second favourite musical instrument.

From what I saw of him in documentaries and read about him, he was one of the good guys. There have only ever been five members of Pink Floyd, there are now only three left.