Archives for category: Music

David Cross Band / David Jackson Cultuurpodium Boerderij 19 May 2017

May 22, 2017 //

David Cross and David Jackson

So I saw this gig announced a few months ago after I’d spent several weeks listening to almost the entire Van Der Graaf Generator catalogue. David Cross played violin on Starless and Bible Black and Larks’ Tongues In Aspic by King Crimson. Jackson played horns with VDGG for most of their run. So, yeah, two incredible musicians who had each been in the game for more than 45 years. It was a gig I didn’t want to miss. Especially given the recent resurgence of King Crimson, I was quite surprised that the gig was far from sold out. Fine, I’ll take middle front at this relatively small club. (When packed, Boerderij can hold an audience of 750 or so and my guess is there were about 300 there.) To open, Cross and Jackson came out alone and traded a little humour before taking on Starless Loops from the recent Cross/Robert Fripp album of improvisations on the Starless theme, Starless Starlight. After a few more pieces, they played another from Starless Starlight. There’s one ripple of chords from Starless that always gives me the shivers and did again when Cross played it Friday night. My friend Corniel, who joined me for the gig complained that it would have been better for him if they’d just played and not joked around so much. There’s some merit to that argument, as the joking detracted from their sheer expertise. Their duo work owed more to improvisational jazz than to the progressive rock they’re best known for. After a 30-minute set, they took a break before coming back with the full David Cross Band.

In the main set, the band played several numbers from the new (very good) album, The Sign of the Crow including Starfall, the title track, Rain Rain and The Pool. Current vocalist Jin Wilde has a very interesting voice (having come out of a dance music background, it seems) handles the new stuff quite well. His tenor is well suited to the music, generally. The band’s set includes (and if the 2008 live album I bought at the merch counter is anything to go by, has included for a long time) three King Crimson songs: Exiles (from Larks‘), Starless (from Red), and the encore 21st Century Schizoid Man (from In The Court of the Crimson King). The last of these featured Greg Lake on vocals, and the other two John Wetton. On these songs, Wilde doesn’t seem to take ownership. He seems to be trying to sing like Wetton, but his voice is too different. The band, however, quite made up for it. After Exiles, the band left the stage to drummer Craig Blundell who did an appropriately hair-raising solo. (Blundell has played with numerous folks including Steve Wilson.) The band returned playing George Martin’s Theme One (recorded in ’72 by Van Der Graaf Generator) before a slightly ragged Starless. Paul Clark and his Gibson Flying V are very very good and he doesn’t try to be Robert Fripp. After a quick moment back stage they closed with an appropriately wild Schizoid Man. I wasn’t expecting it and was well impressed. (Someone commented on Blundell’s facebook page that Crimson currently has three drummers and was impressed with how well he did his part solo.)

Overall a great evening with a couple of bona fide legends.

Tags David Cross, David Jackson, King Crimson, Sign of the Crow, Van Der Graaf Generator

Categories Music, rock and roll

Eyes like cameras move their lenses

May 9, 2017 //

I don’t recall why I first bought The Age of Plastic by the Buggles. I might have heard Video Killed The Radio Star; it might have been because I knew the Yes connection, though I’m pretty sure I knew the album before the Drama tour (which my sister saw, but I did not). Al of that said, it had a huge impact on me. I played it quite a lot when I was 13 or 14. I’m quite sure I knew it well before we had MTV. Those eight songs were all mini movies in my head, the way the best pop is. (One track is indeed about a real movie studio, Elstree.) The fact that they’re all quite sci-fi as well appealed to my teenage literary tastes.

Much later I found the Bruce Woolley version. Woolley co-wrote it with Trevor Horne, and released a more guitar-heavy version with a crew called The Camera Club, which also featured a pre-Age of Wireless Thomas Dolby and Matthew Seligman. The most recent issue of Mojo (#283) has interviews with Woolley, Horne, and Geoff Downes who was the other half of the Buggles. At the close of the article, it’s mentioned that Woolley has recorded a new version with Polly Scattergood. It’s a very beautiful, slower, lower interpretation that reminds me of why the original excited me so much when I was a kid. (Keep an eye out in the vid for Thomas Dolby.)

After replacing Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman for one album (Drama) and ill-fated tour (Horne didn’t have Anderson’s range or vocal stamina and on the later dates especially, his voice was a liability), the Buggles released a second album, Adventures In Modern Recording, but had already gone their separate ways before its release.

Horne went on to produce a stack of classic albums (Welcome to the Pleasuredome, The Lexicon of Love, 90125, Seal, Dear Catastrophe Waitress, and Who’s Afraid of the Art of Noise to name a few) and Downes founded Asia and took prog rock into that weird 80s pop direction. Asia’s a weird animal, too. Downes was the only consistent member (in fact there was one lineup of Asia that even he wasn’t in on) of almost 30 who have passed through, but at different times it was fronted by John Wetton and Greg Lake (both ex-King Crimson among many other bands).

When John Wetton passed away, I flitted through a bunch of videos of ELP and Asia and King Crimson and came across a fantastic concert he and Downes performed in a church which featured a gorgeous arrangement of Elstree. (Track four on this video.)

But back to The Age of Plastic. Giving it another listen now (and it’s a pretty consistent part of my listening – I don’t think a year goes by that it doesn’t come up in the rotation), I’m both 13 again and trying (as I still do with the music I love) to get my friends to hear its brilliance, and the 50 year old wannabe rock historian. More often than not, my friends thought I was enthusing on The Bugaloos, anyway.

The music is almost entirely keyboard/synthesiser-based, but the arrangements are impeccable and multi-layered. Considering the new wave acts of the time, the arrangements put them more in the category of disco (when there were still live string sections) and the intricate productions of Joe Meek. Johnny On The Monorail has both a disco bassline an almost a surf-like hook, and a 70s folk guitar bridge.

Horne is quoted in the album’s wikipedia page as having wanted to make music like Elton John was doing, but didn’t feel he had the chops. He then heard Kraftwerk and learned ‘you didn’t even have to emote’ to make hit songs. That said, all of the musicians had been working for most of the decade (Downes, Horne, and Woolley all worked with a singer named Tina Charles who had several hits, for example), so it’s not a surprise that the album has so many facets. It still rates five stars with

Tags Asia, Bruce Woolley, Geoff Downes, King Crimson, Living In The Plastic Age, Tecnopop, Trevor Horne, Yes

Categories 70s, Music, Rock

AVDGAD – 15 – Do Not Disturb

February 23, 2017 //

And last year’s fine effort brings the Van Der Graaf Generator saga to a close. Clocking in at just under an hour, Do Not Disturb is a curious effort. They three remaining members only worked together on the music for about two weeks (according to the wikibox), but it sounds much like another well-oiled VDG machine.

vdgg-dnd (Oh No I Must Have Said) Yes seems to be a response to the various failings of the electorate in the past year, though the recording was complete before, for example, the Brexit referendum…

But let’s not talk about the old days
except to say the consequences run,
to be plain, what’s over isn’t done
and you thought you were only having fun.

As always, most of the songs seem to contain epics within them, slow movements calmly orchestrated still go measure to measure with slamming drums, weirdly overlaid vocals, and histrionic keyboards, but if they didn’t, we’d question whether we were listening to the right band.

It’s definitely good stuff, but not the gut-grabbing musical assault that we were once used to.

I realised there’s another live recording: Live at Maida Vale, recorded at the BBC in 2010 and released in 2012. It’s not on the band’s Wikipedia discography, but it’s up on Spotify. I’ll probably give that a listen next week.

Tags Van Der Graaf Generator

Categories Music, rock and roll

AVDGAD – 14 – Merlin Atmos (2015)

February 20, 2017 //

You’ll note that I skipped one. 2012’s ALT was an interesting enough instrumental album, but nothing really to jump and shout about.

Merlin Atmos, recorded in 2013, is a live album featuring the trio line-up that had recorded ALT, A Grounding In Numbers, and Trisector. A such, it leans on these later albums, It opens with Hammill’s solo epic Flight from the 1980 release A Black Box. It’s a proper full-side piece in multiple parts in the vein (sort of) of A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers (which takes up side 2 of Merlin Atmos‘ vinyl release).

There were two CD releases – a single and a double. The single includes the two epics and closes with a tight version of Hammill’s Gog, previously heard in a poor 1975 live recording as a bonus track on Still Life.

Disc one also features Lifetime and All That Before (Trisector) and Bunsho from A Grounding In Numbers.

It’s quite an interesting affair, a good balance of the old and the more recent trio work. It’s interesting that both this and Vital were recorded by lineups that weren’t the classic quartet. As such, David Jackson’s horns are especially missed on the older material. On the other hand, the recording is clean and the performances are as intense as one would expect.

The second disc (Bonus Atmos) features:

Interference Patterns, Over the Hill (Trisector)
Your Time Starts Now (A Grounding In Numbers)
Scorched Earth (Godbluff)
Meurglys III (World Record)
Man-Erg (Pawn Hearts)
Childlike Faith In Childhood’s End (Still Life)

They’ve been doing this work a long time and the renditions are generally tight. I think the solos, such as the keyboard adventure in the middle of Childlike Faith, seem a little tightly bound to the original versions. At two hours twenty, I don’t feel driven to compare the live tracks to their studio counterparts in the moment, but these versions are certainly satisfying. Hammill lets his vocals soar in a way he hasn’t on the recent studio recordings. I’d say it’s as good an introduction to their work as you’re likely to find.

Tags Van Der Graaf Generator

Categories Music, rock and roll

AVDGAD – 12 – A Grounding in Numbers (2011)

February 6, 2017 //

A stronger effort in many ways than Trisector, but more lyrical weakness. Lines like ‘Mathematics / Just so “wow” it brooks belief’ (from track 2, ‘Mathematics’) are more common than one would like to admit. On the other hand, there a lot of musically strong numbers – track 3, ‘Highly Strung’ is one of those – Hammill, Banton, and Evans seem to be finding their places as a trio in a way that wasn’t evident on Trisector (even though the three had been playing together for decades).

Opener, Your Time Starts Now, is almost theatrical with sweeping organ fills, and big concepts about how the addressee hasn’t been getting on with it, but now must.

vdgg-agin-cd It’s a poppier affair, at least in terms of song length. Five tracks clock in under three minutes; only four break five; and only one breaks six.

Snake Oil certainly speaks to the current dystopian zeitgeist, ‘Brainwashed and bound to believe in the orthodox text, slogans on t-shirts, / the punters can’t wait to be told
what to think of next’, from a slightly different angle to 2005’s Every Bloody Emperor.

Side note – I posted that song on FB last week and my mother shared it out. If even my mother (who loves Leonard Cohen, but otherwise listens to musical theatre, classical music, and a lot of NPR) would give Van Der Graaf a try, what would it take to get that song up on the charts?)

Smoke has a funky keyboard opening that slides in and out of something nearly disco (in a good way), but after slipping into something even weirder, they decided not to take it very far. Despite the line ‘You held your inattention’, two and half minutes is as far as they decided to take it before segueing into 5533, another song ostensibly about something mathematical (‘As the primacy of digits ticks the boxes / So the codes that they unlock begin to run’).

A Grounding In Numbers closes with All Over The Place, which might be as good a title for the album as the one they used. The longest track on the album, it leads with a nice harpsichord melody (that might be a counterpoint to the organ of Your Time Starts Now) but the whole song is still a little piecemeal, like they felt they had to do something proggy and multi-sectional.

Tags mathematics, Van Der Graaf Generator

Categories Music, Rock