The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

Free Richard Thompson download from Noisetrade

by 11 Comments

Following on from ChrisF’s post at new year regarding the RT acoustic sessions (https://theafterword.co.uk/richard-thompson-acoustic-vol-2/) there’s a small selection of RT acoustic tracks available on Noisetrade for a free taster.

– I want to see the bright lights tonight – 1952 Vincent Black Lightning – I misunderstood – Beeswing

http://noisetrade.com/richardthompson/acoustic-classics-volume-1

Revisionist History and Malcolm Gladwell

by 3 Comments

I heard someone give Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell a big up on the Afterword podcast, so I gave it a go and thank you very much to whoever mentioned it.

I bring it up because the 8th episode ‘Hallelujah’ is right up the Afterword alley – talking (briefly) to Alan Winstanley about working with Elvis Costello and making an album they all hated (Elvis, Alan and mega-fan Gladwell); the creation and eventual emergence of Halellujah as a classic covered by all and sundry; the difference between Dylan and Cohen and much more.

The rest of the series is very interesting too. Made me think about my thought patterns, behaviours and choices on more than one occasion… The tryptic on education started making me very angry.

Angus Young can play (surprise surprise) and it isn’t being obscured with effects

by 12 Comments

This would typically be nowhere near my kind of thing, but I was down the Youtube rabbit hole and watched this gear rundown of Angus and Stevie Young’s kit and found the simplicity fascinating. Key takeaway – Angus’ sound is just a vintage Gibson SG with Marshall 100W valve heads where the settings are all pre-defined and unchanging, little or nothing in the way. Malcolm/Stevie’s is just a Gretsch and Marshalls. All the amps have the required settings stuck on them. Then he just plays the primary SG till it goes out of tune, then swaps to the secondary SG while the first is tuned. He isn’t showing you his guitar collection. They only fix something when it breaks, but you would have probably guessed that kind of attitude from the music…

And in another Angus interview he talks about why he uses the SG – because he’s a little guy (his description) and the Les Paul is too heavy. Simples.

Sara Watkins alert

by 1 Comment

There’s been some love round these parts for Sara Watkins in the past. Her new album “Young In All The Wrong Ways” is streaming on Noisetrade at the moment if you fancy checking it out. Some nice stuff there.

http://noisetrade.com/exclusive/sara-watkins?utm_source=Wednesday%20Emailer&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=Sara%20Watkins&utm_campaign=Young%20In%20All%20The%20Wrong%20Ways%20Streaming%20Exclusive

The Nightmare Stacks

by 1 Comment

Author:Charles Stross

The Lovecraft-meets-James-Bond-meets-BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell – http://www.theregister.co.uk/data_centre/bofh/) series continues on another tangent, and this time we’re following the vampires of the secret service into another Case Nightmare scenario. Without the Sysadmins. Up to now I only recall Case Nightmare Green being mentioned, but as was obviously implied, there are others…

It’s heaps of fun, even when it gets really dark, very nasty, and ultimately sad, while still keeping a wacky undertow. That was a pretty neat trick actually. The tension builds rapidly, and escalates exponentially. There even seemed to be some cross pollination from Neal Stephenson’s ‘Seven Eves’ in a sub-plot and narrative driver. There were a couple of spots where the (admittedly very thinly stretched) plausibility was taken over the edge, but still a hell of a lark.

I’m a fan, so highly recommended, but don’t start here – you would need to start back at the beginning with the Atrocity Archives. If that doesn’t float your boat the rest won’t either.

It was almost too abrupt, too abbreviated. I would have liked more of a post-script, and known a bit more about some of the outcomes to the threads that were launched so wildly » Continue Reading.

Born under a (bad road) sign

by 28 Comments

So one of the threads sent me off on a tangent, and I found out that Phil Lynott was born in West Bromwich. At Sandwell Hospital FFS. At least, according to WikiPedia. Maybe that explains the 30 years fixation on Lizzy. What with him (coming from where I spent a large part of my teenage years) and Steve Winwood from Aldridge (just the other side of the M6 from where I was born and grew up and spent my early teens), I was wondering… who else might come from the spitting distance of (north) Birmingham that you might not expect…

So……french

by 14 Comments

So I was checking out the web site for the Le Mans 24 hour race, and up it popped in french. No problem (even though my 40 year old schoolboy french could understand most of it), click the EN button and away we go….scroll down, and my puerile little brain couldn’t help but notice this little howler to the bottom left of the page…. It’s just such a french kind of mistake. I love the french, it might even be deliberate. And I love Le Mans.

View post on imgur.com

http://www.lemans.org/en/24-hours-of-le-mans/

Perverse, obtuse, done on a bet

by 2 Comments

Perverse, obtuse etc…..no, not about me. Really.

I’d been thinking about this all week, The Tragically Hip and Silver Jet – are the lyrics the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard, and was this the result of someone making a bet that you can’t get ‘Gregory Peck’ and half a dozen other oddities into a song? As mentioned in this timeless section :

It’s quiet again, when a car like Big Ben; The radio dopplering, for all you Gregory Peck fans; Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; To take some pressure off the wonderous to fight and

And I still love it.

I’ve been using it as an antidote to the hold-music Telstra inflicts on people stupid enough (i.e. me) to order their services then fight through the phone system to get to someone to correct the myriad mistakes in actually fulfilling an order. I’m amazed how they treat me before I even have to pay them for anything.

The Prince lyrics thread nudged me over the line.

Todd Rundgren on WTF

by 4 Comments

Probably not news to those who subscribe, but an interesting interview with Todd Rundgren on WTF last week. Has his potted version of the XTC production story, production in general (incl. Bat Out of Hell), and even name-checks Mahavishnu Orchestra (@colin-h).

The Dweezil Zappa episode earlier in the month was pretty good too.

http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_691_-_todd_rundgren

RT alert

by 2 Comments

the latest episode of the WTF podcast features not only Saint Richard of Thompson, but also Lemmy. Also coming up in the next week or two apparently, an hour with Keef. Can’t wait.

Ruts DC

by 5 Comments

Has anyone seen the Ruts DC of late ? Worth seeing ? They’re coming to Oz later this year and I’m very tempted….

Best wacky time signature songs

by 73 Comments

So this came up on my phone today and became quite the ear-worm (in a good way). Attached is Odds, “Come To LA”, and it seems to alternate between 3/4 and 5/4 on consecutive bars. That might be a) wrong, and b) technically 8/8, but I don’t think so. Unfortunately the track has been blocked on Youtube (along with the rest of the Cheerleader album unfortunately), hence resorting to Spotify.

The wacky time signature made me wonder – what are the great songs outside the bog standard 4/4 area ? Have we done this ?

Dave Brubeck didn’t do songs, and we can leave Sting out of it (I hope). There’s a few 3/4s I could mention. Cue Colin and The Mahavishnus…

Roli Seaboard keyboard

by Leave a Comment

This seems like an interesting approach. Something that seems blindingly obvious to someone as musically and mechanically uninformed and incompetent as me, at least from the sorts of computer keyboards you’re seeing from tablets and laptops. I’m almost surprised it didn’t already exist – a synth keyboard based on an continuous sequence of spatially and pressurely sensitive keys, bend the notes up, down and around….and some bloke from Dream Theater. Article below… It’s like watching someone playing a Chapman stick, only made of rubber and sideways,

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/25/frankfurt_musikmesse_2015/

Downfall

by 16 Comments

Year: 2004 Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel

So I’m only a decade or so late to this particular party, but bloody hell this is good. I’ve had years of this Downfall meme, and found them all to be pretty amusing to one degree or another, but seeing the whole movie on SBS at last was a complete blast. I haven’t felt that claustrophobic and tense in yonks. Jeez it’s long though. It was amazing that they managed to make so much happen in what (in hindsight) must have been a very limited set of locations. Just adding to sense of claustrophobia and encroaching forces. Bruno Ganz is terrifically unhinged, everyone else is a wildly varying shade of mental, and Alexandra Maria Lara is fabulous. Doing very little but expressing heaps as the witness to the chaos.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Buggered if I know. Can’t think of anything even remotely close. Battleship Potemkin perhaps ?

Counting Crows

by 6 Comments

Venue:

State Theatre, Sydney

Date: 09/04/2015

A really nice relaxed night. Pretty much every song a strong one and familiar to a good proportion of the (largely grey/bald, i.e. my peer) audience. They played for just shy of 2 hours and paced it beautifully. Opened strong, lots of variation, and finished really strong, cantering through the whole catalog and rarely straying from the great stuff (IMHO), and even the new album items were very welcome. Dunno if Palisades Park was quite closer material for the dancers down front with it’s various mood and tempo changes, but I liked it. A great night, great selections of chooons, and the only one they left out for mine – Mr Jones. The second night must be happening even as I type this right now. Hope it goes as well or even better.

The audience:

Mature, gray, bald, office after hours (esp. me)

It made me think..

As a parade of Fenders, Les Pauls, hollow bodies and the like were passed around by some spectacularly un-athletic roadies (as were we up in the gods), I was very forcefully reminded of the comment that anyone playing more than 3 different guitars is showing off » Continue Reading.

Music homework

by 9 Comments

Driving home from soccer training, number 1 son just told me with some enthusiasm that his music homework is to analyse 3 pieces from an artist of the 60s or 70s, colour tone, variation etc. Seems like a nice idea and he’s obviously into it. I have to point out at this juncture that any dialog with a 15 year old is rare, so anything that goes beyond monosyllables and grunts is amazing in the first place, let alone enthusiasm. Car rides tend toward silence usually.

So anyway, he said his first thought was HJH, but it seems like everyone else in the class is going that way. You also have to bear in mind this is in a music department talent night where the boys did a *very* convincing Pat Metheny cover where I wasn’t biting my knuckles, so awareness and choice aren’t an issue. Anyway, I piped up with The Dame (70s, Ziggy era, and he’s a fan), but he was ahead of me….he’d already picked the Kinks, all on his lonesome. Fair bought a tear to the eye it did.

Anyway, his “research” (presumably the first 3 results on Google) reveal that some deranged lunatic reckons “All » Continue Reading.

Cricket and the death of Richie Benaud’s legacy (*** he’s still ok though as far as I know)

by 9 Comments

There’s a fantastic article on the Oz Grauniad from a couple weeks back by Geoff Lemon on how the current channel 9 commentators with Mark Nicholas are killing the legacy of Richie Benaud in the commentary box. The article is fantastic, but the comments thread is astounding. If you like cricket that is. It is the only public comments thread I’ve gone more than two posts through (outside this place and the old places anyway). The comments are just shy of 800, with I’d guess 99.99% agreement on the article. Amazing.

In fact it seems like there’s been a toning down the banter in the last couple of World Cup games on Channel 9, although that might be SkyTV related as there are other commentators piping up besides the usual 9 club. Mark Taylor has been much more to the point, and thankfully I haven’t heard James Brayshaw at all.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/feb/13/channel-nine-destroying-cricket-legacy

Amusing Afterword-friendly cartoon

by 8 Comments

You might not notice the Australian arm of the Grauniad, but it has a rather nice toon called “First Dog On The Moon”. The politics may not be to all tastes, but the latest one on music and Australia’s entry into the Eurovision Song Contest next year is up our collective alley, albeit a bit Aussie-centric on the politician references.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2015/mar/06/eurovision-and-australia-the-true-story