I guess many of us are either working from home or self isolating. I work in an essential industry but work from home alternate days. Its a novelty and gives me chance to play discs that haven’t been aired for a while and catch up on new. Yesterday my Jukebox was:
Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbotts – Manchester calling (delivered that morning – first listen fab)
Mike Oldfield – Ommadawn – long time since I played, really enjoyed hearing again.
Fela Kuit – Everything scatter
Elbow – The take off and landing of everything – a greatly underrated Elbow album
Hurray for the Riffraff – Small Town Hero
David Bowie – Is it any wonder ep
Danny and the Champions of the World – Brilliant Light
Goat – Requiem
In our self-isolation I have played Outside It’s America, Six Days On The Road and The Subs Bench discs from the Jess Roden Hidden Masters set.
There was Moon Child Vulcan from the Chris Wood Evening Blue Set.
Bonnie Raitt’s eponymous first and Give It Up.
Streetwalkers Live
The 5th disc of Associated Recordings – from Free’s Songs Of Yesterday set – that includes Peace, Sharks, KKTR and Koss/John Martyn.
The bonus disc from Paul Kossoff’s Back Street Crawler de luxe – including the 38 minute Time Away jam.
John Martyn – One World – album and bonus album from the De Luxe set.
Traffic – Mr Fantasy with both UK and US editions of the album.
Plus on multiple plays Brandy Clark’s superb new album Your Life Is A Record and The Mastersons’ new album No Time For Love Songs.
Today, seeing I don’t work Fridays and because, until the fan splatters, we are respecting leave and time off: for when we won’t, it has been a Royksopp sampler I acquired of the web, Up the Downstair by Porcupine Tree and War by U2. Jings that Porcupine Tree is good, ‘they’ seeming to be nearly only Steven Wilson at that stage. It is the remix I have, with redone drum parts. And that U2, whatever happened to them, they could have been quite something.
Penguin Café Orchestra – Signs of Life, Maddy Prior & June Tabor – Silly Sisters, Robert Crumb & the Cheap Suit Serenaders – Singing in the Bathtub, Otis Redding – Sings Soul Ballads and Lightnin’ Hopkins – Sittin’ Down Thinkin’ were played earlier.
Skip James – Skip James Today!, Man – Slow Motion, Tom Waits – Small Change, New Model Army – Small Town England and Nightmares On Wax – Smokers Delight are lined up for later.
Love the Pengs….
FOR THE LAST WEEK…..Time Fades Away-Neil Young, Manchester-Heaton and Abbott,Live At The Isle Of Wight-Jethro Tull ,Jazz Samba-Stan Getz, That epic new Dylan single, Bridge Over Troubled Waters-Paul Desmond, Behind Closed Doors, Where Country Meets Soul (various), Under The Covers Volume 2-Matthew Sweet and that fabulous bird from The Bangles, Bruised Orange-John Prine, The Last Temptation Of Chris-Chris Difford, Esja-Hania Rani, Timeless-Mark Murphy, Basher-The Best of Nick Lowe, Johnny Pearson-Johnny Pearson, Kes Soundtrack, Ethiopiques-Vol One…..
Love that Ethiopiques series, you have given me an idea for later
A big thumbs-up for Harold McNair’s superb soundtrack to “Kes”.
I might be wrong but isn’t the soundtrack to Kes by John Cameron? But whoever did it, it is superb.
Apart from the title track and Carpet Crawlers, I had never heard the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway until this week. Having disliked side 2 of Selling England by the Pound, I decided they were a busted flush and, deciding to teach the band a lesson, resolved to not listen or like.
Fast forward this week and it’s quite good, isn’t it?
It’s fantastic, isn’t it? There’s a strange, austere tone to it all – lyrically and musically – that sets it apart from all their other work. Harsh and urban replaces the bucolic. Eno had some small part to play in proceedings (played down by Banks in interview, natch). It’s not the album of theirs I naturally reach for, but I’m really glad it’s there.
Should have been a single album, of course, and, as is a general principle for double albums, the first two sides are best:
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
Fly On A Windshield
Broadway Melody Of 1974
Cuckoo Cocoon
In The Cage
Counting Out Time
Carpet Crawlers
Anyway
Here Comes The Supernatural Anaesthetist
The Light Dies a Down On Broadway
Riding The Scree
I don’t think it’s an album that easily yields to cuts and edits. But that’s a typical fan’s response.
That said there are 23 songs on this album, many under four minutes. This is not an ordinary Genesis album. It rambles, yes, with dense, dystopian themes, and lyrics that seem deliberately obtuse. Maybe it was Gabriel’s heavily disguised suicide note to the band.
But however conceited the concept – and this album, in its austere pretension, reminds me a lot of some of Townsend’s more ambitious conceptual efforts – the results are spectacular. You have to sit there for the full one and a half hours to get the complete statement. For me, it’s the sound of a band utterly dedicated to a central artistic cause, unafraid of failure or shame. I love and marvel at its singular ambition – the dominant sound, production and lyrical themes are like nothing they did before, or since.
I’m really glad it exists. It is real. It is Rael.
I think it lost a bit of momentum in the second disc, but it recovers at the end.
I found I can’t properly concentrate on the is working from home thing with a soundtrack going, so am mostly in silence.
Hasn’t been much new recently, but have been greatly enjoying back-catalogue run throughs from
* Rod Stewart – The Mercury Years, plus the first 3 Atlantic albums (never quite as interesting or vital after 1978)
* Dr Feelgood – every home should be issued with a copy of Stupidity as part of some sort of government good-will gesture
* Metallica – although … And Justice For All is no better than it was 32(!) years ago
* REM – the IRS version and the Warners version are 2 different beasts. You can almost hear it in the first 5 seconds of Green.
@rigid-digit
Good point re: REM . Not one I’d considered before. Their sound became bigger somehow. I like Green. It’s a very good album. World Leader Pretend could very well be their best song.