Author Archives: Tim Hall

Almost all the lineup for this year’s Cambridge Rock Festival on 17th-20th July has now been announced. Sunday’s bill just about makes me fall off my chair in amazement. With Marillion topping the bill, this is looking like an incredible day.

• Marillion
• Mostly Autumn
• The Reasoning
• Breathing Space

The entire festival runs for four days, and there seems to be a theme for each day (Friday is 70s pub-rock, Saturday is blues-rock with the current incarnation of Bad Company topping the bill). And Sunday is definitely prog day!

It looks like The Astoria is doomed

“The construction of Crossrail means that the Astoria can’t be saved”, the mayor said. He added that a new, plusher concert venue would be included in the new development in Tottenham Court Road. Mr Livingstone said: “It wasn’t at the cutting edge of modern comfort”.

Ken Livingstone really doesn’t get rock and roll, does he?.  The ‘plush new venue’ will be inevitably be as corporate and soulless as the political party he belongs to, with ticket prices to match. Rock venues are supposed to be hot and sweaty with beer-stained walls and floors. The best ones have character and history, with some of the essence of all the bands that played there imprinted in the building.

While The Astoria isn’t my favourite London venue, I’ve been to some great gigs there over the years, most recently Mostly Autumn’s Christmas show last year.  It will be missed.

The Guardian’s Michael Hann invites readers to nominate your favourite flop follow-up albums

So, fellow pop snobs – and don’t lie to me, you’re out there – which are the commercially disastrous follow-ups to smashes that set your pulses racing? And no nominating the Stone Roses’ Second Coming, which was a bigger hit, I am told, than its predecessor. Bonus points for anyone who nominates Quiet Riot’s follow-up to Metal Health. Bonus points, in fact, to anyone who even heard Quiet Riot’s follow-up to Metal Health.

I thought of a few, like Diamond Head’s ‘difficult second album’ “Canterbury”, too off-the-wall and experimental for many fans of their major-label debut, and saw the band dropped and subsequently splitting after it failed to sell. And then there was Marillion’s “Brave”, regarded by many fans as their definitive masterpiece, but which failed to sell in anything like the quantities expected by EMI, and marked the beginning of the end for their major-label career.

But if the theme is attempts to defend albums that mark the point where a previously successful band went down the commercial and critical toilet, Black Sabbath’s 1983 album “Born Again” checks all the requisite boxes.

Three years earlier Black Sabbath had successfully reinvented themselves by replacing the burned-out Ozzy Osborne with Ronnie Dio, and produced two classic albums. But when Dio departed due to a clash of egos (what do you expect from someone who’s stage name is Italian for “God”?), they replaced him with … Ian Gillan.

The tour was rightly dismissed as a bad joke; There was that gigantic fibreglass Stonehenge that provided the inspiration for Spinal Tap. Ian Gillan wore the same stage outfit as he’d worn when fronting his own band a year earlier and looked totally out of place. He butchered Ozzy’s songs to the point of unrecogisability, and didn’t even attempt any of Dio’s stuff. And the new songs, well, at the 1983 Reading Festival I remember a guy next to me sadly shaking his head and muttering “It’s not Sabbath”. The consensus was that special guests Marillion totally blew them off stage.

But… Ignore that awful cover and listen to the album. While it’s no “Sabotage” or “Heaven and Hell”, it still has it’s moments. If it’s ‘not Sabbath’ (and a lot of it isn’t), it’s still a worthwhile member of Ian Gillan’s canon. ‘Trashed’ is quite Purpleesque, and there are echoes of ‘When a Blind Man Cries’ in the title track. And ‘Zero the Hero’ with it’s menacing growling riff is one place where the alchemy finally worked.

Actually, a rather old quote from The Phoenyx that I must have missed the first time round

Are Mostly Autumn prog-rock? (pause) Oh, yeah, they have an album of songs inspired by LOTR. They must be.
- Carl Cravens, as quoted by Karen

Now, as we should all know, it’s only really prog if those 12 minute songs about hobbits are in 7/8 or 9/8 time…

If you’re a Mostly Autumn fan, you get used to semi-regular lineup changes. As Bryan Josh has just announced on the Mostly Autumn website, we’ll have to say farewell (for the time being at least) to Angie Gordon, Chris Johnson and Andy Jennings.

As Angie Gordon states:

It was my intention to return to touring after the birth of my daughter, Scarlett but I could never have anticipated how my feelings would change. Although there are several reasons, ultimately, performing locally over the last few weeks has made me realise that being away from Scarlett to tour further afield is out of the question at this time.

Meanwhile Chris Johnson, who has touring commitments with Fish, has this to say:

To remain so creatively focused on Mostly Autumn would have been spreading myself too thinly, and MA isn’t the kind of band where you can give less than 100%. This is going to be a key album for MA and they’re playing some of the biggest shows of their career in the next 12 months, I’d feel like I’d be letting down myself, the band and, most of all, the fans if I was going into this with my attention elsewhere.

And we see the return of some familiar names:

We are extremely pleased to announce the welcome return of…

Liam Davison on guitars.

Iain Jennings on keyboards (Barring the occasional gig due to former commitments).

Anne Marie Helder on keyboards, guitars, vocals and flute.

We would also like to welcome on board a fantastic new drummer by the name of Henry Bourn who is playing on the album as we speak.

I’ll miss Angie Gordon in particular. While her flute playing has been seriously underused on the last couple of albums, she’s played a very important part in the band’s live show, both on flute and on keys. Indeed, she was virtually holding the whole show together at one point in 2006. But when it comes to trying to combine being a touring musician with being the mother of a young baby, I think she’s made the right decision.

Chris Johnson’s departure really doesn’t suprise me in the least. With his touring commitments with Fish coinciding with the recording of Mostly Autumn’s new album, and a planned European Fish tour that clashes with MA’s own UK tour, it was going to be inevitable that he wouldn’t be able to continue as a member of both bands. And while he’s a good songwriter, I’m not sure of his style quite fits the Mostlies’ established sound. He’ll still be missed.

And I’m in two minds about Iain Jennings’ return. Not that he isn’t a superb keyboard player (and all-round nice guy), but it leaves me wondering where that leaves his own band Breathing Space, who have been getting better and better over the past year.

The war against lazy music journalism continues. This time, the Guardian music blog has given space to another stereotypical NME hack, who cheerfully admits he don’t bother to actually listen to records but thinks it’s acceptable to write dismissive reviews based almost entirely on prejudices.

He reminds me of Gerald Ratner. His famously-reported quote about his cheap jewellery being ‘crap’ that’s worth less than a prawn sandwich brought about the downfall of his chain of shops selling cheap tat. Let’s hope this article does the same for the NME and their ilk.

Oh, and anyone still using the term ‘rockist’ in 2007 is a dinosaur who somehow thinks it’s still 1979, and doesn’t realise the punk wars are over and nobody cares about them any more. He’s like those WW2 Japanese soldiers found in jungles of south-east Asia in the 1970s.

Last resort when I haven’t got anything worthwhile to blog about – just list the last ten CDs I’ve listened to, and say a few words about each one.

• Opeth – Ghost Reveries: Swedish death-metal that goes “Grrrrrhhhh!”. It’s actually surprisingly melodic if you listen to it closely; it’s just the melodies aren’t Mikael Ã…kerfeldt’s growling vocals, but in the intricate twin guitar harmonies.
• Mermaid Kiss – Etarlis: A concept album of atmospheric keyboard-led female-fronted prog, based on a fantasy setting that sounds quite gameable. What’s not to like? Hopefully I’m going to get to see this lot live some time in the next few months
• Porcupine Tree – In Absentia: I can never quite make up my mind which PT album is my favourite. Sometimes it’s last year’s “Fear of a Blank Planet”, sometimes it’s “Lightbulb Sun”. And sometimes it’s this one, which marks the point where they started adding a metal influence to their sound. It was The Guardian Readers Recommend Songs about Mental Illness that triggered me to dig out this one. Not that I expect Dorian will pick “Blackest Eyes”, even when it got ‘donded’.
• Mostly Autumn – Storms Over Still Water: Every playlist of mine must include an MA album, it’s a rule. This one was the first of their albums I pre-ordered, and I think it’s one of the most underrated albums of the career. No album containing the magnificent ‘Carpe Diem’ can ever be written off as a dud.
• Fish – 13th Star : Yes, I had mixed feelings about this one when it first came out, but it’s absolutely brilliant; the big Scotsman at his angst-ridden croaky best.
• Gentle Giant – Octopus: I dug this one out following discussion of GG on the Mostly Autumn forum. This is real off-the-wall 70s prog, an eclectic mix of rock, folk and jazz, taking off in several random directions often in the same song. Nothing else sounds quite like them, although you can hear their influence in early Spock’s Beard a generation later.
• Muse – Black Holes and Revelations: From 70s prog to 00s prog, from the band that finally made prog-rock cool again. And I’ve finally worked out what that killer riff that ends ‘Knights of Cydonia’ reminds me of. It’s not Thin Lizzy’s ‘Emerald’. It’s MSG’s ‘Into the Arena’!
• After Forever: Self-titled album by the latest band from the European ‘Lady Metal’ genre, big epic operatic stuff.
• Ordinary Psycho – The New Gothik LP As far as I know, this band only recorded the one album in 2000. Vocalist David Gulvin is a bit on an acquire taste, but this viola-driven prog/indie/goth crossover was well worth revisiting. Whatever happened to them?
• The Mars Volta – Amputecture: They’ve been described as ‘completely bonkers’, and I wouldn’t disagree with that. This is their third and (in my opinion) weakest album, which seems to lack some of the manic energy and inventiveness that characterised the first two. I’m seeing them live in a couple of weeks, and must pick up their (reportedly much better) fourth before then.

So there you have it. All kinds of music, metal, prog and prog-metal.