Music Blog

After too long a break, J Michael Neal is blogging again. Here’s what he has to say about Mark Knopfler’s latest album.

Knopfler has become far and away my favorite lyricist. Understand that my default setting is to pay no attention to a song’s lyrics whatsoever. Just because you hear me singing along doesn’t mean that I have the slightest idea what is being said. This has its upsides and downsides. It means that Dream Theater and Yes have irritated me a lot less than they might have, letting me just enjoy the music. It also means that it took me a long time to really appreciate Knopfler.

I actually think that the majority of ordinary music fans are more interested in the music than the lyrics. Unfortunately it’s the other way round for the majority of music critics, who, being writers, care more about the words. Hence we see the out of hand dismissal of bands like, well, Yes and Dream Theater, and excessive praise heaped upon the likes of Morrissey and Pulp, who’s work is sometimes so much about lyrics that they forgot to put any actual music in there. Strip away the lyrics from just about any of the indie bands praised by the NME, and you’re left with very formulaic four-chord plod where not only individual songs, but entire bands are completely indistinguisable.

As for Mark Knopfler, I’ve lost touch which what he’s been up to since the days of Dire Straits. I saw them live when they were at their commercial peak, when the Brothers in Arms album was CD all the gadget-obsessed yuppies always used to show off their expensive new stereos. Dire Straits unfortunately got tagged as Corporate AOR for the three-CDs-a-year crowd, filed alongside Phil Collins or Foreigner. They were really better than that. They’re overdue for critical reappraisal, and deserve to be remembered for works like “Telegraph Road” rather than the awful cheese of “Walk of Life”.

Last weekend I’ve broken the four month drought of live music by seeing a kick-ass performance by Hayseed Dixie, for which I still haven’t written a review.

Next up is the always wonderful Mostly Autumn at Rhyl, for which I’ve now got my accomodation sorted. I’ve got a front row seat, so this should be a good one.

Now I’ve got to decide whether I’ve got the stamina for the DEMU Showcase, Queensrÿche and Journey on three consecutive days in June! So far I’ve got a ticket for Journey, but not Queensrÿche. There’s also Zappa plays Zappa two days earlier, for which there also still seem to be tickets available. That would make three gigs and one model railway exhibition in five days. Can I cope with this without needing a week off work to recover?

Update: I’ve managed to get a seat in row D for Zappa plays Zappa, and on the basis that Owen and Mike Foley are probably going to Sunday’s Queensrÿche show, I’ve just ordered a ticket for that as well.

Is this why fundies call heavy metal The Devil’s Music?

On the surface there might appear to be no link between Black Sabbath, Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, West Side Story and the theme tune to the Simpsons.

But all of them rely heavily on tritones, a musical interval that spans three whole tones, like the diminished fifth or augmented fourth. This interval, the gap between two notes played in succession or simultaneously, was branded Diabolus in Musica or the Devil’s Interval by medieval musicians.

A rich mythology has grown up around it. Many believe that the Church wanted to eradicate the sounds from its music because it invoked sexual feelings, or that it was genuinely the work of the Devil.

It is a mythology much beloved of long-haired guitar wizards.

When will the fundamentalist loons start demanding that the theme tune of The Simpsons be banned?

According to an interview I’ve read (can’t remember where), Tony Iommi came up with the riff of “Black Sabbath” while the band were rehearsing next door to a cinema showing horror films. Someone suggested that if people were paying to see scary films, they’d pay to hear scary music. So he picked up his guitar and played some tritones.

Meanwhile, Finland’s Eurovision Entry appears to be upsetting some Greek fundies who really need to get a life.

A group of Greek protesters known as the Hellenes have called on the Finnish government to intervene: “We ask the Finnish Commission of the Eurovision Song Contest to cancel the procedure and choose another song. This evil and satanic Finnish band is not welcome in Greece.”

Not sure whether their song “Hard Rock Hallelujah” contains any of the dreaded tritones.

Unlike the flurry of gigs at the tail end of last year, I’ve gone three months without any live music, which is three months too long. But now I do now have some gigs to look forward to. So far I’ve got tickets for Hayseed Dixie (recommended by Ginger) in Manchester on 23rd April, Mostly Autumn in Rhyl on 5th May, and Journey (how long since they last played the UK?) at Manchester Apollo on 5th June.

Currently listening to Journey’s new album “Generations“. Some great material, and a lot rocker than other more recent releases, but why does new vocalist Steve Auguri only sing half the songs?

As for Hayseed Dixie, the only music of theirs I’ve heard is their fantastic cover of Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls”, which appeared on a recent cover disk of Classic Rock magazine, and completely blew away everything else on that CD. Anyone recommend which is their best album?

You think your own country has a terrible music scene, dominated by cheesy pap? It could be worse. You could live in North Korea

A graduate of the North’s prestigious Pyongyang University of Music and Dance, Kim was allowed to further his studies at the Tchaikovsky Music Academy in Moscow in 1995 at government expense.

A year later, he came into contact with jazz for the first time.

“One day, one music class was cancelled, so I went to a cafe near my school to drink a cup of coffee, and music (coming) from the speakers there _ a type that I had never heard before _ thrilled me”, Kim said.

So, which jazz great did he hear? Bird? Coltrane? Monk? Rollins?

“I asked the cafe owner what kind of music that was, and he replied it was `A Comme Amour’ by pop, classical and jazz pianist Richard Clayderman. It was too good, and that began to change my life”.

Richard Clayderman? “Too good, and that began to change my life”?? A chilling insight into the cultural desert that is North Korea.

What do you get when you cross Rammstein, The Darkness, and the props departments of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings? Something like Finlands’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. Those Vikings are crazy, I tell you….

I’d love to see Britain enter a proper rock song rather than the processed eurocheese we usually come up with. Mötorhead would be the ideal entry, especially if they do something completely uncompromising, along the lines of “Killed By Death”.

On the other hand, perhaps The Darkness would be the ideal entry; they’d actually be crazy enough to do it.

First Dagworth, next the world! That’s what The Guardian’s Dave Simpson seems to think.

“Most youth subcultures encourage people to drop out of school and do illegal things,” she says. “Most goths are well educated, however. They hardly ever drop out and are often the best pupils. The subculture encourages interest in classical education, especially the arts. I’d say goths are more likely to make careers in web design, computer programming … even journalism.”

Still doesn’t explain why I know more goths through the world of model railways than through RPGs.