Music Blog

While I’ve been a good boy and not spent vast sums of money at Waltons of Altrincham this weekend (Dealer in n-gauge Fleischmann, Roco and Minitrix), I did go on a CD splurge at HMV. Expect reviews (both here and on Blogcritics) of the new album by the Neil Morse-less Spock’s Beard (good), British glam-metal sensation The Darkness (also good), and the latest album by Blackmore’s Night (which I haven’t listened to yet).

BBC NEWS | England | Kent | Oxfam bans Max Bygraves

A charity shop in Kent is asking for records and CDs to sell – as long as they are not by Max Bygraves or Val Doonican.

The Oxfam shop in Canterbury has a sign outside saying it does not want any more records by the two veteran crooners – because it has so many already.

The manager says it is not meant as an insult, and says the large number of albums by the singers show how successful they have been.

Max Bygraves told the BBC there were so many of his records in charity shops because lots of people who bought them originally had died.

In forty years time, will the same shops be refusing copies of “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Led Zeppelin IV”?

If you love music, and think commercial radio plays far too much formulaic sludge and not nearly enough good stuff, you must read this. It’s a longish post, but well worth the time it takes to read it. (Link from the road to surfdom)

No, not another antiwar rant, but a post about Death Metal.

Death Metal more international than people think. Perhaps it’s Sweden’s most popular export after the Volvo? (It did start in Sweden, didn’t it?). I remember meeting a student from Iran of all places at an Anathema gig in Manchester a year or so ago.

Now I read about the Iraqi Death Metal band A. Crassicauda (the scientific name for the black scorpion).

All their songs are in English. Heavy metal should be either in English or German, says rhythm guitarist Faisal Talal. “Arabic doesn’t fit.” Moudhafar interjects with sudden hauteur, “We don’t want just anybody to listen to our music. It should be, like, an educated person.”

Not sure what death metal might sound like in Arabic. I know metal sounds quite wrong in French, although Goth Metal sounds good in Polish.

Now the war is over, they’ve had to drop their compulsory pro Saddam song from their set:

Follow the leader
Saddam Hussein
He’ll make them fall
Drive them insane

Although the singer is none too happy about this.

“Damn, I’m really mad we can’t sing that song anymore,” says Talal. “It was our best song. The chorus was too much, it was great.”

(Link from BlogCritics)

So he’s not a Mötorhead fan after all. According to this Guardian article, his favourite song is King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man”

Cat’s foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia’s poison door.
21st century schizoid man.

Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians’ funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
21st century schizoid man.

Death seed blind man’s greed
Poets’ starving children bleed
Nothing he’s got he really needs
21st century schizoid man

They don’t write ‘em like that any more…

Parellels with the war on Iraq, or anything else about Tony Blair’s government, is left as an exercise for the reader.

From Common Sense and Wonder, (Link from Sasha Castel)

1. Most Blues begin, “Woke up this morning.”

2. ” I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the Blues, ‘less you stick something nasty in the next line, like ” I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.”

3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes … sort of: “Got a good woman – with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher – and she weigh 500 pound.”

You have to have an authentic blues name, of course. A name like “Nigel” just doesn’t cut it.

19. Make your own Blues name (starter kit):
a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Kiwi,etc.)
c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)
For example, Blind Lime Jefferson, or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not “Kiwi.”)

Let’s see, “Tone deaf Loganberry Clinton?”

From Hot Rails to Hull, the full story behind Blue Öyster Cult’s poor show at the Castle Donnington Monsters of Rock festival in 1981: The soundman George Geranios tells the story.

It was now the Cult’s turn. There was much consternation during the set change. No one seemed to know exactly what the problem with the system was, but we all knew there was a problem. We started the set and there was very little volume available. The sound check settings produced an anemic squeak from the huge mass of boxes flanking the stage.

At some point during the set I looked up to see Malcolm Hill himself crawling around the stage right stack at a great height, ears into boxes. I was told not to try to turn the system up, but the band is inaudible. I try anyway and as I push the main faders up, the system volume decreases even more! Things are upside down, and I would be upside down if I tried that again, so said my minders at the front of house.

At one point during this farce I got on the talkback mike between songs and told the band to simply leave the stage. Maybe they could come back out when things were sorted. If they continued without acknowledging the problem then our Donington appearance would be shot. They do not do this and our Donington appearance is shot. The Band finishes with a flourish and……. there is nothing. No response from the audience. Sixty thousand metal fans stand sullen and silent. It is, as they say, an oil painting out there.

He then talks of a later Donnington, in 1987

I remember reading a telling article in Kerrang! the day before the show. The essence of the piece was an extremely perceptive winge about the Donington show sound. The author had attended many a show there and wondered why, given the virtual mountain of speakers, all the opening acts sounded weak and puny whilst the headliner sounded massive. What if you didn’t give a toss about the headliner? Your favorite(s) sounded lame! Shouldn’t every band sound good? You paid your hard earned pounds to see and hear all the bands. The author had heard this at all the Donington Park shows and was quite fed-up.

He then goes on to describe in details I don’t fully understand, how the sound for everyone other than the headliners, Bon Jovi, was deliberately sabotaged.

Attitudes like this limit audience enjoyment and essentially rob the audience of what is rightfully theirs: a full and effective show. It’s also a pussy move. It implies the headliner does not have the confidence to carry the show without kneecapping the competition.

Does this always happen? No, but it happens often enough to be a real problem for touring professionals. It is an unfortunate part of the politics of the music business. These decisions are almost always band decisions implemented by management with the complicity of the sound company.