I’m woefully unresearched on this but I’m guessing that the generally ok Popworld on Channel 4 eventually died a death because of it’s heavily sarcastic main presenters who ended up scaring off future bands who might actually want to appear and the resultant drying up of content leading to McFly performing live almost every week.

This clip seems to detail some of the problems with the show and modern Indie (or Indie in general) including the novel in the lead singer’s pocket that was probably put there by a costume designer to make him look intellectual and the attempts by the other band member to “keep it real” being knocked down against protestations of adult content and the design of his hair (to mask a hangover or worse, I assume).

There is defiantly a lack of trust between producers and content that sets an uneasy tone. You could argue that it’s post-modernist humour its most self destructive. Does anybody really know if they’re joking anymore?

The day the 00’s British Indie music scene died? Well no, but this moment still bothers me to this very day. Without a doubt the Indie music scene is a bit wanky and, regardless of its attempts to adhere to a casual bohemian uniform, is about as inclusive as, erm, something that isn’t very inclusive.

....and put it right up on screen!!!

Ever have one of those days when a country music parade featuring sexy female office workers and camp cowboys follows you down the street singing and dancing? That's right, we all do.

This cheered me up no end when I saw it.... plus I swear one of these guys is Jeff Bridges... but then again, why wouldn't "The Dude" be there?.

The great disparity between origin and resultant influence. I like this clip because of how honest both parties are. You will always get artists who interpret their influences and never quite hit the mark, but I suppose that is the whole point.

The blood that runs between feeling and desire is very thick, so who knows whether the chicken or the egg came first, as long as you feel whatever you do in your bones. Creation is in heart and every beat sings its own song.

Being a foundling of the cd megastore generation I'm not used to the ever dwindling cult of the indie record store., so the horror stories about elitist serving-counter gremlins have only appeared in the darker recesses of my dreams.

I'm currently visiting my mother in glamorous Birkenhead and this week I hot tailed it over the water to the big city to find some reasonably priced cds. After trips to the usual chain outlets I nipped up Bold Street to a little "we buy/we sell" vinyl store and started thumbing through the dog-eared copies of Nelly Furtado and Dido offerings for a hidden gem.

During my afternoon perusal the owner and manager of the shop began to raise his voice to a shaggy looking individual and said to him, no less, that he should "shut up and just f*ck off". Alas this seemingly mono-syllabic and rather hippy-attired individual was being fired from his only source of income.

To be fair the manager pointed out, quite clearly, that this young man had not been turning up on time and that he was pretty un-useable in a business sense, but I couldn't help but feel rather uncomfortable where I stood (gratefully towards the back in the "V" section looking for Velvet Underground stuff).

I hot tailed it out of their before the disgruntled Syd Barrett-o-like returned with an AK-47 to rid himself of all his woes, but had noted it as a shopping first. I shall return though and with any luck find a pristine original copy of Astral Weeks with a Dublin post mark on it.... who knows.

The record industry is, indeed, a fickle business.

The experience of listening to the new album by The Flaming Lips has been described as being similar to that of watching the stargate sequence from 2001 A Space Odyssey. However, as much as I agree, I personally would equate it more to the first Mission Impossible film in that on your first visit to it you are stunned at how labyrinthian and complex it is, but after a few goes you are satisfied with it's simplicity and artful entertainment value....

....the former example is a little brainier though, lol.

Embryonic sees yet another gentle stylistic shift for The Flaming Lips, who have never been frightened of a little experimentation. There's not a massive change in their approach, but rather than sounding slightly bubble-gum and twee the sonic mucking about actually feels stronger, more mature and in places nightmarishly dark. It's nice to hear that after nearly twenty-five years of releasing albums a band can still produce their most challenging work.

The album pulls together all their previous resources but somehow manages to create something that you feel you've never heard before. Frontman Wayne Coyne has said he believes his musical instrument of choice is the recording studio and Embryonic is a perfect example of what he means. You will be reminded of Miles Davis as much as you will be reminded of a little alternative band from Oklahoma who once ripped-off Cat Stevens.

If you don't find Embryonic enjoyable then you will at least find it interesting.

I love it.

PS
The album cover scares the crap out of me, eek!!!

Does anybody else find that having iTunes open on their computer whilst trying to carry out other tasks like surfing the web and editing documents really slows things down. I don’t know whether it’s because iTunes simply uses up to much space when it’s active or I am multi-tasking a little too much, but my laptop really grinds to a halt when I’m listing to music or podcasts. I’ve switched it off now and things are going quite smoothly.

Does anybody else have similar issues with this?

It’s a hungry memory monster!!

James
(Sheffield)

I find the idea of an album as a piece of narrative musical storytelling one of the reasons why I was first drawn into the guitar drenched beaches of rock appreciation. I don’t mean “storytelling” in a rock opera or concept album sense, but merely as a twelve-track emotional experience. Recently I tried to put my iPod on shuffle to help me get to sleep but without the usual time to make a connection with any of the songs like I would during the flow of an album I was not as relaxed as I had hoped. It was almost disconcerting. I like to feel I am entering the world of an album and its either simple or complicated dramatic structure. This is the problem I have with “bonus tracks” on the end of CDs nowadays, I like listing to b-sides and live tracks but not tacked onto the flow of an album when, sometimes, I have genuinely been moved by the music then to be interrupted by the sound of a screaming audience at Wembley or elsewhere.

Having been buying up music in only the CD and MP3 format since the inception date of my interest in rock music I have been rather intrigued by the now largely redundant vinyl “side” structure and it’s continuation in modern releases, Contemporary artists still sometimes make reference to two key musical “acts” in the linear notes of their albums even though the songs are played without the required “turn over”. Coldplay had a go with X&Y, as did the Arctic Monkeys with Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not and Green Day recently had 21st Century Breakdown divided into “Acts”, basically vinyl record sides.

On the odd occasion that I create a “mix-tape” or playlist for somebody I will invariably use this methodology and divide the songs in half and address each side as a separate entity, maybe even having an “intermission” instrumental track to bridge the two sides. This is especially interesting when you are combining “Various Artists” and songs with awkward intro’s and outro’s. Quite often with homemade b-side collections I find out why the songs never made it to the album in the first place, it is hard to know where to place them in a running order, but it makes me appreciate what bands have to go tthrough when it comes to finalising a finished product. Below is my attempted Spotify Playlist of Radiohead “B-Side Greatest Hits” which had me sat hunched over my laptop literally until two in the morning trying to figure out the tracklisting.

Time not well spent.

I’m guessing that bands use the old vinyl style of organising songs an ideal way of making sense of all the material they have to make work when put side by side. Sometimes the reaction you get from a song can be completely different depending on its place in an album’s running order, an low-key track may work as a nice ballad when place somewhere at the start but if moved to the end it can become an electrifying and poignant conclusion.

Do you think the art of tracklisting an album will disappear with all the new technology that is available to us, or do you think good clichés work for a reason?

James
(Sheffield)

I'm sure this topic may have been covered before, but here goes...

I am trying to work out where I would go on a “rock pilgrimage” should any holiday plans find me in the correct vicinity.

I used to indulge in this back when I was more of a film geek and once dragged my family up a rather steep quarter of Florence on a burning hot summers day just to visit the church featured in Brian De Palma’s rather overwrought Hitchcockian thriller Obsession. I also went all the way to Liverpool Street Station in London (whilst visiting the fine metropolis on business) for the sole purpose of just making sure it looked like I remembered it from the first Mission Impossible film, when Tom Cruise goes to use a payphone (actually just a bank of cash machines).

Now that I have been seduced by rock and all it’s glorious facets I wouldn’t mind making a few sneaky trips to some slightly less obvious places.

My rock pilgrimage’s might include:

- 96 and 98 St Mark’s Place featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti.

- The recording studio’s at 154 E. 2nd Street New York where The Strokes ditched their trust funds and recorded Is This It.

- Nellcote in France where The Rolling Stones partially made Exile On Main Street. I think that area is a bit fancy though so I’ll probably never be there on holiday.

- Bron-Yr-Aur in Wales where Page and Plant retreated to write much of Led Zeppelin III.

- Hull University where The Who made live recordings with the intention of releasing them worldwide, however apparently something didn’t sound right with the bass track so they had to use the recordings from the night before in Leeds. I think “Live At Hull” is catchier, personally.

- The site of the Mothers club in Birmingham where Pink Floyd recorded the first half of Ummagumma and many up-and-coming artists of the day passed through on their way to the top.

- The site of the Russell Club in Manchester where Tony Wilson decided to open a punk night, the rest is history.

Any more for any more?

James
(Sheffield)

Just as a little change from the usual indie durge I happen to indulge in, I have recently looked up a few “classic” albums by artists I would not usually listen to just to get a little more grounding in this rich musical cotton field we are all toiling away in.

What slightly disturbed me was how familiar some of them were and how much credit I can now give my parents for having something other than just “Greatest Hits” collections weighing down the shelves back home. The records I looked into weren’t exactly hidden jems, but they meant a lot to those who played them.

At the mention of some of the artists I would usually (and rather unfairly) cast a wry smile at but, having now dug them out on Spotify or elsewhere, I have discovered that these LPs have soundtracked by youth without me realising it. One of them I don’t think is even available anymore.

They are:

“Tapestry” by Carol King
“Watermark” by Enya
“Oasis” by Mary Hopkin, Peter Skellern, Julian Lloyd Webber etc (as Oasis)

Having listened to samples of these records I can admit that I know each and every track like the back of my hand, even though I never once put the record on myself. I find that really odd that something can penetrate you so deeply without you even realising it. The above three albums are classic examples of the “Sunday lunch” music that routinely got stuck on in the dining room at home over warm lamb and countless bottles of red wine.

Listening to them again is rather poignant now that my family has “split up” over the years and the memories they bring back are a little hard to take, but I do find it interesting this idea of almost subliminal cultural ingestion.

What albums have surprised you over the years by being more familiar than you realised?

James
(Sheffield)

This video caught my attention the other day when I was looking for articles written by Lester Bangs. I am curious to find out more about his influence on rock journalism but, apart from finding his old reviews at the Rolling Stone website, I have pretty much only been able to find articles written about him rather than by him.

In this recorded interview he is throwing out a theory (or just having a good old moan) that some rock artists such as Brian Ferry and David Bowie are not performing or producing work for the music, rather as an “advertisement for their own ego”. I find this point of view quite interesting and, to me, this theory would most likely apply to an artist whose body of work (I so wanted to say “oeuvre” then, but I stopped myself) I am unable to feel enthusiastic about or understand the many plaudits they have aquired over the years..

I started brainstorming for artists who might come under this catagory and tried to work out why I had included them. Some reasons were their willingness to shift musical genres at will to satisfy the current rock/pop trend or because they just seem to be churning out the same thing over and over again without having anything of weight to express.

Here is my rough list:

David Bowie
Brian Ferry
Elvis Costello
Bjork
Sting
Johnny Borrell
Morrissey
PJ Harvey
Brandon Flowers

Some of these artists I really do respect greatly and it is probably for this reason that they have dropped into my list. Many of them you can imagine landing on their feet and carrying on comfortably if they were unable to continue with their music careers tomorrow. The likes of Bowie, Ferry, Costello, Sting, Borrell and Harvey you can see popping down to the temping agency in the high street and having a six month contract start the next day if it all went “Pete Tong”. Artists like Bjork and Morrissey have found it just a little too easy to whiz around using collaborators and producers to create their “wild new sound” for them and seem to be singing the same songs over and over again just with a different backing track.

Brandon Flowers on the other hand appears to be carving a career for himself and his band out of conducting himself in the fashion of Joaquin Phoenix in the notorious David Letterman Show interview. He comes across as being “out to lunch” both spiritually and musically.

Who would you count as an “intellectual who just happened to get involved in music” and who would you define as being “all about rock & roll”, a person who would probably just flop around on the floor and expire if they did not have a music career?

James
(Sheffield)

I hope this subject does not result in me getting too much of a kicking as my intentions are fairly innocent. Well,here goes:

In my relatively fresh history of enjoying Led Zeppelin I have found it dificult to aquire a fondness for their sixth album, Physical Graffiti. At first I had attributed this dislike to the rather unpleasantly nasal and scuzzy tone to a lot of the guitar parts and the prominent use of slightly dated 70s keyboard sounds throughout. I just could not agree with most reviews that claim it to be their career summit. Something just did not feel right.

Whilst doing a bit of research using, gulp, Wikipedia (that bastion of hard facts) I found out what is probably common knowledge: that a lot of the songs on the album were “studio outtakes” (a phrase which often inspires dread in me) from III, IV and Houses Of The Holy. I then created a Phisical Graffiti playlist on my computer ommiting the songs recorded prior to the “official” 1974 album sessions. I was left with:

Custard Pie
In My Time Of Dying
Trampled Under Foot
Kashmir
In The Light
Ten Years Gone
The Wanton Song
Sick Again

I find this edited version has a faster pace, a hightened intensity and has a significant musical consistantcy that the standard Physical Graffiti lacks. The things that bothered me about the album before just do not stand out so much anymore…. basically the songs sound like they belong together and the “filler” has been trimmed. I understand that just because an album is shorter it does not always mean it will feel shorter, however the original extra seven tracks just seem to weigh the whole thing down to the point that sometimes, when I played it, the album felt like it was wheezing on the floor.

Most of the songs cut are absolute gems on their own and I do miss “Bron-Yr-Aur” and “Down By The Seaside”, but in the context of the album they just did not seem to work for me. Plus, let’s face it, on Disc One (or Side Two for all you vinyl copy owners out there) you want to get to Kashmir as quickly as possible.

Are there any albums you find tricky to enjoy that would benefit from a little judicial cut here and there or a complete re-arrangement of the tracklisting? I often feel guilty when I tamper with the intended flow of an album (no matter how much I disagree with it), but in this instance it just feels right.

Let It Be… Naked? Physical Graffiti… Rubbed Out!!!

James
(Sheffield)