There's been quite a bit of chatter across the site the last few days about compilation CDs, catching up with artists you'd never quite got found to listening to etc. As I was browsing iTunes this morning I came across, again, a series of 5-track downloadable EPs from the redoubtable Rhino label. I've bought a few in my time and was tempted by a few classic Dave Edmunds tracks when I thought "This might just fit the bill for those looking to have a quick skim through an artist's catalogue."

They are the Rhino Hi-Five series and are available on most of the download sites - here a link to the ones at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_5?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/rhino-hi-five-Downloads/s/qid=1265627436/ref=sr_shvl_1-all?ie=UTF8&rs=77197031&keywords=rhino%20hi-five&rh=n%3A77197031%2Cn%3A!77925031%2Ck%3Arhino%20hi-five%2Cp_n_format_browse-bin%3A78186031

It reckons that this gives you about 350+ results (1800+ tracks to choose from).

The samplers retail between about £2.29 and £2.99 and each have 5 (if not essential then at least pretty darned good) tracks drawn from the artist's back catalogue. There are genre themed ones too.

All sounds too good to be true but the choice of tracks seems really good on the whole - almost all proper album versions not ropey live cuts or studio floor sweepings. And the range of artists is pretty darned impressive and eclectic too... A-ha, Coolio, Barbara Lewis, Big Joe Turner, Ratt, The Dream Academy, Mose Allison, Aretha, Dionne, Black Oak Arkansas, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Yes, The Meters, The Ramones, Seals & Crofts, The Electric Prunes, Grover Washington Jr, Ice T, Ella, Love, Dokken, Atlantic Starr, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, Andrew Gold...

Well worth a browse and a search on "Rhino Hi-Five" at your local MP3 emporium should give you more than enough browsing food for thought.

...one half of the Alan Parsons Project passed away today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8392805.stm

Despite the shooting fish in a barrell tendencies of today's other posting I must confess to liking a goodly proportion of the APP's output. Slightly over wrought at times, a little bit smug and too clever by half at others but always done with class and aplomb. Some of the lead vocals were brilliant, ht eorgchestratinos were as luch and symphonic as a very symphonic thing and players like bassist Davey Paton and guitarist Iain Bairnson remain sadly under-rated in my opinion. Woefully untrendy but it still has a little place in my heart and it's sad to hear of Eric Woolfson's sad demise.

And above all, I will always fondly remember the Alan Parsons Project as a deadly laser gun on the moon.

All this reminiscing around the career of the mighty ELO got me musing about something. Is Jeff Lynne basically the single luckiest/most fulfilled bloke in the entire history of rock music?

Let's look at the evidence... Here's Jeff, a member of an obscure Brummy beat combo who's grown up being heavily influenced by a range of artists, each of which have blended to form a part of his musical DNA. There's 50s rock n rollers like Roy Orbison, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, there's the Beatles, there's Bob Dylan, there's the Byrds etc.

Anyway, he gets asked to join another already successful and respected popular beat combo who have already had numerous hits just as the creative force behind the band is going through a change of musical direction (which kinda matches with some of his leanings). He immediately becomes a joint creative force and forms a new band with the beat combo leader who wants to push the boundaries of what pop is currently doing. After one album the more well known creative force leaves, leaving Jeff Lynne to take the band in his direction and global super-stardom.

In the early 80s, Lynne gets bored of ELO and disbands the group going on to become a hotly sought after record producer. As such he works with a number of his idols from his formative years (e.g. George Harrison, Del Shannon, Roy Orbison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr) and works with several other respected artists, creating universally acclaimed albums (e.g. Tom Petty) plus a few less acclaimed. He gets asked to work with his greatest influence to create two new tracks from some unused studio demos which are then released as the icing on the cake of that band's retrospective set.

Meanwhile, he also forms a band with several of the aforementioned personal seminal influences releasing two more hit records.

After a relatively quiet decade he then once again becomes a sought after producer for up-coming indie types like Regina Spektor... The story continues...

As a personal history of living the dream... that's not half bad. Yup, probably the single luckiest bloke in rock music (bad hair and beard or not!).

Does this development in the world of rock finally signify that pop has finally eaten itself and that rock music can no longer claim any connection to its "rebel without a clue" origins?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7740078.stm

There is now to be a "British Music Experience" interactive museum exhibit which will open at the O2 in London in March. It is intended, of course, to be a major new tourist attraction for the city.

Pop and rock music of many (practically all?) sorts was originally designed with an ethos which firmly held up one (or two) digit(s) to the establishment, to your parents and to the status quo. Anre remember that encompasess a broad church from rock and roll to heavy rock to prog to disco to punk to new romantic to nu folk to metal to grunge to whateber. Now that same movement/art form is to get its own V&A equivalent (or is it its own Madame Tussaudes?) - with all the requisite interactive buttons for the party of school children on its day out to press.

Isn't this what the "Hard Rock Cafe" was all about - seeing some dress worn by Diana Ross ina video, or Prince's left over jock strap...

Can the world or rock still claim to have any real cutting edge, agent provocateur, iconoclastic edge when it has its own museum and heritage industry into which it buys. Of course we've all known that the rebels were, indeed, without a clue. Elvis the corruptor or a nation's youth was, of course, later asking to be an FBI special agent to protect young America from the evil of the Beatles, Who, Stones and the like. The Who, naturally saw salmon framin as a preferable alternative to dieing before they got old. The remaining members of the Fab Four are rolled out for any rentarockceleb extravaganza while (persumably now) presiding over a veggie fast-food empire and voiceovering Thomas the Tank Engine (yes, I know it's Our Lucien now but still). The Stones are now the world's premier Rolling Stones covers band and defacto landed gentry/Hello fodder... but still... Rock was supposed to be all anti-establishment wasn't it? "Rebel without a clue" indeed.

Not that I'm dissing or disparaging the idea. I'm pretty sure that I'll end up going along at some point before long, and bringing my guitar obsessed nephew along too. However, it does seem to undermine any claim that rock might have had that it's not just corporatised and sold out.

Maybe its time for all us radical music types to rediscover a new music revolution de jour? Yo, dig that rad Gregorian chant, dude, it's well book!

...incredibly deep voiced men no longer did voiceovers for movie trailers.

Sad to hear of the passing of the fabulous Don LaFontaine - owner of THAT voice which adorned so many trailers over the years. A true (cheesy) master within a very very small and select field.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7595352.stm

It's amazing how one person can reach near ubiquity and be immediately recognisable to millions across the globe yet remain almost completely anonymous to the general public. Even his characteristic VO opening "In a world where..." has become a true movie cliche. In the above article he explains the reason behind it:

"We have to very rapidly establish the world we are transporting them to," he said of his viewers.

"That's very easily done by saying, 'In a world where...violence rules' 'In a world where... men are slaves and women are the conquerors' - you very rapidly set the scene."

Those 5 minutes after the lights go down and before the feature starts just won't be the same any more!

Was browsing the BBC news website and came across this article which made me smile...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7571952.stm

Interesting to think who Bob Marley's influences might just have been. I must admit that as a music-loving bass player in his mid 40s, Drooper's always been a formative role model for me!

Clearly we're slap bang in the middle of the silly season but it was a diverting read for a Thursday afternoon!!

Seeing NealT's dubstep posting reminded me about a blog that I'd been planning to post for yonks and never got around to... Like Neal I'm rather hoping to draw on the gestalt consciousness of the Word blog and get some recommendations on where to start when listening to Zydeco.

It's a style I've heard on the odd occasion (late night radio 2 eclecticism) and have always rather enjoyed but never really properly checked out. Of course the big question is where to start? If only Proper did a great compilation of zydeco like their recent "Proper Folk". Or do they? Or does someone else?

Anyway... so where does a dabbler start? What would be an easy but credible introduction? Are there some compilation albums which are effectively zydeco 101? Are there come seminal albums/artists one simply HAS to check out?

Like NealT I'm old fashioned enough to be a CD buyer (tho' I do download the odd track when that's all that's required...). So who should I be checking out?

Trevor

...track index marks on CDs?

This thought popped into my head the other day when I was feeding CDs into the computer for inclusion on the old iTunes. I was popping in a couple of classical CDs and Turn of a Friendly Card by the Alan Parsons Project. It suddenly occurred to me that, on my first ever CD player, a lovely and late lamented old Rotel, which I bought around about 1988 or so these very discs had several long tracks which were split into sub-tracks by index marks.

Of course that meant that, for example, on a concerto (where one concerto = one track) you could jump to a particular movement you wanted to hear by selecting an index point within the track. Same with the Alan Parsons Proj album where "side one" was now just one long track. Every single CD player I've had since that old Rotel (including newer Rotels) and all the various PC based players I've ever used seem to omit that very useful feature.

The irony is that there's a very similar feature on some Radio 4 comedy series I've downloaded as audiobooks where they are one long track with chapters for each episode.

Never thought about this index feature for goodness knows how many years but, of course, now I've remembered its past existance I keep thinking about just how useful it might be... Maybe I need to get out more!

I'm sorry, this just made me laugh this morning...

God bless you, YouTube!

Just got an e-mail from a friend in the States who is flying over here in a couple of weeks for a visit. Anyway, she gave the flight details and it turns out that she's flying from Detroit Wayne County Metropolitan Airport. Which made me sit up and go, "Huh?"

Detroit Wayne County Metropolitan Airport

Hey, I know that the UK's got John Lennon International Airport and George Best Belfast City Airport. Do you suppose the good burghers of Motor City realised what they were doing when proudly naming their brand spanking new airport (tenth busiest in the United States and the nineteenth busiest in the world) - that they were accidentally also naming it after a 1970s transsexual New York punk rocker!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_County_%26_the_Electric_Chairs

Or as the saying goes... D'oh!

One of the most fascinating of recent podcasts (for me anyway)was the one focusing on music technologies - and in particular th erise of AutoTune and maximisers. Well, that's all well and good but I just came across THIS video/product. Flippin' heck! If AutoTune and ProTools jiggering with the recorded performance has been considered to rob much modern pop from a lot of it's individuality and feel, what will this allow producers/engineers to pump out?

http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna&L=0

Well, Mystic Dave has been holding forth for a while. "The music industry is broken..." quoth he, maintaining that there needs to be a new business model if the industry is to survive, let alone flourish.

We're already seeing the internet, medium-sized touring, direct and distribution sales indie (broad terms not jangly guitars meaning) artist carving out a small scale career for themselves. "Send me a tenner and I'll send you a CD in 8 months when I've actually recorded it" etc

But Mr H's personal hankering to a return to the simpler, more song based days of the 60s seems a little closer. The says when the song, the single and the EP were the thing. The days when bands recorded two or three songs and put those out as they were recorded and albums were an afterthought rather than the be-all and end-all.

The following from the BBC website: Muse 'might ditch album format' http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/music/newsid_7292000/7292404.stm

From an Australian comedy show. The Beatles playing Stairway To heaven...

It just so happens that I was in the studio audience for the recording of this version of California Dreamin'. Loved it then, still makes me smile now!!

I'd love to do my homework from this week's podcast. However, on the posts where tunes have been posted all I get is an empty white box which does nothing when clicked. Is there some ActiveX plug-in that should be downloaded or a media player that needs to be running in the background or something? Sigh...