Listen Again...
Jan. 30th, 2009 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningI have spent much of the day listening to old albums, courtesy of the internet. I went to Amazon to download a couple of tracks – which I couldn’t. I was after a tune by Prince with the enigmatic title “It” – on the Sing O’ The Times album (a great single album; pity he made it a double!). Instead, I looked for it on Last.fm (not available to listen) and so I went to Spotify.
Where of course I listened to it. It is wonderful – a very sparse sound, mostly just a drum beat with some moody twiddly bits in the background. I can’t think when I last heard It – not for fifteen years, I would guess. It is one of the best tracks on Sign O’ The Times – It, (the ungrammatical) If I Was Your Girlfriend (and, yay! the unexpurgated version) and the title track make a brilliant trio of songs, and I listened to them all.
The twiddly bit in the background of It has always reminded me of the tune of Patti Smith’s track Easter – it follows the same sequence of intervals if not the same notes. I have got Easter, but I was drawn instead to Radio Ethiopia. This was Patti Smith’s second album; at the time, I didn’t particularly like it – it is not half as accessible as Horses, it is harder to listen to – it actually takes some work. I have a couple of tracks from Radio Ethiopia on the Land compilation - Pissing In The River and Ain’t It Strange; both are brilliant, and whenever I play them on Land (usually when I am driving somewhere), I think I must actually give the whole album another listen.
So I did. It is a really very good album. It is superb. It is harder than either Horses or Easter (the album), a strange blend of rock production by Jack Douglas (who produced the Blue Oyster Cult) and avant-garde music. There is a real tension between these two axes: and that is probably why the album didn’t work – despite having some real rock tracks on it.
I was really impressed. Even Radio Ethiopia/Abyssinia – an abstract-then-riffing and meandering poetic-screaming – even that works well. (An aside: the opening of RE/A sounds like an industrial noise: it reminds me of a pelican crossing: and for the last thirty years, whenever I have heard a pelican crossing, I have hummed the first guitar riff in sympathy with the traffic lights. That riff itself sounds like the riff from A Hard Day’s Night – just slowed down a bit…)
hearing Radio Ethiopia made me a bit nostalgic, so I went to check out Nils Lofgren. I wanted to hear either his live album, Night After Night from c. 1979 or, even better, a recording of his performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test when he was touring Cry Tough. I recorded that show by setting up a microphone in front of the tv, and I still have the cassette somewhere – but I had in my head that it had actually been released as a BBC sessions. Maybe, but I couldn’t find it.
Instead I listened to his first, eponymous, solo album. Brilliant, again. I can’t have heard that album for twenty odd years; more. It made me think of schooldays and adolescent lust. Plus ca change.
So I then went on to the Blue Oyster Cult’s Secret Treaties. Again, brilliant. this was marvellous stuff – only spoilt a little by Spotify sneaking in an ad in the segue between Flaming Telepaths and Astronomy. Remembering these tunes – picking up with them after so many years – was wonderful. The overt flirtation with fascism is less welcome, but hell, they’re a great rock and roll band.
And Spotify is wonderful, too!
Where of course I listened to it. It is wonderful – a very sparse sound, mostly just a drum beat with some moody twiddly bits in the background. I can’t think when I last heard It – not for fifteen years, I would guess. It is one of the best tracks on Sign O’ The Times – It, (the ungrammatical) If I Was Your Girlfriend (and, yay! the unexpurgated version) and the title track make a brilliant trio of songs, and I listened to them all.
The twiddly bit in the background of It has always reminded me of the tune of Patti Smith’s track Easter – it follows the same sequence of intervals if not the same notes. I have got Easter, but I was drawn instead to Radio Ethiopia. This was Patti Smith’s second album; at the time, I didn’t particularly like it – it is not half as accessible as Horses, it is harder to listen to – it actually takes some work. I have a couple of tracks from Radio Ethiopia on the Land compilation - Pissing In The River and Ain’t It Strange; both are brilliant, and whenever I play them on Land (usually when I am driving somewhere), I think I must actually give the whole album another listen.
So I did. It is a really very good album. It is superb. It is harder than either Horses or Easter (the album), a strange blend of rock production by Jack Douglas (who produced the Blue Oyster Cult) and avant-garde music. There is a real tension between these two axes: and that is probably why the album didn’t work – despite having some real rock tracks on it.
I was really impressed. Even Radio Ethiopia/Abyssinia – an abstract-then-riffing and meandering poetic-screaming – even that works well. (An aside: the opening of RE/A sounds like an industrial noise: it reminds me of a pelican crossing: and for the last thirty years, whenever I have heard a pelican crossing, I have hummed the first guitar riff in sympathy with the traffic lights. That riff itself sounds like the riff from A Hard Day’s Night – just slowed down a bit…)
hearing Radio Ethiopia made me a bit nostalgic, so I went to check out Nils Lofgren. I wanted to hear either his live album, Night After Night from c. 1979 or, even better, a recording of his performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test when he was touring Cry Tough. I recorded that show by setting up a microphone in front of the tv, and I still have the cassette somewhere – but I had in my head that it had actually been released as a BBC sessions. Maybe, but I couldn’t find it.
Instead I listened to his first, eponymous, solo album. Brilliant, again. I can’t have heard that album for twenty odd years; more. It made me think of schooldays and adolescent lust. Plus ca change.
So I then went on to the Blue Oyster Cult’s Secret Treaties. Again, brilliant. this was marvellous stuff – only spoilt a little by Spotify sneaking in an ad in the segue between Flaming Telepaths and Astronomy. Remembering these tunes – picking up with them after so many years – was wonderful. The overt flirtation with fascism is less welcome, but hell, they’re a great rock and roll band.
And Spotify is wonderful, too!