soul - TL:DR (That's Long, DID Read)

Play for Today: 21st January 2016

It’s fair to say the past week or so of my listening (and writing) has been derailed somewhat by the passing of David Bowie. There’s been (and is) so much online about the mawkishness/validity of feeling bereaved over the death of Bowie/famous people in general and there’s no need to add to that.

All I can say is I used to go on about Bowie almost as much as I do now, and, true to my obituary elsewhere on this site, whatever my mood since his passing, one or another of his songs has suited it perfectly.

Listening to Bowie now is inevitably sadder than it used to be. His work has always been notable for its artificial quality, the adoption of various personae etc, but, unless you don’t believe in being emotionally engaged/moved by works of fiction there’s no contradiction in being affected by his apparently non-personal songs, especially given his brilliantly written lyrics. Anyway, here’s the playlist for today and the past week or so…

The Gouster Sessions 1974 (fragment) – This is so frustrating, tantalising and great; the song fragments; Shilling the Rubes, I Am A Lazer, After Today and the rough version of Young Americans come from what is currently my favourite Bowie period and the recording has just a little more grit than the finished album. Bowie and his band sound on top form and the bits of studio banter sound amazingly relaxed and fun given Bowie’s apparent drug intake and exhaustion during that time. I wish the full sessions would turn up and be released.

We Are The Dead (from Diamond Dogs, 1974) – Not morbid humour on my part. I’ve loved this song (and Diamond Dogs in general) for years (its only fairly recently been supplanted as my favourite Bowie album by Young Americans) and I’m not sure that he ever sang a song better than this. The part in the first verse where he sings ‘I looked at you and wondered if you saw things my way’ over the ominous churchy organ part (so to speak) is to me one of the greatest moments in all Bowie-dom. Hugely atmospheric, perfectly articulated and chilling/moving/ominous. For years I thought the chorus (or semi-lack thereof) let the song down, but I’m not so sure now.

Big Brother (from Diamond Dogs, 1974) – Surely one of the most dodgy and creepy anthemic songs ever written, Bowie sings it like he really does want someone to fool us/shame us etc. What a great chorus, when he finally hits the high ‘oooh’s (no less lame way of putting it) in the last choruses it becomes uplifting like stadium music is supposed to be; even if the stadium he seems to be evoking is in Nuremberg.

Word on a Wing (from Station to Station, 1976) – Speaking of ideologically dubious Bowie material, Station to Station must be one of the creepiest albums ever recorded by a mainstream pop artist; not least because its melange of decadent European culture, emotional withdrawal and exhaustion and overtones of religious and magical yearning are imbued with a dark romanticism. Word on a Wing is just beautiful and weary though.

Sound & Vision (from Low 1977) Bowie at his most withdrawn and sombre still managed to be musically adventurous as well as writing a bona fide catchy pop song; not many people do that.

The Buddha of Suburbia (from the Buddha of Suburbia soundtrack, 1995) – On the whole, Bowie seems not to have been (in his music at least, but see below) an especially nostalgic person. But writing the music for the TV adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s 70’s-set drama allowed him to look at his early work as others saw it, and this breezy yet yearning song is extremely moving, if you’re me.

Drive In Saturday (from Aladdin Sane, 1973) – Despite what I just wrote above, Bowie’s early work is often nostalgic, but not so much for his own past as for the recent past as seen from the future; the retro-futurism of songs like The Prettiest Star, Drive In Saturday was similar to the ’50s in space’ atmosphere projected by early Roxy Music and seems to have been the raison d’etre for the covers album Pin Ups (1973). Drive In Saturday has a really nice tune.

Lady Stardust (from Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars, 1972) – A beautiful, brilliantly produced and performed song that exemplifies everything glam-era Bowie stood for; sexy, glamorous, gender-ambiguous and an immaculate pop song too. Sigh.

The Slinky Vagabond: David Bowie 1947-2016

I was listening to David Bowie on the way to work today; I would have been doing that anyway. The fact that his death was reported on the news this morning did make the listening horribly poignant though. And even more, it made me notice just how unique and distinctive his talent was;

“They pulled in just behind the bridge
He lays her down, he frowns
‘Gee my life’s a funny thing, am I still too young?’
He kissed her then and there She took his ring, took his babies
It took him minutes, took her nowhere
Heaven knows, she’d have taken anything…”

The montage-like flow of imagery in Young Americans builds up an incredibly vivid, familiar-yet-dislocated image of America as seen from the UK; and it’s poetry. Even better in fact, because Bowie was a singer and musician, it’s poetry that’s accessible and meaningful to people who don’t even understand it as words. Like all of Bowie’s best work it is, musically and lyrically ambiguous; it’s British, it’s American, it’s kind of latin, it’s pop, it’s soul but because it’s Bowie it’s always a different, alien version of all those things.

I’ve been listening to David Bowie for more than half of my life, but like most people of my generation, I’ve been very aware of him for much longer than that.
A lot of the tributes that have been made to him have – understandably – been by his peers, or those who experienced his music as something new, exciting and different. For those growing up in the 80s though, his music was at the time more or less mainstream pop with an odd singing voice (Let’s Dance, the Bowie/Jagger atrocity etc) but he was always just there; in the charts, on TV, and maybe above all for my generation, starring in Labyrinth.

There were two (as I remember) more or less simultaneous but separate things that led me in my late teens to Bowie’s music; a book about Lou Reed (I was already a big Velvet Underground fan) which led me onto Queen Bitch and therefore Hunky Dory (for a long time my favourite album) and seeing The Man Who Fell To Earth on TV and therefore listening to Low, which was in my mother’s record collection; and loving it.

From then on, whatever ways my taste has changed, it has never needed to abandon Bowie; I liked glam and Bowie was glam (both the light, frothy kind – The Prettiest Star – and the dark, sleazy kind – Diamond Dogs). I was interested in 1930s German Expressionism and Bowie had recorded Berthold Brecht’s Baal (one of his most underrated records actually). I was interested in Crowley and European culture and electronic music and he had recorded Station to Station. I liked soul and funk and he had made his own weird version of it. And so on, and on. He was interesting and interested in things and was able to turn his interests into his own art without losing either what made it interesting in the first place, or his own personality in the process. It’s also true that although he was often accused of pretentiousness, that means that even his most ‘difficult’ work is never less than interesting; it was only on the odd occasions that he followed fashion instead of leading (or ignoring) it that he was boring.

I don’t love everything Bowie ever recorded, but there is no period of his career that doesn’t have something great in it, and right up to the last few days of his life (not that I knew that’s what it was) I always looked forward to hearing what he was going to come up with next; and there aren’t many stars with 40+ year careers I can say that about.

RIP David Bowie

A personal Bowie playlist:

Please Mr Gravedigger (1967)
Janine (1969)
Memory of a Free Festival (1969)
Width of a Circle (1971)
All The Madmen (1971)
The Man Who Sold the World (1971)
Changes (1971)
Oh! You Pretty Things (1971)
Eight Line Poem (1971)
Life On Mars? (1971)
Quicksand (1971)
Queen Bitch (1971)
The Bewlay Brothers (1971)
Five Years (1972)
Soul Love (1972)
Moonage Daydream (1972)
Lady Stardust (1972)
Star (1972)
Ziggy Stardust (1972)
Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide (1972)
My Death (live) (1972)
Velvet Goldmine (1972)
Watch That Man (1973)
Drive In Saturday (1973)
Panic In Detroit (1973)
Cracked Actor (1973)
Time (1973)
Lady Grinning Soul (1973)
Sorrow (1973)
Port of Amsterdam (1973)
Sweet Thing /Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise) (1974)
Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me (1974)
We Are The Dead (1974)
Big Brother (1974)
All The Young Dudes (live) (1974)
Young Americans (1975)
Win (1975)
Fascination (1975)
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1975)
Can You Hear Me (1975)
Who Can I Be Now? (1975)
It’s Gonna Be Me (1975)
Station To Station (1976)
Word On A Wing (1976)
Stay (1976)
Wild Is The Wind (1976)
Speed of Life (1977)
Breaking Glass (1977)
Sound and Vision (1977)
Be My Wife (1977)
Warszawa (1977)
Art Decade (1977)
Weeping Wall (1977)
Some Are (1977)
All Saints (1977)
“Heroes” (1977)
Sons of the Silent Age (1977)
V-2 Schneider (1977)
Sense of Doubt (1977)
Moss Garden (1977)
Neukoln (1977)
Fantastic Voyage (1979)
African Night Flight (1979)
Move On (1979)
Yassassin (1979)
DJ (1979)
Repetition (1979)
It’s No Game (Pt 1) (1980)
Baal’s Hymn (1982)
Remembering Marie A (1982)
Ballad of the Adventurers (1982)
The Drowned Girl (1982)
The Dirty Song (1982)
Alabama Song (1980)
Modern Love (1983)
Cat People (Putting Out Fire) (1982)
This Is Not America (1985)
When the Wind Blows (1986)
Amazing (1989)
Goodbye Mr Ed (1991)
The Wedding (1993)
Pallas Athena (1993)
Looking For Lester (1993)
I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday (1993)
Buddha of Suburbia (1993)
South Horizon (1993)
The Mysteries (1993)
Untitled No 1 (1993)
Ian Fish, UK Heir (1993)
Heart’s Filthy Lesson (1995)
The Motel (1995)
I Have Not Been To Oxford Town (1995)
—– nothing against the next few albums but haven’t heard them enough to have favourites —-
The Next Day (2013)
Dirty Boys (2013)
The Stars (Are Out Tonight) (2013)

and hopefully when I hear Blackstar some more songs will make it onto the list

Play for Today: 9th January 2016

Today’s playlist is mainly stuff that has been playing since Christmastime, so it’s probably longer than it will usually be:

Brian Eno – Before and After Science (1977)

Eno’s last collection of somewhat alien-sounding ‘songs’, definitely good, but compared to his first few it’s a bit all over the place, tending to segue into the ambient stuff that was beginning to be his main focus. I do love his voice though.

Ihsahn – Arktis (2016)

Much as I wish I’d seen the Emperor reunion, I have to say that by now Ihsahn’s solo discography is if anything even better. Arktis isn’t as unclassifiably brilliant as Das Seelenbrechen was, but it’s more straightforward and accessible; arguably as good as anything he’s made.

Blind Lemon Jefferson – Texas Blues; The Complete… (1925-1935)

113 songs, most by Jefferson and a few by related artists; taken as a whole I like it less than the similar Charley Patton set, but although his work is less atmospheric, Blind Lemon is less repetitive and just as inventive as a guitar player.

Dorje – Catalyst EP (2015)

Talking of inventive guitar playing, Dorje’s 2015 EP packs as many seismic hard rock riffs and blistering solos as you could reasonably fit into a half hour(ish) running time. Every band member excels here, and more importantly, the songs are up to the standard of the playing.

The Ornette Coleman Trio – At The “Golden Circle”, Stockholm (1965)

The poet Philip Larkin once called Coleman’s music ‘a patternless reiterated jumble’ and that is sort of fair enough (there are no actual tunes to speak of), but doesn’t take into account the beauty of his playing or the telepathy between the three musicians; definitely love it or hate it kind of jazz.

Abbath – Abbath (2016)

Not quite out yet, Abbath’s debut is the perfect album for those missing Immortal. Like his I album Between Two Worlds (2006) it leans more towards traditional metal than black metal, but this time it feels more like a successor to Sons of Northern Darkness rather than a departure from it.

Kristin McClement – The Wild Grips (2015)

A beautifully delicate and haunting album which I’ll have to listen to a bit more before writing anything hugely meaningful about it

Black Sugar – Black Sugar (1971)

Mostly great Peruvian latin-funk-jazz LP, the sort of thing that would be extremely hard to hear without the internet

PLAY FOR TODAY

An irregular series, being in the nature of a kind of playlist, ‘now playing’ or similar item, with or without further comment, perhaps to be interpreted as recommendatory, but of course entirely subjective in nature…

For Whom The Cowbell Tolls…

Thanks for this article are owed to Jamie Cowey (for the title) and the anonymous person whose enlightening comments on my original version of this have been incorporated into the section on Honky Tonk Woman…

AND SO…

The cowbell has presumably been part of the percussionist’s arsenal since early in the Jazz period, but it really came into its own in the 60s and 70s; but that’s not what this is really about.

‘Cowbell rock’ is, as well as being a hugely irritating electro classic by Pyramyth, almost a genre of its own, and this is a brief (mostly unresearched, therefore probably mostly wrong) glance through it.The obvious disclaimer here is that rock comes from blues and R&B music and therefore the true history of the cowbell in popular music should feature many more black musicians than are included here. But this isn’t a true history of anything really.

There are notable uses of the cowbell in mid-late 60s pop and rock, notably The Beatles’ Drive My Car (1966), which perhaps surprisingly prefigures the genre with its funky soul influence. The Spencer Davis Group’s equally soulful Gimme Some Lovin’ (1966) also features possible cowbell* although to my ears it sounds more like a tambourine. *see note on Honky Tonk Woman below

Iron Butterfly’s psychedelic rock monster In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is often cited too (including by me elsewhere), though a proper listen to the song reveals that although there may be cowbell there (and it is certainly implied by the beat etc) it mostly sounds like straightforward snare/toms.

So to me (and I am happy to be put right on this), the art of true cowbell rock begins…

The Rolling Stones – Honky Tonk Women (1969) – before anything else, the intro is purely cowbell and from then on the song establishes cowbell rock; a rocking, yet laidback beat that holds everything else together. It was to prove hugely influential on the rock of the 70s and every revival thereof up until the present day. Interestingly (this is the part alluded to in the introductory note; thanks anonymous person), it is most likely erstwhile Spencer Davis Group producer Jimmy Miller, rather than the undoubtedly brilliant Charlie Watts, who plays the cowbell.

The 70s was the cowbell era and the classics are many and (to a degree) varied:

Free – All Right Now (1970) – picks up where Honky Tonk Women left off, with even bigger gaps in the riff; more room for cowbell. Most of Free’s early work should really be in the ‘implied cowbell’ list below

Velvet Underground – Sweet Jane (1970) – an honorable mention really; the cowbell (if there is any) is not very audible but this should be a cowbell classic based on the riff alone (more such nonsense below).

Slade – The Bangin’ Man (1974) – a tongue in cheek, slightly sad song, seemingly alluding to the memory problems the great Don Powell suffered when recovering from a horrendous car crash; but his drum/cowbell playing here is peerless.

David Bowie – Diamond Dogs (1974) – the sleazy death throes of Ziggy provide the

perfect backdrop for some classic cowbell courtesy (I presume) of the great Aynsley Dunbar. Interestingly, Bowie’s flirtation with cowbell rock outlasted his glam period; check out the Young Americans-era outtake I’m Divine for some classic cowbell with more of a funk flavour.

Nazareth – Hair of the Dog (1975) – basically a compendium of everything cheesy-but-good about mid-70s hard rock; and they came from Dunfermline!

Kiss – Calling Dr Love, Ladies Room, Take Me etc (1976) – Presumably Peter Criss got a new cowbell in 1975/6 because it’s all over the classic Rock & Roll Over album (released November 1976), giving it a looser, warmer feel than the also great but clinically orchestrated Destroyer (released March 1976, shockingly; When they were good, they were productive!)

Blue Oyster Cult – Don’t Fear The Reaper (1976) – the tempo is slightly too frantic to be classic cowbell rock (though the cowbell is very audible!), but this has to be mentioned thanks to the excellent Saturday Night Live sketch with Will Ferrell.

Aerosmith – Last Child (1976) Many early Aerosmith classics have implied cowbell (see footnote), but this slow & dirty-sounding masterpiece has the real thing.

War – Low Rider (1975) – somewhat out of genre being funk, but this song belongs in any discussion of the cowbell in popular music. I’m sure Funkadelic must have used it too, but nothing comes to mind so I’ll leave that for now…

Beyond the 70s there’s still plenty of cowbell action but on the whole not in the classic mould, but a few nice examples are:

Motley Crue – Wild Side (1987) Tommy Lee is not as good a drummer as he or his fans think he is but although he doesn’t use the cowbell properly here, he uses it well.

AC/DC – half of their songs (you would think, examples are rarer than one would hope), they kind of built a career on it.

Pixies – U-Mass (1991) Who’d have thought? But they do it well.

Nowadays there’s probably more cowbell rock than ever, but as far as I’ve heard it’s mostly a purely retro/pastiche/tribute thing so worthy of consideration, but not here…

POSTSCRIPT: IMPLIED COWBELL

The list of songs that are, to all intents and purposes ‘cowbell rock’ but have little or no actual cowbell is distressingly long; someone should add some posthumous cowbell to these at the very least:

Edgar Winter’s White Trash – Give It Everything You Got (1971) Dirty, nasty, gritty, funky rock, oddly the intro is kind of Stooges-like, but anyway; no cowbell.

Black Oak Arkansas – Hot And Nasty (1971) – The title says it all. Would have been hotter and nastier with cowbell though

Alice Cooper – Be My Lover (1971) – Great anyway, but how much greater would it have been a tiny bit slower and with

cowbell?

ZZ Top – Waitin’ For The Bus (1973) It nearly has cowbell on it. Let’s just pretend it does.

Foghat – Slow Ride (1975) – come on, this blues rock classic has everything except the icing on the cake; where’s the cowbell Roger?

Ted Nugent – Cat Scratch Fever (1977) – same principle as above, maybe Ted is too much of a guitar guy to care about getting the percussion right? Ditto Stranglehold, but that said, I haven’t heard a huge amount of early Ted, isn’t there bound to be at least one cowbell anthem in that oeuvre?

Whitesnake – Come An’ Get It (1982) – Whitesnake’s work is a bridge between 70s rock and the harder, more modern 80s version; this would have been a tiny bit better with cowbell though, no?

Judas Priest – You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ (1982) – The beat is right, Rob Halford gives the perfectly assured performance the song needs, but Dave Holland does everything right except play the cowbell; possibly they wanted to distance themselves from the 70s at this point

Manowar – Metal Daze and Shell Shock (1984) Great, great testosterone fuelled nonsense/genius, the former song may have to be featured in a ‘best notes ever hit by a vocalist’ article at some point. But should have got out the cowbell guys; not metal enough I expect.

The Rolling Stones – Start Me Up (1981) and The Cult – Love Removal Machine (1987) The same song, more or less. Both bands forgot the cowbell though.

In fact, The Cult’s transformation from moody goths to leather-clad rock gods was generally lacking in cowbell, despite the potential of songs like the awesome-anyway Wild Flower. That does however have some tambourine or something similar on the choruses to give that faux cowbell flavour.

Overall though, it is the 1970s that is the true era of the cowbell, and this is all just the tip of the iceberg. One of the great things about 70s rock is how much of it there is – and surely there must be many cowbell classics lurking out there, just waiting to be rediscovered by modern ears…

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2015 (part one)

I don’t know yet how many releases of the year I have, so I am just going to do them in sets of five (or thereabouts) over a few days. I don’t think I have an overall ‘album of the year’ for 2015 so instead I’ll just cover one – the first one – in more depth than the others each time.

IN FACT, this is all a bit artificial, in the sense that these are the NEW albums of the year & therefore not necessarily what I spent the most ‘quality time’ listening to; so there will be one of those each time too… ONWARDS!

Jarboe and Helen Money – Jarboe and Helen Money (Aurora Borealis Recordings)

One of the musical highlights of 2015 came early in the year; nothing about this release is ordinary. Less than an album but more than an EP, its six tracks pack a massive emotional and musical impact. Jarboe and Helen Money are in, in some ways similar figures; Jarboe the visionary, expressionist vocalist/musician/artist of Swans and (the criminally underrated) World of Skin and avant-garde cellist Helen Money. Piano, cello and vocals may not seem like the most varied palette, but Helen Money explores the possibilities of her instrument here in a way that is rare in any kind of music. The cello doesn’t stand in for other instruments in an imitative way, but is percussion, rhythm and lead and it’s a testament to both players that the record always feels like a genuine two-way collaboration between Jarboe’s voice; alternately fragile and indomitable and Money’s cello and never as simple as vocalist and backing music.

Zombi – The Zombi Anthology (Relapse Records)

As the title suggests, the music contained on this album isn’t from 2015, but this album was released this year, and it’s my choice, so it counts. And Zombi’s music from 2001-2003 is a masterclass in creepy minimalist electronica in the John Carpenter mould, so there’s that too.

Ghost Bath – Moonlover (Northern Silence Productions)

Somewhat overshadowed by the strange controversy of where Ghost Bath are from, the fact of the matter is that Moonlover is an excellent addition to an ever-growing pool of music that’s too ‘nice’ for diehard BM fans but too nasty for your average non-metal alt-rock/shoegaze listener. It’s definitely become some kind of genre, but there’s room for originality within it and this has very good songs without being too typical.

Odessey & Oracle – Odessey and oracle and the Casiotone Orchestra (Folkwit Records)

French baroque pop with twee tendencies, this is a warm, rich and harmonious album full of great tunes, wistful electronica, folk textures and something that should probably be called ‘winsome Gallic charm’. The twee-est bits are perhaps overly sweet, but overall it’s an accomplished and hugely likeable piece of work.

De Profundis – Kingdom of the Blind (Wickerman Recordings)

Undoubtedly one of the metal releases of the year. De Profundis have never made a bad record, but each has improved on the last, with Kingdom of the Blind now standing atop a formidable body of work. So perfectly balanced and masterfully written that its heaviness is easily overlooked, this is a metal album to cross all genre boundaries.

OLD ALBUM OF THE YEAR: contender #1

David Bowie – Station To Station

2015 was the year that Diamond Dogs was replaced by Young Americans as my favourite Bowie album; but in the last few months the sinister, numb-yet-romantic, occult-yet-technological Station To Station has been gaining ear-space. A uniquely strange mixture that absolutely works.