parklife 1

Hard Rock Calling, 27th June @ Hyde Park

After an impressive and hugely enjoyable two hour performance of classic songs by Neil Young, headlining the second of this three-day festival, it's probably a bit churlish of me to rant on about such a small thing... but what is it with the end of his songs?

I have observed that there's a longstanding convention that guitarist, drummer and bassist should mark the absolute end of the absolutely last note of a guitar-fuelled rock-out number (not really on my own patch here so bear with me) with what I can only describe as a simultaneous testosterone-induced "kerchang!"

Most, if not all, of Young's electric guitar-based songs tonight end, not just with this, er, "kerchang" but also with an extended feedback-fest or frantic exchange of unnecessary noodling with the drummer, each lasting some considerable time. It's a bit tedious frankly.

Seems it was ever thus with NY. Check out this performance of "Cinnamon Girl" from 1978:



See what I mean? The song as we know it (because we've heard the record right?) ends at 3:25 and yet the final "kerchang" doesn't get to us until 3:58.

It's asking a lot of an audience to keep the clapping and cheering going all that time, particularly when the same thing happens with every other song, and sure enough at the end of one number this evening NY complains that the crowd are "awful quiet". That'll be because we clapped and cheered for that last song when it finished five minutes ago Neil mate. Can you not wind things up a bit more sharpish?

Lest I present an unduly curmudgeonly view of proceedings, these are some of the things I did enjoy during the course of the afternoon/evening...

• Everything else about NY. He's always been rather on the peripheries of my musical taste but I somehow know about two-thirds of the songs.
• Fleet Foxes. Love those arrangements and they're pretty spot on with their vocal harmonies. Just a shame that a lot of festival goers talk, quite loudly, over their songs...
• Magic Numbers, as ever. They'll soon have a new album out--hoorah!--and here are some of the songs from it, which sound good.
• "A Day in the Life", NY's encore, along with showbiz mate one Sir Paul McCartney. Yes, I know he's got his thumbs up again like a grinning loon but he's a Beatle and I've never seen one of them before...

if you like that, you should try this...

Run out of ideas of what to listen to? You can't have, surely.

But should it be that you're lacking a bit of inspiration, try music-map. Why, it's "the tourist map of music".

Some searches to try:
1. George Formby
2. Jason Donovan and, best of all...
3. Chas and Dave

Maybe havin' a laff then...

before they were famous

The other day I found, lurking in what's left of my ancient cassette collection, a compilation tape I must have put together ooh I don't know a good fifteen years ago. One of the tracks--I think I used to have the single too--was "Don't Come To Stay", a moody soul ballad by a band called Hot House.

I've since discovered that the lead singer was one Heather Small who went on to front M People, the band mainly remembered now for being the least ever popular winners of the Mercury Music Prize in 1994 when they consigned Blur's Parklife to also-ran status. (Whatever happened to them?) The following year they went on to perpetrate the overblown "Search For The Hero" which I seem to remember becoming a clatteringly obvious choice to routinely accompany feats of sporting endurance on TV. Maybe then the Hot House years produced Small's best work?

This is the best YouTube can do, a bit jumpy and sadly it cuts off abruptly at the best part of the song, but you probably get the general idea...



On the same tack, how about this, an early offering from another northern soul diva who went on to bigger things. Again, I think this is better than anything Lisa Stansfield (for it is she) recorded later as a solo artist...

noisette on a string

How great is this?



Front runner as UK entry in the next Eurovision Song Contest?

The album's good too. You can get it on Spotify.

test match special

Recently I've been watching the excellent BBC series "Empire of Cricket". The episode about the history of the game in the West Indies the other day was particularly fine and had a tremendous musical soundtrack with a song to illustrate almost every stage of the story. Unfortunately there seems to be a large Kensington Oval-sized hole in the internet where youtube videos of--indeed any reference to--many of these songs ought to be, so instead I humbly offer my top five cricket songs...

5. Cod reggae and dodgy Jamaican accents from Stockport-based MOR seventies hitmongers: yes it's Dreadlock Holiday by 10CC
4. Tortuous-cricketing-metaphors-R-Us from 10CC-era Aussie one-hit wonders Sherbet: Howzat
3. Yet another one from the seventies: the rambling but rather fine When an Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease by Roy Harper.
2. Top calypsonian Lord Kitchener tells the tale of the Windies landmark test series victory in post-Windrush England: Cricket Lovely Cricket
1. It could only be our favourite TV sport theme tune from a group of musicians whose combined understanding of the laws of cricket probably won't be troubling the scorers...


P.S.: I notice that erstwhile Divine Comedian Neil Hannon is making a move towards the barely mined seam (ahem) of cricket in pop music with his new combo the Duckworth Lewis Method. Sounds promising...

summat for nowt

Fopp Records have two of my favourite albums (Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain by Teenage Fanclub) in a box set. They are selling it for £3. This is scandalous. Consumers should not be allowed to have great music at grotesquely reduced prices like this.

the viking of sixth avenue

The Music of Moondog @ Barbican, 30th May

It's no surprise that Louis Hardin became famous, inclined as he was to wander round the streets of Manhattan in Viking attire carrying a huge sword. That and playing strange and beautiful music on a selection of bizarre instruments, many his own inventions.

Moondog--for it is he--spent much of the 1950s and 60s doing these very things, mainly at the intersection of 53rd Street and 6th Avenue. At night he would sleep on nearby rooftops.

Positioned as he was near many concert venues and jazz clubs, musicians would often pass by and understandably his streetside performances aroused their curiosity. As a result, he went on to become an accepted part of the New York musical establishment, forging a particular friendship with Philip Glass, and eventually having many of his compositions performed in the concert hall.

In the 1990s, he collaborated with various British ensembles, and this tribute concert, held ten years after his death, features two of these: London Saxophonic and the Britten Sinfonia.

It's quite difficult to characterise his music: there are elements of big band jazz, sixties film soundtracks, Bach fugues and Mozart: the "Salzburg Symphony" is one work--of his total output of some 1,400 pieces--which has never been performed in public. Until tonight.

I reckon there's even a hint of a drum & bass rhythm in "Bird's Lament"...



More reading at Moondogmadness.

More tunes, you guessed it, at Spotify.