Favourite Food

In lieu of music review postings [for those who follow I am in summer exam marking mode], and because I have just emailed to a friend for fun, I am filling a gap by posting pictures of three of my favourite American culinary delights, fashioned by these very own hands: 1. Chilli Dog; 2. Jucy Lucy; 3. SOS [Shit On Shingle] -

 

Music may well be the food of love, but the love of food is this rough stuff!

Eagles, Desperado - 1973 - Top Fifty

Pretty Is As Pretty Was

I’m working my way through the fascinating Eagles documentary History of the Eagles, The Story of an American Band shown recently on the BBC. I’ve just watched the section where it features the recording of their second album Desperado, and this is the album that introduced me to the band, having pretty much missed their first. It did then and does now appeal to everything I love about this country-harmony sound, a style Glen Frey in the documentary refers to disparagingly as ‘Beatles-Country’ as dictated [to a shared degree I think if the band is totally honest] by then producer Glyn Jones. The criticism is made because both Frey and Henley wanted a heavier sound, which they did move on to with their next On The Border where production duties were soon transferred to Bill Szymczyk [and the stylistic dichotomy between Bill and Glyn is an intriguing as well as mildly comic revelation in the programme].

Whilst interesting, these relatively minor schisms in style are meaningless in as much as I am a continuing fan of their oeuvre, but this second album is in my Top Fifty as both introduction to and exemplification of their beautiful harmonising and songwriting. The fact that JD Souther and Jackson Browne also still contribute to that songwriting on this album [well, on Doolin-Dalton] is significant, being a fan of their work too, as platitudinous as that statement and proclivity is. The point is I am with Glyn Jones on thinking this is the sound that defines the Eagles.

The ‘outlaw’ concept with album cover and other photos added an attractive if ultimately tenuous connection with notions of being alternative at the time, but I do recall playing the album over and over, as with their next two, for those glorious vocals. Pretty yes, but pretty damn fine then and now. 

Ginger Baker's Jazz Confusion - Phoenix, Exeter, 12th July, 2013

What Was That? That Was Jazz

At 73 years of age, Ginger Baker isn’t the double bass-drum oscillator he used to be, but the African beats he deployed throughout his jazz set at The Phoenix, Exeter, last night – aided and abetted with a compensatory gusto by Ghanian percussionist Abass Dodoo [who would have thought cymbals could at times make such a distinctive and glorious contribution?] – reflected a continued love of playing live as well as for that genre.

With further assistance from the wonderful saxophone tone of Pee Wee Ellis [having played for the James Brown Revue between 1965 to 1969, and contributing to no less than 13 albums with Van Morrison] and Alec Dankworth, perhaps the most outstanding soloist of the night on double and electric bass, it was an evening of highly enjoyable jazz penned by Baker himself and the likes of Wayne Shorter and Sonny Rollins, all underscored by the aura of getting to see one of the great rock musicians/drummers of all time.

As someone most recently in the press because of the new film documentary about him titled Beware Of Mr Baker - but more notoriously when he breaks filmmaker Jay Bulger’s nose with his cane - and also widely available video footage of a rather cantankerous recent interview session, the only indication of such bad behaviour last night was when someone in the audience shouted out either a request or a heartfelt accolade and Ginger pricked up with a mildly aggressive ‘What was that?’ and immediate threat to have ‘hecklers’ dealt with in some punitive way: all indicative of the fact that after years of thunderous drumming, Ginger Baker can’t hear what is being shouted at him. Overall, he actually seemed to be enjoying himself, proffering a mild giggle as Pee Wee slowly walked behind him having too slowly walked off the stage before the encore and thus being significantly behind the rest of the returned band – and with Ginger’s pace at 73 hardly [wait for it] gingerly, you can imagine how desultory Pee Wee was ambling.

It was that kind of night: an audience whose seniority reflected maturity, wisdom, bad backs and other ailments, hair-loss and a multitude of unrealised dreams of rock stardom and a life of debauchery that Ginger Baker has passed through with some undoubted pain but considerable if crotchety resilience to arrive at this plateau of jazzy reverence and relative calm.  For me it was a night of consistently enjoyable music by a great man I never got to see in his prime but feel I have now seen pursuing his great love of jazz music, having always, apparently, referred to himself as a jazz rather than rock drummer. Where many stars hit the tours churning out their familiar hits [and that's OK too] it was reassuring to see this notorious survivor of the sixties doing so engagingly in his seventies.

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Black Sabbath - 13

Age of Pathos

Released on the 10^th June, but streamed over the last few days, like thousands and thousands out there I have been listening to Black Sabbath’s latest 13 and Ozzie’s long awaited return to the band after 35 years. I was asked today if I like it – the obvious question to address in this review – and I think I prevaricated far too much, though essentially I gave an appropriately paradoxical answer. I do and I don’t. As I said of single God Is Dead? it is both wonderful and ludicrous.

As someone who still recalls the brilliance of hearing that first album, aged 15, I can’t possibly retrieve the same ecstatic enthusiasm for this album that tries so hard to recreate the original sound, which it does so effectively. Interestingly as I write, I’m listening to fifth track Age Of Reason – very loud – and this is proving pretty damn cool as it is in many ways least like the music of Sabbath’s first LP which other tracks echo so closely, like opener End Of The Beginning. One thing I’ll say from the off: when Tony Immoni lets loose on any one of these eight songs it is beautiful to hear.

Part of my less enthusiastic response is in finding the lyrics preposterous. Perhaps when I was 15, semantics weren’t really an issue when it came to heavy music. The titles of four songs on 13 declare the pretentions of the pseudo-philosophising: End Of The Beginning; God Is Dead? Zeitgeist; Age of Reason. And the line Is this the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end, losing control or are you winning, is your life real or just pretend...reanimation of the sequence, rewinds the future to the past....yada yada yada...and I’m chuckling knowingly rather than headbanging mindlessly.

I know this is the wrong approach! I know. Perhaps it’s also knowing so much about Ozzie these days – that reality TV programme; the interviews; seeing a clip of his live performance at Perth this year where his oblivion is worrying and pathetic - his singing live is dreadful. Knowing makes this contemporary packaging of the Black Sabbath sound too disingenuous for me.

But the thumping with harmonica and now Immoni scorching a solo on Damaged Soul playing still loud as I type pulls me in for that momentary escape back to times before, and it is enjoyable. Even far out. But the reality is it just makes me want to put that first album on – always the best and favourite without any question – and then dip in and out of the next three.

The album’s ending on a thunderstorm and tolling bell is neither satirically aware nor metaphorically significant. We clearly understand by now that much on this album is judicious pilfering from the past, and it will obviously be their last offering. This explicit echo from the start of their debut and iconic gem is a mistaken gesture in pathos.

So I’ve just put Age Of Reason on again, louder. 

Black Star Riders - All Hell Breaks Loose

Full Thin Sound

This is a fine record and band, clearly reminiscent of Thin Lizzy having toured under that name and with Scott Gorham continuing to provide the distinctive guitar playing/dueting he did when with the original. Singer and songwriter Ricky Warwick doesn’t try to sound like Phil Lynott, though he does so often, as on sixth track Hey Judas. All the songs are therefore classic in this sense, and anthemic, and there is even the ostentation of an Irish folk lilt in third Kingdom of the Lost. It is both heavy and melodic, the mix that was and continues to be very listenable and enjoyable. Love those harmonic guitar breaks.

Black Sabbath - 'God Is Dead?'

Nietzsche and PR

I’m looking forward to the release of the new Black Sabbath album next week. Of course I am. How can you not want to hear another work from the founders of metal?

Planet Rock has been giving considerable airplay to the single God Is Dead? It is wonderful. It is also ludicrous. It is wonderful in the way that it so clearly re-presents the Sabbath sound –  those neanderthal slow riffs and the guitar breaks that do just enough to be heavy. Then there’s Ozzie’s distinctive vocal. But it is ludicrous too in the way it seems to be aping that original sound. Ozzie’s vocals in particular seem to have an obvious disconnect with the rest of the music, presumably an add-on in the studio, perhaps like all the other parts, and perhaps like many other bands and their recordings. Maybe I’m wrong, but this certainly doesn’t sound like a live - and energised by that immediacy - performance. The polish undermines what ought to be Ozzie’s raw emotion. And as for asking ‘Is god really dead?’ Why the fuck should the hard man of rock give a toss. The dark worshipper of satanic suggestiveness shouldn’t give a flying beheaded bat’s pizzle whether god is alive or deceased. And asking the question would appear to counter a lifetime of not tossing.

I know all musicians approaching their own mortality have a problem re-presenting what made them vital in their youth. The Stones would seem to somehow just about achieve this – apart from Jagger trying to justify recent outrageous ticket prices by citing dubious claptrap about ‘supply and demand’, and bleating about the cost of funding a tour.

Maybe that’s why Ozzie allegedly fell off the drink and drugs wagon so recently. It couldn’t have been a PR stunt to posit some Sabbath street-cred ahead of the tour and release, surely?

If you haven't heard [well, you haven't been listening] you can here.