The road to blogging hell is paved with good intentions. But a plug for Monarchy from an anti-royalist

Well, when I started some time way back I thought I’d blog every week at least. But there’s been a bit of a hiatus, matron.

I’ve not been inactive on the DJing front but rather just busy with that and more generally. Touch wood (hand to head), I don’t intend to die of boredom.

So just to get back in the saddle, something I’ve downloaded this week that I like.

It’s I Won’t Let Go, by Monarchy (which reminds me of the riff in Deadmau5’s Ghosts ‘N’ Stuff), a great piece of pop bop in my view.

A lovely tune even if the video is, how you say, reet weird, and possibly should be reported to the RSPCC (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Cupcakes):

Love the Beatles’ catalogue, ultra-dubious about their performances? Try this Kurt Elling cover

The acclaimed Chicago-born jazz singer Kurt Elling is touring Britain and continental Europe at the moment. He has recently released an excellent covers album, The Gate, and I’m particularly taken by his fantastic treatment of Norwegian Wood, not least since I’m no great fan of the Beatles as performers. (If I were trying to sum up my aversion, I would say I hear far too much metronome and far too little Africa.)

Elling, a four-octave baritone, reworks the tune to combine great vocalising with a delicate poignancy and a splendid arrangement, especially the unexpected edgy guitar break by John McLean, which adds yet another fresh dimension to the original. This is uplifting artistry at its finest. The producer of the album, which is seriously worth exploring, is Don Was.

Enjoy a brilliant new setting of Norwegian Wood in this superb 11-minute NPR interview by Liane Hansen, with Elling in New York and Was in California:

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/20/133876814/kurt-elling-a-jazz-singer-stretches-his-songbook

On the Elling website, older tracks are available to listen to in full:

http://kurtelling.com/kurtradio/

So what is the point of Beady Eye?

I have done my best to approach the debut album Different Gear, Still Speeding by Liam Gallagher’s new band Beady Eye with an open mind. I have listened to all the songs, I can understand why the track The Roller has been lifted as the single. And sadly, I find myself totally unmoved by the whole enterprise.

Snippets of all the tracks (with the option of purchase) are here (other outlets are available):

http://amzn.to/g4kIJA

I’ve read the reviews of live performances where ardent devotees of the Gallagher cult have gathered in awe and worshipped anew as the latest exemplars of what are perceived by aficionados as pop perfection are unveiled to a waiting world. I still don’t get it.

Whether you get the Oasis-Gallagher schtick is the 1990s successor to the great debate on the Beatles-Stones divide, one of the oldest clichés of rockdom. For the record, I was a Stones boy from the start. While I concede that the Beatles wrote a good tune or three, and have generated the mega-royalties to prove it, the performances by and large never grabbed me. In my view, Oasis were in every way a spin-off of the Beatles phenomenon: not only in the sound but also arguably in the dynamic with two brothers, biologically or psychologically (for Noel and Liam Gallagher read John Lennon and Paul McCartney, or vice versa) colloborating and competing. It is almost totally unsurprising, perhaps inevitable, that on Different Gear, Still Speeding one of the tracks is entitled Beatles and Stones, which notes wishfully: “I just want to rock’n’roll/ I’m gonna stand the test of time/ Like Beatles and Stones”.

For me, the Oasis album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is genuinely outstanding at least as a popular, even populist, milestone in the mid-Nineties of the post-Beatles legacy and it captured the zeitgeist perfectly.

But after that, I had had and heard enough. Continuing sales by Oasis and the wide, dare I say nostalgia-driven, adulation now afforded to Beady Eye suggest I must be in some sort of grumpy misanthropic minority.

For me, the Beady Eye album generally sounds unoriginal, derivative and tired. The Roller exudes essence of Oasis and a vague rehash of the musical ground partly covered, say, in Instant Karma by Lennon. For now, I won’t be joining the Church of Beady Eye. Anyway, in the interests of utter fairness so that you can make up your own mind, let me leave you with The Roller:

Another fab blast from the past: Refugee, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

OK, the lyrics could seem rather trivial given the real-life tribulations of proper refugees, not least the poor benighted masses trying to get out of Libya at the moment. But this is a great arrangement by a great band able to deliver both in the studio (with agonising attention to detail, verging on perfectionism) and live.

First, the recorded version with a superb mix: marvellous bass line, exquisite organ fills, rock-solid drumming, great rhythm and lead guitars, plaintive lead and backing vocals, and excellent dynamics:

And then a quality live TV performance too:

Great blast from the past: Dire Straits playing Money for Nothing at Knebworth

This video is great, a shivers-and-tingles-up-and-down-the-spine moment: marvellous footage on stage and in the crowd, exceptionally good sound quality for a live outdoor event, Mark Knopfler at his cool understated best, and Eric Clapton, in his pink suit, as an utterly sublime sidesman. The song is a great commentary on the MTV society and is the sort of thing that does make me proud to be English (even we cynics have our patriotic moments):

Shock, horror. It’s a decent debut single. It’s called Carnival, the band are the Locomotives

A couple of listens confirm that the Locomotives have a tuneful, well-produced debut song in Carnival. It tells a story, has solid vocals and harmonies, a good guitar break and even sympathetic drumming (that’s probably mussed up someone’s street cred). All in all, a fine piece of work. Listen to the Soundcloud at  http://locomotivesuk.tumblr.com/Carnival

Lachrymose and lambada: the less than and more than acceptable faces of JLo

I watched American Idol last night (well, someone has to): on this occasion, a stereotypical mix of a hackneyed idea (Beatles week, old British red phone box plonked in the middle of the stage) and yet the vocal talent generally shining through and the dross painfully exposed.

I’m not an “either/or” when it comes to talent shows. I think they have their place but, to state the bleeding obvious, most artists come to public prominence and acclaim by all the other routes that do not involve American Idol, The X Factor et al.

Yet arguably the most distracting and extraordinary performance last night was the tear-stained, self-indulgent “I-can’t-do-this-anymore” pity party from Jennifer Lopez, a judge for goodness’ sake. Cue predictable hugs from her fellow panel members Randy Jackson and Steven Tyler.

Take a look at the bigger picture. This was being broadcast as country after country in the Middle East continued in unrest and turmoil, part of the struggle of long-oppressed people for basic freedoms and a job. Girl, unlike in much of the world, as far as I know nobody died not getting to the final 24 of a talent show or having to decide, for what I assume is a huge pile of dosh, who does. When it comes to globally known dance music superstars, surely a key part of the job description is smiling, making us happier, distracting us from our woes, not inappropriate public outbreaks of sobbing over relative trivia. Keep the hyperventilating for behind closed doors, please.

Enough misery already. Let’s accentuate the positive: the forthcoming JLo single, On The Floor, is a great upbeat dance track that reinterprets the lambada and makes up for what I hope are the temporary lachrymose excesses of a talented and beautiful woman.

I like the edginess that Pitbull adds to this song. I understand that the official release date in Britain is late next month (March 27, 2011). Enjoy:

Countertenorism

No, the heading is not a mistake and this is not an attack on tenors. Rather, I’m going to reflect on the phenomenon of the countertenor, the male voice that covers the alto/contralto range. First, a confession: I was an (almost teenage) countertenor, as I sang the part for several years in an English cathedral choir in my early twenties. My thanks and appreciation to Rebecca Caine, the soprano, who is experienced in both operatic and musical theatre traditions, for prompting this train of thought after she posted a humorous tweet about a newspaper story. An edited version of our exchange:

I read this as Counter Tenor! [Daily Telegraph headline] The British counter-terror programme that ‘fails to stop extremists’

I imagine my great countertenor [CT] hero James Bowman bewailing this with soul-searching phrases from Vivaldi [reference to the psalm setting Nisi Dominus]

Actually, the CT I saw in Death in Venice [Canadian Opera] recently changed my mind. Beautiful man, beautiful singing

So you were not keen on the CT concept before?

Possibly in the same way I used to not like trannies. Trying to be more of a woman than me. Now I like both

I sang CT for 2 years in cathedral choir in my twenties. For me, it was about developing hidden register of natural instrument

I’ve always wondered how men come across that register. Does one wake up one day and decide to give it a go? Choral tradition?

And, to borrow from Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, that got me thinking. My first thought is to acknowledge the trauma of the breaking voice. I was a good treble, singing in a London parish church choir with a strong musical tradition and also the Westminster Abbey Special Choir. In those circumstances, you know it is inevitable that your voice will break and you know why, but nevertheless it is a loss that in some way has to be mourned and got through if you are a serious boy singer.

I moved from the front row to the back row and started singing tenor. Unlike in historic Vatican times, there was no suggestion of castration and continuing to sing in an upper register seemingly otherwise reserved for the female of the species. I was aware of the countertenor tradition, where men sing falsetto, for want of a better term, but my limited exposure to not the finest examples of it persuaded me that it was not a good idea.

That changed when I went to a Prom at the turn of the 1970s and heard James Bowman performing with, I think, Martyn Hill and David Munrow as “early music” enjoyed what can be appropriately termed its renaissance. There was a purity about the Bowman voice that was not feminine and was unsullied by the fruity or hooty tone that, to my ears, makes some countertenors sound very mezzo-soprano but in a bad way that evokes unfortunate visions of pantomime ugly sisters.

Some years later, as a postgraduate student in my early twenties, I inquired about joining the local cathedral choir and was asked by the choirmaster if I would be interested in singing countertenor.  He gave me an audition and in his languid way said that I made some interesting noises. There was something of a crisis in that part of the choir as the ageing gents singing the part were sounding a little owl-like.

I lasted a couple of years before choosing to move on. There were many challenges: discovering and developing a voice that blended well with the rest of the choir; and, as an average sight reader, working through a vast repertoire that changed weekly on the basis of about two hours’ rehearsal for almost two hours’ performance. My main voice production issue was at the bottom of the register (around the F below middle C) where I struggled to produce a tone that compared with the top end (I could produce the top F two octaves higher fairly well). On the negative side, dark tales circulated of nodules developing on vocal cords after years of singing in this “unnatural way”.

I became very aware of the long tradition of countertenor singing, not least in England, and felt proud to be part of it: Henry Purcell was one name that loomed large, not least with Rejoice in the Lord Alway, and on one occasion I did manage to sing the Orlando Gibbons verse anthem This is the Record of John. I have not sung for many years but it was good while it lasted.

I do not think that singing countertenor is de facto effeminate or gay, although it can be perceived or misunderstood that way: hence the gibes about Alfred Deller, who did most to resurrect countertenor singing in the mid-20th century in England, in the Canterbury and St Paul’s cathedral choirs, as being a bearded lady. Deller is reported to have been asked by an enthusiastic Frenchwoman after a concert: “You are eunuch, no?” He replied: “I think you mean unique, madame.”

I have heard Bowman sing in the past couple of years and, even in his sixties, still find his voice to be extraordinarily moving and musical.

There is also a whole area to explore in pop and rock of the high-register male. Two examples that come to mind in England are Jimmy Somerville and Jon Anderson; and not least there is Sylvester on the US disco scene. There are many more. I’ll finish for now by wondering if the predominantly church countertenor tradition is one of the influences on these other genres.

PS Credit where it’s due: Rebecca Caine’s website is http://www.rebeccacaine.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conductor unbecoming?

I’ve done all sorts of music over, God help me, about half a century. Rosenna East, a violinist in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, has just written in The Herald (Glasgow) about the need or otherwise to have someone out the front waving his (it is still overwhelmingly his) or her arms about, pulling faces, smiling, weeping and generally gurning and yet not actually playing an instrument … I’m paraphrasing rather extensively, so enjoy the original article and I’ll then discuss things a bit further http://tiny.cc/qoc9l …

From my childhood until my mid-twenties, most of my musicmaking was in church or cathedral choirs, often conducted. At its best, the conducting was helpful or even moving as a very experienced/professional person who knew the repertoire far better was leading and directing us amateurs/semi-professionals. The nadir was, I remember as if it were today, when an anthem went badly adrift and the alleged professional behaved very unprofessionally and almost unforgivably. Far from rescuing the situation, he waltzed off in a huff, leaving us and the organist to get back on track. That helped to decide me to leave that choir, as I had totally lost confidence – not in that person’s ability, but rather his character. I and many of my colleagues felt betrayed, like private soldiers who had discovered that an officer was a coward under fire.

More and more from my mid-twenties onwards, my musicmaking has been “informal” in the sense of being in the pop, rock and especially soul and blues genres rather than “classical”. The culture has been professional in the sense of rehearsing regularly and then performing to a sufficiently high standard to draw and keep a crowd, but the dynamic has been quite different. Yes, there are leaders, and brass players always seem to need their parts written down, but the rest of us – singers, guitarists, bassists, keyboard players, drummers and yours truly (Latin and other percussion, harmonicas) – have chosen to play/sing mainly by ear and memory. We’ve operated on the basis that we know each other and our strengths and weaknesses really well; we’ve looked at and talked to each other in rehearsal and on stage. It all feels more natural and, buzzword alert, organic.

I can see the point of a conductor when a group of musicians or singers is large/inexperienced/does not know the repertoire really thoroughly. But when there are no more than, say, a couple of dozen performers, and they’re competent or even better, especially top professionals such as Rosenna, I’m tempted to borrow from, er, The Temptations (and Edwin Starr) and ask: “Conductors, what are they good for?” Their answer, regarding war, was “absolutely nothing”.

Ponder this as you listen to The Temptations http://bit.ly/i51uti