Thursday, March 17, 2005

Musical Memories

Claire's blog today includes the comment "choose at least 6 tracks or albums listen to them and tell us what they make you think about or feel when you hear them." So, more or less at random, here's six from my collection :

The Kid From Kensington, the Dogs D'Amour. In the late eighties, the Venue (rock night-club in Glasgow) decided to hold an under-18s night. A group of us would head up every weekend. Many of us were into the Dogs D'Amour, but the DJ would only play one of their songs, The Kid from Kensington. He claimed it was because no one would dance to any of the others - I reckon it was the only one he liked. As a result, Kid became a regular, at least for the five or six weeks until the Venue decided they weren't making enough cash, and the under-18s night disappeared without warning. Since we'd turned up, we went to the pub, and then to the over-18s version anyway.

Sonic Temple, the Cult. This album came out while I was reading many Lovecraft stories for the first time. To this day, some of the riffs make me think of Deep Ones.

Take Five, Dave Brubeck. Along with its cousin Unsquare Dance. In order to avoid compulsary torture (aka P.E.) I signed up for a crash music O level in my fifth year. There were five of us in the class, and not nearly enough time to teach us the syllabus, so the teacher (Dave Bringham, probably the coolest teacher I had) talked to us about stuff that was interesting and vaguely relevant. Dave Brubeck stands out in my memory, but he also introduced me to the works of Dave Allen. Other standout memories include Jason, Jonny, and me playing Run to the Hills by Iron Maiden on recorders, discussions on whether the score for Eric Clapton's Layla needed the words "Guitar Electrico Obligato" at the start, and listening to early Whitesnake.

The Everley Brothers. Not any particular song here, just their entire work. Mum was always a fan, and I grew up with the Evs complete works playing semi-constantly. Their early work still defines good pop music for me, and albums like "Songs our Daddy Taught Us" and "Stories He Could Tell" are minor country masterpieces that show the genre can be so much better than Dolly Parton and Achy Breaky Heart. See also Kenny Rogers.

Floodlands, the Sisters of Mercy. Goth nowadays seems to mean wearing a bit of black lipstick or lace. Uhuh. True goth was defined by Andrew Eldritch and Patricia Morrison, and This Corrison remains the genre's finest five minutes.

The Perceptions of Johnny Punter, Fish. Discovering Marillion was a dividing point for me. Either my parents or friends' parents were willing to attend Status Quo and Ultravox concerts with me, but heading up to Christmas 1987, Marillion at the Edinburgh Playhouse was too much, and Mum waited in the car till I reappeared. It was the point at which I really started to discover my own musical identity. Shortly afterwards, lead singer Fish left the band, who have carried on to bigger and better things, none more so than last years stunning Marbles collection. Fish, on the other hand, produced two decent albums, a collection of covers, and one album that was decidedly dodgy. In the process he went through three record labels. He was starting to look a little washed up. On my birthday in 1997 I was in Glasgow with Claire, at the time a relatively new girlfriend, and wandered into one of the record shops on Great Western Road. They had a new CD by Fish that I hadn't even heard about, Sunsets on Empire. So, Claire bought it for me as a present. We spent the rest of the night in the Queen Margaret Union, in my case getting riotously drunk. The next day, I played the disk for the first time. It opens with this track, a deceptively simple, rolling riff, confrontational lyrics, and production values that Fish has never matched before nor since. There are many great tracks on the album, but the opener represented the first time I'd been so excited by a Fish album since he left Marillion. Much of that was to do with this guy, Steven Wilson, who produced the whole album, as well as co-writing and playing guitar on most tracks. I'd never heard of him before, but soon found out that he had his own band, Porcupine Tree, and picked up their live album, Coma Divine. Since then I've enjoyed a voyage of discovery alongside Mr Wilson, discovering with delight his smaller projects - Bass Communion, IEM, Blackfield - and a host of other artists he's worked with or been inspired by. Much of my current interest in music can be traced back to this one track.

[<< Birthday Plans] [Sacred Texts >>]