Category: Musical Tuesdays

Musical Tuesday – Epics

Well, better late than never!

I’ve been really busy this week – I reinstalled Civilization III and have been conquering the world as the glorious Persians. So much more important than blogging commitments I’m sure you’ll agree.

In any case, this week I’ve decided to focus on two songs that can only be described as epic. Or possibly far too long. Long, epic songs that almost approach prog-rock in their sheer lengthy indulgence.

We’ll start with another from Sheffield movers and shakers of the 90’s, Pulp. Wickerman (from their last album, 2001’s We Love Life) is a phantasmagorical tour of the Steel City and its surrounds with Jarvis Cocker as your guide. Let him show you the hidden rivers that run below the streets, the viaduct that drunks used to jump off and the pressed in plastic letters at the cafe at Forge Dam. Feel the regret and try to track down the sample taken from the soundtrack of classic British horror movie The Wicker Man – I’m assured it’s in there somewhere.

If you’re thinking that the whole thing sounds like poetry, you can hear it as such too.

If eight minutes of Jarvis Cocker isn’t enough music for you, please carry on to our second song, Dire Straits’ Telegraph Road. Taken from 1982’s Love Over Gold it clocks in at an almost unbelievable 14 minutes 18 seconds. It’s not in bad company either, the entire album only has five songs on it, the shortest of which goes for over five minutes.

The interior album art shows a snuffed out cigarette in front of an Amstrad PCW 8256 – which is what a lot of the album sounds like – a dim, smoke filled room at 3:00 in the morning with grit in your eyes and only a monotone cathode-ray tube for company. The recording process got so grim in fact that the band had to cut loose and compose Twisting by the Pool just to stop themselves going mental. But the end result is regarded as one of their best, and Telegraph Road is the crowning glory of the album.

It’s a winding story that starts with the history and development of a town, then meanders off into bleak 1980s post-industrial collapse, which merges into relationship collapse, then wanders into a rocking five minute guitar playout. If this wasn’t enough to make it an epic song, it was also first performed live in my home city of Perth. So there!

Here it is, see you in a quarter hour…

Tune in next week when I may actually be on time for once! 😀

Musical Tuesday – I remember Every. Single. Thing.

Yes, it’s that time of the week again when I pick two songs for your aural delectation and try to justify some vague link between them – Musical Tuesday!

We start today with a classic late-disco track from 1982, Laura Branigan’s Gloria

It may surprise people to learn the the track was originally by Italian singer Umberto Tozzi. A hit in Italy in 1979 it was similarly successful in various translations around Europe, but it only came to the attention of English speakers with the massive success of Branigan’s version three years later. Take a listen to it, from the perspective of 30 years on the production is a bit dated, but that girl could sing! Sadly she passed away from a brain aneurism in 2004.

My second selection this week is Disco 2000 by those thoughtful pre-emos of the 90’s Brit-Pop scene Pulp. Released in 1995 it was one of the band’s biggest hits and tells the tale of a young man in love with a childhood friend who seemingly can’t see him for all the popular people she now hangs out with (not that you’d realise that from the video clip…). The story is apparently autobiographical, with Jarvis Cocker (Pulp’s almost supernaturally tall and thin frontman who was a hipster back when a hipster was someone cool and interesting rather than a dickhead with a beard and stupid hat) claiming that the only made up part is the woodchip wallpaper.

So, what’s the connection? Well did you actually listen to them? The main riff of Disco 2000 is taken direct from Gloria, with Jarvis even driving home the point by singing “Deborah – Deborah” in exactly the same way as Laura Branigan. This should not be any great revelation – it’s been known about for 17 years – it’s just an interesting way to link two very fine songs, that’s all.

(Good lord, I just realised that gap between now and Disco 2000 is longer than the gap between Disco 2000 and Gloria. Damn I’m getting old…)

Note that I’ve embedded the full version of the song, that includes the Cocker trademark of a slightly strange monologue which is cut from the radio version. They always cut Pulp songs for the radio, Common People is never quite as good without the vicious third verse about dogs and chip stains. Sad.

Finally, some years back I had four concluding notes (something like C B A B) from a song stuck in my head for months. After almost going mad I eventually tracked it down to Disco 2000, the very last place I would have expected. Neat.

Musical Tuesday – Gallimaufry

With the Dr Who 50th anniversary over the weekend, what could be more appropriate than picking a couple of completely random and unrelated tracks – thus creating a musical gallimaufry* – for this week’s Musical Tuesday?

(well, I could l0ad up the extended 12 inch of Doctorin’ the Tardis, but no one needs that!)

So first up, a catchy little 60’s influenced track from Brooklyn three piece The Essex Green – Don’t Know Why (You Stay)

Despite the cheery tune and soaring harmonies in the chorus the lyrics are a bit grim – but then there are plenty of other great songs like that, so who are we to argue?

Secondly I present a real gallimaufry of a track consisting of a bit of Bach combined with a 12th century student drinking song, played on synth and bagpipes by some insane Germans who’ve chosen to name themselves after a contagious medieval dancing mania. So here is Toccata by Tanzwut (excuse the 40k imagery and terrible spelling, it’s the only decent copy of the song I know of on YouTube)

It sounds scary as hell, but the lyrics (taken from the same source as Carl Orff’s famous Oh Fortuna) pretty much translate as “If you’re not here to drink then get out of our party!”, which is still kind of threatening I suppose, but less so than the treatment might suggest.

OK, I’m done for now. Tune in next week for another two tracks that might have some more effective kind of theme than not having a theme at all.

* I’ve always presumed that Gallifrey – the name of the Doctor’s homeworld – took its inspiration from gallimaufry. Exactly what this says about Time Lord society is up for debate…

Musical Tuesday – You’re a Lion!

Back in the 1920’s a black South African man named Solomon Linda wrote a song. You know it. Everyone knows it. But you probably don’t know it by the name Linda gave it. He called it Mbube, Zulu for “The Lion” and the version he recorded with his band the Evening Birds in 1939 went like this…

Recognise it now?

Mbube went through a variety of mutations. America folk singer Pete Seeger turned it into song called Wimoweh and recorded it in 1952 with the Weavers. Popular and covered by many artists throughout the 50’s it was rewritten by one George David Weiss (co-writer of Elvis’s I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You) who added some mediocre lyrics about lions, retitled it, and gave it to Doo-Wop group the Tokens who released it as a B-Side in 1962.

You can probably guess the rest. The Lion Sleeps Tonight went on to become one of the most recorded songs in human history.

But what of Solomon Linda? He was paid a token fee of about 87 cents for the recording back in 1939. That was it. The success of the record made him a star in South Africa, but when he died in 1962 he had only $22 to his name, and his widow couldn’t even afford a gravestone for him.

Happily, things eventually worked out alright. In 2004 his family sued Disney – who were making millions from featuring the song in The Lion King – and a settlement was reached wherein the Linda family is now receiving the royalties they deserve. The lawsuit and settlement were prompted in no small part by the remarkable and evocative article In the Jungle by Rian Malan, published in Rolling Stone in 2000 and well worth a read if you’ve got an hour or so to spare.

My second track this week is for another descendant of Solomon Linda’s tune. Composed by German band leader Bert Kaempfert in 1962 (that year keeps coming up…) it’s titled A Swingin’ Safari and despite it’s campy 1950s-ness it has a place in my heart because my dad used to play it when I was a kid. So, enjoy!

Musical Tuesday – A Song for Europe

Well, today was the Melbourne Cup, the horse race that both proverbially and allegedly stops a nation. Woohoo.

I’ve never really been a fan of the Cup. I’m a contrarian by nature – if someone tells me that everyone does something I’ll tend not to do it, specifically to be a counter-example – so I’ve always reacted to being told that the Cup stops a nation by saying “Well it doesn’t stop me!” and ignoring it. I’m also not big on horse racing because of the animal welfare issues. I’m not a member of PETA or anything, and I eat plenty of meat, but racing somehow seems to be pushing our treatment of animals a bit far. I’ve also got a streak of puritanism deep in my soul, which pops up at unexpected moments to condemn things like gambling as wicked – so Melbourne Cup day has never held much attraction for me.

Of course working in an office environment makes such iconoclasm difficult, and heading off to a pub to watch the race at least provided a free lunch and 90 minutes or so of not-working. So I went along with it. I was also talked into placing a $2 bet, which I put down on Red Cadeux – the horse suggested by Diesel the Psychic Echidna, mostly just for a laugh.

As anyone who gives a crap about the race would know, Red Cadeux came in second, so I ended up winning $10. Not bad at all for advice from a monotreme, not bad at all.

Anyway, in honour of the event what song could I choose for today but My Lovely Horse from classic comedy series Father Ted?

For those unfamiliar with the show (have you been living under a rock for the last twenty years?) it follows the chaotic lives of a trio of notably unholy Catholic Priests exiled to a small island off the coast of Ireland – the venal Father Ted, the idiotic Father Dougal and the frankly diabolical Father Jack. In the episode A Song for Europe Ted and Dougal decide to enter the Eurosong music contest (an extremely  thinly veiled parody of Eurovision) and come up with a ridiculous dirge about ‘a lovely horse’. They later improve it by stealing a tune from another song, but end up representing Ireland in Eurosong with the original because the country is desperate to lose and avoid the cost of hosting it again next year.

In real life the song was written by Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy, and the band actually released it as B-Side in 1999.

In any case, here is the song as presented in the episode (the seemingly random inclusion of swimming sequences and ping pong is because it’s a parody of the video for That’s What Friends Are For by the Swarbriggs).

They really need to lose that sax solo…

My second pick sticks to the Eurosong theme with the song Wolves of the Sea, which was Latvia’s Eurovision entry in 2008. But I’m not going to make you listen to the campy Latvian version, instead I’m presenting the cover by Scottish pirate-metal band Alestorm, which was released in 2009 (yes, pirate-metal is a thing).

I first heard this track in the Morley branch of Games Workshop and was rather surprised to say the least. But not as surprised as some commenter on YouTube who seem to be unable to grasp the purpose of the steel drum break in the middle. I mean, is it really that hard to figure out what they’re referencing? Really?

Anyway, that’s enough for now. The prawns I had at lunch seem to be disagreeing with me, and I’m taking an early night.

Musical Tuesday – Satellites

Sad musical news over the weekend with the death of iconic composer, musician and rock poet Lou Reed. It was a foregone conclusion that I’d feature one of his songs in tribute this week, but I had to think long and hard about which one. The beautiful Perfect Day, which after one listen had me listening obsessively to RTR back in the pre-internet early 90’s in the hopes that they’d play it again so I could find out who it was by? The rocking There She Goes Again that I accidentally downloaded off a less than reputable file sharing service in the freewheeling early 2000’s while looking for the similarly titled song by the La’s, but grew to love anyway? The classic Walk on the Wildside? Something really obscure to prove my musical cred? No. In the end I decided I couldn’t do better than simply posting my favourite Lou Reed song, no matter how overplayed or cliched it may be this week, 1972’s Satellite of Love.

Thanks Lou. We won’t see your like again.

The second song I’m highlighting is another one concerning satellites by another musical magician. In his truncated life, Joe Meek inhabited the space where genius and insanity collide. But by insanity, I don’t mean entertaining whackiness – he  was emotionally and psychologically unstable, moody, irritable, occasionally violent and dangerously paranoid. He was obsessed with death and hung around in graveyards trying to record ghosts, and was convinced that Buddy Holly was talking to him from beyond the grave. Yet despite this, in late 50’s and early 60’s Britain, musicians were lining up to work with him. Why? Because he was the only guy on that side of the Atlantic who could produce records that sounded like they came out of the big American recording studios.

He achieved this by combining obsession with a natural talent for electronics which allowed him to convert his rented London flat into a recording studio. All of it. Every room was riddled with wires, with microphones hanging from the ceilings, and a band who wanted to record would be broken up into the areas and corners as Meek saw fit to best record their sound. With the tracks down he’d tune and mix them on his homemade equipment – often supplementing the recording with what today would be regarded as samples – and come out with something astounding.

He was also a composer – although he couldn’t write musical notation or even sing in tune – and hired session musicians to come in and record his creations. The best known of these is the track I’m featuring today, 1962’s Telstar – inspired by the launch of the world’s first communications satellite Telstar 1 – and recorded by the Tornadoes. It sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard before and was a worldwide hit – reaching number 1 in both the UK and the US.

Sadly, things did not end well for Joe Meek. A lawsuit prevented him from receiving any royalties from Telstar, and the coming of the Beatles changed pop music fashion from lush orchestral arrangements to stripped back drums and guitars. He went into debt, fell deeper into paranoia and depression and finally in 1967 he took his own life and that of his landlady in a murder suicide. Nonetheless he left us with an incredible (and surprisingly vast) legacy of recordings that are still being explored and enjoyed to this day.

So that’s your lot. Tune in next week for more Musical Tuesday!

Musical Tuesdays – Theme Edition

Wow, I’ve actually managed to make a second Musical Tuesday post. Maybe this will last a while after all!

The first song for this week is Christmas Island by Washington State natives Lake. Also known as Island Song, keen eared listeners will recognise it as the end theme from possibly the best cartoon series ever, Adventure Time with Finn and Jake.

Even more keen eared listeners will realise that it’s not quite the same song as the end theme. The Adventure Time version has a whole bunch of altered lyrics – although you don’t get to hear too much of them, as the end credits only run for a verse and a half. If you’re interested in a complete comparison you can track the full version down – think of it as a challenge!

In any case, this version of the song is a sweet, lo-fi ballad with a touch of the 50’s to it, which is A-OK by me.

The second track for this week is another TV ending theme, this one belonging to 80’s sci-fi series Max Headroom. Those too young to remember the 80’s may be unaware of Max and his career trajectory which went from Pepsi spokes-thing to star of a cyberpunk TV series, to interrupting late night Doctor Who reruns with incomprehensible rants about Chuck Swirsky. In any case, I remember the TV series as being a greatly entertaining distopian extravaganza set “20 minutes into the future”.

It would no doubt look pretty dated now, but then Cyberpunk itself is dated. It was the 1980’s idea of what the 21st century would look like (much as Steampunk is the 21st century’s idea of the 19th century’s idea of the 20th century). It got a few things right, but a whole lot more things wrong. Cybernetic limbs for instance are rare, and not terribly good. There certainly is a “net” – but it’s not an exciting virtual reality world made up of vector polygons, it’s a place where people post videos of their cats. Corporations are  not – as yet – in charge of private armies of mercenaries engaging in prolonged gun battles through the city streets. Climate change has mitigated the chance of constant gloomy overcast and pounding rain, and neon signs full of Chinese and Japanese logograms are mostly limited to the areas immediately surrounding Asian restaurants.

But back to the music. This end theme apparently appeared on a only a few episodes, which meant that for years the only way I’ve had to hear it is the scratchy version I recorded straight off the TV onto an audio tape circa 1989 – which features the added bonus of an announcer talking about all the action coming up on a new episode of something called Paradise. But I recently stumbled over a copy that some kind soul has put up on YouTube. So slip on your mirrorshades and chill out to a great piece of 80’s synth that may or may not have been written by that dude from Ultravox.

Musical Tuesdays

So here’s a new thing I’ve been thinking about doing for a while to get me back into the habit of blogging, and hopefully resurrect the Wyrmlog from its current state of moribund sporadicity. Musical Tuesdays! Every Tuesday until I forget or get bored I’ll be highlighting two musical tracks that I think worthy of notice. Ideally one recent, and one from the past, but we’ll see how long that lasts.

So the first track I’ve decided to go with is the – as far as I’m aware – only notable hit from Texas natives Fastball – 1997’s The Way. The song is based on the true account of an elderly couple who set out one morning to attend a festival in a neighboring town, never turned up, and were discovered dead hundreds of miles away two weeks later – but it reinterprets this sad tale into a story of a couple who leave their lives behind to head out together onto the open highway into an eternal summer. The anxious verses describe their decision to leave and what happens to them on the road, but are resolved in a soaring, triumphal chorus, and the entire work has an enjoyable latin flavour as befits the song’s south-west origin.

The second track is Pizza Guy from Australia’s own Touch Sensitive. To be honest I don’t know much about the track or artist, except that I stumbled across it on late night radio and spent much of the next day trying to track it down. An electronic piece, it’s redolent of the 80’s and the works of Jan Hammer.

So there you go. Musical Tuesdays Issue One complete!

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