"minutes and seconds live" is just a CD when all's said and done, of course, well put-together and clear on the ear but not the same as being there. Still, it preserves the interesting rearrangements of some of Moyet's classic songs, and it's a decent memento of an excellent tour. Recommended to those to whom that means something.
Posting this a month or so late, but what the heck.
To start with, a boast. I first saw Magazine in (I think) 1978 at a gig in a university hall, and then again in 1979 at the Corn Exchange. So, having made it to their gig at The Junction, I think I must have seen them every time they've played Cambridge.
Actually, the '79 gig was one of Angela's and my first dates, so we weren't going to miss this one. But first, we got hold of No Thyself, their first new recording as a band for thirty years. I'm not sure if anything on this is quite up to their best work c.1980, but it's definitely real Magazine, recalling, say, the menacing pulse of "The Light Pours Out of Me" in "The Burden of a Song", and the deliberate four-letter shock effects of "Permafrost" (only more so) in "Other Thematic Material". The pushing-for-accusations-of-bad-taste lyric of "Hello Mister Curtis (with apologies)" might almost count as something new, except in that it fits with Howard Devoto's general, habitual post of punky irony. (Though that his disdain clearly extends to punk: "No decadence, no cheap thrills of hate from me...") Some of the songs could probably grow on me quite a lot, in fact; they may look like conscious recreations of the band's old style, but in the worst case, that's a fine model to emulate.
(I was amused when some critics detected a new maturity in "Of Course Howard", incidentally, given that I recognised some of the lyrics from the introduction to a collection of other Magazine lyrics published thirty years ago. Actually, the song seems to represent a dialogue between Devoto today and his younger self, which is interesting in itself.)
But anyway... For those who don't know them, Magazine were a group who evolved out of the punk scene when lead singer Howard Devoto decided to do something a bit unashamedly smarter, then vanished when Devoto apparently just got bored of the whole business, leaving a legacy that took the rock world decades to acknowledge. Unfortunately, since 1981, John McGeoch, the band's authentic post-punk guitar hero, has died. Also, when they reformed in 2009, Barry Adamson, their bass player and other most strikingly capable musician, rejoined, but he's since evidently decided that his career in film music and so forth means more to him, and walked away. The replacements, Devoto's occasional collaborator Noko on guitar and "Stan" on bass, are entirely capable of emulating the originals' playing well enough, but whether they can emulate the original synergistic, innovative brilliance is another matter.
Not that the audience at this gig were too worried (and I speak as one of them, believe me). We may not have had associations with the two guys on his left and right, but that was Howard Devoto in the middle. Okay, a lot of us were clearly there to be reminded of our youth. I haven't seen this many grey hairs and this much male-pattern baldness since ... um ...the last folk gig I was at. And I guess that Devoto, who's gone from "high forehead" to "bald" in thirty years, could feel entirely at home in this company. But enough tacky irony. That's Howard's job.
The set consisted of a mixture of old and new songs, in pretty conventional rock gig style, really, not that I'm complaining. It even used staging tricks I remember from thirty years ago, notably hitting the audience full in the face with white spotlights behind the band for "The Light Pours Out of Me". Among the new songs, "Hello Mister Curtis" was dedicated, a little strangely, to Terry Pratchett; I assume that the point there is that the song is about facing up to mortality, though whether its pose is one of acceptance or defiance - whether the lyrics are addressed to Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain in tones of wry admiration or contemptuous sarcasm - seems unclear. Clarity has never been the point with Magazine, mind; during the first song, Devoto was at one point wandering around the stage with a placard say "You Do The Meaning".
And we will, Howard, we will. Whether we were here for abrasive surrealism, or wry and twisted humour, or to be reminded of our student days, or just because we know the band will rip into that guitar riff in the encore of the monumental classic "Shot By Both Sides", we all likely went away satisfied.
The support, incidentally, were In Fear of Olive, whose country-tinged rock was competent enough, but seemed on this brief exposure to lack sufficiently memorable tunes, aside from the fact that they really didn't look to have much in common with Magazine. But the support act in '79 was Simple Minds, and I didn't think very much of them, so what do I know?
A covers album from Peter Gabriel has to be an interesting idea, but this is, well, Peter Gabriel; he's not one to take the entirely obvious route. Scratch My Back features a dozen interesting songs (some of which I was familiar with, some not) - all accompanied by modernist orchestral arrangements by John Metcalfe, and generally slowed right down to the point where Gabriel's singing occasionally approaches simple speech.
So it ain't exactly rock and roll. But it's good, in a self-consciously searing sort of way, and well worth a listen. It did occasionally remind me of Peter Sellers reciting the Beatles' "Hard Day's Night" in the manner of Laurence Olivier's Richard III, though.
There's apparently also going to be a CD made by the various people whose songs Gabriel covered, covering some of his songs in return. That may be interesting - it should feature David Bowie, Paul Simon, the Magnetic Fields, Randy Newman, and Neil Young, among others.
The "Special Edition" version is well worth the extra money, incidentally, less for the second CD (which has remixes of three of the tracks, plus definitive proof that "Waterloo Sunset" is an absolute poetic and musical masterpiece which can withstand absolutely any sort of assault) than for its inclusion of a code that gives a free three-month subscription to the Society of Sound - which means free downloads of high-quality versions of a clutch of varied but often very interesting albums.
As some of my older friends can probably attest through gritted teeth, I've always had a very large soft spot for Magazine. This is partly aesthetic (they were, after all, one of the most important and talented bands of the post-punk era), and partly sentimental (I saw them twice in my student days in Cambridge, and the second time was one of my early dates with Angela). But Magazine were a band who quit while they were ahead, when presiding genius Howard Devoto evidently decided that life as a rock star didn't suit him and ran away to join a photo library. (His subsequent musical projects, in Luxuria and ShelleyDevoto, never seem to have been more than hobbyist exercises.) Anyway, I presumably don't count as a proper Magazine fan; I didn't get to the reunion concerts last year...
Still, I did eventually get around to picking up the DVD of one of those shows (from Wire-Sound), so I guess that I get some latent fan points. I also get a pretty good down-the-line concert DVD, simply but slickly enough shot and presented given the slightly marginal nature of the exercise. It turns out that the members of the band have lasted pretty well, absent the sadly deceased John McGeoch, as has the band's music (but we knew that). In particular. when the event kicks off with "The Light Pours Out Of Me", we are forcibly reminded that Barry Adamson provided much of the heart and soul of the band, generating bass lines that are at once thunderous and melodious. (I'm not sure about his current apparent taste for top hats, but with that talent, he could get away with wearing a tutu.) Across the stage from him, McGeoch's replacement, Noko (who previously worked with Devoto in Luxuria) provided a remarkably effective emulation of one of the great rock guitarists of the last thirty years, only occasionally slipping into conventional axe hero antics that McGeoch would surely have avoided.
But it's the man between them who counts, and who's ... not changed, indeed who looks amazing unchanged (but he always looked a bit like an ageless alien reptile), but illuminated by time - and the main thing we can now admit is what a (deliberately) funny man Howard Devoto really is. Actually, Magazine in general and Devoto's lyrics and stage presence in particular were always loaded with irony and flippant surrealism, but jokes weren't what smart post-punk rock was supposed to be about back in 1980, and Devoto's threatening songs, laden with alienated lyrics, chilly electronic soundscapes, and razor-sharp Adamson and McGeoch riffs, could seem terribly serious if you let them. Now, though, when Devoto shows up in a pink jacket and plus fours, and announces that he's reformed the band to impress a woman, the joke becomes a bit more explicit. We've all had thirty years to relax (well, I have - I hope and would imagine that Magazine have fans these days whose parents hadn't even met when I saw them at the Cambridge Corn Exchange), and we can allow ourselves a more open awareness of the ridiculous.
Which reminds me - one fannish note. "Model Worker", a love song in the jargon of Chinese Communism (yes, some of us got that joke even back then) includes the line "I know the cadre will look after me". This was widely misheard when it was first played as "that Carter", and in 1981, Devoto played along by singing "I know that Reagan will look after me" instead. In 2009, he sang "I know Obama will look after me"... The only other odd lyrical tweak I noticed was in "Permafrost"; in the first chorus, "I will" became "you want me to", and there were even mumbles about political correctness from the sofa. But in subsequent iterations, that still-chilling-thank-you chorus reverted to its original form.
Oh, and I wonder - were these the first Magazine concerts with a backing chorus line (of two)? One of these ladies - Rosalie Cunningham, I believe - took duet parts on one or two songs, and had the Magazine cool down just right, with a perfect combination of a detached gaze, a razor-sharp black bob, and an LBD - plus a tendency to sit down on stage to read a magazine when her voice wasn't needed. She deserves credit.
The extras on the disc are pretty minimal - one song from a rehearsal room, one from a different concert - and there was very little new; just a re-enactment of greatness. But no matter. Sentiment assuaged.
When I ordered this DVD, I also picked up the CD which was apparently indirectly responsible for the reunion concerts happening - keyboard player Dave Formula's new Satellite Sweetheart, featuring every surviving member of the band (and indeed featuring a McGeoch credit on one track - presumably a sample from an old recording or something), which assembly inspired someone to think that they could also do some stage shows - along with Live and Intermittent, a collection of live tracks from Magazine's heyday which Formula has recently assembled. The latter may be moderately interesting as a historical document, but it's a very rough recording; completists-only stuff, really. The former is, well, despite all those appearances (on different tracks), not really how one imagines Magazine would have evolved, even over thirty years; Formula is evidently one of those (extremely talented) rock band members who'd really, really like to be showing what he can do by playing something slightly different - in this case, something like lounge jazz, a lot of the time. Adamson has gone the same way at times over the years, to be sure, but he at least has a taste for the sinister in his atmospherics. There were times on Satellite Sweetheart when I was irresistibly reminded of Derek Smalls's excursions into free jazz, but without the thundering bass (or the stunned audience). Still, it does feature Devoto singing on "Via Sacra"...
I first ran across "Mara Aranda y Solatge" in the form of a single track, "Romanç De La Porquerola", on a freebie CD with a magazine. This caught my attention enough that I eventually, recently, purchased the whole album it was from, Dèria, in MP3 form.That was a good move.
The album is, as I understand it, a set of modern treatments of 16th century Aragonese Spanish songs in some kind of Sephardic tradition. That probably sounds terribly academic, and to be honest, there are times listening to this stuff when a combination of nasal Spanish vocals and the buzzing of what I think are Galician bagpipes gets a bit ... worthily unprepossessing. Likewise, the harp solos can be a trifle obvious in their emotional effects. But then some extra layers of instrumentation cut in, or the quasi-flamenco rhythms shift into higher gear, and I'll forgive them pretty much anything.
"Romanç De La Porquerola" is probably still my favourite song here, in fact; a 6+ minute track that, for the first third, sounds like a melancholy medieval lament for bagpipes and voice. Then the rhythm section kicks in with a vengeance, and Aranda begins an intricate duet with the stringed instruments... I still don't have the faintest idea what she's singing about, but it still sends shivers down my spine for the next four minutes.
"Els Contrabandistes" hits high gear faster, whereas "Quatre Traginers" stays slow and probably tragic, while "Bolero De Guadassuar" has a lovely double-bass-driven opening... Oh heck, I'm attempting vague descriptions of stuff which I like but can't claim to understand. I like it, okay? It's evoking a culture where I probably wouldn't want to live even if I could speak the language, but if this is what their music sounds like, I'm happy to go visit.
(There seem to be some pretty good clips of the group playing live available on YouTube, incidentally. Worth a look.)
I haven't really followed R.E.M.'s development closely enough to essay a review of Live at the Olympia. They're not a band about which it feels permissible to attempt even a glib, smart-arse bunch of throwaway comments unless one has trawled studiously through the subtleties of the I.R.S. years and all that; heck, even they seem to avoid talking much about Automatic for the People, which a naive casual fan like me can regard as one of the great albums of the last fifty years or so.
I can say that this collection has some songs I recognise, and some I don't, and of the former, there are some wonderful performances, and some which aren't quite as punchy or enthralling as I've heard elsewhere. And I'll note that R.E.M. are clearly a great live band, who it'd be cool to catch in the flesh some day. But that's elementary stuff.
No, the reason I'm posting is simply a thought inspired by the DVD which came with the deluxe set which I picked up. Specifically; how can a band so alert to the history of rock and roll, and so paranoically diligent about avoiding cliche, include so many scenes where they wander around corridors backstage prior to going on. I mean, have they really not seen Spinal Tap?
In which is considered the question: Is Nina Persson selling out?
Well, not really. Anyone whose early work (with the Cardigans) mixed references to Emmerdale Farm with Black Sabbath covers is more or less permanently immunised against any accusation so naffly '70s. But a first couple of listens to A Camp's second album do rather suggest that it's short on the sinister-surreal edge of their first, cover art notwithstanding. A Camp used a lot of conventional-sounding instrumentation and arrangements, to be sure, but placed them behind Persson's dark or chilling or moving singing. This one just doesn't seem to have anything to match the bass-synth thunder of "Such a Bad Comedown", or as hook-laden as "The Bluest Eyes in Texas" - let alone as chilling as the Cardigan's similarly recent "And Then You Kissed Me", as smart as their "You're the Storm", or as potent as "I Need Some Fine Wine, and You, You Need to Be Nicer". And the loose theme of colonialism doesn't really seem to hold it together.
Still, it does have "Stronger Than Jesus" (Don't you know that love is stronger than Jesus?/Don't you know love can kill anyone?/Bring it on, wars and diseases...) and the mutant-'60s-girl-group style of "Here Are Many Wild Animals". I guess that Persson's self-possessed-masochist stance might begin to wear after a few more albums, but I'm still along for the ride.
features a dozen interesting songs (some of which I was familiar with, some not) - all accompanied by modernist orchestral arrangements by John Metcalfe, and generally slowed right down to the point where Gabriel's singing occasionally approaches simple speech.
When I ordered this DVD, I also picked up the CD which was apparently indirectly responsible for the reunion concerts happening - keyboard player Dave Formula's new Satellite Sweetheart, featuring every surviving member of the band (and indeed featuring a McGeoch credit on one track - presumably a sample from an old recording or something), which assembly inspired someone to think that they could also do some stage shows - along with Live and Intermittent, a collection of live tracks from Magazine's heyday which Formula has recently assembled. The latter may be moderately interesting as a historical document, but it's a very rough recording; completists-only stuff, really. The former is, well, despite all those appearances (on different tracks), not really how one imagines Magazine would have evolved, even over thirty years; Formula is evidently one of those (extremely talented) rock band members who'd really, really like to be showing what he can do by playing something slightly different - in this case, something like lounge jazz, a lot of the time. Adamson has gone the same way at times over the years, to be sure, but he at least has a taste for the sinister in his atmospherics. There were times on Satellite Sweetheart when I was irresistibly reminded of Derek Smalls's excursions into free jazz, but without the thundering bass (or the stunned audience). Still, it does feature Devoto singing on "Via Sacra"...
This one's a bit of a find.
I haven't really followed R.E.M.'s development closely enough to essay a review of Live at the Olympia
. They're not a band about which it feels permissible to attempt even a glib, smart-arse bunch of throwaway comments unless one has trawled studiously through the subtleties of the I.R.S. years and all that; heck, even they seem to avoid talking much about Automatic for the People, which a naive casual fan like me can regard as one of the great albums of the last fifty years or so.
