Weekend Listening

If I were to list my favorite musicians of all time, Alan Parsons would rank in the top five, not as much for his musical playing — piano/keyboards, guitar and flute — as for his understanding of modern musical forms, and their composition, arrangement and production.  He was, and is, the complete package.

As a producer, he probably ranks only a little behind the legendary George Martin (unsurprisingly, as he learned his trade at EMI’s Abbey Road studios);  but for all Martin’s genius behind the desk, he was of the previous generation, while Parsons belonged to the next.  (It’s difficult to imagine George Martin creating Pink Floyd’s milestone Dark Side Of The Moon  album, for instance, which was Parsons’s breakthrough into the top ranks of record producers. )

And it says much about Parsons that when asked to produce Floyd’s followup Wish You Were Here, he turned them down in order to create his own works, with co-producer/-composer Eric Woolfson, which could truthfully be described as modern classical music through the medium of “concept” albums.

Which brings us to our weekend listening project:  the Alan Parsons Project.

I discovered the Project back in the 1970s through Lead Guitarist Kevin, who had turned me on to many other artists I would otherwise have missed (Kate Bush, Hudson Ford, Christopher Cross and Earl Klugh, to name but some).  Given the stature of Parsons in the music business, it’s unsurprising that was able to surround himself with a wonderful array of talented musicians.

What I’m going to do is list my favorite Alan Parsons Project albums in chronological order — and for those who’ve never heard his music before, I’ll link to a single song, just as a taste for each work should you not have enough time to tackle the entire album.

Tales Of Mystery And Imagination — sets Edgar Allen Poe’s dark, broody prose to dark, broody music.  My favorite is Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether  (because we used to play it) but Cask Of Amontillado  is an absolute gem.

I, Robot — dystopian future (this time, based on Asimov’s writings), full of gloom and anxiety, set in songs of catchy brilliance.  Try Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You.

Pyramid — hey, it was the Seventies, and people bought into that “pyramid-power” jive.  The album, however, is outstanding, with Shadow of a Lonely Man  (John Miles on vocals!) being my favorite.

Eve — all about broads.  The standout is the bitter I’d Rather Be A Man.  So would I.

Eye In The Sky — the surveillance state (produced, it should be remembered, in the early 1980s).  The first two tracks should suffice.  From this point on, by the way, the Project albums became markedly more commercial-sounding.

Turn Of A Friendly Card — cynical look at gambling, in all its forms.  Time  could easily have been a Pink Floyd song.

Ammonia Avenue — probably the most commercial of the Project’s albums.  Prime Time  (the first song on the album link)was the big hit, although the turgid ballad Since The Last Goodbye  became a chick favorite.

I must confess to losing interest in the rest of the albums, because the commercial sound sounded like they’d all been produced by ugh  David Foster and not Alan Parsons.  Nevertheless, here they are:

Vulture Culture Sooner Or Later is indicative of the direction the Project was moving…

Stereotomy — not as commercial as the others, featuring longer, more complex songs instead of pop ditties.  This one is worth listening to in its entirety.

Gaudi — last of the Project’s “canonical” output.

Enjoy.

Quote Of The Day

From Taki’s Magazine:

If there are two categories in which black people outperform nearly everyone else on the planet, those would be sporting events and crime.

Our modern era is no different from other ones, despite our pretensions at civilization.  You can get pilloried, accused and even arrested just for speaking the truth.

Galileo would understand exactly what I’m saying.

Divided By A Common Language

That’s because the average town in Britishland has clearly-defined boundaries, where Town Planning forbids any kind of development outside those limits.

Here in the Land Of Da Free, our towns sprawl all over the fucking place, and (e.g. in Plano) you can drive around all day, not see a business of any kind, and still technically be “in town”.

The Germans, of course, have it down pat.  If you take the Ausfahrt  off the Autobahn  to, say, Stuttgart, you just follow the signs which say Zentrum  and you’ll end up in the main business center of town.

Which, by the way, the Brits with their love of inscrutable acronyms refer to as the “CBD” (central business district), only they don’t always use street signs to direct you there.  You get downtown by guesswork and luck.  Don’t ever stop and ask for directions, because the local yokels think it’s great fun to send you into a series of one-way streets and cul-de-sacs  (which is what signs do say, and not “dead ends”) until you wish Hitler had got the job done and flattened the place, back during the Slight Disturbances Of The Early Forties.

Not that I’m bitter about it, or anything.  When you finally get there, it’s all worth it.

…right up until you try to find parking.

From Pretty To Peculiar

There’s this TV show called Love Island, where pretty young heterosexual things of all types get to hang around in seclusion somewhere and bonk each other.  (I may not have got this quite right, as I’ve never actually watched the poxy thing, but this seems to be what happens.)  After the season ends, the cast go on to make all sorts of money from endorsements and Instagram appearances and so on.

Nice work, if you can get it.

And to get it,  you need to be pretty, regardless of whether you have a pleasure pole or a love socket.

The men, needless to say, don’t do much to make themselves look more attractive to the women — ’twas ever thus, except for men of the Elton John persuasion — but the sluts women certainly do.  And of course, by today’s deplorable standards of beauty, a girl needs to have an ass of Lopez/Kardashian dimensions, and a face that… well, see for yourselves.

Here’s an article which shows Before / After pics of some of the girls’ faces.  Most of them are fairly plain, but one stuck out as particularly sad:

She went from being quite stunning to looking like a RealDoll.

Yes, that’s a RealDoll.  I challenge anyone to contradict me.

In describing my despair at our modern life, I often say that I’m just a 1911 man trying to live in a 2020 world.  And I’m not exaggerating.

Here are three famous Edwardian beauties (Gladys Cooper, Lily Elsie and Marie Doro).  Compare them (and their contemporaries) with the grotésqueries  in the above article, and I think you’ll get my point.

 

Not a stitch of cosmetic surgery anywhere.  And if you didn’t fall instantly in love with one or all of the above three, I don’t want to talk to you anymore.

Lockdown Blues

Over a month ago I went to Trader Joe’s to buy a couple of things, but was told to go to the back of the (100-yard) queue because the store was only allowing a dozen or so customers at a time to go in.  The outside temperature that day was August-In-Dallas (i.e. there were lizards frying gently on the sidewalks), so I said (quite loudly) to the officious little asshole at the door:  “This is total and utter bullshit, and you guys are acting like hysterical children.  I don’t need your stupid products that much,” and walked away.

A couple of people cheered and gave me the thumbs-up — and a few even nodded and walked away themselves.  (Sometimes, it only takes one, and — this may come as a surprise to many — I’ve often been that one, in my lifetime.)

It’s bad enough when Nanny Government can’t stop telling you what to do:  stay out of here, only six people allowed to be together there, family reunions or events are banned, can’t shop here but there is okay, this work is allowed but that isn’t and so on, but don’t forget to wear your face-condom everywhere or else you’ll be fined / arrested / publicly scolded / tossed out.

When stores start fucking with people’s lives, however, it’s probably too much.  At least, it was too much for this wonderful woman, who after having been bullied by everyone in Government or a uniform for months, decided that being told to follow in-store one-way signs was a Nanny Too Far, and showed her displeasure:

Shopper becomes furious after Co-op staff in Lingfield, Surrey, ask her to observe social distancing rules and starts throwing items and knocking bottles of wine off the shelves. The video that was captured in CCTV shows the woman screaming at the shop’s workers, after being asked to use the one-way system.

And just to put this in perspective, here are a few pics of Lingfield:

   

Not exactly the kind of place where one might find agitators and troublemakers, is it?

If you follow no other link today, this would be the one.

Bravo, Madame.