Tag: Music

In a just and fair world, there would be very little manufactured pop music like that of the endless procession of boy bands like Take That and pop idols like Taylor Swift, all regurgitating musical ideas which revolve around the same four chords played in the same progression.  Rick Beato has a video entitled Why Boomers Hate Pop Music (start at 5.00 to miss the boring intro) and of course, he’s absolutely right, because when you’ve grown up on simpler music e.g. Beatles and the British Invasion (that era’s definition of boy bands), at least this was followed up by music becoming more thoughtful, complex and artistic — Procol Harum, Zep, King Crimson etc.

The problem with all the modern music is that it starts simple and stays that way, without any pretense towards greater sophistication.  (With notable exceptions like Dream Theater and their ilk — who, by the way, are technical wizards and their music is complex but not very sophisticated.)

As I’ve said in earlier posts like this rant, I find myself drifting more and more towards Eurometal bands because while they too sound fairly alike after a while, at least they come up with interesting songs like Everybody Dies, Sancta Terra  and the incredible No More Hollywood Endings.   Just remember, all musical genres eventually sound repetitive — classical music works with the same instruments and orchestral setups just as much as metal bands perform their repertoire with the same five or six instruments.  This is why the songs have to become more interesting — Rachmaninoff’s Air On A Theme by Paganini uses essentially the same instruments and musical format as Beethoven uses in his Piano Concerto No 4 G major, but they are different works altogether — something that cannot be said for most modern music, where last month’s chart-topper sounds exactly like this month’s, even though they are performed by completely different artists.

Yeah, I know that orchestral metal is really just a development of classical orchestral music, so it should come as no surprise that I would prefer orchestral metal to anything ever written, sung or performed by Ed Sheeran or James Blunt, just as I prefer Chopin to Gilbert & Sullivan.

And of course, a number of the orchestral metal performers are — quelle surprise! — classically trained (Amy Lee, Arjen Lucassen — who is today’s Donald Fagen — and Simone Simons, to name but three) and it shines through their music like a searchlight.

Go ahead and search for bands like Evanescence, Epica, Gentle Storm, Nightwish, Ayreon and… oh heck, just look up Noora Louhimo, Sharon van Adel, Tarja Turenen, Anneke van Giersbergen and Simone Simons, to name but a few.

Comparing their music to modern pop music is comparing Tulips from Amsterdam to Heart of Amsterdam.

And just to be absolutely clear:  when it comes to vocal ability, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga together aren’t fit to wear Floor Jansen’s eye makeup.

Now go and listen to Ghost Love Score.

I enjoyed myself during the late 1970s, but when I hit the 80’s was when I hit my stride.  No other way to put it:  I ruled.  Successful business career, band was playing up a storm, a “stable” of girlfriends — what later came to be called “friends with benefits” (we just called each other “friends”); and in the middle of that decade, I moved over to the U.S. to start all over again.

All this took place with a fantastic soundtrack, and here it is, Kim’s Top 50.  (I started off adding links to the songs, but in many cases, the links had either disappeared or the video been taken down.  So if you see a title you want to listen to, just look it up in YouTube or whatever.)  The songs are in no specific order.

1. Red Red Wine — UB40
2. More Than This — Roxy Music
3. Vienna — Ultravox
4. The Way It Is — Bruce Hornsby & The Range
5. Sledgehammer — Peter Gabriel
6. Stepping Out — Joe Jackson
7. Everybody Wants To Rule The World — Tears For Fears
8. Something About You — Level 42
9. Angel Of The Morning — Juice Newton
10. Higher Love — Steve Winwood
11. Touch and Go — Emerson Lake & Powell
12. Why Can’t This Be Love — Van Halen
13. Dance Hall Days — Wang Chung
14. Summer of ’69 — Bryan Adams
15. Run To You –Bryan Adams
16. Sussudio — Phil Collins
17. The Confessor — Joe Walsh
18. You Can Call Me Al — Paul Simon
19. Would I Lie To You? — Eurythmics
20. St. Elmo’s Fire — John Parr
21. Tainted Love — Soft Cell
22. Roseanna — Toto
23. Wildest Dreams — Moody Blues (a little 70s follow-through, there)
24. Don’t You (Forget About Me) — Simple Minds
25. Under Pressure — David Bowie & Queen
26. Sweet Child O’ Mine — Guns ‘N Roses
27. Upside Down — Diana Ross
28. 9 to 5 — Dolly Parton
29. Bette Davis Eyes — Kim Carnes
30. Maneater — Hall & Oates
31. Africa — Toto
32. Cars — Gary Numan
33. What About Love — Heart
34. The Girl Can’t Help It — Journey
35. One Night In Bangkok — Murray Head
36. Tuff Enuff — The Fabulous Thunderbirds
37. Let’s Go Crazy — Prince
38. Power Of Love — Huey Lewis & The News
39. Part Time Lover –Stevie Wonder
40. Addicted To Love — Robert Palmer
41. Things Can Only Get Better — Howard Jones
42. You Give Love A Bad Name — Bon Jovi
43. Walking On Sunshine — Katrina & The Waves
44. She Drives Me Crazy — Fine Young Cannibals
45. Easy Lover — Philip Bailey, Phil Collins
46. Dancing In the Dark — Bruce Springsteen
47. If You Don’t Know Me By Now — Simply Red
48. Hazy Shade of Winter — The Bangles (I know:  ancient song, but Susannah Hoffs)
49. Voices Carry — ‘Til Tuesday
50. Wouldn’t It Be Good — Nik Kershaw

Every single one of the above songs evokes a memory of a time, a place or a person, and every single one of them is absolutely wonderful.

One of the highlights of my excellent high school education was in choral singing.  I’d joined the Prep School Choir (after a rather terrifying audition), and when I moved from Prep School to College (a distance of about fifty yards — literally, College started in the next quadrangle over), I joined the College Choir.

The St. John’s College Choir was famous in South Africa.  We performed often, sometimes live concerts at the school and elsewhere, and sometimes radio performances (usually transmitted live from our chapel).  It was as close to a professional choir as one could get — actually, I’ve been in professional choral groups that weren’t as professional as we were.

The man who ran the thing was our choir master, James “Jimmy” Gordon, a tall, very classy 40-ish man of unbelievable talent as a singer, church organist (we had a 72-pipe organ in the chapel) and teacher.  It was generally accepted that Jimmy could have made a good living as a singer or an organist — even, perhaps, as a concert pianist;  but there he was, in St. John’s College, teaching a bunch of young hooligans such as myself to sing sacred choral music.  His mastery of the choir and of its music was absolute, yet he was patient, self-effacing but a relentless perfectionist for all that.  Here’s an example.

Our choir had about sixty members, and we were rehearsing a piece by, I think, Mozart or Handel.  At one point he stopped the choir with a raised hand, pointed to me and said, “Du Toit, that was a lovely harmony you sang at bar 28 — but it’s not what the composer wrote.  Kindly read your part properly and sing accordingly.  Now, again from bar 14…”  He could pick out not only a dissonant voice, but could identify its owner, out of sixty choristers.

As I said, he was endlessly patient, and I only ever remember him losing his temper twice, and venting his anger at the miscreants.  (No prizes for guessing who was one of them.)

We (and I) did not deserve to have him;  but we did, for five whole years.  And as my voice changed from soprano through alto and finally to first tenor, my ability grew and grew until I could read any piece of music, and sing any part of it.  It was, and remains, a priceless gift from this extraordinary man, James Gordon.  I’m only glad he never heard me perform with the rock band — he’d have cringed at what I did to my voice.

Jimmy passed away last week at age 91, and I only learned about it via my sister’s link to the school’s website.  Here’s his obituary, and if I can say anything about that and the tributes that accompany it, it’s that they don’t do him justice.

Thank you, Jimmy, from the bottom of my heart, and R.I.P.

Clayton House (1971)

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.

I remember the Kennedy Awards ceremony honoring Led Zeppelin, and in their introduction Jack Black made reference to the “Led Zeppelin Haj”  — listening to the entire Zep oeuvre  in chronological order of album release (which I’ve done, maybe too often).

There’s another such haj, of course, this one involving the peerless Steely Dan, which I followed earlier this week.

As longtime Readers are well aware, I am by no means a fan of jazz music, having repeated the various knocks against the genre time and time again.  (“A bunch of guys all playing at the same time”,  “Five musicians in one room, all hunting for a tune” and so on.)

But Steely Dan aren’t like that.  Their songs feature tightly-structured, complex chord structures and (to many) obscure and inexplicable lyrics about a stranger variety of topics, all delivered with remarkabe skill and, let it be said, massive doses of irony.

I was late to the Dan-train;  I’d heard a couple of their songs on the radio (Reeling In The Years, etc.), but it was only when I got The Royal Scam  as a birthday present, and played it on a long solo car trip — over and over and over — that I realized just how good these guys were.  Later on, our Army band Hogwash covered just about the entire album — and what a thrill that was.

I have the boxed CD set, although it was released in 1994, I think, thus missing their last two albums.

So if you feel like doing the Steely Dan haj  over the weekend, be my guest.  (Given the nature of YooToob, some of the links may have changed, but give it a go anyway.)

Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972)
Countdown to Ecstasy (1973)
Pretzel Logic (1974)
Katy Lied (1975)
The Royal Scam (1976)
Aja (1977)
Gaucho (1980)
Two Against Nature (2000)
Everything Must Go (2003)

Oh, and R.I.P. Walter Becker.