Reviews – You are allowed to enjoy this…

REVIEW: Caravan – In the Land of Grey and Pink [40th Anniversary Edition]

Darren — Thu, 26 May 2011 15:00:20 +0000

1971 was a good year...

I came to the Caravan party a little late, discovering their music in July 2000 when I picked up their compilation “Where But for Caravan Would I?” and was immediately a fan. I always say that if I were a contemporary of Caravan, then this would be the band I’d be in. They probably match my level of technical competence – not too flashy, but full of soul and ideas.

With the 40th Anniversary edition of their seminal 1971 album, I shall be talking mainly about the 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound mix that appears on the accompany region-free DVD. Over the years, I have become quite interested in these surround mixes put out by classic bands as they often throw up new auditory experiences for the listener, uncovering instrumentation that’s often been buried in the mix.

The thing about this record is that while Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree does a sterling job of the mix, there’s not a lot here to impress the listener. The problem with Caravan is that they are not a symphonic band like Genesis or have the power or detail of a King Crimson, so this remix just sits there and does its job nicely.

Granted it’s nice to hear the acoustic guitars of “Golf Girl” and the sub-woofer thump certainly reinforces the mix, with the bass now being a more prominent member of the team, but it’s hard to overly excited by this remix. The last remaster done at the start of the millennium is a good starting point, and the mixes here (and the stereo mix for that matter) doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, but they are obviously cleaner.

Yes, you are getting the ultimate Caravan listening experience, but I would argue that the work here isn’t as radical as what you hear on the Genesis or King Crimson 5.1 surround mixes. That’s because what you hear on a Caravan album is very much a live experience committed to vinyl. There’s no multi-layering of instruments as you’d hear on King Crimson’s “Lizard” for example and you don’t gain any extra “ooomph” either.

While Steven Wilson has done a great job, retaining a lot of the original’s roundness and warmth, it’s not going to blow anyone’s socks off. But maybe it’s because this album was more about the original homespun “vibe” than supersonic, 21st century, clarity? What you do get is good separation of the instruments and for those of you who want to study the record, you are going to be more than satisfied with this.

The DVD also contains two Beat Club appearances by the band, which if you look hard enough are already available to view on YouTube. The quality isn’t bad and certainly makes interesting viewing if you are unfamiliar with the clips.

The packaging is great, but the record company has scrimped by not including a plastic outer slipcase that often comes with these “Deluxe Edition” releases and instead the fold-out four-panel sleeve is initially secured by a seal that needs to be broken to open the case – meaning you can seal it up again. The inner booklet is packed with the usual collection of photos and there are some nice words to read.

The CD side of things sees the album being expanded over two discs. The first disc contains the album with three extra tracks tacked onto the end. I’m one of those weirdos who likes albums to keep their original tracklisting and any extra material to be put on a separate disc. The stereo mix is very clean and there’s some excellent separation on show. Comparing it with the reissue from a decade ago, this version just has the edge in terms of crispness and definition, but there’s really not much in it.

Some of the extra material from this release also appeared on that previously-expanded edition, but whoever compiled this collection has really pulled out the stops and collected enough relevant extra tracks to fill a second CD including five live tracks from various BBC sessions.

The bottom line is that this really is the ultimate edition of this album and represents excellent value if you don’t own “In the Land of Grey and Pink” in any format. If you are not interested in the 5.1 mix or the extra CD, then I am not so sure this is such a good buy, but fans are fans and the MusicBizTM knows that like slavering dogs we will buy our favourite albums again and again and again!

Overall, a positive experience…

And here’s the review I posted on YouTube:

Concert Review: Van der Graaf Generator Barbican 27/03/11

Darren — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 23:10:56 +0000

Setlist
1 Interference Patterns
2 Mr. Sands
3 Your Time Starts Now
4 Mathematics
5 Lemmings
6 Lifetime
7 Bunsho
8 Over The Hill
9 Scorched Earth
10 Childlike Faith In Childhood’s End

Encore:
11 La Rossa

The last time I’d seen Van der Graaf Generator was back in 2005 when they thundered back to the realm of live performances with their now legendary comeback gig at the Royal Festival Hall. I had tickets for their previous Barbican outing in 2007, but decided not to go because I’d gotten the Missus pregnant and I thought all the noise and excitement of a VDGG concert wouldn’t be conducive to the development of the foetus.

Despite getting a little lost driving into London, we arrived late to miss the first song and caught them blistering through “Mr Sands” from the new album “A Grounding in Numbers”. And quite a bit of material tonight was from this CD and their previous released “Trisector”. But despite this, the one hour and forty-five minute set whizzed past with such speed, such was my enjoyment and involvement with the music.

It takes quite a bit of getting used to not having David Jackson’s saxophones in the mix, but I must admit I didn’t miss him with Hammill covering his lines on guitar and keyboard. This was a very different animal, much leaner, much meaner and definitely louder. The material from “A Grounding in Numbers” felt a lot stronger than the “Trisector” songs, which felt a little meandering and meek in comparison. Of course, you also want some of the old songs and there was a smattering of those to suffice: “Lemmings” which the beginning was almost unrecognisable thanks to Hammill’s lead guitar playing, “Scorched Earth” was dispatched with a raw power you come to expect, but it wasn’t until show closer “Childlike Faith In Childhood’s End” that I felt the power of the music actually suck the air from my lungs and leave me breathless. The encore of “La Rossa” continued to electrify and left me tingling as all the hairs on my neck and body suddenly stood to attention, such was the power of the music.

The band were on good form and one can forgive the “trainwrecks” (Peter Hammill’s words not mine) that happened during the show. The power and brute force of this trio still amazes me and Hammill’s unfaltering voice, which soars and screams and whispers and talks, is worth the ticket price alone. How that man can still do what he does at his age, I find totally awe-inspiring.

I must admit that I had pretty low expectations of the concert, but I feel that was the best place the start because I had a very good evening of music delivered to me. I spent a lot of the evening transfixed by the playing of drummer Guy Evans, who is the heartbeat of the band, while Hugh Banton bolstered the guitar and keyboard playing of Hammill. The only criticism, if there is to be a criticism, is that Peter Hammill is no lead guitarist and his playing was a little weak in places and sometimes you couldn’t even hear him in the mix. But it doesn’t matter because with that voice, Hammill can sing the telephone book and I’d pay to listen.

They are a pretty tight trio when they get going and, despite their collective age, make a lot of younger rock bands look like a bunch of simpering pussies. Viva le VDGG!

CD Review: Penguin Café – A Matter of Life…

Darren — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:28:54 +0000

The new album from Arthur Jeffes, Penguin Café

I’ve written many words about my fondness for the original Penguin Café Orchestra and its proprietor, Simon Jeffes, and you might have already read my review of the recent concert by the revived, rebooted, Penguin Café helmed by son-of-Jeffes, Arthur. Well now there’s an album of new material written by Arthur Jeffes featuring this new configuration of musicians.

It’s a hard job to fill anyone’s footsteps, probably even harder to fill your father’s footsteps but “A Matter of Life..” is brave attempt at resurrecting his musical heritage. Before you even listen to the CD you have to commend his strength of character for even attempting such a feat. I mean, what if the record is a stinker? What if it is just a piss-poor shadow of the original Penguin Café music?

Thankfully, the answer to those questions is a resounding “No!”. There are some classic moments on the record where you forget that this is Jeffes Jr work and you kid yourself that the PCO are back in town, the opening track “That, Not That” and “Landau” are examples of the music just spiriting you away to the good old days and a are worth the price of admission alone.

And while it is a brave record, you can sense that there is a lot of nostalgia here, the tunes are looking back and not looking forward. A lot of the musical cues and ticks and styles are borrowed wholesale from Jeffes Snr (the “Fox and the Leopard”, for example). Is this a bad thing? Yes, if you are looking for a work of startling genius. No, if you accept the record and the project for what it is: remembering and reviving.

I must admit I’ve never experienced music or a record like this before. It feels right as a continuation, but the snickering cynic at the back of my mind asks: “Is this music genuine – does it come from a genuine place?” I don’t want to even try and answer that because I have already accepted the record and I can’t imagine my own children being remotely interested in the music I make, let alone setting out on a path to recreate it.

The bottom line is that if you are a Penguin Café Orchestra fan and you want the closest thing to bringing the band back from the dead and experiencing a new PCO album, then this is it. My only criticism is some of the later tracks feel a little underdeveloped and meandering, but the original band were guilty of this trait sometimes too.

It truly is a remarkable piece of work and my admiration for Arthur Jeffes continues. I look forward to seeing the band again in May.

Gear Review: Roland GR-55 Guitar Synthesiser

Darren — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 10:55:17 +0000

I have been using Roland guitar synths since 1994, starting with the now legendary GR-1 and working my way through to the most recent GR-33 version. Being a tech fanatic, it is no surprise that every time Roland releases a new shiny box, my pulse races and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. When the announcement of the new GR-55 guitar synthesiser was made at the 2011 Winter NAMM, the news was equally, if not more, exciting.

This time around Roland was marketing the GR-55 as a kit-killer, a one box solution that would do away with the GR-33, the VG-99 guitar modeller and any other stomp boxes you might employ. The promotional videos near enough spelt this out in huge flaming letters four hundred feet high. So, the GR-55 had a lot of hype to live up to but this didn’t stop me pre-ordering my unit.

I’ve had my GR-55 for a couple of weeks now and I thought it was time I posted some thoughts on it. First off, I must commend Roland for returning to a metal chassis when building their effects units. The VG-8 and VG-88 both sported metal cases and looked like Stealth bombers and this gave the units a sturdiness that was comforting. Other units such as the GR-33 or the VG-99 have relied on lighter, less solid plastic constructions, so it was nice to see that the big blue GR-55 was rock solid. It instantly makes you think you’ve bought a quality piece of kit. The buttons are solid, the footpedal exudes quality and there’s a nice big rotational control knob flanked by press buttons to act as your main navigational tool.

This is my Roland GR-55 guitar synthesiser

The display is lovely and large and is a refreshing change to other guitar synths I’ve had which often have relied on double line LCD displays which tire your eyes really quickly. The GR-55’s display takes a page from the VG-99 and writes its messages to you in large friendly letters. The editing and patch access takes getting used, relying on lots of flicking through the “Page” buttons to access features and it can be a bit overwhelming remember where patch functions are. But I am sure with some more practice this will come second nature to me.

But what about the tracking? Yes, the most important quality of a guitar synth is how well it tracks on your guitar and I can say, hand on heart, that the GR-55 is the best guitar synth for tracking I’ve ever owned. With minimum setup, even my nylon string Godin Multiac ACS was triggering sounds very accurately. The sounds themselves are very high quality and in my opinion, superior to the GR-33 and hark back to the top end synth sounds of the GR-1. Of course, some of the patches are near useless and will need tweaking, but I was very impressed with the pianos and the wind instruments. The flute patch itself is very expressive and sounds utterly convincing.

The unit also features a USB stick reader so it can be used to playback WAV files – making ideal for solo performers to pack backing tracks with them – and there’s a 20-second looper on board too. The looper itself is good fun allowing you to capture ideas and to overdub on the top of the original loop ad infinitum, but compared to one of the RC units put out by Boss (Roland’s dedicated guitar business) it feels quite limited. However, it is an extra value feature you get with the unit and should be considered in those terms.

Connectivity involves a USB connection to a computer allowing you to backup any patches, but I don’t think that there’s a dedicated patch editor for the GR-55 yet. This would be a great tool to have, especially if you have trouble editing on the GR-55 unit itself.

But the big question thrown up by the GR-55, or more specifically by Roland’s original promotional material, is whether you can throw away all your other effects units if you buy a GR-55? Well, you can certainly sell your GR-33 on eBay because this is the superior item on every level. But if you use a VG-99 for recording, then you might want to consider holding on to it because some of the COSM guitar modelling sounds OK, but nowhere near as rounded as the VG-99. Of course, hearing is subjective and you might think them acceptable. I can see the GR-55 being used by gigging players to replace racks of equipment as I think the pedal would be great in a live situation.

Overall, the GR-55 is a jump forward in the technology and a welcome addition to my sonic armoury. If you are considering purchasing one of these units then you I believe you won’t be disappointed. If you are looking for a cheaper option or your first foray into guitar synths, then check out eBay for all those GR-33s and GR-20s that are being offloaded by new GR-55 owners!

And here are three videos I’ve made to demonstrate the GR-55. I used my Godin Multiac ACS nylon string guitar to show how well the GR-55 tracks.

Roland GR-55 Piano Patch Demonstration

Roland GR-55 Flute Patch Demonstration

Roland GR-55 Patch Compilation

And here comes the self-publicity bit where I foolishly try to convince you to buy some of my music, much of it recorded using guitar synthesisers, funnily enough:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/darren-lock/id4151062

And here is a complete demo of the pre-programmed patches of the GR-55:

Concert Review: Penguin Café & Portico Quartet, The Barbican, London 09/02/11

Darren — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 23:03:05 +0000

It is hard to believe, but it has been four and a half years since my last gig. My self-imposed exile meant that I have not been able to worship at the shrine for such a long time, so it was quite apt that such a musical banquet was served up to me last night.
I had been looking forward to the concert since it was announced because it was my first chance to see the Portico Quartet who I’ve admired since hearing their first album two years ago and it was also the first proper London outing for the Penguin Café, but more about them later.

The music of the Portico Quartet is straddles genres – the use of saxophone and upright bass puts the band firmly in the jazz camp, while the utilisation of the hang drum adds a new age/world music slant to their output. The band is purely instrumental and we were treated to performances from both their debut and follow-up albums, “Knee-Deep in the North Sea” and “Isla”.

The performance was truly mesmeric. The music, for me, transporting and expansive – showcasing the unique sound of the band. Tunes played included, “Lifemask” with its strange looping beginnings, “News from Verona”, “Line” and “Clipper” – there might have been others by my memory isn’t want it was and I don’t remember their tunes by name, just by familiarity.

I was surprised just how much use of looping there was by the band with both the saxophonist and drummer preparing and triggering loops, and sending ethereal noises into the sonic backdrop. The drummer also appeared to be responsible for some live mixing on the set as he often was seen scrambling to adjust his mixer whilst playing.

I thought it was a truly superb performance and I felt old and “over the hill” seeing these young fellows being so adept at their craft. The music was so engaging that by the end of the hour-long set, I felt emotionally drained and exhausted by the performance – in a good way, of course.

After a short interlude, whilst road crew scurried around removing equipment and preparing the stage, the Penguin Café headed by Arthur Jeffes took the stage. What is the Penguin Café? It’s not the Penguin Café Orchestra, for that was a completely different beast. It is not a cover band. It’s not a reboot (although Arthur Jeffes coined that terminology during the set). It’s similar but different – like looking at the world through a new set of eyes, or listening to the Penguin’s albums with someone else’s ears.
The strength of goodwill and positive feeling washed upon the stage and it was a good night. I thought it took the band a few songs to hit their stride, but it didn’t matter, for this was a special night and a night I thought I’d never see happen. To imagine that I’d hear these songs again performed live was fantasy since the untimely death of Simon Jeffes and for his son to pick up the reins was an incredibly brave thing to do.

What to say? If you love the Penguin Café Orchesta, you will love this band. It just has to be. You will forgo the complaints that the guitar playing on “Dirt” isn’t as good, or that Arthur’s ukulele playing needs a little work and that there appears to be too many people on stage at once, because it’s not about that. It’s about celebration, for the concert was more than just a run-through of a few old songs, it felt like a celebration of the music and a way of preserving the musical legacy put-down by Simon Jeffes.
Arthur Jeffes is a personable young man with a deft line in rambling, humble stories and he does a grand job as band leader. The band itself is a sprawling mess of talent, with many of them dressed as if they’d just escaped from a Victorian lunatic asylum, which is kind of jarring when they first hit the stage. Of course, this is stage craft and very few bands these days try to attempt to engage with their audiences in this way.

All the old favourites were performed such as “Telephone and Rubber Band”, “Music for a Found Harmonium” and “Perpetuum Mobile” as well as new tracks from the freshly-released Arthur Jeffes-penned “A Matter of Life…” album.
I thought it was a truly wonderful evening of music and a rich feast for a cultural starved man as myself. It was good to be a part of it and one of the best concert experiences I’ve ever had and one I will remember for a long while.

And to be a total publicity whore, for those of you visiting via Google, feel free to check out my music at iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/darren-lock/id4151062

DVD REVIEW: Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe – A Night of Yes Music…Plus

Darren — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 20:29:40 +0000

Now I have fond memories of the ABWH period of music. For those of you who don’t know or who have absolutely no knowledge of progressive rock music, this band was the bastard offspring from the Yes franchise in the late 1980s, which had floundered both commercially and creatively. With lead singer Jon Anderson conning ex-Yes and King Crimson dummer, Bill Bruford, to come play some drums on his solo album, an interesting franchise was creating. With the band name sounding a lot like a local solicitors, the first album offered a lot of promise. OK – some of it was a little sweet and sickly thanks to Anderson’s input, but as a whole, the album is quite robust when compared to others of that period. And for once it was a progressive rock album that actually had a smile on its face, rather than frowning earnestly and asking you to marvel at the musicianship.
So the best memory was getting excited about going to see the band at Wembley Arena and it was the first time that I had ever been to a gig. It was also the first gig me and the Missus attended together and it was a rather stonking night. I got to watch my favourite rhythm section (Bill Bruford and Tony Levin, both of King Crimson) working out and to hear some old Yes classics that I thought I’d never hear played live. It was a good night, apart from me slipping on some spilt beer (not my own, I didn’t drink back then) and falling down the stairs during “Heart of the Sunrise” as I attempted a quick toilet break. Ouch! Also, my English teacher Mr Bailey was also a fan and he attended the concerts, though I found it a little embarrassing to talk prog rock in the class in front of frowning, disapproving peers. (Mind you, this was the guy who used to quote King Crimson lyrics and give me the wink during lessons too…so it was a really progtastic period of my life!)
In terms of merchandise, there was a video EP released called “In the Big Dream” that documented the recording process for the album, which was put together at the recording studios in Montserrat, and included a couple of promotional videos too. A few years after all this, a concert was released on video as a limited edition and I was lucky to pick this up and it is the same concert that I am reviewing here.
Voiceprint, a company that specialises in reviving old classics back from the dead and the obscurity of deletion, saw fit to release this concert in its entirety and bring out a 2 DVD edition that also includes “In the Big Dream” as a bonus. Of course, being a fan and deserving of a couple of hours of sweet nostalgia, I snapped it up. The concert itself is a surprisingly good transfer, however there’s nothing in the way of a surround sound mix or anything. But despite this, the music sounds fresh and clean. The concert itself starts with each member of the band doing his party piece until they are all on stage and then the fun begins with cuts from the ABWH interspersed with some well chosen songs from the Classic Yes period. The only downside to this performance is that Tony Levin is missing due to illness, replaced by Jeff Berlin.
In terms of quality, I thought this was a good upgrade to my old VHS edition, but my one bugbear was that the concert was split over two discs (ever heard of dual layer, Voiceprint?) and the original introduction was tacked on as an extra on the second disc, completely out of sequence. This original opening showed Jon Anderson as he walked to the concert explaining that he was going to appear in the middle of the audience and start singing. OK, so its not THAT important, but when I saw it originally, it really added to the sense of excitement and anticipation. Now, it is resigned to an outtake on the second disc, which seems a bit stupid. Either keep it in or cut it out, no?
My other major grip is the quality of the “In the Big Dream” video EP. There have been edits made to this and the video quality is bordering on awful. It is actually worse that my old VHS because it is obvious that they’ve taken a PAL VHS source and recoded to NTSC, rendering the colours muted and washed out. The sound is also awful. On my old VHS, there was a recording error during one of the songs and the sound is spiked by a tape wobble. Guess what? The same error occurs on this DVD, so obviously the tape was from the same source. Gee – I could have just dubbed my VHS to DVD and saved myself the trouble.
On one hand, this is really great for those who have never owned the original VHS, but for those of use die-hard fans who have the tapes and the T-shirts and the novelty blow-up Steve Howe dolls, you might be a bit disappointed with the quality of the “extras”. It really is a game of two halves. But saying that, for the money, it was nice to wallow in the warm glow of nostalgia with The Missus and feel really, really old.
“The order of the Universe, the order of the Universe…”
Indeed!
For even more information, go to http://www.abwhdvd.com/
And here’s a little video sample for you:

CONCERT REVIEW: Peter Hammill, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 04/10/06

Darren — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 18:39:00 +0000

It seems I am jinxed. Someone out there has been busy with needles and wax effigy or has thrown a dark hex my way. “How so?” I hear you ask. Well it all began when I stepped into my local tube station with the intention of getting to the gig on time. I had left early, so that I could meet up with the Missus and have a bite to eat at one of those snazzy eateries on the South Bank, before tootling onto see Peter Hammill in concert. However, my Spidey-senses tingled as soon as I hit the station and the word “delays” echoed over the PA system.
What should have been a simple, 60 minute journey was stretched out beyond all recognition. Travelling from Debden to Stratford, which normally takes about 25 minutes, turned into a 90 minute marathon with the driver apologising profusely for there being signal failures at Bethnal Green. The problem with that bottleneck of the Central is that you are stuffed until you get to Stratford as there are no connecting trains, so I stood in cramped carriage and swallowed it down. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t like the Underground. I know it is a bit wimpy, but there’s something I just don’t like about the UK tube network. I always think it is on the edge of collapse and when we get stuck in a tunnel for a long period of time, my bowels begin to churn. But enough of the details, eh?
So when I did eventually get to The Missus, all hopes of having something to eat were out of the window and it was just a matter of walking to the venue and taking our seats. I was in a bad mood and didn’t particularly want to be there – my nerves were shot by the prolonged tube fiasco and I wanted a drink. Yes, I wanted a drink real bad. But I never drink before a gig as I believe music should be received untainted by alcohol, so I was very tetchy.
In this tour, Hammill was accompanied by violinist Stuart Gordon and I was interested in hearing how it would turn out as I hadn’t had the chance to pick up their collaboration “Veracious”. Tracks like a “A Better Time”, “Driven” and “Bubble” were stripped down and arranged in such a way that there was plenty of space for Gordon to fill in with his violin. I am not entirely sure if this approach worked. I mean those guys are great performers, but some of it just didn’t work for me and didn’t engage my senses. The only time things really started to get electric was during a harrowing performence of “Like Veronica”, a song about spousal abuse, which really went for the jugular. An old classic “The Birds” elicited whoops from the audience and I was particularly pleased when Hammill performed “Stranger Still” as the final song. It’s one of my favourites, but again the rearrangement jarred me, but all came good in the end. There was one encore with “A Way Out” and it was all over. While I thought it was an interesting night of music, I did find myself feeling slightly underwhelmed by the proceedings. Hammill, I felt, was a little off and a little sloppy in the guitar/piano department and Gordon’s violin, while sweet and soaring in places, began to grate after a while. Again, this is no slur on their performance, I just think a whole evening of this configuration is difficult listening, which can be a good thing sometimes. I guess my tube troubles had clouded my musical brain, which upset me.
After the show (yes, Hammill performed that song too), we headed out into the night and The Missus want to eat. Again, my Spidey-senses were tingling and, much to her annoyance, I insisted we went straight home. Good job too, because the tube was still up shit creek without a paddle. First there was the “Passenger Action” on the Jubilee Line (yes, those are two words you don’t want to hear on the Tube), so we hopped off and diverted to Bank station. There we waited ages for a train to Leytonstone, then had to wait there for a connecting train heading to Epping, which was another 20 minute wait. By the time we got home, it was 11.50pm and we’d left the concert at 9.30! The Missus remarked that in total, I had been travelling nearly four and a half hours on the Tube that evening for a round trip of less than two…
You’ve got to laugh, ain’t ya?

REVIEW: Queen – Queen & Queen II

Darren — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 19:35:30 +0000

Here’s something different. I thought I’d start doing some retrospective reviews and today I just happened to decide on putting these two records on my MP3 player while I walked Alex the Wonderdog.
The first rock band I ever got into was Queen. I think it might have had something to do with my raising in the 1970s and listening to Radio One over breakfast and hearing the hits of the band played with frightening regularity. Neither of these albums were my first proper Queen purchase – that honour goes to “Greatest Hits” and then “The Works”.
Queen – Queen

I listened to this album today and it was the first time I had given it a spin in a couple of years. I managed to bag a cheap version of “The Crown Jewels” boxset a few years back which contains a remastered version of this album. Instantly, the opening chords of “Keep Yourself Alive” took me back to being a withdrawn 13-year-old and the many times I had spun this album in my bedroom. In those days, I never bought LPs, preferring tapes. The reason for this was that our old house in Alber Road was so damp that in a matter of weeks, any LP was reduced to a crackly mess. So cassette tape was my weapon of choice and I can still remember buying Queen on cassette.
I was on a family holiday to Jersey in the Channel Islands with my grandparents. They always took me away during the majority of my teenage years and I purchased the cassette in Boots The Chemist in King Street for £3.05. This was at the beginning of a two-week holiday and I didn’t have a Walkman and the longing to hear the tape was burning a hole in my ears. My nan suggested that I should ask the Portuguese family who ran the hotel we were staying to play the tape over their PA system, so that I could listen to it. But I was too shy to ask and I waited until we got home.

Good job I did as the tape itself had been loomed into the casing the wrong way, meaning that on playback you heard the whole thing backwards. Subliminal messages ahoy! But this meant I had no album and there were no other large Boots The Chemists in the locality that sold music. So I had a further wait until we had a family day-out at Southend where my mum exchanged the tape for a fresh, working copy. Aahhhh, the good old days – I waited about five weeks to hear that album. Now we can download music at the click of a mouse – but you try and tell the younger generation and they won’t believe you!
So back to the review. The first Queen album is the sound of a young band trying to find themselves – it is incredibly rough in places, but I think that adds to the charm. Some of the ideas are just “out there” – “My Fairy King” for example, though I’ve always loved “Great King Rat” as it reminded me of my own errant father and shared the same birthday and sentiment. What always captured my imagination is the playout of the proto-demo version of “Seven Seas of Rhye”. I was already familiar with the proper version, but how amazing was this band that they put a preview of a future song at the end of an album. That was just brilliant in my book.
There’s a lot to like about “Queen” and what it lacks in production, it makes up for in charm and sheer energy. Some of the songs on this are better served on the “Live at the Beeb” album that was released in the early 1990s, but it is an important record, especially if you listen to it back to back with its successor.
Queen II

This is a completely different prospect. Here is a record by a band that now has confidence and a vision of what it wants to achieve in the studio. But is this a progressive rock record? I think it is because there is some kind of concept behind it, from the Black/White sides to the song cycle on the second side that starts with an “Ogre Battle” and ends with “Funny How Love Is”. I can’t get over just how good this record is. You can even hear the conception of the Queen sound shaping before your ears – with “The Fairy Fellers Master-Stroke” and “The March of the Black Queen” showing that the band were interested in creating walls of operatic sound and not afraid to screw about with the stereo field. Get your hands off than pan control, Deacon! And it finishes with a fully realised “Seven Seas of Rhye” – its almost as if the first album was a dry-run for this, the real deal.
What’s great when you listen to these two classic albums together is that you can actually hear the band growing and that’s quite unusual in rock. Usually bands break onto the scene fully fledged and its not until you listen to their fourth or fifth subsequently released platter than you detect any development. But with these two records its a steady progression which continues onto “Sheer Heart Attack” and culminates in their magnum opus “A Night at the Opera”. It’s really tough, but with the benefit of retrospect, I am beginning to think that Queen II might just be my favourite record of theirs purely because of the embyonic ideas within.
Again, there are bits of this album that are truly brilliant, like the opening instrumental “Procession” where Brian May manages to coax a tone from his guitar the likes of which have never been heard of before. It is earthy and kind of alien, but provides a suitable introduction to the crashing “Father to Son” – a song that always has an effect on me (or any song dealing with fathers and sons, for that matter). I like the way that the first side is more of a classic rock album before every wigs out with the backwards experimental nightmare that starts side two and “Ogre Battle”, a song that delights with every listen – can you hear the ogre ripping the man’s arms off. Great!
The final song cycle on the record is just inspired and the level of detail and the amount of ideas bouncing around truly are a portent of things to come. The next thing you know the record is over and you are wanting more. And then there’s the iconic cover from Mick Rock where Freddie and the band do a Dietrich. A bona fide classic.

FILM REVIEW: Superman Returns

Darren — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 07:05:56 +0000

For my peers, the defining movie of their childhood is probably “Star Wars”. For me, it was the original “Superman – The Movie”. Being taken to see the movie at the ABC fleapit cinema near Baker’s Arms in Leyton (which was subsequently closed in the eighties and turned from B&Q DIY store to a Kwik Save supermarket) was one of the few promises my father managed to keep. He had promised to take me to see the aforementioned “Star Wars” and I was very excited. He worked at British Caledonian as an air steward and so he wasn’t always around – sometimes there were weeks between him flying off around the world and coming home again. That particular summer he made his promise and I had told my schoolfriends, but when we made it to the cinema in Walthamstow, the queue was deemed to long and the wait too much for him and so we turned away, a trip to the local toy shop was to be my treat instead. My heart was broken and I subsequently tried my best to lie about seeing the film and cribbed the plot from the “Star Wars Weekly” comic that was published at the same time. The only problem with that was the comic was based on the first draft of the “Star Wars” shooting script and there were several scenes in the publication that weren’t in the film. I soon learnt never to lie.
But for me, “Superman – The Movie” was special. We missed the first 15 minutes because of lateness, but once my father was asleep, I didn’t rouse him at the end of the movie and so I got to see the whole film again in its entirety. In those days, you could sit in a movie theatre and watch films over and over again without being moved on. The only downside was that it was the seventies and you had to suffer the fug of cigarette smoke that hung over the screen like a blue mist. The good old days, eh? I don’t think so. But seeing the film was a good memory and even though dear old Dad did a runner a couple of years later and there were many other disappointments along the way, seeing that movie together (even though he slept through most of it) is a memory I treasure. It is a “me and my dad” memory. A rose-tinted attempt at portraying him in a good light.
But, as usual, I am detracting from the main thrust of this piece. When “Superman Returns” was announced, I was a little worried that it would be a bit of a muck up. The film had taken over a decade to get to the screen and likes of Nicholas Cage and Jude Law (among others) had been touted for the lead role. Luckily, Bryan Singer got hold of the project and cast an unknown. Brandon Routh is simply superb as the Man of Steel and those who complain that he looks too young are missing the point completely. He manages to retain the same fresh-faced innocence that the late, great Christopher Reeve brought to the role. Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane also surprised me, as I had been prepared for a disappointment, but her chemistry with Routh overcomes the fact that she doesn’t really nail the hard-bitten hack routine so expertly played by her predecessor Margot Kidder.
The plot is simple: Superman returns after being missing for five years after zipping off to explore the ruins of his homeworld, Krypton, in a desperate attempt to find any survivors. In the time, the world has moved on. Lois Lane, the woman he loves, has moved on, had a child and a fiancé and is nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her piece entitled: Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman. Au contraire, Ms Lane. The whole film is about why the world needs heroes – not just human heroes who pull off amazing feats of courage or determination or blind faith, but those symbols of good to which we can all relate and aspire. The great thing about Superman is that he isn’t human: he lacks the vanity, the greed, the ego, which makes us such poor imperfect specimens – and all that makes his nemesis Lex Luthor so potent. And Kevin Spacey pulls out a majestic performance as the villain and is genuinely frightening in some of the darker scenes.
A lot of people have complained that there isn’t a plot or it is a bit slow, but that’s what I like about this film. It portrays Superman as a real character and there’s bag of character development and despite its 2 ½ hour length, I loved every minute of it. The set action pieces are just breath taking and when Superman takes a Kryptonite-induced kicking, you’ll be grimacing at his pain through clenched teeth. The special effects are just out of this world and the CG stuff is invisible. I just can’t get over how good it all looked on the screen. Of course, it is a quantum leap away from the original movies, but there’s so many ways this film could have gone completely wrong, but Bryan Singer has done a sterling job. I thought that this was a truly brilliant rendering of the character and a magnificent restart to the series.
The final scenes, which I won’t reveal because it will give away the plot, had me choked up. I realise that the Superman movies is essentially a father-and-son piece with Kal-El trying to find his way in a universe without his father and just doing the best he can. This sentiment was echoed in that final scene and was very emotive for me. When the movie was over and the Missus asked me what I thought, I genuinely couldn’t reply as I was literally choked with emotion. It took me a good ten minutes to get over the experience and I know this is sad because it is just a superhero story, but it pulled those emotional strings that run invisibly through us and returned me to that seven-year-old walking out the ABC in Leyton with his father. And sons, even Superman, need their fathers.

DVD REVIEW: Pink Floyd – P.U.L.S.E.

Darren — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:48:55 +0000

I remember when the revitalised Pink Floyd was originally touring to support “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” and I didn’t have enough cash to buy tickets. Several years later nothing had changed and I still couldn’t afford to see them at Earls Court as part of “The Division Bell” tour. Part of me isn’t that bothered because when you see a modern Pink Floyd gig, you know what you are going to get. Strong visuals, music that’s almost identical to the record and a very corporate live experience. You are worshipping at the shrine of Pink Floyd Ltd – now buy a T-shirt, if you know what I mean. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing (afterall U2 have refined the experience to an art form now) but it’s not for me.
When the original P.U.L.S.E. album and VHS came out, I skipped it. I’d already got the “Delicate Sound of Thunder” album and didn’t need yet another turgid live Floyd experience. I know this sounds harse, but while I love PF on record, their later live performances always leave me a little cold compared to their hey-day in the 1970s – even “The Wall” can grate after a while. So when the P.U.L.S.E. DVD was announced I was a little non-plussed and not exactly clamouring for a copy. I wasn’t even planning on buying it, but it came my way via a treat from the Missus – unbeknownst to her, she got it for me the same day it was announced founder member Syd Barrett had died, so there was a little uneasy synchronicity going on.
The performance is spread over two discs and I must admit, I did enjoy the proceedings. It brought back memories of the PF Venice concert I’ve got on tape, but this time around the band were more relaxed and there seemed to be a little more charisma coming across, which is difficult because David Gilmour doesn’t always come across as a great frontman. Consummate guitarist – yes, front man – no.
The first disc opens with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, which made for tough viewing after hearing of Syd’s demise – before it was a raise-your-glass-in-fond-memory kind of song, but now it had turned into an elegy. The rest of the disc plods along with a lot of post-Waters material, which is OK – but I only have time for “Learning to Fly” and “Take It Back” – the rest just washes over me in a laser light enhanced fug. It’s only when you get to the second disc when I began to enjoy the performance as the band plays the entire “Dark Side of the Moon” album and it works surprisingly well, despite the lack of Roger Waters. The visuals and stage effects enhance the music and I really began to get into it – even though it still is a rather plodding affair. Even “The Great Gig in the Sky” was a much better executed affair compared to that Venice gig I caught on TV. The last three songs on disc two are “Wish You Were Here” – again turned into a elegy now after the sad news about Syd – “Comfortably Numb” which features some great stage craft towards the end which really caught my attention and “Run Like Hell” which is the standard closer during the Gilmour-era.
OK – so I wasn’t totally impressed by the twelve-year-old concert – it’s a little bit anonymous, a little lacking in spontaneity and just a little bit “so what?” in my books, but where P.U.L.S.E. comes into its own is the quality and quantity of material included in the set. Not only has the picture been enhanced so it looks as if the gig was shot yesterday, but the sound is crystal clear – there’s not much in the way of 5.1 Surround Sound juiciness but you do get a lot of the sound effects panned to the rear speakers. All the extra material is split over the two discs, so each one needs to be explored fully. You get all the mini-films that are projected on the screen on the main stage for your perusal (including live sound track), tour material including maps and itinerary, music videos for “Learning to Fly” and “Take It Back” (but not one for High Hopes, funnily enough), album cover art, a performance of “Wish You Were Here” with Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins and a little tour film made by one of the road crew. In all, for your money, you get four hours of material in the package. For the fan it is a treasure trove to explore, even if like me you don’t like the main feature a great deal. However, I must admit I was a little underwhelmed by the packaging as it is just a standard digipak – I was expecting some kind of pulsing light or laser show as I opened the box to retreive the DVDs!
It’s a no-brainer if you are a Pink Floyd fan – buy this set because it represents great value and is a last chance to see this era of the band in action and maybe float away in a nostalgic haze. I’m just a little bit weary of this type of performance, preferring Gilmour’s recent stripped down, acoustic solo outings and compared to last year’s fifteen minute Pink Floyd performance at Live8, you’ll realise why this DVD isn’t really Pink Floyd at all, but a surrogate band.

CONCERT REVIEW: The Roches – Bloomsbury Theatre, 26/03/06

Darren — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:34:34 +0000

Setlist
I don’t have you
We
Factory Girl
Who Cares
One Season
Anyway
Quittin’ Time
Another World
Mr Sellack
Train
Hallelujah Chorus
The Sound of a Tree Falling
Clothes Line Saga
The long lonely road to nowhere
My Sick Mind
Hammond Song
On the road to Fairfax County (with Paul!)
A prayer
Jesus Shaves
Yakkety Yak
Like a lot of my musical development, my first exposure to the sound of The Roches came via Robert Fripp’s “Exposure” album, but this was largely overshadowed by the band’s guest appearance on the cartoon show “Tiny Toon Adventures” circa 1989 when they appeared as “The Roaches”. Clever, eh? It had been a long time since the Roches had played together, let alone playing in England, so I wasn’t going to miss this concert.
As it was a Sunday and there was no Congestion Charge or parking restrictions, we decided to drive to the venue and I was mightily pleased with myself when I managed to navigate us to the road adjoining Gordon Street where the theatre is located and we were just a hop and a skip away.
We took our seats and the three ladies came on stage promptly and started with “I Don’t Have You”, a song I wasn’t familiar with as it came from Maggie & Suzzy’s new album “Why the Long Face”. After this came the almost obligatory “We” as this song serves as the band’s introduction to the audience. It was funny because all the references to how long the band had been together and performing were changed to “forever” and faces were pulled to illustrate the passage of time.
Material was played throughout the career span of the band, though there was a lot of emphasis placed on the newest album at the “Zero Church” project, which featured people’s prayers set to music. A good healthy selection of songs were performed from their debut album and these were greeted with healthy applause and recognition. I was happy because they played two of my absolute favourites “Quitting Time” and “The Hammond Song”. OK – on the latter we didn’t have Fripp’s heart-melting solo, but it was still powerful anyway and my old eyes became moist.
What I really like about this concert was the atmosphere of good humour and support from the audience. I had never experience such a feeling during my concert-going history. It was a really pleasant feeling and you felt that the audience was 100% behind the audience – though I expect this might be due to the fact that the band hadn’t played in the UK for over 15 years.
After “The Hammond Song”, some wag shouted out for “The Road to Fairfax County” and said that he’d die a happy man if he heard it. The ladies offered him up on stage to help with the lyrics has they weren’t quite prepared for this act of spontaneity. After much cajoling and insistence from the audience, Paul (the guy who asked for the song) sheepishly took to the stage and they played his song with him helping out with the words. Mind you, he needn’t have worried as the audience were doing a great job of singing along. It was a nice human touch to the evening.
They ended with the old song “Yakkity Yak” which was performed as an audience participation moment, but I felt I was the only one shouting out “Don’t come back!”. It was a really great concert and one I’ll remember for a long time and we even got to see Terre Roche’s daughter perform. She came on after the interval to perform a song she had written and it was the first time she had performed publicly. Again, despite a false start, there was much support from the evening.
My only criticism is that some of the latter material, their more “poppy” songs, were forgotten and it would have been nice to hear some of those. But if you like the Roches, you must catch them. They are playing a couple more dates in April, I believe. If you don’t like them, but like a good tune, great voices and good humour – go along anyway. It was a worthwhile 2 hours to spend in London.

REVIEW: Imation 4Gb Micro Hard Drive

Darren — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:05:53 +0000

The digital domain impinges on our life from every angle; from digital photography to downloadable music, the need for data storage on the move is something that even the average technophobe appreciates. The new 4Gb Micro Hard Drive is one such solution and is a USB 2.0 device aimed purely for storage. It’s backwardly compatible with USB 1.1 so there shouldn’t be any problems connecting this to PCs and Macs, though if you are using a operating system that’s older than Windows XP, you will need to install some drivers (included or downloadable from the Imation website).
The unit itself is very solid and takes the shape of a padlock, the plastic loop unhooks and doubles as the USB connector. THe body of the drive is made of brush aluminium and there’s something quite satisfying just fiddling with this in your hand. When connected to a PC, it appears as a detachable hard drive and you can just drag and drop your files straight to it. If you are transporting sensitive data, free encryption software is available from the Imation site to protect your files.
Using it is is a synch, but I was alarmed to notice that after a few minutes of use, the outer casing became quite warm to the touch. This is the only technical fly in the ointment as the hard drive does exactly what it aims to do with aplomb. My reservations about it stems from the fact that you can buy solid state memory cards of a similar capacity more cheaply and they don’t have any moveable parts that might fail. It also takes up more space than your average memory card and could be considered as bulky. I can’t see this being a popular product, but instead being adopted by geeks and aesthetes who wants something mysterious to clip onto their bags as a talking point. I think in terms of portability and reliability, you’d be better off spending your money on solid state memory instead.

The Imation 4Gb Hard Drive has been designed to resemble a padlock

The rubberised loop unfurls to reveal a USB connector

This is the tiny hard drive that lurks beneath the brushed aluminium casing

Here’s an alternative view of that tiny drive
For more information, visit: http://www.imation.com/products/micro_hard_drive/index.html

CD REVIEW: Lanterna – Desert Ocean

Darren — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:52:18 +0000

I love Henry Frayne. There, I said it. I know it can sometimes be difficult for men to express their emotions, but Mr Frayne (and to some extent Leo Abrahams) occupies a place in my heart labelled “Underrated Guitarists that I empathise with”. I first encountered Frayne and his band Lanterna, which is really just him and a drummer friend, while perusing the eMusic website about five years ago. The first album I heard “Elm Street” instantly captivated me and I realised I had found something special and ever since that time I have followed the Lanterna sound.
This new album isn’t scheduled for release until March but I ordered mine direct from Badman Recordings and got it early. What annoys me abotu Frayne is how can this guy continue to produce consisitently good albums in such a short period of time. It’s bugging me! But seriously, prolific must be Frayne’s middle name. This new album serves up more of the same, and that’s not a bad thing, if like me you enjoy epic, cinematic, instrumental guitar music.
Lanterna’s sound is that of a the simple soul. Optimistic, panoramic, sunny, the road leading to the horizon: that’s the best way to express what I hear and feel when I listen to a Lanterna album. Of course, this music isn’t for everyone because some would consider it “fey” or too simplistic to rate him as a guitarist because he doesn’t play a million notes a minute. What he does play is considered and from the heart. There’s driving delayed rhythm guitars that don’t sound a million miles away from U2, gentle acoustics thrumming with Frayne humming, one track almost sounds like the extended solo Brian May from Queen used to play during “Brighton Rock”, steady drumming from long-time collaborator Eric Gebow and 10 tracks that will transport you off to the heartlands of America. The album is expansive, panoramic and begging to be used in a movie soundtrack.
If you want a record to banish the winter blues, then look no further as I guarantee this will remind of the summer sun and blue skies that await us. And if you aren’t familiar with the music of Lanterna, this ten track album represents probably the best introduction. Buy it now (and don’t forget to buy a copy of Leo Abrahams’ “Honeytrap” album too). Alternatively, get a free trial on eMusic and download some of their albums from there.
Or you can download two sample tracks direct from the Badman Recordings website by click the links below:
“B Minor” from the album Elm Street
“Brightness” from the album Highways

REVIEW: Alesis MultiMix16 Firewire

Darren — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:25:18 +0000

When it comes to making music, I’m always on the lookout for new gear that will make my life easier. When I saw the Alesis MultiMix16 I thought I’d found something special. It’s a 16 input mixer, with an inbuilt FX processor and the ability to connect to your PC via Firewire and act as a 16-input audio card. Looking at the spec, I thought I would be able to replace four pieces of equipment (my current mixer/external effects/compressor/sound interface) with one.

However, my experience of the Alesis equipment left a lot to be desired. Opening the box, I was very impressed with the general construction of the mixer. It has a metal chassis and good solid knobs, though the channel sliders were a bit plasticky. Operation seemed simple, install the drivers, connect the mixer and then connect your music equipment to the mixer. Unfortunately, my PC didn’t want to recognise the equipment on the first pass. So I visited the Alesis website and downloaded/installed the latest drivers, as you do.

On the second attempt, with the new drivers, my PC recognised the mixer and I thought I was in business. Unforunately, I had major issues when getting it to work with recording software SONAR with a number of the inputs failing to be recognised in the standard ASIO mode. Switching to WDM mode rendered the interface useless with it juddering and stuttering and crapping out at every opportunity.

But this time I was getting a little frustrated and this frustration was compounded by the fact that the signal output from the PC was significantly louder than the input from my equipment. Even though I tried to get a clean, loud signal, my eardrums were nearly burst by the output from the PC. No matter what I did, I could not get a decent balance between the input and output signals.

I tried using the mixer with the supplied Cubase software, but I am not a big fan of that application for audio recording. Anyway, the mixer worked better with Cubase and to me it seemed as if the mixer had been designed with this audio software in mind and that there was no way I was going to get any satisifaction with SONAR, my software of choice.

This was not good. It suddenly got a lot worse when I selected a stereo pan delay on my FX processor. This makes the guitar signal bounce from ear to ear, but in this case I noticed that the signal seemed really flat. At first I thought that my ears were blocked and then it dawned on me that the output from the headphone socket was coming back in mono, yet it was a stereo signal when played back a recording from the PC. What this means is that you could play a lovely stereo piano sample and live it would sound mono, yet when you played back the recording it would be stereo as intended. It was at that moment that I realised I needed to get a refund immediately.

I double-checked with The Missus that my ears weren’t on the blink and she agreed that there was something fundamentally flawed with this mixer. We immediately packaged the item up and got it ready for return. On paper, this seems like an ideal solution for anyone with a small studio in need of major space saving, but it has to be the singularly worst piece of audio equipment I’ve ever used and it’s a crying shame because if the MultiMix16 had worked as intended it would be a first-class piece of kit. My recommendation to anyone thinking of buying this item is not to until Alesis fix all the problems.

RRP: £385
Website: www.alesis.com

CD REVIEW: A Night at the Opera (30th Anniversary Remaster)

Darren — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 06:59:03 +0000

As a record buyer it is very easy to succumb to “remaster fatigue”. I don’t know how many times, like a slavish dog, I’ve dribbled to buy the latest edition of my favourite record. In this case, there was very little stopping me buying this album. The reason was that this remaster featured two discs: one a standard remastered CD and a second DVD-Audio version of the classic album remixed in 5.1 surround sound.
Queen was the first band I ever got into. I think it was because throughout my childhood my breakfast times were marked by listening to Radio 1 and it seemed like every morning I heard “Seven Seas of Rhye”, “Killer Queen”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Don’t Stop Me Now”, “Bicycle Race”, etc. And so I was almost preprogrammed to like the band. Probably the greatest rock compilation “Queen – Greatest Hits” is technically my first album (if you discount John Williams’ score to “Close Encounters/Star Wars/ET” that I purchased on the Music for Pleasure label or the “Russ Abbott Madhouse” cassette that my nan bought me for Xmas). When I was dying of pneumonia at 13 years old (it was Christmas 1984 – I remember it well as the news was full of Rick Allen losing an arm and a few years later I bought the abysmal Def Leppard album “Hysteria” out of misplaced solidarity), I had two albums with me to get me through the experience of having my lungs drained and being put on the cancer ward to watch geriatric men die in their sleep. The two records were “Queen – Greatest Hits” and “The Works”, which I played in rotation on my old mono tape recorder. It wasn’t until the following Christmas that I received “A Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races” as my Xmas present. I must have worn those cassettes out. Anyway, I digress…
Now I am not the biggest fan of surround sound albums. I think that rock music is probably best heard in stereo and many surround sound mixes that I’ve heard have been very busy, concentrating on guitars or sound FX whizzing past your ears and generally being as distracting as an errant wasp trying to land in your pint of cider. Not so with this album. A Night at the Opera is probably the pinnacle of Queen’s studio experiments and the producers of this DVD-A have done a very tasteful job of using the 5.1 speakers. The wall of overdubbed vocals that are synonymous with Queen are put behind you and allow the listener to concentrate on the instruments. For me, this worked really well as it was like listening to a new album.
OK – sometimes guitars do fly all over the place, but if you are familiar with the record, tracks like “Death on Two Legs”, “The Prophet Song” and “Good Company” lend themselves to audio trickery greatly. The DVD itself doesn’t just rely on clever audio, as each song is accompanied by a visual presentation made up of band performances, photos taken from the time and old black and white Pathe footage. It works really well and it is like watching a video album, even though it has been constructed around the music at a later date. I greatly enjoyed the visuals and allowed for repeated viewings/listenings.
The DVD-Audio disc also features interviews with the band about the making of the album. It’s a bit like the extras on a movie DVD and the band provide a commentary to each track. Again, this is extra value added to an old album and you learn a lot about the record too.
The packaging has been expanded from the original album and my only complaint is the awful plastic slipcase that surrounds the digipak. It fits so tightly that it can be difficult to slide on or off (insert suitable double entendre here) and if you have no fingernails like me, it can be a frustrating time just getting the set out of its packaging.
For the £10.99 I paid for this, I think for once, it was money well spent and I recommend it to any Queen fan wishing to revisit the past – it’ll also make a nice stocking filler for the Queen fan in your life.

DVD REVIEW: Mike Oldfied Exposed

Darren — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:28:56 +0000

I am a big Mike Oldfield fan, but I’ve often had issues with some of his live DVDs. HIs more recent performances available on the Tubular Bells II/III double-header to me seem very forced and almost robotic as if he was playing to a click-track and leave me feeling underwhelmed. So you can imagine my surprise when I loaded this new double DVD set into my player and sat back to enjoy the ride.
What you have here is a classic performance taken from 1979 at the Wembley Conference Centre and it is absolutely brilliant. The concert features a full rendition of the “Incantations” album and a funked up take on Tubular Bells on the second DVD – if you already have the album “Exposed” you are basically getting the visuals to go with this great album.
While I am not a great fan of “Incantations”, I am absolutely spellbound by the performance by Maddy Prior as she sings the “Hiawatha” section by Longfellow and this is repeated on this DVD. She does an absolutely amazing job with it and I dare anyone not to be left open-mouthed…WOW! There’s lots of energy on this disc from the singers and performers and a level of playfulness that you don’t often get from Mike Oldfield.
The really great thing about this disc is that you can switch angles and concentrate on performers as the concert goes on – this is what the DVD format was invented for. My only complaint is that the audio is presented in bog-standard stereo and while this is very clean and acceptable, it would have been nice if the authors of this disc had created a 5.1 Dolby mix and added some ambience to the rear speakers – but I am probably asking too much.
If you love “Incantations”, if you really dig Oldfield from this period of his career, then this is an absolute must-have. If you like his later, more mechanical performances, you might see this release as quaint and as a thing of its time. I however think this is musical magic and Oldfield should get back to this route of organic music making.
But the best part of the disc is at the beginning when the classical performers drafted in by Oldfield to augment his band complain of not having any music to play to and having to play by memory. They are actually in awe of the rock players who can memories this stuff!

CONCERT REVIEW: Greg Lake at the Orchard, Dartford 12/11/05

Darren — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:06:16 +0000

Now it struck me that I’ve seen most of the King Crimson alumni playing live now (with the exception of Boz Burrell, Gordon Haskell and some of the lesser known contributors) and this concert was to be the first time I’d see Greg Lake performing. I’d never bothered with his 90s stint with ELP, so when this concert was announced I thought I’d give it a go, not really knowing what to expect.

What I got for my money was a lightning fast gallop through Lake’s back catalogue featuring material from King Crimson, ELP and his own solo career. Unlike some of the KC singers out there, Lake still has managed to retain his vocal prowess and it is a big old voice he has there, very impressive. The band was very tight too, though the guitarist Florian Opahle (who looked so young that he might have had to have gotten a note from his mum to appear with Lake) while accomplished, was prone to hard rock widdling and posing. His addition of “wah-wah” guitar to “In the Court of the Crimson King” actually made me laugh out loud…and this was the opening song. Even so, the performances were good and the music intact. Some of the songs didn’t do much for me as I am not a follower of Lake’s solo career and the band’s attempt at “Pictures at an Exhibition” seemed to descend into mush, but it was worth it for the more up-tempo tracks such as “Paper Blood”, “Fanfare for the Common Man” and “Touch and Go”. I was upset that “Still You Turn Me On” wasn’t featured, but we got a decent represenation of “From the Beginning” instead.

I didn’t expect the music to touch me in anyway, but about halfway through “Lucky Man” I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck beginning to stand on end. The music was working. And it was a double punch when they followed up this great performance with an absolutely knock-out version of “21st Century Schizoid Man” – I was mightily impressed with the tightness of the performance, the drummer held it together very well and the syncopated stop/start sections were simply brilliant. Yes – I’d got my ticket’s worth!

To finish off, while some of the songs weren’t exactly to my taste and some of the arrangements were just a little bit too “balls out rock” for my liking, it was a very enjoyable evening and I am glad that we got the chance to see Mr Lake doing his thing. As I said to The Missus in the car on the journey home: “It’s prog, Jim, but not as we know it”.

CONCERT REVIEW: The Blue Man Group, New London Theatre 10/11/05

Darren — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:01:23 +0000

We’ve been lucky enough to visit Las Vegas a couple of times and whilst we were there The Blue Man Group were playing at the Luxor hotel where we were staying. I was always a bit reluctant to pay the expensive ticket prices and so I vowed to catch the group when they came to London. So when the tickets went on sale for the Blue Man Group at the New London Theatre, I got in fast, buying tickets for the opening night.

On the way there, I joked about not being selected by the Blue Men for one of their stunts. “I hope that they don’t stick that camera down my throat,” said I. Fateful words those… So before the concert, we found a snug little pub called The Sun on Drury Lane for a couple of quick drinks. It was a traditional styled pub and I quite enjoyed the general ambience. I joked to The Missus about selling our tickets and remaining in the pub for a good old drink.

Inside the theatre, I was considering buying some merchandise and planned to buy a couple of BMG CDs as I often buy stuff at gigs, but my ardour was cooled when I saw that they were selling both BMG CDs for £17.50 each and the DVD was £22.50. I might be dumb, but I am not that dumb. Instead we went inside and took to our seat. We were seated in the fourth row and had to wear protective blue overalls to protect us from any leakages or splashes from the stage. I was like wearing a large polythene condom over your head and after ten minutes I was glad that I had decided to wear a T-shirt to the event as I the smock contained my bodyheat causing my potatoes to boil over rather rapidly, if you know what I mean.

“Hey, I’ve always looked like a complete dick, so this is no problem…”

The show started and if you haven’t been to the BMG group or unfamiliar with the concept, it can be described simply as “performance art”. But don’t be scared, it’s not that bad. The Blue Men are three mute blue men who indulge in a little bit of mime, pull visual gags and love audience participation all to the sound of a tribal soundtrack that was written by the BMG (though performed live by a houseband). While I thought some of the humour was OK-ish, I really enjoyed the musical segments where the group used their homemade instruments – the Drumbone is made out of industrial pipe and sounds like nothing on earth. The percussion is superb and it was good to see a Chapman Stick being used by one of the band members.

During the audience participation sections, the BMG descend into the audience and pick unwilling volunteers to help them. Yes, I was chosen for the “throat cam” section of the show. Before the show, my ESP was telling me that I was probably going to be chosen and me and The Missus discussed it as we walked over Waterloo Bridge. When the BMG grabbed me, I played along, flipping out my lizard-like tongue to reveal a mint I had been sucking…I think that made the audience laugh…then they stuck the camera in my mouth and that was it really. I would have loved to have seen the footage, but my vision was obscured by the group. No matter. I had made a little bit of history: I was the throat-cam victim of the opening night of the BMG in London. I think that’s kinda cool. (Sad git, ain’t I?)

Me and the Missus really enjoyed the show and lasting 1 hour 50 minutes the BMG don’t outstay their welcome. I can’t see the average British theatre-going audience “getting this” because it is too much fun for the West End. There were quite a few empty seats on the opening night and I would hate to see the run end early because there’s a lot of hard work involved in the show. If you’ve not see the BMG and want to experience an evening of fun, cool music and luminous bog-roll, I recommend you book a ticket. It’s the first show where I felt the artistes were playing to the whole theatre.

Evidence that I was touched by blue hands. Does this make me an honorary, if slightly out of shape, Blue Man?

CD REVIEW: Kate Bush – Aerial

Darren — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 19:40:38 +0000

This album has been a long time coming, but Kate Bush has delivered a double CD that really is a game of two halves. The first CD called “A Sea of Honey” opens with the current single “King of the Mountain” which sounds very much like a Kate Bush track of old. From then on, the album takes a very different, more personal turn with Bush dumping the overblown production she’s used on previous albums and using a more intimate approach. “Pi” is a song of numbers which lays down some music themes that reappear on side two, “Bertie” is a song that only a mother could write for a son and the lyrically-ambigious “Mrs Bartloizzi” makes you wonder if this is a murder scene or someone just in the throes of domestic bliss? The next two songs “How to be Invisible” and “Joanni” aren’t as strong and didn’t have any real effect on me. The last track on the first CD “A Coral Room” concerns Bush’s mother’s death and I found it particularly moving when she started to mention the little brown jug. (My own late grandmother had a little brown just that was passed down and used to mention that same song too).

The second CD “A Sky of Honey” is a completely different beast and I found it a much more enjoyable journey. It is a concept piece dealing with the passage of time on a mid-summer’s afternoon as day turns to dusk to night and back to dawn again. Combine this with characters such as the Painter (played and sung by Rolf Harris – it was nice to hear him on this project) and a panoply of bird chorus and you have a sound painting of a time and space. Hearing Kate attempt to mimick the bird songs is a highlight and stand out track “Somewhere in Between” should be the next single. This CD is a full of warmth and humanity and was written by someone who obviously had the time to study a summer afternoon with depth. I love it.

The two CDs are very different, but I don’t think they would have worked without each other. They are two sides of the same coin and, for example, I don’t think that “A Sky of Honey” would have worked so well if it had been released on its own. I think this is a truly great record, full of soul and warmth, and is well worth falling in love with.

DVD REVIEW: Peter Gabriel: Still Growing Up – Live and Unwrapped

Darren — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 23:50:09 +0000

This is an interesting double DVD set because it contains a concert that never happened. How so? Well Peter Gabriel last year performed a number of concerts that left behind all the theatrics of his previous tour and he’s assembled the footage here. So we have performances from a number of different venues edited together to create psuedo-concert. The first disc contains this performance and features songs such as “Digging in the Dirt”, “Red Rain” and the obligatory “Sledgehammer”. It’s interesting to see PG perform without bouncing around the stage in his Zorb or his other theatrical devices and it does make for some fascinating viewing. However, if you’ve bought either of Gabriel’s other live DVDs there are a number of tracks that are constantly repeated. But of course, packages like this are aimed at the superfan, so no complaints.
The picture quality is excellent and the 5.1 DTS sound absolutely superb, putting you right in the middle of the audience. Despite the material being gathered from different concerts, you don’t really notice the join. Bonuses on this disc includes another chance to see “In Your Eyes” being performed and “No Self Control” from the POV video (which was released in the 1990s and has been long out of print) with an excellent 5.1 Dolby soundtrack. This bodes well for the future and maybe POV will soon be getting a proper DVD release?
The second disc is an odd affair as it features the same setlist from the first disc (though I think the performances are different) and is intercut with Peter Gabriel and his touring musicians ruminating over the clips about subjects such as touring, their dreams and other stuff. I found this disc absolutely infuriating as it didn’t seem to know if it was a documentary or a concert film, with both types of footage vying for the viewer’s attention. I’d have liked to have seen a straight documentary in the style of Anna Gabriel’s “Growing Up on Tour” DVD (which is great, but a little short BTW). The best thing about this disc is the extras as you get three tracks taken from a studio performance of UP tracks performed for journalists at the Real World Studio back in 2002 and two tracks from the Jools Holland TV show.
Overall, it is a great package if you don’t own any PG DVDs, but some might find the repitition of tracks a little too much and the lack of the theatrical set-pieces a little dull. I enjoyed it though. Mind you, I am a big PG fan.
(You can get this disc from CD WOW for £12.99 – some shops have been charging £19.99 for it – so you have been warned)

CD REVIEW: Phil Manzanera – 50 Minutes Later

Darren — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 01:54:24 +0000

If you play Phil Manzanera’s previous album “6PM”, then this one follows approximately “50 Minutes Later”. Yes, I thought it was clever too. I really enjoyed last year’s “6PM” a lot. In fact, it was my favourite album of 2004 and is still in rotation at Chez Lock. When I heard that there was going to be a follow-up, I was both overjoyed and apprehensive. How would Mr M follow-up such a strong release?
Well I had needn’t worry because “50 Minutes Later” is almost a direction continuation of the “6PM” vibe. Opening track “Revolution” echoes “Green Spiky Cactus” (and the bassline also apes the INXS hit “Need You Tonight”) and “Technicolour UFO” has a hook that sticks – it also name checks all those characters from the 24-hour Technicolour Dream hippy extravaganza. Mind you, PM had me hooked with the lyric “There’s Kevin Ayers sitting in the corner, singing from the bottom of a well”. Oh yeah. The first two tracks are great, plenty of crunchy guitars and are upbeat rocking numbers.
The rest of the album then takes a more mellow vibe. “That’s All I Know” is a reflective acoustic-driven song, the vocal work on “Desaparacido” immediately reminded me of Steve Hackett and the song itself has a great chorus. “One Step” again is a reflective piece, full of doubt and questions, and “Swimming” sums it all up with the line “Let’s not waste this precious life, as time keeps slipping away”. It’s an album of reflection, of adulthood, of regret and of new resolutions. It’s a very positive record. The album then gets darker (naturally) with “Bible Black” which is heavy and brooding and magnificent at the end. “Till the End of the Line” resolves the various themes of the album. The two instrumental tracks “50 Minutos Mas Tarde”, which features Robert Wyatt and sounds very jazzy and experimental for PM, and “Dusza” break up the vocal songs and are quite different from Manzanera’s usual instrumenal pieces, with no burning electric guitar solos.
As an album, it’s very good and a very different journey from “6PM”. Whereas that album has a confident swagger and plenty of guitar for us boys, this follow-up is far more mature affair and sees Manzanera writing some of his best lyrics of his career. My only criticism is the utterly pointless Eno remix of “Bible Black”, which is, in my honest opinion, a big steaming crock of shit. It spoils a good album.
(And keep your ears out for the hidden track that comes after “Till the End of the Line”)
Recommended listening.

HARDWARE REVIEW: Logic 3 Solar Charger for PSP

Darren — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 06:50:55 +0000

I love gadgets. Yeah, I love gadgets and gizmos a lot. I was employed once solely because of my fanaticism to gadgets and gizmos. Oh, the glory days…but I digress. I’ve been enjoyed the Sony PSP since I got mine in the US in May, but one of the shortcomings is battery life. You have to keep recharging the thing. This isn’t a problem in itself, but when I saw this solar charger from Logic 3, I just had to give it a go. The unit itself is made from shiny black plastic and opens up to reveal two solar panels. These are to be exposed to the light and recharge the inbuilt LI-ON battery inside the unit. It should take around 8 hours to charge it in good light and then you can use the charget to either charge up your PSP or use it as an external battery/power source. This is great if you are travelling and aren’t near a power supply. I’ve been using it for a day now and I am impressed. I can keep my PSP topped up or I can run it from the Solar Charger. How cool is that? However it does take an awful long time to charge via the solar panels (but that’s living in England at this time of year) but you can use the PSP’s charger to boost power levels – though this defeats the whole point of the solar charger. So it’s a good idea, but it is let down by the lack of sunshine at the moment!

The Logic 3 Solar Charger
It cost me a reasonable £23 from Simplygames.com and you can read more about this handy device here.
If I were to give this a rating, I would give it a healthy **** out of ***** (That’s 4 out of 5 stars, purely for effort)

CD REVIEW: Another Day on Earth – Brian Eno

Darren — Sun, 12 Jun 2005 21:58:16 +0000

Like most fans, I’ve been looking forward to the next Brian Eno “vocal” album for quite a while. “Another Day on Earth” is his first proper vocal album since “Nerve Net” from 1992 and it kicks off with the sublime “This”. Now I love this kind of Eno treatment, a good percussion track, a thoughtful lyric and a guitar solo that comes from the Heavens. The only problem is that “This” could have easily come from “Wrong Way Up” and sounds so much like the co-writes he’s done for U2 and James. I still like the track loads, but it sounds dated and, frankly, old. And that’s the problem with the rest of the album.
Whereas “Nerve Net” had me asked “What was that?” when I first heard it, this CD leaves me asking “Why?”. It is an exercise in familiarity and nostalgia, with dancing percussion, ethereal vocals and those ambient keyboard sounds that are synonymous with Eno. “And Then So Clear” features a throbbing, pulse-like bass drum and Eno burbling along with a distorted vocal. It’s pleasant enough. And that’s the problem…it’s all too pleasant. After this track, “A Long Way Down” sounds like an off-cut from the U2/Eno cross-over record “Passengers” but isn’t as nearly as creative or interesting.
More old ground is visited with “Going Unconcious” which sounds like it could have been lifted directly from the “Drawn from Life” album. It’s suitably ambient and transporting, but it evaporates just before you get to your destination. The rest of the tracks plod along, going at the same pace, it’s like one giant vanilla ice-cream of sound. Thick, comforting, but ultimately unrewarding. Where are the sprinkles? Where’s the flake? Where’s the nuts and juice?
“Just Another Day” manages to lift the pace somewhat and is probably the second best song from the album. It’s got a beat. Yes, it actually has a noticeable drum loop. Hurrah! You could call it the title track of the album because the lyric is “It’s just another day on Earth”. More Eno recycling happens with “Under”, a song that was meant to be on the “My Squelchy Life” album that got transmogrified into “Nerve Net”. This track has been around since 1992 and appears on the Eno Vocal Box Set from that time. I find it’s inclusion here a bit strange. Yes, it is a great song, but surely this is a bonus track, not a fully-fledged album track that every Eno fan is familiar with? Oh well, that’s Eno’s decision, not mine. The last track “Bone Bomb” is probably the most interesting track of the album in terms of texture, but it relies on sampled vocals that instantly remind you of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” – but that makes it sound dated. If you can get over the 1980s sound, it is an intereting little number and owes a lot to the experimental, cut-up vocal sound Eno used on “Nerve Net”.
“Another Day on Earth” is a curate’s egg. Parts of it feel right, but much of it feels wrong for me. In parts, it is too slow, too familiar, too repetitive. Most of the album sounds incredibly dated and this album proves that Eno works best when he has other musicians to spark off from. There’s nothing like that here. There are no moments of jaw-dropping beauty or heart-stopping excitement. It’s almost like Eno tried to make an ambient album with vocals. It’s certainly good listening to it in the bath, but standing it against his other releases it is an empty shell compared to “Nerve Net” which really made me question modern music when it came out or “Another Green World” which is a work of genius.
I guess the problem is that I expected too much. But saying that, at least it got me listening to “Drawn From Life”, which is a much more fulfilling work in my opinion. Nice try, Brian, but this CD lacks the quirky imagination of your previous works. Must do better…

DVD REVIEW: Steve Hackett – Spectral Mornings: Live on Musicladen 1978 DVD

Darren — Sat, 21 May 2005 00:39:06 +0000

I’m going through a bit of a Steve Hackett renaissance at the moment. What with the two acoustic gigs I’ve seen and the multitude of recordings I’ve purchased over the last few months, it’s really a Hackett bean-feast at Chez Lock. This particular release I have been waiting for for nearly a decade. When we had satellite TV, I used to tune into all the German TV channels – OK, most of the time I was looking for pornography but every weekend, some of the German channels (Bayern, was one of them) used to play old rock concerts from the 1970s. From this show, I managed to tape performances from Marillion, Peter Hammill and Steve Hackett. The only problem with the Steve Hackett concert was that I missed the first fifteen minutes of the show. This galled me because it was such a fine performance and it was never repeated again while I had the old dish.
Anyway, the self-same concert, recorded on 8 November 1978, is now available for the first time on DVD. I got my copy direct from SH’s online shop and so my copy has his signature scribbled on the cover…how dare he deface my DVD sleeve! The performance is all here from me this time and we get to see Steve and his band (featuring his brother John) performing numbers from his first three solo albums.
The DVD opens with a pretty incendiary version of “Please Don’t Touch” and I still can’t forgive Genesis for not recording a version of this for their Wind & Wuthering album. The fools! But it doesn’t matter because Steve has done well on his own and this DVD shows just how strong he was so soon after leaving the band. Pete Hicks helps out on vocals for “Racing in A” and “Narnia”, but I’ve never been a particular fan of either song. I prefer the instrumentals. And we do get them…”Ace of Wands”, “A Tower Struck Down” and “Spectral Mornings” all get a strong outing, with Steve using his eBow for the latter track there. You also get to see/hear SH using the infamous Optigan keyboard for one number and it really is a curiosity. I am glad that they included it because it is a funny little number and one thing you always get with Hackett is a lot of dry humour. From the intros to the band (David Bailey on camera – cue applause from the unwitting German audience) to the use of filters on his voice for Carry on Up the Vicarage, you can see why all the fun stuff disappeared from Genesis after his departure.
The concert itself ends with a great medley consisting of the sublime “Shadow of the Heirophant”, complete with Dik Cadbury pulling off amazing vocal gymnastics to perform the vocals that were laid down by Sally Oldfield on the original (all together now: get yer knackers out of the vice, Dik!), which seques into an evil version of “The Angel of Mons” ending with drummer John Shearer going completely apeshit and providing the inspiration for Animal from The Muppets at the end of that track.
But it doesn’t end there… As this is DVD, you get an extra 14 minutes of unreleased stuff that wasn’t deemed fit for human consumption. So “Carry on Up The Vicarage” and “Star of Sirius” are now available to be heard. Neither is particularly strong, but it is good to hear/see them here.
The DVD itself features a 5.1 surround mix, but it didn’t really provided any extra depth to the performance. The really clever thing is that you can programme the DVD to playback the content in any order, so you can seemlessly add the cut footage back into the concert for a complete Hackett experience.
Look, I am a complete Hackett fan, so I say: BUY THIS DVD NOW! You get a great view of SH in the 1970s and it means you can throw away that crappy copy you bought for £25 off eBay, you moron!

CONCERT REVIEW: Laurie Anderson: The End of the Moon @ Barbican Theatre – 18/05/05

Darren — Thu, 19 May 2005 21:00:46 +0000

I worked it out that I see Laurie Anderson every two years – what a lucky guy am I. “The End of the Moon” is the second of a trilogy of works by Anderson that began with “Happiness”, which I saw at the Barbican back in 2003. The latest performance piece features many different ideas about science and beauty and art and looking up. The stage is sparse with an old leather chair which is used to tell a couple of stories, a projector and Anderson’s musical rig which is her pulpit for the majority of the show. Around the stage there was about a hundred candles flickering and dancing, creating a very calm effect. Almost a sea of stars on the stage. The narrative thread is provided by Anderson’s employment as NASA’s “Artist in Residence” and she goes on to talk about why the guys at the Hubble Space telescope make the pictures of far-off stars psychedelic rather than try and get a realistic model of the stars (“well we think the people would like them that colour) to how new intelligent space suits that have been developed aren’t being sent into space, but being sent out to be used in desert warfare.
The mood of this piece is much darker than “Happiness” and I was left feeling a little bit down. But that’s not to say it is a miserable piece, there’s much to laugh at and Anderson’s use of language is both hypnotic and, in places, unnecessarily verbose. However, the quality of the stories shine through from tales of duetting with an owl in Italy to walks in the woods with her dog Lollabelle and the canine’s subsequent discovery that danger can come from the air. Yup, looking up is the theme of the piece. Looking at the moon, looking at turkey vultures swooping down on Lollabelle, looking at the Twin Towers falling…looking up. Danger can come from anywhere.
Interspersed between these monologues there’s Anderson musical pieces played out on the violin. Very often these are solo, sometimes accompanied by a backing track. This time around she used a harmonizer and delay effect on a couple of the performances to create a twin violin duet with herself. The music was very strong and it certainly broke up the stories and kept you interested in what was going on.
The performance itself is about 90 minutes long and it is a totally solo performance with Anderson operating the backing music, cameras and some of the lighting herself. That’s without all the dialogue. It’s a very involving show and if you get the chance to catch it, please do. It’ll send you out of the theatre thinking and looking up.

CONCERT REVIEW: Tom Jones at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas 11/05/05

Darren — Thu, 12 May 2005 16:08:28 +0000

I was never going to see Elvis play Las Vegas, so I settled for the next best thing in the shape of Tom Jones. Yes, Tom is a guilty pleasure. He’s been around for ages and still manages to produce the odd fluke hit every decade. Even if you don’t like him, you have to admire his tenacity and longevity.

This was my first Las Vegas show and I was very excited. Me and the Missus got to the venue with minutes to spare (thanks to the terrible traffic along the strip) and were ushered to our seats. Drinks were being served at our table so we got a couple of beers and some pretzels. Then the introductory music began and the curtains opened and there was Tom.

The gig was incredibly loud for a small venue such as the MGM Grand (it was much louder than the recent Musical Box show we saw) and it certainly rattled the bones. But we were there and were behind the music. We got what we wanted…all the old hits “Delilah”, “Green Green Grass of Home”, “It’s Not Unusual”. “What’s New Pussycat?” and newer tunes like “Kiss” and my personal fave “If I Only Knew”.

The performance was superb and for a sixty-four year old, Tom is in fine form. He still has “THE VOICE” and I feel lucky to have heard two fantastic vocalists in the space of a week, even though there are from completely different genres and generations.

We got very excited by the show and made lots of noise and cheered at the appropriate moments. Highlight for us was the point where a lady in the front row fanned Tom’s crotch with her drinks menu, much to the consternation of her husband.

As Tom said, “We don’t plan any of this, you know!”

Afterwards, an American fellow asked if I had enjoyed the gig, knowing full well that it was me and The Missus making all the hullabaloo in the row. I grabbed him by the hand, shook it fiercely and told him I was British and that I had been born to enjoy the show.

Oh well, another lifetime ambition achieved…what next, eh?

CONCERT REVIEW: Van der Graaf Generator at Royal Festival Hall 06/05/05

Darren — Sat, 07 May 2005 07:51:48 +0000

Track-list (though songs might be missing and in the wrong order because I am still giddy like a schoolgirl whose first crush has just invited her to the prom).

Undercover Man
Scorched Earth
Refugees
Every Bloody Emperor
Lemmings
Nutter Alert
Darkness (11/11)
(In The) Black Room
Masks
Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End
The Sleepwalkers
Man-erg
Encore:
Killer
Wondering

I arrived fashionably late to the concert. Don’t get me wrong, I started on my journey two hours before the gig started and it should have took me around an hour door to door, but the Jubilee line decided to stop working and I had to back-track fast, using my knowledge of the rat-run tunnels at Bank station to get to the Waterloo & City. Suffice to say, I broke some kind of landspeed record by getting from Stratford to Waterloo in around 24 minutes.

Anyway, the Missus met me inside the venue and the bells were sounding ushering people into the concert hall. I was already excited, but now I had the added rush of adrenaline from hurtling across town. I could have murdered a drink, but with no time before the start, I settled for a boiled sweet of indeterminable flavour provided by The Missus. Like a dromedary, I used my own moisture content to overcome the “thirst”.

The band came on stage at about 7.45pm to a standing ovation. Hey, even I stood up and they took their places and launched into “The Undercover Man”. Wow…I’d never seen VDGG perform live before and was instantly stuck by the power. The second song up was “Scorched Earth” and by now the hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end. It was an intense experience, it was like a force of nature smacking you in the chest. At one point, I thought I was going to die…that’s how fucking powerful the music was.

The band shifted gear with “Refugees” before pulling out a track from the new album in the shape of “Every Bloody Emperor” which stood up quite well amongst the old stuff. Hey, I even got to sing a long. Then there was a surprise, pH introduced the next song and by the introduction, I knew what it was…it was “In the Black Room”. Sweet. I love that song from his solo album and it was amazing to hear the band tear it up and inject it with that patented VDGG energy.

Now, my memory is getting hazy because I was very carried away with the music. I was just in the middle of it completely, so I might forget songs or pull them up in the wrong order. I remember a particularly intense version of Lemmings, which just tore my head off and vomited in the stump. The band played another track from “Present” and this time it was “Nutter Alert” getting an airing. Again, it worked better than the album version and pH injected more fire into it. I was completely knocked back by the two tracks from Pawn Hearts, which were absolutely vicious in their delivery.

The selection of songs were great and I was surprised just how many of them I was familiar with – I didn’t think I was THAT much of a VDGG fan. Wrong. I am a really big fan…an even bigger fan now. OK – the band were a little sloppy in places missing cues and that, but who cares. The energy was there. Hammill is just THE VOICE. That guy could shred phonebooks with that set of lungs and David Jackson is something else. Never seen him play before and it was a real treat. A flute, two saxes at once? No problem. Though after one particularly aggressive solo he stood too near to a microphone and I heard him gasping for breath. I thought the poor old sod was going to snuff it. Then there is Guy Evans…what a powerhouse. If he’d have played the drums with the Schizoid Band, he’d have blown them away. His bass drum alone was causing palpitations in my chest! And then there was steady, reliable Hugh Banton, delivering the goods and then pulling out a blistering solo. My god, it was one of the most amazing gig experiences I’ve had.

To say that I am tired and emotional would be an understatement. I knew I would enjoy the concert, but I didn’t realise that VDGG would grab me by the scruff of the neck, rattle me around, hold me over a precipice and leave me dangling there screaming for my life. Amazing. Hammill is great solo, but he is amazing with those three guys behind him. What a team.
Amazing…my heart is still thumping in my chest with excitement.

FILM REVIEW: The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Darren — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 05:53:01 +0000

What can I say? When I was about ten years old, I was first exposed to the works of Douglas Adams. First it was via the TV shows, then the books and eventually the radio plays – so I kind of did it arse about face. During a run of the TV shows, I contracted chicken-pox and suffered for a fortnight, but that programme got me through and I loved how so knowingly clever it all was. Hitch-Hikers, like Dr Who, was a thing that I loved in my childhood, but both are having a resurrection, so at the moment, I am feeling a little bit like and eleven year old again. It’s bloody brilliant!
Back to the movie. There’s been a lot written by the “fans” about this film and most of it has been bad. This is a shame, because I thoroughly enjoyed this new version of the classic. Firstly, I wasn’t expecting a complete conversion of the book, I wanted something NEW and FRESH and that’s what I got. Not a crusty adaptation of a 30 year old book where the everyman Englishman was ever-so middle-class and had a tea fetish. I could never identify with the old Arthur Dent because he was so far removed from my experience, but I like the new Arthur Dent played by Martin Freeman who sums up his modernity towards the end of the film when he says: “I could murder a cuppa”. Too right, Arthur.
Anyway, the film radically departs from the book, leaving a lot of the oh-so clever, self-reverential words behind and instead taking a more filmatic journey through the HH universe. I think the fans that complained about this film wanted large chunks of the text projected onto the screen so they could read and giggle along – alas, movies do not work like that. They are a visual medium (no shit, Einstein). The story cracks on at a frightening pace and it is not long before we are into the action. It certainly was the fastest 109 minutes I’ve spent in a cinema. The special FX are absolutely excellent and I absolutely adore the new Marvin robot, voiced by Alan Rickman. All the cast work well with Sam Rockwell nailing it as the shallow, vain and frankly stupid Zaphod Beeblebrox. Some of the new ideas, like the point-of-view gun are inspired and I liked it how the white mice are more malevolent in this version of the story.
When the opening banjo plucks of “Journey of the Magi” began to play, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It was fantastic. Granted, some of my favourite passages weren’t included, but it doesn’t matter. This is a new film aimed at an audience who hasn’t read the books. My only major gripe was that there wasn’t enough from the Guide itself, voiced by the superb Stephen Fry. I thought Mos Def did a great job as a spaced-out Ford and Zooey Deschanel made a very attractive Trillian. A lot as been made of the “romantic” thread in the film, but I thought it was OK. If you are the last two humans left alive after the destruction of Earth, it’s only natural that you might want to “get it on”. Am I right or am I right? Bill Nighy makes a great Slartibartfast and the journey through the planet workshop on Magreathea is the film’s money shot. I really liked that bit and the bit when they activated Earth Mk II. Fantastic!
This film was made for the next generation of fans-to-be and luckily, we had some ten year olds sitting in the row in front of us. It was cool because I was that age when I first got introduced to this work. The kids laughed at the jokes, loved the whale and let our a roar when the mice shouted “Bollocks!” and got squished. As the curtain came down, they looked like they enjoyed the film and I was left hopeful that they would investigate the source. The only people complaining were the fat, flabby-arsed, unattractive anoraks we heard outside moaning about the fact that not enough money was spent on Zaphod’s second head. For fuck’s sake, get a life. It’s a movie. It either entertained you or it didn’t.
I was entertained. For my money, I got 109 minutes of entertainment. OK – it’s not wet-your-pants funny, but then HH wasn’t like that for me. It’s more a wry smile “that’s very clever” kind-of-funny. When it finished, there was a final, very quick, shot of Douglas Adams’ face zooming off the screen and my eyes went a little moist. It was my love of Douglas Adams and Harry Harrison that made me start writing sci-fi stories when I was a nipper and caused me to vow that I wanted to be a writer. I liked this film a lot and it saddens me to think that a lot of fans who’s minds are stuck in 1977 or 1981 won’t realise that this movie wasn’t actually made for them.
I loved it and can’t wait to own it on DVD. Please, I hope that enough people see this film so that the DisneyCorpTM decides to make “Restaurant at the End of the Universe”.

CONCERT REVIEW: The Musical Box Presents The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway at The Cambridge Corn Exchange 22/04/05

Darren — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:48:45 +0000

I love Genesis. And I love the Lamb album. In fact, “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” was the very first Genesis album I ever bought. It was around the time of the Peter Gabriel “So” album and I heard that he was in this other band before he went solo. So I read up in the NME Encyclopaedia of Rock and discovered that the Lamb was regarded as their pinnacle recording and that PG left soon after. I bought my copy on cassette from WH Smith in Romford during the Whitsun school holidays. I hate Romford, but the record shops made it bearable for a 15-year-old me. I played the album obsessively trying to figure out what it all meant, not having the luxury of an inner sleeve or the background story that came with the album. But it had me hooked and I became a Genesis fan.
I’m a (relatively) young whippersnapper when it comes to Genesis and I never saw them play live in the 1970s. I saw them on the “We Can’t Dance” tour and the highlight was always the old medley. In 2002, we caught “The Musical Box” when they performed at The Royal Albert Hall. I am not a fan of tribute acts, but I heard that this band were something else. And they are. They aren’t a tribute band as such, they are more a theatrical recreation of a moment in time. The moment in time is a Genesis concert from the 1970s. The “Selling England By the Pound” gig we saw that the RAH was fantastic and we even got to see Steve Hackett play an encore with the band, so when I heard that they were performing the Lamb, I was really excited. I didn’t want to see them at the RAH again, instead I opted for the Cambridge Corn Exchange, thinking it would be a more intimate performance.
Cambridge is about 45 minutes drive away from us and after getting lost on the Cambridge Ring Road, we arrived at the venue with 15 minutes to spare. However, we soon discovered that the band would be going on stage 15 minutes later than planned. Not a problem as we would slink off into a nearby pub for a drink to waste the extra time. The pubs were thrumming and we had a quick pint of cider, before taking in a few of the sites of the shopping precinct/square near the venue. We headed back in time to buy a programme and take our seats. I wasn’t too pleased with where we were, as the balcony at the Cambridge Corn Exchange is angled slightly too shallow, so you can see the top of people’s heads blocking the stage. If the angle had been a degree or two sharper, things would have been fine, but they weren’t. So I did a bit of stretched and discovered that my slouching was hiding an extra inch or two of neck length. Click! I could see the stage. The Missus wasn’t so lucky, lots of craning left and right for her.
The opening tinkles of The Lamb began and everyone cheered. Except me. I quickly realised that this was the worse sound system that I had ever heard. There was no PA system serving the balcony, so it felt that we were watching another audience enjoying The Musical Box. A lady behind me was very annoyed by the low level of the music and went downstairs to complain. It’s a shame because The Musical Box are a top band, but where we were sitting, their attempts to recreate sonic history was reduced to musical mush. Cup your hands over your mouth and sing “And the Lamb…lies down…on Broooaadwayyy!” and you’ll understand what we were hearing.
Not to be disheartened by the poor view and crappy sound, I began to tap my legs and jigger in my seat and sing along. Unfortunately, the sound was so low that everyone could hear me and not the band. The Missus asked me to stop – I was making a scene. “But I always sing along,” I replied. Not tonight…I was too loud. So I found it hard to get behind the music. But I still tapped and jiggered and enjoyed the unfolding story of Rael and his journey through the Underworld.
I thought it was all very clever, the way the projections worked with the songs, the props and the energy of lead singer Denis Gagne. The music was good too with only a few duff guitar notes and keyboard fluffs along the way. But with the sound mix as it was, it was barely noticeable. I must say that the drummer on this tour is spectacular. He is absolutely amazing and from our vantage point, looked like Phil Collins. He had the moves and the swagger down to a tee. Superb.
The stage show went well and I couldn’t get over how complex it all was. It was simple in its execution, but there was a lot of ideas being thrown at the audience. Do you listen to the words, the music, take in the projections, watch the lead singer…boy, it was a real sensory overload. The music was absolutely top-notch, but there was a few moments when I couldn’t hear the singer – there was an audible drop in sound. I loved the use of the fire effect during Back in NYC and this has to still be one of my favourite Genesis tunes. Of course, the Lamia and Slipperman costumes steal the day…very clever stagecraft, even if it is a little cheesey in the 21st century. I thought the final flash and the two Peter Gabriels before “IT” was superb. I briefed the Missus to look out for that and we tried to guess which one was the dummy. It was impossible to tell. And then the show was over – it was the quickest 90 minutes of concert I had ever seen. Highlights were the guitar solo for “Fly on a Windshield”, “Broadway Melody of 1974” and jamming on “The Waiting Room.” Singing along to this stuff and getting a mental picture of that tour was splendid. I’d waited a long time to put the imagery to the music.
The band returned to the stage to perform an encore. It consisted of “The Musical Box” and “Watcher of the Skies”. I’d heard them perform these songs before, but to keep authenticity, the arrangements seemed a little different and Gagne’s performances were more muted than during the “Selling England by the Pound” performance. I wasn’t sure if this was part of the act or whether he was worn out. Anyway, I loved those two old tunes and was surprised to see the amount of people who left before the encore…mind you, the record for people leaving was broken tonight by the four men who left soon after “Fly on a Windshield” – they left never to return. Obviously they didn’t like the sound either.
I had a quick toilet break during one of the instrumental pieces and had a listen on the floor to the sound and it was completely different. It was much better, in fact. I wish we’d got tickets in the stalls and not in the balcony, because the Cambridge Corn Exchange as venue did The Musical Box a great disservice tonight. A great gig, shame about the lack of PA in the balcony.

CONCERT REVIEW: The Steve Hackett Acoustic Trio – The Broadway, Barking 16/04/05

Darren — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 20:39:26 +0000

The Missus and myself enjoyed the Steve Hackett Trio at the QEH so much that when we realised that he was playing a mere 30 minutes drive away, we snapped up tickets immediately (and they were considerably cheaper than the QEH tix). We’d never been to the Broadway Theatre before, but I had heard that it was a relatively new building. Despite our complete lack of knowledge of the Barking area, we found the theatre quite easily and were a good twenty minutes early for the performance. This gave us time to check out the lavatories (in very good condition) and the rest of the facilities (there was a bar and a little cafe area and balcony). The venue itself is rather nice, if a little “blocky” and modern in construction and I was a bit jealous that Barking should have such a building when our local council can barely manage to keep the over-budget, over-schedule public swimming pool from closing down.

Anyway, we were in row C, which gave a nice view of the stage, just above eye-level of the performers. There was plenty of leg-room and I was surprised just how many people had turned up for this concert. Then I noticed a familiar looking chap and his lady friend take a seat next to the Missus. After much sideways looking and discreet peeping, I whispered to the Missus that “it’s that bloke…that bloke from the Steve Hackett Band”. Basically, Terry Gregory, the current bass player from the electric Steve Hackett Band was sitting right next to her. We argued in whispers whether it was him or not (until later, when SH himself put us right by announcing Mr Gregory’s presence).

Just after 8pm, SH took the stage and I immediately noticed that the atmosphere was very different from the QEH show. It wasn’t as supporting…in fact, the audience felt nervous, not knowing how to respond to SH’s little anecdotes. At the QEH, there was plenty of applause and laughter, at Barking, there were little applause for the anecdotes and just a little laughter. Of course, this could just be a volume thing as there was only a fraction of the audience present compared to the QEH gig.

The setlist was almost identical to the previous show. The guitar seemed to keep its tune a bit better too. I was just getting into the music, when a gruff voice came from over my left shoulder. Some oaf who was as pissed as a fart, was effing and blinding during the show. So in the right ear I had the gentle strains of SH’s acoustic guitar and in the left ear, a stream of coarse, East-End styled, expletives. Now don’t get me wrong – I am an East End boy myself and I like to swear just like the next man (you bunch of bloody buggers, you <--- SEE) but this was SOOOO wrong. There were kids present and I could feel the energy just disappearing. Terry Gregory seemed visibly riled by the man and I thought at one point he was going to say something. Eventually the man calmed down, but throughout the evening the show was punctuated with phrases such as "fucking twat" and "he's a fucking cunt". Astounding...never heard anything like it, even at a "proper" rock concert. After forty or so minutes, SH retired and we had the interval. We went out to stretch out legs and check out the rest of the theatre before returning to our seats. The second half seemed much more pumped up and the audience seemed to get behind the music a lot more (plus the increased volume drowned out Mr Beery Sweary behind me. Again, the setlist was almost identical with a few tweaks here and there. "Hands of the Priestess" and "Jacuzzi" are still my favourite songs of the night, along with "Gnossienne #1". By the end of the concert, the crowd was well into the music and we coaxed them back for an encore. This gig was very different from the QEH, it seemed a lot more relaxed and the banter between SH and Roger King and his brother, John Hackett was a lot funnier. There were some corking gags, like the one from Roger King comparing Steve Hackett to "Jasper Carrott on Horlicks" and that SH has pioneered "sit down" comedy. It was very funny. They even managed to have a sly dig at Terry Gregory saying that they could make bass sounds without the need of a bass player. Ouch! Terry Gregory's lady friend replied to Roger King's little knock with a spirited "The bastard!". Yes it was that kind of concert. I don't normally see the same gig twice, but hearing SH a second time really got me into the music (despite the services of the swearing oaf in row D) and I am glad we did it. Afterwards, I went to the merchandise stand where Alan "Super Genesis Fan" Hewitt was hawking some SH goods. I bought a copy of the DVD "Hungarian Horizons", shook Mr Hewitt by the hand and wished him well with his biography of Hackett. Then we stumbled off into the night for the return trip home.