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.
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The weather has been appalling. Meanwhile, Alex the Wonderdog is walking with a pronounced limp. In fact, he has started to hop around the house like a smelly kangeroo. There’s something not right with his rear left leg. I had the vet look at it the last time we were there but he couldn’t spot anything. I guess we’ll have to be a bit more persistant the next time we go.
In the post: a birthday present for The Missus, concert tickets for Greg Lake and the new Peter Gabriel “Still Growing Up – LIve and Unwrapped” DVD.
The past couple of days, I’ve been working hard on “Dead Rock Star”. The last couple of chapters have been difficult and this is a good sign. When things start to become an effort that means I am poking my stick into the right anthill, as it were. The first pass at chapters 10, 11 and 12 are done and we are upto 40,000+ words, which is surprising as I wasn’t expecting to hit that word count to around chapter 14/15. Anyway, lots of forward momentum, the introduction of the goth band, the ghosts of Abbey Road demonstrate how clueless they are and the reunion concert at the Shepherds Bush Empire is blighted by a plague of ghosts. So far, so good.
Here’s a little taster of the events at the Empire as the ghosts run amok and ruin the concert:
True enough, to the left of the stage were the presences of Jamail and his band of children, a ghostly Fagin directing his little demons to create mayhem and disaster. The amorphous traces of the spirit children darted across the stage, busying themselves with the various pieces of equipment that were used by the band. The first noticeable problem was with Geoff Simms keyboards as loud squelches and burps could be heard over the PA system. Somehow the children were scrambling the circuitry inside the keyboard and making it misbehave. Geoff could be seen adjusting knobs and buttons on his instrument before switching it on and off. When he realised that it had stopped working completely, he began to signal to the roadies off stage. The remaining members of the band hadn’t noticed Geoff’s technical difficulties and continued to play with guitarist Jon Woodworth stepping forward to take a solo. As he began to play, ghostly hands ran over the tuners on the headstock of the guitar detuning the guitar, rendering the subsequent solo tuneless. Woodworth heard himself making an out of tune racket and immediately stopped playing. The spirits surrounding him loosened his guitar strap and all of a sudden the instrument swung free, the heavy ash body of the Fender hitting him square on both feet. The force of the impact caused him to literally topple over in pain onto the stage.
Malcolm Anthony noticed what was happened and did what every good drummer would do and launch into a blistering drum solo. David Seymour looked around the stage and noticed that his colleagues had suffered various technical difficulties and found himself panicking about what to do next. As Malcolm pounded his drums and worked his way around the kit, he was oblivious to the spirit children unfastening the bolts on his drum seat and as he reached the full momentum of his solo, the seat collapsed and the drummer completely disappeared from view. The music had stopped and David Seymour was left to make an announcement. He stepped forward, but as he reached forward to grab the microphone, he was completely unaware of the spectral presence that had been tinkering with the circuitry of the microphone. As damp skin touched metal, perfect conductivity had been reached and Seymour had completed the circuit. Before he could even open his mouth, a significant voltage surged out of the microphone and down his arm. With a scream, he was propelled backwards across the stage and hit the drum riser with an audible thud. The impact caused the drumkit to topple forward and Malcolm Anthony’s schizoid face adorned bass drum landed squarely over Seymour’s head with a crash, framing his unconscious body with jarring precision. The audience fell silent and then somebody screamed. The lights went out and people began to panic.
Of course, this will all change with subsequent editings and revisions.
The mushrooms I photographed by the front gate have gone rotten and only had a life of just over 24 hours. I am glad I photographed them when I had the chance.
In the post: The Simpsons Series 6 DVD box set (Digipak Edition). I’m a sucker for the Simpsons. I make no apology for it.
It’s mushroom season round our way and with the recent damp weather, wonderful wild mushrooms are popping up everywhere. I took a few snaps of these fantastic funghi. The first shot was taken outside a house on some open grassland. These almost look like the closed-cup mushrooms you get in the supermarket.
The next pictures were taken of a very small, exotic looking clump of mushrooms that have taken root by the base of our front gatepost. Now you wouldn’t notice them if you didn’t look down, but I am an eagle-eyed type of guy and spotted them, grabbed the camera and took some shots. I think they look great.
I returned to the bank yesterday afternoon and went to the teller to ask for a new bank card. Apparently, there was some kind of block on my account and a new card may or may not have been dispatched but was never delivered. They couldn’t be any more specific. I asked the whens or whys of this, but you might as well talk to your own open palm. I don’t blame the worker, they are just the frontline. So the teller got me to fill out a form stating that I had changed my address (I hadn’t. I remember filling the same form out 5+ years ago when I moved into the area). When I presented the form and my various forms of indentification, she told me that she could order a new cheque book for me there and then, but if I wanted a new bank card, I’d have to go home and call a number and speak to someone in India for them to order it for me. What kind of twisted logic says that this is a better way of doing things than getting this woman, to whom I have presented my three different forms of ID, to press a few buttons and order the card for me. At the second window, a woman was trying to order a new bank card for her severely disabled brother, who had communication problems.
“How the hell is he supposed to use the telephone to do this?” she asked, “You people have no consideration for disabled people.”
Meanwhile, I notice my teller lowering her head and smirking everytime the man groaned and gesticulated to his sister in order to relay his wishes. Pathethic, I thought. So I left in a huff, returned to Woolworths and got my DVD replaced with one that actually had the discs in it and headed home. I phoned the number to order the card and spoke to Sanjeev, who dealt with my request with no problems. This was the first time I’d ever dealt with a Indian call centre with any degree of success. Either they must be getting better at understanding my East London patois or I am getting better at understanding their rich Indian accents?
With the firework explosions getting louder and increasing in frequency, Alex the Wonderdog is looking for new and more secure places to hide from the barrage. Yesterday, he decided to try and sit on my guitar equipment.
Hey, this is quite comfortable…
It’s one of those days. You know, a day when things conspire to annoy and irritate. So I needed to deposit some money into my bank account. We have two accounts and my personal account is for all my income tax money, so when the taxman-cum-highwayman comes knocking I can handover the goods sharpish. So I trudge in the damp and the drizzle to the bank and put in my card into the ATM machine, type in my pin, get the envelope, put the cheque in the envelope, type in the amount and then press ENTER. The sodding ATM rejects my card. As a result, I decide to deposit the cheque in our joint account with no problem. I look at my bank card and discover that it is out-of-date. It had expired in September, but somehow the bank didn’t think it was important enough to inform me of this or send me a new card for my account. I look at the bank queue, realise that I don’t have the obligatory ID to deal with the bank (you know, passport, driving licence, utility bill, vial of freshly drawn piss for toxicology reports, a blood sample for DNA anaylsis, etc), so I head outside, vowing to myself to return later, fully equipped.
So I decide to console myself with a visit to Woolworths. There were no CDs that I liked the look of, so I decided to purchase the new Star Wars III DVD (I know, I know. It is a guilty pleasure – I enjoy that sci-fi dross, OK?). I am feeling a little better because at least the journey resulted in a little bit of retail therapy. The guy behind the counter doesn’t give me a bag to put my DVD in, so I mutter something about service and retreat, the sealed DVD in my pocket, protected from the drizzle.
After 15 minutes of walking, I am back home, coffee in hand, homemade chicken and stuffing sandwich at the ready and I am ready to have a little preview of my new purchase. I rip the protective polypropylene sleeve and open the case. There are NO DVDs inside.
Oh well, it looks like I’ll be returning to the bank and Woolworths this very afternoon. Whoopsie fucking do!
Meanwhile, it is getting closer to Guy Fawkes Night and the locals are letting off rockets and other noisy fireworks. Alex the Wonderdog isn’t a particular fan and has been seeking protection in the small space under my legs between me and the computer table. It’s a tight squeeze, meladdio.
“I hate those pesky fireworks”
I decided to put together a little compilation of songs I’ve recorded for visitors to this site.Enjoy!
If you like what you hear, please leave a comment and if you want to support my musical endeavours feel free to purchase my music from reputable online stores such as iTunes (links to the right). Or you could just send me a dollar or a quid via PayPal to help me pay for new guitar strings and the running of this place. 😉
Just saw the glorious sunset and thought I’d share it. I love my digital camera!