From: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org (idealcopy-digest) To: idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Subject: idealcopy-digest V8 #144 Reply-To: idealcopy@smoe.org Sender: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk idealcopy-digest Monday, May 30 2005 Volume 08 : Number 144 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [idealcopy] Fall antics ["John Hobson" ] Re: [idealcopy] Fall antics [Derek White ] Re: [idealcopy] Fall antics [Derek White ] Re: [idealcopy] [OT] Liverpool/Milan ["Keith A" ] Re: [idealcopy] Fall antics [Tim ] [idealcopy] [ot] Four Tet [Andrew Walkingshaw Subject: Re: [idealcopy] Fall antics > 'Later' has its place. Its basically the direct descendant of 'The Old > Grey Whistle Test' and reflects what is 'happening' in music if you only > ever read the Observer Music Monthly and haven't been to a gig since you > saw the Levellers in 1992. The idea of getting disparate bands in the same > studio is still quite a good one, its just a shame they are so > conservative in their choice of acts. > > Live music and the 'indie' scene in this UK is suddenly huge again, > relatively new bands jump from playing pubs to Carling Academy in a matter > of months and if you want to see a gig these days you have to book in > advance, well you do in Manchester anyway > Would be good to have a music show to reflect this without fucking Van > Morrison. A national 'network' show (the Nathan-Barley-esque shit that > goes out after 1am on C4 and the MTV channels don't count), and one with > live performances. Like The Tube but without the Phil Collins/Eurymthics > bits. The nearest we had to this was Snub TV....bring it back! > I totally agree that we are seeing a real resurgence in live music and more importantly places to play in. But you are wrong in attacking the choice of bands in later. To stay on air it has to find an audience and if you think Van Morrision is irrelevant to music then who in the name of heavens would you include. He is an old curmodgen (and could give Mark Smith real lessons on that score) but he has a genuine appeal. What's wrong with that. As for ignoring new acts, Kaiser Chiefs, Go Team and Arcade Fire are all acts people want to see as they have a buzz about them. KT Tunstall launched her career on the back of one song last year so its clearly good exposure if you get on. It is not the OGWT by any means and the constant failure of C4 to find a formula for this market proves its doing something right. I just wonder why Wire never were asked to appear! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 07:50:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Derek White Subject: Re: [idealcopy] Fall antics I know some non-UK lC'ers probably find it ungrateful of me to diss 'Later', given that some of you have NO music show of any ilk to enthuse/complain about. Let me explain. The principal reason that I'm carping about 'Later' is the dark suspicion that it's presence in the schedule probably serves as a figleaf for the people at the beeb who either lack the will or the knowledge to come up with a new show/presenter/format. As things stand, if pushed on the subject, they can always point at the program and say "See, we DO cater for the non-mainstream", however thin that statement is. Later's very continuing existence makes the appearance of a new show , such as a 'Snub TV' or similar far less likely. It could be keeping something much more ....erm....vital off the nation's screens. No, IMHO it's time to give it the ol'heave-ho. Jools gets progressively more bumptious and psycophantic with his guests, and the whole enterprise has the feel of going thru' the motions. If we can't have an entirely new show, then at the very least, a radical re-vamp is called for, in the way that the OGWT had when faced with punk (although in the end that was little more than lip-service, with a preponderance of 'punk-by-numbers' and mainstream new-wavers. The OGWT did however get some fresh faces to present it's latter days. As for the 'diversity' of the artistes on offer, while some may reckon this is a good thing, I'd just argue that it means that I have no interest whatsoever in 2/3rds of each week's hour slot. Mark B had it about right when he railed against "The [phoney] bonhomie, and the fiction that all musicians are good and everyone gets along with everyone else, all music being of equal worth" fiction. If that's true, then the artistes booked are quite unlike any musicians I've ever known, who by and large are well able to slag other acts off when compared to their own combo, and are just as duplicitous and back-biting as everyone else, so why pretend otherwise? I'd like to see perhaps instead of a single hour-long show with 'eclectic mixes', two or three rather more genre-driven shows of lesser lengh. Give us a credible alt-rock/indie show (indeed, a la Snub TV), put the R'n'B in it's own show, and the 'World Music' can go to BBC3 with the other fringe pursuits. There WAS a program a couple of years back that looked promising, but it only went out on BBC Wales:- it was called the "pop factory", as it was filmed in a place that was a former bottling plant. It had an interesting mix of stuff, but wasn't so diverse it lost the thread. The first two seasons were pretty promising, but then it went national for series 3, and the booking policy had taken a nosedive, and it was suddenly wall-to-wall boy bands !! But the original format was good...........anyone else see the early runs of it? Keith A?? As for The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, I don't know a great deal about them save to say I *think* they were the brainchild of a Guy called Giles Farnaby (Now deceased, I think) who gathered together a varied band of musicians, and dabbled in all sorts of (mainly accoustic) musical styles, often with quite odd instruments, inc Xylophones, glockenspiels, mandolins , banjos, guitars cellos, violins:- you name it, they used it. Style-wise they covered every base from string quartets to ethno-music and back again. They were all, so far as I know, classically trained, and were beloved of advertising execs, and their stuff often shows up as music for voice-overs on documentaries, and ads. I guarantee most of you will have heard *something* by them, though you might not have known it. The one I guess that most of you will have heard is "Telephone and rubber band", which was used in a 1-to-1 phone network ad. It sounded, unsurprisingly, just like a telephone and a rubber band: consisting as it did of a looped 'dial-tone', with some accoustic upright bass noodling, and topped off with a scrapy violin or two. Also their piece "Perpetuum Mobile" and "Music for a Found Harmonium" crops up all the time on TV. For the curious, I'd recommend the compilation "Airs and Yodels:- a Penguin Cafe primer".......To hear that Bez has name-checked them, though, is something I find utterly astounding, as nothing he's ever been involved with points in that direction AT ALL !!!!! Tim wrote: Derek White wrote: > I know that there's a lot of Fall fans on the list, and *maybe* some for > those people who like to see artists doing total re-treads of > familiar songs, but on the whole, this was yet another edition of '! > later' that illustrates that the show has had it's day, and not only > is Mr Holland scraping the bottom of the barrel, last night's > ladle-full also came up with a liberal amount of splinters in it. > 'Later' has its place. Its basically the direct descendant of 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' and reflects what is 'happening' in music if you only ever read the Observer Music Monthly and haven't been to a gig since you saw the Levellers in 1992. The idea of getting disparate bands in the same studio is still quite a good one, its just a shame they are so conservative in their choice of acts. Live music and the 'indie' scene in this UK is suddenly huge again, relatively new bands jump from playing pubs to Carling Academy in a matter of months and if you want to see a gig these days you have to book in advance, well you do in Manchester anyway Would be good to have a music show to reflect this without fucking Van Morrison. A national 'network' show (the Nathan-Barley-esque shit that goes out after 1am on C4 and the MTV channels don't count), and one with live performances. Like The Tube but without the Phil Collins/Eurymthics bits. The nearest we had to this was Snub TV....bring it back! I know people who work in Music TV and they know about as much about music as I know about Football so if they are representative its no wonder there are no decent Music TV shows. > glumly, dw. > > ps:- Regarding last week:- anyone else think that Arcade Fire sounded > like the bastard offspring of the Talking Heads and The Penguin Cafe > Orchestra? Just me , then.......;-) They do sound like Talking Heads and indeed did a cover of TH when I saw them live. never heard any Penguin Cafe Orchestra. All I know about them is that Bez from the Happy Mondays mentions them several times in his autobiography! Anyone care to tell me more about them? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 07:55:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Derek White Subject: Re: [idealcopy] Fall antics Re Later:- John Hobson wrote: I just wonder why Wire never were asked to appear! ////// If there is such a thing as a common denominator to the booking policy on 'Later' it is that by and large, you have to display *some* classic 'Muso' traits to get on it...... Or be *continuously* around that long, that you can be seen to have paid your dues, and be difficult to ignore. Much though I love Wire, I think there studied "anti-(or non-)muso" thing possibly disqualifies them ? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 16:39:28 +0100 From: "Keith A" Subject: Re: [idealcopy] [OT] Liverpool/Milan > I too am a red. I can still barely speak! This doesn't surprise me. Most of the LFC supporters I know can barely string a sentence together ; ) K. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 17:05:58 +0100 From: "Keith A" Subject: Re: [idealcopy] Fall antics > The performance was 'I Can Hear the Grass Grow' and 'Blindness'. The > current Fall band were on good form, MES was typically shambolic, half > arsed and incomprehensible....and if you hadn't heard him before (as a > lot of viewers won't have) you'd probably wonder what all the fuss was > about...he just sort of whined a bit over the music. I like The Fall, but thought the performance of ICHTGG was a half-arsed re-working of a classic song that worked on little more than a comedy level. Blindness was much better though. The best thing about the show for me though was Tony Visconti and Marc Bolan's little lad, Rolan being there! > Still, as our overseas counterparts are keen to remind us...we are very > lucky to have this programme. At least the Manic Street Preachers > weren't on. I think Later's OK. It's certainly better than nothing and I'm really not convinced that getting shut of Jools and forced bonhomie would result in anything better. There'd either be nothing or something that didn't at least feature the odd band we like. The chance of it being replaced by a Snub like show is as just about as remote as Wire playing a gig in the north-west! I remember moaning about OGWT and thinking it needed dumping. It was. Did we get anything better? No. Do we wish it was still going in a current form? I guess I do. Lets enjoy The Fall, Arcade Fire, etc while we can. Keith ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 01:27:56 +0100 From: Tim Subject: Re: [idealcopy] Fall antics Derek White wrote: > > As for The Penguin Cafe Orchestra,The one I guess that most of you > will have heard is "Telephone and rubber band", which was used in a > 1-to-1 phone network ad. It sounded, unsurprisingly, just like a > telephone and a rubber band: consist! ing as it did of a looped > 'dial-tone', with some accoustic upright bass noodling, and topped > off with a scrapy violin or two. Also their piece "Perpetuum > Mobile" and "Music for a Found Harmonium" crops up all the time on > TV. They were sort of the Moby of their day then?! For the curious, I'd recommend the compilation "Airs and > Yodels:- a Penguin Cafe primer".......To hear that Bez has > name-checked them, though, is something I find utterly astounding, as > nothing he's ever been involved with points in that direction AT ALL I quote (and the grammar and spelling is all Bez's) "...My mate astounds us both at that very moment by findin that the hi-fi can play two tapes at the same time. What a bearin this has on the trip; there was Penguin Cafe an Frank Zappa blastin out at the same time. My physical existence in time an space was facin an unreasonable multitude of questionin; I had to give in an accept that reality was goin to be evadin me for the time bein." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 01:39:24 +0100 From: Andrew Walkingshaw Subject: [idealcopy] [ot] Four Tet Get "Everything Ecstatic" by Four Tet. It's ace - it's loud and messy in all the ways Rounds wasn't and is better for it. Oh, and I may as well go public with this; I've started making music fairly seriously (hobby serious, but never mind). Have a look at http://www.hiddenmusic.co.uk/ if you want to have a laugh at my (and the folks I'm working with)'s stuff. Cheers. (Please be gentle!) - - Andrew ------------------------------ End of idealcopy-digest V8 #144 *******************************