From: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org (idealcopy-digest) To: idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Subject: idealcopy-digest V9 #223 Reply-To: idealcopy@smoe.org Sender: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk idealcopy-digest Sunday, August 27 2006 Volume 09 : Number 223 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [idealcopy] Mr Graham Lewis [PAUL RABJOHN Subject: Re: [idealcopy] Mr Graham Lewis a few thoughts on this one now i get some time...... EGL's solo career this century really has never got going , and i was fascinated to see where he might be headed. the He Said Omala set at the RFH was excellent , i think everyone there would agree on that. yet that stuff has still never seen the light of day. all he's released this century is a couple of (pretty inconsequential) tracks on compilations and the ocsid "opening sweep" album. whereas i loved hox , ocsid i found hard work. "opening sweep" must be one of the most impenetrable wire-related releases , this huge lump of (i guess) improvised music that i suspect few have played through too often. anyway , the venue was this really great cellar-type bar , great to meet up with howard and the two marks. the crowd was surprisingly big , seemed to be mainly the london expat swedish hipster community (who'd have thought there was much of one , eh?). i'd never heard of sci-fi skane , the drill was that they played a set and graham and a female vocalist came on and did "guest spots" during the event. SFS are clearly big in sweden , its a pretty light hearted electropop act with a DJ and 2 frontmen. their own stuff sounded pretty good in places , a couple of numbers were excellent. however they also did some terrible karaoke type covers that were a bit tiresome (the lunatics have taken over the asylum , immmigrant song , street life to name but three). sorry mark but i thought the girl singer was a bit dire , and the cover of grace jones' version of "she's lost control" was the worst thing i've sufferred in months. she usually sings in revl9n , of whom i know nothing either. the posters billed EGL as appearing at 9.30 , SFS had been playing for over an hour at 11.30 and still no sign of our man. must admit i was getting itchy feet as i had a long drive home to follow. but just as the swedish end of things began to flag badly , lewis made a mclareneeque intervention and kicked things up to a different level (he says optimistically.....) lewis' set was quite beat-driven , quite commercial sounding really. maybe you could look at it as a he said for the 21st century? love to hear it again , that's for sure. whatever , i think the consensus was that he's still "got it" and we'd like to see it some more. here's hoping. p Mark McQuitty wrote: Mr Graham Lewis at the Notting Hill Arts Club on Monday night, here be pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tingy/sets/72157594246879911/ Although we had to wait a good while for it, I really enjoyed the set. Some great tunes were belted out there. Hopefully Graham considers it a success and we see him doing much more of this in the future. Cheers, Mark M ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2006 16:44:40 EDT From: Eardrumbuz@aol.com Subject: Re: [idealcopy] 21 more songs you have to hear... In a message dated 8/24/06 4:22:36 AM, giluzzz@gmail.com writes: > Of course you should love your own tracks and listen to them, but > personally > I think Colin is wrong here. As he mentioned himself part of the reason he > listens to his own tracks is professional: " I listen and re-listen to make > sure that I have got the best from a piece, even when it's supposed to be > finished. I 'bulletproof' the music to stand up to repeated scrutiny." > There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but the no. of times you play > your own stuff can't be compared to others' - it's not the same kind of > listening habit. I wouldn't have put my own stuff as my favourite, not > because I was trying to be modest - mainly because if I judge my favourites > by the no. of times I play them my own stuff cannot be included, because my > main reason for listening to it is actually part of the creative process and > cannot be compared to my 'regular' listening habits. > I agree. I'm not on last.fm, but if I list my iTunes music by "# of times played" then the most popular track in my library is my 4 second silent track I use to separate other tracks of mine. When I compile tracks for a cd, I like to keep the "albums" separate, so I stick one or more of these 4 second long spaces between the last track from one session and the first track from the next, to give the listener some time to absorb before moving on. I don't know how last.fm works, but the count goes up in iTunes when the track ends, so if I'm listening to the end of one of my songs repeatedly, that track will show as being "played x # of times" even though I was just checking how I liked the fade, for example. Another interesting thing is that the song I've listened to most on iTunes, aside from my own, is "Something Must Break" by Joy Division. Sure I love the song, but do I really listen to it so much more than other songs, by JD or anyone else? Not really. The play count is much higher on that one because I recorded a cover of it, and therefore listened to it a lot at that time. So there are reasons behind listening habits that should really be considered when evaluating playlists. Perhaps last.fm has some kind of feature that allows viewers to see that kind of information? Either way, seems like an interesting site I should probably check out. - -paul c.d. The Happy Apple Rock 'n Roll Circus comes to town! http://www.jazzatdetour.com http://www.geocities.com/eardrumbuz/happyapple ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2006 16:50:28 EDT From: Eardrumbuz@aol.com Subject: Re: [idealcopy] A review of Manscape thanks for posting the EW review. I was a bit surprised after such a lovely review to see it receive only a B+...ah, well, I've never been one for grades :o) - -paul c.d. The Happy Apple Rock 'n Roll Circus comes to town! http://www.jazzatdetour.com http://www.geocities.com/eardrumbuz/happyapple ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2006 22:05:39 +0100 From: steeleknight@lineone.net Subject: [idealcopy] OT: The Green Man Festival 2006 - Saturday This goes on a while - and has been split into two for manageability - so please move on if you want to... At the first Green Man Festival I went to three years ago there were 1,000 people. This year, with a new venue - the Glanusk Park Estate, a short drive from the previous venue in the Brecon Beacons in Wales - there are 6,000. Is this evidence of a sell-out? Well, no, not at all really. This is still a festival without corporate sponsorship - Mojo magazine are supposed to be sponsors but their only presence is giving away copies with ice-creams on Sunday lunchtime - and it didn't advertise at all. The Green Man is a festival like they used to be (I assume - I didn't actually go to any back then) and the vibe is cool and slightly smug - we pity all those people at the V Festival suffering advertising and Razorlight. Here we're surrounded by lovely Welsh hills in what appears to be the grounds of a stately home without the home, reasonable toilets and decent food. On the face of it the Green Man musical experience seems easy to summarise - - something about folky hippies - but in practice the music here covers a number of categories: Weird Folk - hairy blokes mainly, with laptops and acoustic guitars singing about women being turned into hares. Strangely, although they are heavily influenced by the late 60s folk tradition, these never play folk clubs. Tortured singer-songwriters - but no James Blunt here - Green Man accepts only the best. Senior Folk Stalwarts - this year Donovan (who I miss because we don't turn up until Saturday - aww) and Bert Jansch American Indie bands who share the attitude - Calexico headline this year, Bonnie Prince Billie last. I could see Low or Lambchop in this context. A bunch of other UK artists who don't really fit but who we like. There are three stages this year - The small Green Man Cafe - a stage under a pergola in the corner of a stableyard - the Folkey Dokey marquee and the main stage in a lovely field, surrounded by hills. Wait a minute - Welsh Hills = rain and so within a few minutes of arriving on Saturday lunchtime it's on with the wellies and waterproofs. This doesn't really help Charlotte Greig who is playing the Cafe and whose harmonium driven traditional folk isn't everyone's cup of tea anyway. But I like her a lot and she perfoms a fine set with her band including an interesting rendition of Sonic Youth's Cotton Crown. A couple of hours of rain later and the marquee is jammed for Misty's Big Adventure. Regular readers will know how high I hold the Misty's live experience but that's usually in the corner of a pub in Brixton and sharing with a 1000 people is a bit of a shock. But the band quickly win the crowd over, unsurprisingly as they have a set of songs and a sound - brass-heavy, lots of opportunity to chant along - guaranteed to make people feel better. Young girls are brought down the front on their fathers' shoulders to see a sight that may haunt their dreams - Erotic Volvo, a tall man in a head-to-toe red suit festooned with inflated rubber gloves, dancing maniacally among the audience. A quick dash through the mud to the main stage to see Tunng, the archetypal Weird Folk band in many ways not least because they are hairy and have a song about a woman being turned into a hare. Their harmonies and acoustic line-up reminds me at times of CSN, if they had been taken to see The Wicker Man too often. I like Tunng a lot, partly because they are very pleasant to listen to and partly because they constantly undercut the pleasantness by introducing snatches of recorded voices and strange burbling noises. This is the sort of thing British Sea Power should be doing I reckon. The sun comes out briefly during King Creosote's set which causes him to change his lyrics in tribute, this is such a momentous occasion. KC has increased in profile since last year's festival but there's little evidence any of this will go to his head as he is still devoted to running the Fence Collective who, along with The Earlies, come across as the most generous set of musicians in Britain, helping out other bands wherever they can. His set of depressed love songs is very well received by the audience and so they should be - he is now an outstanding songwriter. As is Micah P Hinson. It's two years since I've seen him during which he has had a very bad back and the promise of new songs is enticing. Fortunately these are well up to scratch, similar in style ( a kind of Country psychiatry) to his previous work. Speaking of The Earlies, various of them are around although they're inexcusably not playing and Micah is supported tonight by The Great Christian Madden who manages to play tremendous organ throughout despite being apparently very drunk. They end with a great version of The Day Texas Sank to the Bottom of the Sea, which is always a pleasure to be in the presence of. Dumping wife and kids (the latter having heroically turned up again despite only really liking Adem - mind you, they don't have much choice...) back at the B&B, I return to a darkened estate and, although tempted by the DJ stage where The Fall's Leave the Capitol is pumping out, make my way to Folkey Dokey for James Yorkston. I've been meaning to see Yorkston for about three years, being a minor fan of his bitter-sweet love songs and ballads, but circumstances have always conspired against. I'm expecting a pleasant hour in the company of a reasonable songwriter but I'm not prepared for what I get. Sat down, so that one only catches glimpses of his bald pate, he is already presiding over what I can only describe as a lovefest. What on record are often non-descript songs are here transformed into masterpieces as his tremendous band - which make me think of The Bad Seeds in the way that they seem to be a perfect foil - and his personality turn the audience into a set of melting lovers. There's no-one here who isn't having a great time. In front of me four young women start to dance ecstatically, clearly familiar with the songs - who are these people, who know other people who know James Yorkston and come away with them for the weekend? 'Isn't he lovely' says another passing woman. Well, yes he is, although as he's balding and overweight this is more a comment about his personality and talent than anything else. This performance is probably only great because it's here tonight, at the centrepoint of the festival and people are just going for it. But it is, undeniably, a great performance. But I'm not finished yet tonight. Back at the Cafe, Malcolm Middleton - the 'other one' from Arab Strap - is playing and I worm my way towards the front although such is the press of people that most of the time I can barely see anything. Last year Middleton played with a band and he was really impressive, showcasing songs from second album 'Into the Woods' that at the time I was unfamiliar with. Since then I've grown to love it and am really looking forward to this. As it is - possibly because he's playing solo acoustic - - tonight he plays only a few songs from it concentrating on earlier stuff. He is, he admits, 'woefully under-rehearsed'. But I stand there, crushed against a barrier, rivetted by what may be the most depressing set of songs I've ever heard (this from a Peter Hammill fan, remember). Every song is about doomed love affairs, Middleton's self-doubt (two songs refer to his 'shite songs'), his loneliness ('My loneliness shines'), the hellishness of life in Falkirk. But the hour is strangely uplifting and often funny. Middleton's capability for a memorable melody - evidenced constantly with his work with Arab Strap - makes each song distinctive and he has a winning, self-deprecating way with him. His playing is tremendous, bringing out spontaneous applause from the mixing desk at one point. 'Don't worry Malcy' shouts a woman 'your songs ain't shite'. She's right. This has been two great performances at the end of the evening and I move away energised. To be continued... ___________________________________________________________ Tiscali Broadband from 14.99 with free setup! http://www.tiscali.co.uk/products/broadband/ ------------------------------ End of idealcopy-digest V9 #223 *******************************