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THOSE WE HAVE LOST: Nic Potter (1951-2013)
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I blush to admit that although I had been vaguely aware of Spooky Tooth and had heard a few tracks here and there, I didn't really know anything much about them. The one thing that I did know was that organist Gary Wright was a good friend of the late George Harrison, and played on a number of his albums. So I was particularly interested to get the latest instalment of the 'Lost Broadcast' series on Gonzo, which features the band.
Now I am a huge fan of the 'quiet Beatle' and have always rather meant to check out Gary Wright. Over the years I have found some great music, just from checking out the sidesmen on various albums by ex-Beatles. One of the best was Lon and Derek Van Eaton who are massively good and even more massively obscure and whom I probably shouldn't eulogise about too much because they have no records out on Gonzo.
I can see why Gary Wright was George Harrison's keyboard player of choice, but I was particularly impressed by the ensemble playing of the band themselves.
Read on...
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THE YES CIRCULAR - SOME WONDROUS STORIES
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The Court Circular tells interested readers about the comings and goings of members of The Royal Family. However, readers of this periodical seem interested in the comings and goings of Yes and of various alumni of this magnificent and long-standing band. Give the people what they want, I say
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The big are they?/aren't they? question which has been obsessing fans over the past few weeks is the question of whether the band is going to make another studio album.
Chris Squire still seems reasonably in favour of the idea, but even if there is one, it won't be this year. Fans will have to wait at least until 2013 for any new music from the band. Chris admitted this in a revealing and interesting interview...
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Everything has gone completely quiet in the Asia camp after last week's shock announcement that Steve Howe had decided to quit the band. However, this week Carl Palmer (whose illness late last year forced the cancellation of what would have been the last Asia tour with the original line-up has announced various bits of solo activity (again thanks to Bart Lancia for this information).
However, there is apparently s new Asia album in the works. However, the release of the new Asia featuring John Payne which includes my mate Erik Norlander on keyboards will be released soon. And if its anything like the current single it is going to be a real stonker.
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FOR THOSE NOT IN THE KNOW...
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This week we have published two articles of interest about Jon Anderson; a short interview, and a link to a very touching article by a fellow Accringtonian reminiscing about the days before Jon became famous, bur was still a local hero...
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AND JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: An interesting article about the technical rigours of Rick Wakeman's recent dates in South America.
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A REAL EXCLUSIVE: DON FALCONE INTERVIEW
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I have been trying to interview Don Falcone from Spirits Burning for weeks, but every time I tried something happened. We had technical problems, health problems, family problems and even times when I needed to be dealing with various arcane animal related issues from my day job, but eventually we got together through the magick of those jolly nice people at www.recordyourcall.co.uk but for whom I really would not be able to do a lot of what I do.
If you missed part one, check it out HERE |
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Hardboiled Wonderland - "As Small As A World And Large As Alone"
The debut 10 track album is a sonic venture through electronic and trip-hop compositions written by Martin Birke (synths, samples, electronic percussion, drum programming) & Percy
Howard (lyrics, vocals, vocal samples).
Recorded & produced with Christopher Scott Cooper (guitars, samples and engineering) at Blue Seven Audio from 2009-2010 with contributions by Benito Cortez (viola, violins), Edo Castro (7-string basses) with backing vocals by Tara C. Taylor and essence.
From the sultry, emotionally charged title track to the infectious dance beats of ‘Jungle Fever’ and ‘Looking for Strange’, the trip-hop of ‘Filthy’ and ‘I Carry Your Heart’, the album plays
unfolds bold, delicate and introspective. Birke & Howard met several times in the mid-'90s. Birke’s band Sandbox Trio often opened for Howard’s band NUS in their hometown Sacramento, CA.
In 2009 they began work as a songwriting duo with co-producer Christopher Scott Cooper in Fremont, CA. at Cooper’s studio - Blue Seven Audio. As songs began to take shape they felt the band name best described the style of the music they produced and happened to be half the title of a favourite novel by Haruki Murakami (Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World). After a year writing and recording a collection of songs including a remix by the late great bassist Mick Karn (Japan, Dalis Car) which is available on the band’s official website as a download, Birke & Howard felt they have truly created a wonderland of modern music that brings the listener into themselves and out into the exploration of new eclectic music.
www.hardboiledwonderland.net
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Dave Bainbridge is best known as one of the founder members of Celtic Rock band, Iona, of which he has been the mainstay since its formation in the late eighties.
As a solo artist Dave Bainbridge is a relative newcomer, only taking the plunge when Iona had a sabbatical in the early noughties. This break was due to the band's vocalist taking time out to concentrate on her family.
In late 2003, Dave wrote and recorded his debut solo album ‘A Veil Of Gossamer’. The album was critically well received and this encouraged Dave to begin work on another album. This will be completed as soon as there is a gap in the now reconstituted Iona's schedule.
In the meantime Dave has formed a working partnership with Troy Donockley, also of Iona. The duo has made two albums and a live DVD recorded at Lincoln Cathedral. They also toured Japan in late 2004, performing a mixture of their own solo material, alongside traditional and newer songs, plus selected items from Iona's vast back catalogue.
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Label: Open Sky
Catalogue Number: OPENVP4CD
Price: £7.99
Available: In Stock
Label: Open Sky
Catalogue Number: OPENVP4CD
Price: $10.99
Available: In Stock
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THE BEST LAID PLANS...
As regular readers of my inky-fingered scribblings here and elsewhere will know, I am somewhat of a rock music historian and an avid collector of musician biographies. I got several new books for Christmas and have been indulging in an orgy of reading, and I have actually come up with quite an interesting paradigm.
Reading Rob Young’s Electric Eden, which is invaluable history of the sort of edenic and idiosyncratic (acid) folk music that I love so much, it got me thinking. It asserts, as does the new Rick Wakeman fan pack, and various other things I have been reading over the last few weeks all make the same – perfectly true assertion: that a mixture of technological advances and socio-cultural changes meant that the period between 1966 and 1972 saw an unparalleled boom in complex, cerebral, music. This is perfectly true, and unarguable. Less true, and debatable, is the assertions that these stylistic and artistic breakthroughs were somehow linked to the rise in recreational drug taking, although – I suppose – the neo-Bohemianism promulgated by the use of recreational drugs did open many people’s ears and minds to stylistic influences that they otherwise would not have been likely to have come across.
The final assertion that has been made so many times, is that this was a one off, and is unlikely to ever happen again. WRONG!
In the past few weeks I have been listening to a lot of new music, quite a bit of it coming through via the Gonzo label. And over the last few weeks it has gradually dawned on me that the accepted paradigm is just not the case. The advance in technology over the last few years, and in particular the advent of SkyCloud technology such as Dropbox and SendSpace has boosted a whole new, 21st Century way of making music.
(It also produced a whole new 21st Century way of consuming music which basically sounded the deathknell to much of the established music industry which toppled ignominiously in a way I can only compare to the fall of Communism several years ago.)
For the first time artists from all over the world can work with each other without the need to be physically in the same place, and some of the music which is then produced by people like Don Falcone or Spirits Burning is nothing short of extraordinary. Last night I was listening to one of the albums featuring Bridget Wishart and was completely blown away. This is as exquisite a piece of edenic electric folk as anything within the pages of Electric Eden, and it can only open the doors to more gloriously surrealchemical music in the years to come.
For, whereas computer generated music was for many years thought to be the demesne of artists like Kraftwork or, I suppose, The Human League, or the cerebral mindscapes of Brian Eno, it has suddenly changed, and there is now a cyborg twinning of computer generated sounds and traditional organic sounds which is truly astonishing, and transmogrifies both the artist and the listener.
Bizarrely, I first mooted this at the Sidmouth Folk Festival back in 1994, when I hypothesised something called cyberfolk which didn’t really exist apart from in my head and on a couple of not very well recorded things that I had done on an Atari home computer. I soon forgot about it, as did everybody else, but waking up in the wee small hours of this morning to answer a call of nature the memory of what was 20 years ago my brave new concept flashed back into my mind for a moment, and I felt slightly smug.
2012 was a remarkable year for music, and I have a sneaking suspicion that 2013 is going to be even better. Watch this space.
Until next week,
Slainte
Jon Downes
(Editor)
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