Off Topic Saints Not606 Music Thread

Oh well I'd better post something from the first non-Zep Robert Plant solo album that I bought. Now & Zen. Pretentious title, but some good tracks. Here's Heaven Knows:

 

Also on this day, the late Soul and Funkster, Actor, Humanitarian and voice of the Chef in South Park!, Issac Hayes, was born in Memphis in 1942.
Here is his signature song...

 

OK, Isaac Hayes... That's inspired me to post a track from a band I never really got. So I guess it gets into my category of this is a really intriguing song that I like but I'm not sure about the group because I haven't heard enough of them yet. But the Isley Brothers had been around for donkeys years even when this came out, so I'd heard quite a bit by then. In the end I bought a Greatest Hits album which the ex made off with when we separated. Don't worry, she left plenty of great albums behind, and she took it to remember us, so I don't begrudge it for a second. Here's Harvest For The World:

By the way, the lyrics are just as relevent nowadays as there were back then. Which is rather sad.​

 

Great tracks by the Isleys included "Summer Breeze" and "That Lady" - long versions had Ernie Isley letting loose great guitar inspired, apparently, by Jimi Hendrix.
But I loved their earlier Motown stuff too!

 

Led Zep at Knebworth - I was there, at the 2nd of two concerts (so great was the demand for what turned out to be their last ever live show)

Among the support acts were these guys, who I had never previously heard of...

 

Ah yes. Great band. I have a signed CD I got from them after a show somewhere in New Jersey. Great bunch of guys.

 

Listening back to that Now & Zen track, Heaven Knows, just reminded me if my chief dislike of many recorded things that came out of the 1980's. The over-bright digital presentation. To this day people go on about vinyl's warmer presentation, which is actually a mistake. It's a little more complicated than that, and you can look up RIAA correction of phono stages of amps if you like, but vinyl was not warmer, but analogue recording was, simply because digital recording allowed for more treble 'headroom' [sorry, that's audio jargon for extra higher frequency without the penalty of tape hiss]. So they exploited it, onto over-bright levels, and they pushed the decibels too so that digital often sounded distortedly bitsy and toppy. It takes a lot for digital to distort, but when it does it's bloody awful. Tbf, Now & Zen isn't the worst of those 1980's albums for that, and believe me I've given away several which were terrible for it. Also, early digital remasters of pure analogue albums were often a disaster, thought most people weren't going to say. Basically, when Phillips [a company I respected] said 'Perfect Sound', I said Crap. And so it proved in most cases back then. What Phillips had done was to make half-decent sound very easy, cheap and convenient. That's all and that was enough. Any higher aspiration was hype. It was another of those juggernaut untruths that took a long time to turn around.

Let's have some analogue sound. This was a live recording direct-to-disc. That is the master cutting head recorded the live performance directly. It made a huge difference back then, although you'l be hearing this via Youtube's rather crap 128K mp3 resolution [yeah, digital, but you get an idea], and I can tell you that the real vinyl thing is quite astounding. Anyway, a bit of Dave Brubeck from the album, A Cut Above, which was a celebration of the quality vinyl record: Here's Brubeck's own compostion, Unsquare Dance:

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Note that the uploader really should look after his record a bit better. If I had this many clicks and pops I'd be mortified. There is really is no reason for hardly any at all unless it was purchased with a scratch. Also, digital mp3 reveals clicks and pops more. Anyway, hopefully enjoy.

Also note for trivia: the illustration shows Brubeck running through a negative master with a 'shibata' profile reading stylus in the top left. It runs over the ridges, not in the grooves.

 

I've never been a fan of Dave Brubeck even though I think his later stuff is more interesting. Part of the problem was alto saxophonist Paul Desmond whose tone is far too pure for my tastes and when Brubeck started working with other musicians, his music became mor einteresting. I feel the same abut Stan Getz whose spind is similarly pure and you can hear the antecedents of players like the woeful Kenny G in their playing. I wasn't aware that Brubeck had made this disk and was a bit horrified to be honest. It sounds like he was trying to sound like Herbie Hancock's Headhunters but the leader's acoustic piano is still stuck in the 1950s! It is nowhere as near as tight as Hancock's approach to funk and nor is it as sophisticated from a harmonic point of view although, to be honest, no one is as sophisticated as Herbie harmonically! The record sounds really dated even before I start to think about my prejudices against Brubeck's music. Oddly, I think he was a far better composer and his jazz compositions are pretty good. He also dabbled in Classical and Choral music and was surprisingly good at this too although it is worthwhile remembering that he was a former student of the composer Darius Milhaud.

There is still a huge debate around acoustic v electronic in jazz at the moment especially as the technology seems to be getting increasingly sophisticated and allows musicians to be more creative. I can see the logic of using technology but it does date records (even the stuff I grew up listening to in the 80's doesn't sound so clever these days.) It is interesting how it is changing jazz and having heard Donny McCaslin this summer front a quartet that used a number of musicians employed on the recent Bowie album ( which was essentially McCaslin's band) the music sounds horrible. The sax was filtered through a synthesizer and McCaslin's tone was rendered from something ot beauty to a ugly, industrial noise.

 

Ok, self indulgence time, one of my music heroes, John Mellor AKA Joe Strummer was born on this day in Ankara, Turkey in 1952. He was the frontman and main lyricist for The Clash.
Here are some of his best songs...

 

Love The Isleys....

 

Random Plant fact.

When on tour he used to like to hunt down a place he could have a vindaloo for breakfast.

You can take the boy out the midlands.......