My current live favourite. Studio version is quite different, sounded stripped down. On balance I think I prefer the louder live version, with the crunching guitars and Ashcroft shouting "Lord, bring me the light!".
Love Is Noise
Everyone knows this by now. It's epic and the stuido version is essentially the live version. Or is it the other way round. "Love is noise, Love is pain, Love is the Blues I'm feeling again ..."
Rather Be
I heard this for the first time on the Zane Lowe Radio 1 session and really liked it then. Disappointed that it wasn't played at Staffordshire V Festival. Good song.
Judas
This was available to download on iTunes from last week or so so I have heard it before. I think it may grow on me much life Feel did (9 minute chilled out b-side to their second single).
Numbness
Having said the above about Judas, I think this is even more chilled out and more like Feel ... "Yeah, numbness on the brain-ayain-ayain-ayain"
I See Houses
I've been waiting to hear this one for a while having read some good reviews about it and being labelled as one of the essential tracks to download if you believe that albums should only be partially downloaded.
On the first listen, I think it sounds like an average Richard Ashcroft song. I would Rather Be listening to Break The Night With Colour or Check The Meaninginstead. The other songs so far I would say suit The Verve more than Ashcroft solo. This one does not smell like The Verve to me. Not a bad song though (for an album track).
Noise Epic
Another song often name-checked in reviews, probably because of the interesting title. A classic Verve jam. I quite like songs like this on Verve albums. Not commerial and people who like The Verve for Sonnet, Bitter Sweet Symphony and Love Is Noise will wonder what's going on. In the same way that people who like The Beatles for Love Me Do, I Want To Hold Your Hand and Strawberry Fields don't get Revolution No. 9.
Valium Skies
So far, this sounds like the best song that I haven't heard (plus Judas). Reminds me of the latter songs on Urban Hymns, something like Velvet Morning, with Ashcroft singing with a certain amount of pain in his voice.
Columbo
This sounds excellent ... a calming Man Called Sun feel to it. Goes on for quite a while...
Appalachian Strings
This song has stuck out in my memory for a while because of the title. I think they have played it live but I can't remember hearing it and I've been looking forward to hearing it.
Sounds like a bit of a come down song, rather than an epic album finisher (like Come On from Urban Hymns. Does have a rising finish though.
So that's it ... I'm off to listen to it again (and again).
]]>Oasis had a raw guitar album (Definitely Maybe), then added Strings (and handclaps) for What's The Story?, then went a bit excessive on Be Here Now, then for Standing On The Shoulder of Giants they went Pink Floyd on us and I really liked it. Then for the other next two albums I just got bored of them.
And now they are slagging off Kaiser Chiefs who rightly responded by saying that it's very funny that they slg off bands every time they release a new record and as they basically slag off bands that are doing well (e.g. when they slagged off Blur) that the Cheifs took it as a complement.
I haven't seen Oasis for a while. Finsbury Park possiblly just after SOTSG came out (or maybe their next album I can't remember). I'm looking forward to it. But I'm looking forward to the Kaiser Chiefs's new album more. And if I only had money to buy one album this year, it would not be the Oasis one. Sorry Noel. But even more sorry to Andy Bell.
]]>The end of The Feeling's set, who sounded good but we didn't see them/
The last two songs of Calvin Harris, getting the crowd up and down in the tented arena.
A resurgent Travis who played a great acoustic version of Flowers In The Window, and showed that you can still climb lighting rigs whatever your age.
A fairly poor Amy Winehouse - no link intentionally - who played a couple of songs, one of which was her own.
A headline-inspiring The Charlatans, with Tim Burgess sporting a 1990's pudding-bowl haircut.
An awesome "I didn't notice the rain' The Verve who provided an epic version of Life's An Ocean and a stunning run through of new song Sit And Wonder.
Sunday 17 August
The Troubadours were cancelled, so I watched The Hazey Janes instead, who were really quite very good.
A pumped-up Shed Seven (who still don't seem to have an official website) who brought out the sun with them, and showed that you can still jump over drum kits whatever your age.
A diminutive Alanis Morrissette. I went to the toilet instead.
A relaxing, chilled out Amy Macdonald (who?) and Duffy (to call her the Welsh version of Amy Winehouse would be an insult, as Duffy not only has a good voice but is not ruining her body.
A fun Sugababes, who we caught a glimpse of at the back of the tented arena, leading us to ...
An energetic The Twang, who reminded me that you cannot really "get" a band until you see them live (I had no idea that they had two singers, or one singer and one Bez/singer).
We decided at that point to leave ... good job. Car was stuck in mud. We heard Stereophonics who sounded ok.
]]>Taking to the V Stage at the Staffordshire leg of the event, the band braved torrential rain as they mixed crowd favourites with songs from new album 'Forth'.
Joined for most of the set by a violinist, the four-piece introduced new song 'Sit And Wonder' ? which has featured in their set all summer ? by referencing the atrocious conditions.
"Shake off the rain with me," frontman Richard Ashcroft commanded the crowd before the song, "shake off the pain with me."
Playing a series of songs from 1995 album 'A Northern Soul', including an epic version of 'Life's An Ocean', the band then enjoyed a series of loud sing-a-longs from the fans who stuck with them through the heavy rain.
'The Drugs Don't Work' and 'Lucky Man' were bellowed back, before the band reached their climax mixing 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' with recent top five comeback single 'Love Is Noise'.
"Thank you from the heart," freestyled Ashcroft as the songs merged, "it's always been the same."
The Verve played:
'This Is Music'
'Sonnet'
'Space And Time'
'Sit And Wonder'
'History'
'Life's An Ocean'
'Velvet Morning'
'The Rolling People'
'The Drugs Don't Work'
'Lucky Man'
'Bitter Sweet Symphony'
'Love Is Noise'
Keane - Spiralling : Download Here by Monday 11 August 2008
Coldplay - Death Will Never Conquer : Download Here
The Streets - The Escapist : Download Here
Mercury Rev - Senses On Fire : Download Here
Primal Scream - Urban Guerilla : Download Here
Kings of Leon - Crawl : Download Here
and finally a whole bunch of stuff by Swervedriver if you fancy some live versions of their albums (I recommend Duress or Duel).
]]> VIDEOS (where possible)Keane -Spiralling
Coldplay - Death Will Never Conquer
The Streets - The Escapist
Mercury Rev - Goddess on A Hiway
Primal Scream - Urban Guerilla
Kings of Leon - Crawl
]]>
They are pretty much all from indie roots, but now are in majors. I am also awaiting Keane's Perfect Symmetry, Kaiser Chiefs' Off With Their Heads (but they are not on Amazon at the moment).
I might be being a bit harsh - but it illustrates that often the indie bands that I like are snapped up by majors, once they have had one or two singles issued on an indie label. I just need to change their labels in iTunes from "Indie" to "Mainstream Corporate Rock" and start buying more random stuff in shops.
]]>The new album, Forth, to me confirms where the money is in music these days. Aside from touring, established bands are cashing in on fans who will pay for their music by issuing attractive limited editions.
The Verve release their new album in a number of formats, including vinyl for the purists and a Limited Deluxe Edition Box-Set (which has the CD, a DVD, and the entire album issued as a download delivered before 25th August release date and an instant download of 'Love is Noise' (Recorded live from Glastonbury '08). All for £40. Being a music nut I obviously went for this one. I'm still trying to get the instant download to work.
Radiohead did a similar trick with In Raindows, as well as issuing the album for free (or for a donation of up to £99.99), they offered a limited edition box set for £40. Later, they issued a normal physical release of the record.
The Charlatans issued their excellent album You Cross My Path as well as a single or two through Xfm, before releasing a limited deluxe version of the album with Live Bonus Disc. They hoped fans, like me, would buy the deluxe version. I did. I probably would have done even if it was a poor album, but actually giving the music away for free made me more interested in hearing it and getting into it.
The band who has taken this concept to the extreme I think is Nine Inch Nails. They released Ghosts I - IV, a 36 track instrumental album available in a number of different formats and forms, including a free download of the first volume, a $5 digital download, a $10 double CD set, a $75 deluxe edition set, and a $300 Ultra-Deluxe limited edition package, which sold out all 2500 copies.
I am not a great fan of Nine Inch Nails, but I was tempted by the limited edition set anyway! I got the free download thinking about getting the rest, but never really got into it. The next album, The Slip was also available free. I got that but didn't get it either. Oh well - that is the diversity of music for you.
]]>Chapterhouse & Ulrich Schnauss - Love Forever, Truck Festival 2008
There does seem to be a ressurgance of shoe-gazing activity though. Not just at the Truck festival. Swervedriver are touring again it seems. And Maps are doing the new shoegazing scene proud, recently covering Ride's Leave Them All Behind at the end of their performance at the Truck Festival.
If Chapterhouse tour properly, I'll be there however many broken bones I have. Here's them doing a better song in a studio:
Chapterhouse - Pearl
and just found on YouTube some TV live performances from The Beat:
Chapterhouse - She's A Vision
Chapterhouse - We Are The Beautiful
]]>Part 1
Album Wilderness played all the way through:
A Different Place
The Empress
Clowns
Chinese Whispers
Blessed
Funeral Mantra
Back To You (with Emmanuelle Seigner)
Knife Edge
P Marius
Part 2
Misc Brett Anderson / Suede tracks and b-sides etc
Love is Dead - from Brett Anderson album
Song For My father - ditto
Simple Words - from Emmanuelle's album "Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle"
Saturday Night - from Suede "Coming Up"
The Living Dead - Suede b-side going into ...
My Dark Star - Suede b-side
Pantomine Horse - Suede "Suede"
Still Life - Suede "Dog Man Star"
The Wild Ones - ditto
Then six songs in one, at the piano:
To The Winter - from Brett Anderson album
By The Sea - Suede "Coming Up"
The Power - Suede "Dog Man Star"
He's Gone - Suede "Head Music"
The Two of Us - Suede "Dog Man Star"
Asphalt World - ditto
Encore
So Young - Suede "Suede"
Ebony (extract) - from Brett Anderson album
Everything Will Flow - Suede "Head Music"
Trash - Suede "Coming Up"
Reviews:
Read some reviews posted on the BA forum here.
My favourite song;
Well, I like Clowns especially as I can play it on the piano (but I can now play The Wild Ones as well. I think my favourite though was The Asphalt World.
]]>(Golden Cage by The Whitest Boy Alive)
]]>It took a while but eventually I managed to transfer my data from my Commodore floppy disks on to my new PC (which cannot ordinarily read Commodore disks). I think I found a freeware Commodore program that made a Commodore disk drive able to write PC-readable data.
I then created a database in Access 97. This I customized quite a lot, but I still had a lot to learn and by then no time to learn it as I was in work. I decided to buy an off-the-shelf music database but they never had what I wanted. Namely: Store track names and separately song version (e.g. for remixes) and purchase information and a decent import function. Eventually I found the great CATraxx.
I trialled and used version 5 which I then registered for and later upgraded to version 6. It really is fantastic if you need to store lots of information and the import function is I reckon unique in being so customisable, as is the rest of the database generally.
Eventually, I moved to database number 4. Being iTunes. Now iTunes is not really a database of physical CDs, Vinyl, DVDs etc. But from my point of view, it overtook my database as I was more interested in adding CDs to iTunes, by ripping them, then by adding them to CATraxx by scanning the CD and getting informaiton from the online CD database (CDDB / Gracenote).
Now, instead of having a database of information, I had a database of songs that I could click and play. I started getting behind on keeping CATraxx up-to-date. My move to Mac at the end of 2005 exacerbated this. By age 30 I had managed to check that every CD was on CATraxx andon iTunes. But this has not been kept up.
So now I am faced with a large number of CDs that are on iTunes but not on CATraxx. And iTunes is missing information that is contained in CATraxx. And CATraxx is on the PC but I use Mac now for iTunes.
Time for Database number 5.
Number 1: Own Commodore Amiga written database in AMOS
Number 2: Own PC database written in Microsoft Access 97 (later Access 2000)
Number 3: CATraxx Version 5 & 6
Number 4: iTunes
Number 5: ? ? ? (see next post)
]]>There is a section on Pet Shop Boys where they have exclusive tracks (go to Navigation/Product/Exclusive Tracks). There are some great tracks there, including an extended verison of My Night. I had on repeat whilst I was surfing, and can't get it out of my head.
I need a new tune, to get me off the repeat . . .
]]>EMI owner Guy Hands told The Guardian: "Roughly 85 per cent of what EMI does get to release never makes a profit, in part because of the cash spent signing bands and partly due to ill-made bets on the number of CDs the market requires for particular acts."
Well seeing as EMI generally makes a profit (at least in the good old days) I assume this goes some way to explaining why CDs are so expensive: 1) because they waste lots of time signing rubbish bands, jumping on the bandwagon no doubt 2) they snap up people like Robbie Williams for ridiculous sums of money, when he is going out of fashion (step forward Mariah Carey too who cost Virgin, part of EMI $108million in total) 3) they then overpress the number of CDs, so we have to pay for the CDs that are getting chucked.
I am thinking that if Sainsburys over-order on their Ferrera Rocher's, they don't overcharge people on milk to make up their losses. Or do they?
P.S. I don't buy the Guardian. I just used Google.
There is a new greatest hits package out and the recent concert I went to made me realise that I hadn't really appreciated their song, Disco Down. I got sent a promo video for their Greatest Hits package which gave a clip from the Disco Down video. Here's the video in full, with the line dance after approx 3 minutes:
Here, for those interested, is the Greatest Hits promo video:
]]>