Songs I never need to hear ever again Number 1: Hotel California

In contrast to some of the songs I will write about in this series I have never really liked this song. I find it sluggish and boring. The faux Spanish classical scales are really annoying. Most of all I hate the lyrics. Arcane Americana on a grand scale, they mean nothing to me. Are the words poetry, prophesy, social or political comment? What do they mean? Who cares? Rubbish. Just rubbish.

One of the things that I find difficult about modern life is the impossibility of avoiding things that you dislike. Whether it’s an annoying advertising jingle or like this, a supposedly classic rock song, things are just stuffed into your head by a media that doesn’t give a an iota about taste. I’ve tried to get over my dislike for this song but the sheer repetition of it prevents me from ever humming the melody in a reflective and nonchalant air. Even when it’s done in different genres like these: Farhad Besharati; Majek Fashek; Gypsy Kings I can’t listen.

It was a hot sultry summer evening in 2006 when I realised that I never ever need to hear Hotel California ever again. I was going to my band practice and decided to jump into a taxi to save a bit of time. Now let me say one thing about taxis here in Taipei; they are magic. They vary in quality quite a lot. They range from scummy black leather seated affairs stinking of tobacco and betel nut, right through to wonderfully scented carriages, complete with a bouquet of lilies attached to the dashboard. Whatever the style or quality there is always one available when you need one, ready to whisk you away to your destination for a very reasonable fare indeed.

On this particular evening I was picked up by one of the latter kind which sported not only the flowers but also TV screens set into the back of the driver’s and passenger’s seats. The driver was super polite, asking me to take my time as I struggled to get my guitar and practice amp into the car.

For a westerner in Taipei a taxi ride can be an interesting experience. Drivers are often very willing to pass the time of day and  this provides a no-pressure environment in which to practice your Chinese language skills. Sometimes however it is the driver who wants to practice English. This is fine for me too but here you run the risk of some of the most inane conversation you are likely to have with anyone bar a two-year old.

Battling with the Friday evening traffic like a kid on a computer game my driver looked over the seat at me and smiled. Eyes back on the road he said, “You play guitar?”

I reflected for a moment on the thought that life has a way of getting us to repay our debts. I for one am definitely in the debt of Taipei taxi drivers. I have bent their collective ear many times about all sorts of subjects in my far from perfect Mandarin.

“Yes I do,” I replied.

“You like rock and roll?”

“Sure, I love it.”

“Watch.”

With that he was rummaging in the glove compartment. He ignored the road while managing to avoid all the traffic seemingly by feel alone. I swear, put Lewis Hamilton in a Toyota saloon and there’s no way he’d beat any taxi driver in this city. Eventually the driver raised a DVD in the air and paused for a few seconds in triumph. Looking back me again he repeated, “Watch.”

At this point I was fascinated. What could this music be? A range of ideas went through my head from the hopeful (Slayer) to the likely (Wu Bai video). As the DVD started playing all was to be revealed. The credits started to roll: EAGLES: HELL FREEZES OVER. Then as the figures started to gather on the stage and the crowd began to whistle: APRIL 25 – 26 1994. Bugger. Not even the Eagles in their heyday.

I am not a religious man but this is where my prayers started. “Oh please God not Hotel California, Oh please God not Hotel California, Oh please God not Hotel California” I intoned under my breath.

The band started to tease with lots of twiddly guitar scales and bongos before the awful reality was finally revealed with those famous, hateful first chords. If you’re into self-punishment you can see what I mean here, but I beg of you, don’t do it.

“You like?” Came the inevitable question from the front of the car.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s cool,” I replied in uncertain and wincing tones. Damn my ingrained English politeness.

So there I was, a captive audience, grimacing with every minor chord. Even though I was soon able to drive out the Eagles with my own distorted Stratocaster-powered madness the scars of that encounter still remain. If you did click on the YouTube link above and are reeling from the shock please allow me to give you the antidote:

I’d have these blokes over to my house rather than the Eagles any day.

Bloody brilliant return to form for Mastodon

Crack the Skye by Mastodon

Despite the ridiculous title this is a great album. (Crack a Scottish island? Maybe they missed a preposition and the album is the band’s reflections on a really good holiday)

Like most metal fans I’ve been blown away by the Atlanta quartet’s virtuosity and imagination over the past few years. I was disappointed by their previous album. Mastodon are nothing if not progressive but Blood Mountain took things a bit too far. I realise that I am in the minority but to me it felt disjointed, clumsy and a little naive. I respect Mastodon for wanting to develop but I felt that with Blood Mountain’s funny sound effects and voices they had dropped the ball somewhat. While Crack the Skye still does not quite measure up to the band’s seminal Leviathan, it does see them picking up that ball again and running with it as far as they can.

I would say that in general Mastodon are not becoming less heavy so much as using power more skillfully, interweaving it with melodic passages. They give us the assault of Leviathan but in carefully chosen sections. Heavy riffs, beautiful solos, vocal harmonies – even funky sections; Crack the Skye has it all. Here too are the sudden time changes that were very prominent on Blood Mountain. On Crack the Skye however they are almost always successful; it’s only the chorus on Quintessence that jars for me.

The structure of this album has been carefully thought out. There are nine tracks with last two being instrumental versions of the first two. This is not a rip off! Without the instrumentals the album still runs to about forty-nine minutes. Also both these instrumentals are quite different without the vocals and so add to the record. They give it a kind of book end effect, making it feel more complete. Discounting the instrumentals the first seven songs form two movements that one could imagine being on side one and two of an LP. Both of these parts take you through ever mounting musical passages to an epic piece lasting more than ten minutes.

Crack the Skye is special. The music has layer upon layer that rewards each successive listen. Buy this album. You won’t regret it. Brilliant, bloody brilliant.

The Real Clough?

The Damned UTD by David Peace

A topsy-turvy period in the life of legendary manager Brian Clough is explored in this novel by David Peace. Whether it is the true Clough I think is very doubtful but nevertheless The Damned UTD remains an excellent story.

The first thing that strikes you about this book is its unusual style. It comprises two narratives that alternate in short bursts. First is Brian Clough as the new manager of Leeds United just before the start of the 1974-75 English football season. Leeds are the current league champions and the pressure is on to retain the title and also achieve European glory. This first narrative covers Clough’s famous turbulent forty-four days at Leeds and is told in present tense and the first person singular. As such it has an immediacy and tension that compels you to read on. The second narrative describes a much longer period from the bone-crunching injury that ended Clough’s career in 1962, through to his league success with Derby County and on to his joining Leeds. This narrative is also in present tense but unusually is told in the second person. Writing in the second person is notoriously risky, and seems to only find a place in those choose your own adventure books you may have read as a kid. Peace pulls it off here though. The second person distances this narrative from the first, a stylistic tactic making sure you never get the two Cloughs mixed up.

From day one of forty-four the tension builds and builds. Partly this is due to the nature of professional football. Now is not the first era when the desire for success at a club put a manager under inordinate pressure. Peace accentuates this with short simple and repetitive sentences that really get us inside the head of his central character.

“They are not my team. Not mine. Not this team, and they never will be. They are his team. His Leeds. His dirty fucking Leeds, and they always will be. Not my team. Never. Not mine. Never. Not mine. Never. Not this team. Never – “

This quotation brings me to the bad language which is rife in this novel. Did Clough speak this way? He certainly was eloquent and intelligent enough not to need to, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t. As anyone who has ever worked in an all male environment will tell you, swearing is often par for the course. I think the bad language has its place. Despite feeling a bit overdone by the end, this and the repetition, increase the sense of tension and anger that Clough must have felt during this time.

Clough is shown to be stressed out and angry. There is little of the charm that exudes when you see him on film. I guess that this is OK too, as we are in Clough’s head (or at least what Peace sees to be his head) and people can often be very different on the inside. Clough is also is depicted as a chain smoking alcoholic. I take issue with this. I think it is hard to equate the TV pictures from the early seventies with the image of Clough never being without a fag and a brandy. Apparently also, Clough was able to keep up in practice with the Nottingham Forest players at the end of the decade. Clough’s drinking and smoking just seems to be an easy way for Peace to add extra spice to the story. Either this or it is in order to place his narrative firmly in the era. Peace’s Clough is cut from the same cloth as Jack Regan of The Sweeney, iconoclastic as the hard drinking abrasive man of the seventies.

More impressive is Peace’s knowledge of the game at this time. He briefly describes many of the matches, prominent or not, and certainly must have done an incredible amount of research. Peace knows who played in each game and what they did, which all has a bearing on Clough’s story. Take for example the figure of Bob Stokoe, the goalkeeper responsible for Clough’s career ending injury, who reappears again and again in as the Sunderland manager to put a spanner in Clough’s works.

Any book about Clough is bound to be entertaining of course. I especially liked the end, where Peace virtually transcribes word for word an interview with Clough and his arch-nemesis and previous manager of Leeds Don Revie. Clough says “Good lad.” to Revie, seven years his senior and the current manager of England. Priceless. There are little touches like this to enjoy throughout, such as Peace’s take on the origin of Clough’s famous green goalkeeper’s top which he was to be rarely seen without during his time at Forest.

This is an excellent, clever book. If you like football or have a hankering for the seventies it is definitely for you. The Damned UTD is very digestible so long as you take it with a pinch of salt.

Music doesn’t grow on trees, but…

(Photo by Bug-a-Lug)

The Free Music Archive is an amazing site. You can browse by genre and listen to stuff you’ve never heard before by people you’ve never heard of before. The selection is very varied from Blues to Electronica to Heavy Metal to Jazz… you name it. The music is all free to listen to and from what I can see most of it is also free to download and distribute too. Today I’ve been checking out the Space Rock section. There’s some wonderful, wonderful stuff available. I’m sure the other sections are just as good. Have a listen to Deep Mu Flux by a band called Abunai! and see what you reckon. If you don’t like it then go to the Free Music Archive and find something else. If you do like it then leave a message on Abunai’s page and let them know.

Prog Rock rocks

(Photo by fdecomite)

There is no doubting that Prog Rock is one of the most imaginative and forward looking forms of music there has ever been. It has taken a beating by the critics over the years but has stood the test of time. The Mars Volta most notably carry the flame today but Prog Rock has also morphed to such delight with that other stalwart warrior of unfashionable music Heavy Metal, in bands such as Opeth and Mastodon. Vintage albums are still great however, and probably the more obscure the better. With this in mind you should check out magman1357′s great YouTube channel which I stumbled on while I was looking for songs for my review of 666 by Aphrodite’s Child. There is some really unusual stuff there that is sure to delight; such as this little gem from South Africa. Enjoy.

Taiwan’s amazing culture – Mazu’s birthday celebrations

 

When you come to Taiwan one thing that you really want to do is to check out the amazing temples here. These range from grandiose structures that dominate city blocks, right down to simple little shrines on the side of the road or on a mountain path. These places are central to life in Taiwan. Apart from the temples themselves and the ceremonies that take place within, it’s really easy to catch sight (and sound) of some of the amazing processions that move around to the clashing of symbols, banging of drums and tooting of horns. They really bring my neighbourhood to life.

 

This amazing photo  is from Mazu’s birthday celebrations in Da Jia, Taichung County. Mazu is the goddess of the sea who protects fishermen and sailors. Now I’m no expert on these matters but I know a man who is. This picture was taken by Fabian and you can see many more plus his insights into culture here in Taiwan at his site http://4fabian.multiply.com/

 

Fabian says: “The story of Mazu is an excellent example of both how gods are created from real people in Chinese popular religion, and of how once popularized, they are endorsed and elevated by the state.

Her original name was Lin Mo-niang (林默娘), and she was born in the year 960 C.E. as the daughter of a fisherman in Meizhou (梅州), on the coast of Fujian province. She never married, and died at the tender age of twenty-eight. These details are listed in the records of the Song Dynasty.  The finer details of her life are an inextricable mixture of folk lore and history.

Legend tells that one fine day, her father and brothers set out in their fishing boat to trawl the shores of Fujian for fresh fish. After several hours, the clouds darkened and churned in the sky, the seas began to swell, and before they had managed to return to the safety of the shore, their boat was caught in a murderous typhoon. Meanwhile, back in their fisherman’s cottage… (Go to http://4fabian.multiply.com/journal/item/9 to read more!)

Fantastic Albums 1: 666 by Aphrodite’s Child

This is the greatest album ever recorded. There, I’ve nailed my colours to the mast right away. I know that’s quite a claim. But if you sent me away on a mission to Mars saying I could only take one album with me, I would have no hesitation in leaving stuff like Sgt. Pepper’s, Birth of the Cool and The Four Seasons (to name but three of mankind’s finest recordings) far, far behind.

And why? This album is exotic, eclectic and mystical. It has soul and feeling by the bucket full, the production is as flawless as anything done by Floyd and furthermore, it rocks. In its darkest moments it out blacks Sabbath and when it’s avant-garde you might as well chuck your Velvet Underground CDs in the bin. It has orchestral passages that put Blood Sweat and Tears to shame, funk that would be at home on Stax and drumming that would slay Dave Lombardo. It covers all this ground in one album to boot.

Needless to say that perhaps the only genre able to do this kind of thing is progressive rock and here you have one of its earliest and surely, the finest example. 666 is a concept album roughly based on the Revelation of St. John and as such is foreboding and strange. It is no exaggeration to say that after listening to it for twenty years I still get shivers down the spine.

The pleasure of this album is also knowing that the members of  Aphrodite’s Child were never to record anything even approaching its sublimity ever again. The music was almost single-handedly composed by Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, better known to most of us as Vangelis. Now, I think that this was Vangelis at his coolest. Around this time he released material such as Earth that was markedly different from the synthesizer orchestrations he became famous for in the rest of the seventies and early eighties (check out Spiral for example). I don’t care for that later stuff much; for me it was a definite loss of form. The same is true for Demis Roussos. Arguably one of the most amazing male voices you could wish to hear, after this band he descended into mushy ballads; most famously the single For Ever and Ever. While I must admit to the guilty pleasure of enjoying Roussos’s pop, it simply cannot compare to his work here.

The band began work on 666 in Paris in late 1970 but it didn’t see the light of day until 1972. This was to a certain extent due to tensions within the band at the time. Vangelis as the chief composer was earning much more money than the other members, who for their part were not fully comfortable with the new material which differed in tone from their previous efforts. It is curious to me that many of rock music’s crowning glories have been recorded under stress and with the band members not getting along very well. This is a theme I shall return to in later Fantastic Albums posts. Partly also though, it was due to Mercury (the band’s record company) being so concerned with the album’s content. The fact that the subject matter is inspired by the Bible must have worried them. Probably though, tracks such as ∞, which sounds very much like a five minute long orgasm with occult chanting (it has to be heard to be believed), worried them more. Nevertheless the music was eventually released, with one immediate fan being Salvador Dali who described it in his idiosyncratic way as “a music of stone”. It is now almost forty years since its release and it has gone on to garner respect from many quarters.

Perhaps the best thing to do now is to give you the opportunity to check out one of the album’s most accessible tracks. Having said that, this song is hardly conventional. Ladies and gentlemen I give you the drama and majesty of The Four Horsemen.

I think that you can hear from the above extract that the musicianship is amazing. Vangelis is of course the most respected of the band for this, but the other three members don’t come off too badly either. As a guitar player I marvel at the closing solo which has such simplicity but is so effective; only under the foot of Hendrix have I heard a wah pedal used with such taste. Mr. Roussos is a phenomenal bass player throughout the music and you only have to listen to Do It for the drumming to make your jaw drop.

666 has an otherworldly quality that I’ve never quite heard anywhere else. All of Aphrodite’s Child’s output is worth checking out but 666 is pure gold.

http://www.vangelismovements.com/aphroditeschild.htm

http://www.vangelismovements.com/666.htm

http://www.demisroussos.info/

Beautiful Island

Life in Taiwan

Taiwan is a place that everyone should come to. It’s bloody brilliant. The people are magic and the countryside is amazing. If you like mountains and rugged scenery then it’s all here.

If you like exploring different cultures then you need to come and have a mooch around this little island. Honestly, once you get back home you’ll look really cool because you’ve been somewhere that none of your mates even thought about going to, ever.

 

To be sure it is an odd place, and it can get a little bit of getting used to. But therein lies the charm. As an expat in this odd little corner of the world everyday is different.

There is always something to learn. In this section of my blog I will introduce you to the sights and sounds of somewhere truly different. As I do so though, make sure you check out Hartley Pool’s fantastic blog. He gives you his take on the country with his own inimitable sense of humour. Tell him I sent you coz he’s a mate of mine.

 

Now then, if you like food and have an adventurous spirit then I can think of no better introduction than this episode of Bizarre Foods.

 

I’m going on a journey to the mountainous East coast in a few weeks. Hualien and Taidong. Make sure you come back to check out my account of the trip.

Chauvinistic History

A history of Civilizations by Fernand Braudel

First of all I’m going to make an admission, not to be confused with an apology. I have not finished this book. I cannot bring myself to waste any more of my time. I am on page 140 and I cannot face the other four hundred or so. If, after 140 pages and a forty pages preface an author has not managed to interest me in some way, then he or she never will. This is an awful book; avoid it!

As its title suggests, this book is supposed to be an overview of the history of civilizations on our planet. It was intended that it be studied by French high school students, but it is hard to see how any history teacher would have got out of his classroom alive should he have used this coma inducing rubbish.

To be fair, the book probably suffers much in translation. The prose is tough going and plods along, giving information in the least direct way. Having said this, the introduction is interesting. Braudel’s theories on how to interest children in history are worth a read. After this it is all downhill.

As the book was first published in 1963 one would expected it to be a little outdated; it certainly is this as well as Eurocentric and chauvinistic. The first two sections deal with Islam and Africa and towards both Braudel assumes the air of a benevolent school teacher, trying to encourage his students to do better. If only these two areas of the world could make some changes, then they too could come up to the level of the star pupil (the West). You can almost hear the resignation and pity in Braudel’s voice.

Braudel makes lots of statements for which he offers no supporting evidence. Byzantium was beaten from within? If that’s your opinion, fine, but don’t offer it as fact and then move onto your next point without so much as a justifying sentence.

There are many books available that claim to be an overview of the history of civilization. They all suffer from the same problem: having to cover too much ground for any person, era or place to make an impression. Braudel’s book is no exception.

If you are inclined to read a book of this type go for the similarly titled Civilizations by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. Its prose has much more verve and it is more up to date.

Cool People

 

Number 1: Barry Sheene 1950 – 2003

(Photo: Reg McKenna)

When I asked my Dad how good Barry Sheene really was the reply was given with a derisive air, “Best of a bad bunch.” was all he could bring himself to say.

All my Dad really cared about was motorbikes. Bikes, bikes, bikes right up till his dying day. The only thing he ever read apart from the local paper was Motorcycle News. He knew everything. As a very young man my Dad rode bikes himself but the only trouble was that he kept falling off. I suppose in this regard he had a lot in common with Barry who famously had some disastrous crashes in his time.

Despite his encyclopaedic knowledge I remember that my Dad’s opinion disappointed me greatly, because for me Barry Sheene was motorcycle racing. Successful, attractive, charismatic and daring, he epitomised the cool sportsman.

Born in London in 1950, by 1976 he was 500cc world champion and the next year he did it again; the last Englishman to do so. He was very much a David Beckham for the seventies, with a glamorous wife and advertising contracts for aftershave and the like.

He was also famous for his determination to win and his battles on the track with American Kenny Roberts. I know that my Dad greatly admired Roberts and so maybe this is why he didn’t rate Sheene.

The most vivid memory I have of my childhood with my Dad was when he took me to see the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. It was 1980, I was seven years old and I had never experienced anything so loud in my life. There is nothing quite like the high pitched scream of bikes hurtling around a track; you can feel the excitement rattle through your body.

At this time Barry was arguably past his prime, having been eclipsed by Roberts who would go on to win the world title for the third straight time that year. None of this mattered to me a jot. For me Sheene was the man to watch.

After the race my Dad took me to the pits and there we met the victor Randy Mamola. I was shy and hid behind my Dad so we moved on.

When we came to Barry it was a different story. This time I was confident and proudly shook the great man’s hand. I don’t remember what he said to me exactly, but I do remember getting his autograph on a packet of my Dad’s cigarettes.

I was so excited on the way home. Trundling along in my Dad’s filthy blue mini van, I just couldn’t wait to tell my Mum and grandparents what had happened. I’d met Barry Sheene and I had the autograph to prove it!

Sadly when I asked my Dad for the packet of fags he admitted that after finishing them he’d flung the empty box out of the window. That was my Dad, I loved him and so eventually I forgave him. And after all it was because of him that I got to meet Barry Sheene.