The best bar in Taipei was rocking and rolling for charity as a number of local bands graced the stage at Hell’s Kitchen. The sun was out and shining down on the happy crowd enjoying the great music. Hell’s Kitchen sits on the busy corner of Civic Boulevard and Guang Fu South Road so as the bands were grooving the representatives of Karma Relief were out on the street taking donations from passing motorists. Karma Relief is a charity that helps disadvantaged kids here in Taiwan. You can see what it’s all about at http://www.karmarelief.com.tw/cgi-bin/blog.cgi/main . If you haven’t yet been to Hell’s Kitchen then get down to Taipei’s only Irish bar as soon as you can!
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.
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 butBlood 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 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.
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 666by Aphrodite’s Child. There is some really unusual stuff there that is sure to delight; such as this little gem from South Africa. Enjoy.
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 Cooland 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 Earththat 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 Itfor 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.
Oasis at the World Trade Centre, Taipei, Taiwan, Friday 3rd April 2009.
Say what you like about Oasis, Noel is a genuine person. The experience last night was largely that of a band going through the paces and delivering the expected show. The performance was professional and enjoyable, but lacked that spark that makes rock ‘n’ roll memorable. The exception to this was Noel.
It’s obvious that Noel cares about his performance. I imagine that last night he was more subdued than usual but he was still a contrast to the other band members. He took the time to talk to the crowd but mostly the feeling came across in his singing. Noel is a great singer. I much preferred it when Liam sloped off and we had a five piece Oasis. Noel’s voice has soul. As jaded a concert goer as I admittedly am, Don’t Look Back in Anger still managed to move me.
To be fair to the rest of the band, it must have been difficult last night. Things like this are never managed very well in Taiwan. The World Trade Centre is a terrible place for music as it has awful acoustics. The band was far too quiet, with Liam having to ask if the music could be heard by the audience. Indicative of this disorganisation is the fact that the Hi-Life convenience store attached to the venue completely sold out of booze and snacks. I imagine that the franchise owner has his head in his hands this morning, wishing that he’d ordered more stock and regretting the missed chance of an extended holiday in the sun.
Despite the lack of organisation, the crowd had a really good time. One girl next to me enquired of my nationality, and then remarked that I must have been proud to see the band in Taiwan. My reply was equivocal, but in reflection I have to admit that yes, I was proud. I’m proud that Oasis came here in preference to China.
So thank you Noel and thank you Oasis. Whatever the reasons that brought you to Taiwan, I hope you return; it’s so rare that any bands of note visit this island.
The best bar in Taipei was rocking and rolling for charity as a number of local bands graced the stage at Hell’s Kitchen. The sun was out and shining down on the happy crowd enjoying the great music. Hell’s Kitchen sits on the busy corner of Civic Boulevard and Guang Fu South Road so as the bands were grooving the representatives of Karma Relief were out on the street taking donations from passing motorists. Karma Relief is a charity that helps disadvantaged kids here in Taiwan. You can see what it’s all about at http://www.karmarelief.com.tw/cgi-bin/blog.cgi/main . If you haven’t yet been to Hell’s Kitchen then get down to Taipei’s only Irish bar as soon as you can!
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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.
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.
Oasis at the World Trade Centre, Taipei, Taiwan, Friday 3rd April 2009.
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