Monthly Archives: January 2010

Out Of Time (REM) – Album Review

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R.E.M's "Out Of Time" Was Issued In 1991 To Strong Reviews And Sales. It Included The Hits "Losing My Religion" & "Shiny Happy People".

R.E.M.'s "Out Of Time" Was Issued In 1991 To Strong Reviews And Sales. It Included The Hits "Losing My Religion" & "Shiny Happy People".

“Out Of Time” (1991) was to be R.E.M.’s second release for Warner, and it was also the record that led the band to levels of popularity that surpassed all their expectations. Of course, that also means that (as any band with a serious cult following that makes it to the big time) they were faced with the odious “what-have-you-done-to-us-your-true-fans”.  It didn’t certainly help that the disc included “Shiny Happy People”, a song considered one of the stupidest ever by a major band, and that the song was a transatlantic hit.

Leaving aside that composition (and how sickly catchy it is, I must add) the album is characterized by a tremendous world-weariness in terms of lyrics and motifs. Two songs use the expression “the world is collapsing”, and the adjective “hollow” is also featured in different compositions, and repeated as part of choruses. Besides, the one instrumental cut of the album goes by the name of “Endgame”. Continue reading →

R.E.M. – General Introduction

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A 90s Picture Of R.E.M. Featuring Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills & Bill Berry

A 90s Picture Of R.E.M. Featuring Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills & Bill Berry

We all know how pointless it is, but still we take part of conversations along the lines of “The best band ever was…” or “The best guitarist in history will always be…”. It is pointless, because there is not a parameter that we could agree upon to base the judgment on. Is the best guitarist the one with the best technique? The one with the fastest fingers? The one who plays the best solos? I recall the uproar caused by a list published in Rolling Stone detailing the “100 Best Guitar Players Ever” in which Johnny Ramone was in the Top 20. Some were enraged, and some defended the placement.

Still, I think that we take part of such discussions if only because we feel that championing our best-loved band is a way of bringing new converts in. And if you are over 30, I know that you have taken part of the “What’s the best band of the 80s?” discussion. And chances are, if you didn’t go for U2 you actually went for R.E.M.

Hailing from Athens (Georgia), the band fronted by Michael Stipe has had a career of note. It can be split in three sections. The first was the underground one. It started in 1982 with the release of the “Chronic Town” EP (on Hib-Tone), and the subsequent releases for I.R.S. This stage ended when they signed up with Warner in pursuit of broader international outreach in 1988.

The Earliest Picture Of R.E.M. I Have Ever Come Across

The Earliest Picture Of R.E.M. I Have Ever Come Across

With Warner, they were to get that and become international superstars. The albums “Out Of Time” (1991) and “Automatic For The People” (1992) are indisputably the high points of their tenure at Warner, and the guys were to eventually renew their contract for about 80 million dollars (a record-breaking amount at the time). The year was 1996, and the next year they were to lose their long-standing drummer owing to health complications.
Continue reading →

Once (Movie Review)

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"Once" Stars Glen Hansard And Marketa Irglova. The Movie Was Released In 2007, And It Was Written And Directed By John Carney.

"Once" Stars Glen Hansard And Marketa Irglova. The Movie Was Released In 2007, And It Was Written And Directed By John Carney.

Talk about dark horses to the ones who produced “Enchanted”. The same year that Disney’s musical was competing for three Oscars for best original song at the 80th Academy Awards, a down-to-earth number from a low-budget release named “Once” stole the prize in their noses. The song was named “Falling Slowly”, and it was performed by the film’s protagonists, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.

I am uncertain if I would have learned about the movie were it not for Glen and Marketa’s performance that night. And I can tell you for sure that missing this title (written and directed by John Carney) would have been a great, great loss. Continue reading →

A New Category Is Added To MusicKO (Movie Reviews)

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Today I am adding a new category to the blog: “Music Movies”. The category will be an encompassing one, as not only music movies per se like “The Wall” and “Tommy” will be featured, but also movies in which music is either the driving force all along or even a character. In that sense, movies like “August Rush”, “Almost Famous” and “Elizabethtown” will be reviewed.

And a companion category will be added this month as well: “Original Soundtrack Recordings”. The first movie I am reviewing will be “Once”, the most vital creation I ever came across in music-related filmmaking. As always, if there is something you would like me to cover simply drop me a line or leave a comment below.

Cheers,

Emilio

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John) – Album Review

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A Two-record Set, "Goodbye Yello Brick Road" Was Released In 1973 To Great Success

A Two-record Set, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" Was Released In 1973. It Is Now Regarded As The One Album That Marked Elton's Highest Commercial Point.

This is the quintessential Elton John album. It has some pop masterpieces, some filler, some embarrassments, some songs whose lyrics wouldn’t work anywhere else but here, a couple of songs that have inexcusable words, and (on the whole) songs that scream out “this guy sure plays and sings with gusto”.

The cuts that work obviously include the larger-than-life hits “Bennie & The Jets”, “Candle In The Wind” and the title track. Personally, I find it impossible to assimilate that these songs stand as part of a bigger work and not as isolated pieces that are played on the radio every five seconds, and that can sit next to anything. These songs are likewise the ones where Bernie does its job correctly, and even more than that on the perennial “Candle In The Wind”. The album also has the live favorite “Saturday’s Night Alright For Fighting” – it was actually the first single, and it hit higher in the UK than in the US, which was something unusual for Elton at this point. The song also was covered by The Who for the John/Taupin tribute “Two Rooms”, and their version (with Who archivist Jon Astley on drums) can be found on the “30 Years Of Maximum R & B” boxed set as well. It is certainly a “British” song – it deals with Bernie’s early years on the countryside (Lincolnshire), and the images of boys and girls preparing for a long night out surely factored heavily in its success. Continue reading →

The Sixty One – Discover New Artists & Share Your Finds With Everybody

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TheSixtyOne

Name: The Sixty One
URL: http://www.thesixtyone.com

A social site, the aim of The Sixty One is simple: to let you discover new music through your friends, and upon recommending new music yourself you can gain experience points and move up towards becoming a more prestigious (and hence influential) member of the site.

And if you are an artist yourself, you can submit your own work and have it rated by the rest of the community. The system is certainly useful in the sense that if you have the right contacts you can become noticed in virtually no time at all. Continue reading →

Digiclef – Guitar & Bass Tabs On Your iPhone

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Digiclef

Name: DigiClef
URL: http://www.digiclef.com

The MidemNet Lab event is almost upon us, and I am going to make an effort to review the participating companies I haven’t covered yet for those who are attending and don’t really know what to expect.

Today I would like to tell you about DigiClef, a service provided by Release Mobile (a company based in the United Kingdom). It is nothing more and nothing less than a guidebook with guitar tabs on your iPhone. If you think about it, that is a perfect match. On the one hand, you have the iPhone, something that is small and that can be located anywhere, even in places a piece of sheet music couldn’t be situated comfortably (like you thigh when you are playing the guitar). On the other hand, you have something like sheet music – on paper, it is purely inflexible. The user must adapt to it because it only works in one way. And budding players can miss the beat easily. But this app makes displaying the information  an interactive task, as the user can adjust the tempo as he wishes – as fast as “Bodies” by the Sex Pistols or as slow as “My Thief” by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach to put two contrasting examples. Also, you can loop sections of songs in order to get them to the tee. Continue reading →

Rough Mix (Pete Townshend & Ronnie Lane) – Album Review (Part 2)

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(Read the introduction to this album here.)

Doing a quick recap, Ronnie Lane handled the folksy bits on this record whereas the Birdman doled out the rock numbers. It is Pete the one to start it all with the delirious sketch “My Baby Gives It Away”. He knows he is singing utter piffle, and he sings it so brazenly and the accompaniment is so joyous and upbeat that it is not as Dave Marsh says: Pete is not sounding as if he were having fun. He is having the time of his life in a studio in a long, long time. The song goes from silliness to silliness set to the steady beat of Charlie Watts and acoustic guitars that are strummed as if they were the cue for the listener to smile.

Ronnie takes the lead and supplies “Nowhere To Run” and “Annie”, with the instrumental title track sandwiched in between. I do like “Nowhere To Run” – its melody is good, but the lyrics are a bit hazy and it is tricky relating to them. “Annie”, on the other hand, is one of these songs about lost love that are impinged with so much sensibility that the melody (and words) paint concrete images into just anybody, young or old. Continue reading →

Rough Mix (Pete Townshend & Ronnie Lane) – Album Review (Part 1)

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Rough Mix (Pete Townshend & Ronnie Lane's Collaboration) Stole The Accolade Of Best Album Released In 1977. Pistols, Clash & Costello Eat Your Hearts Out!

Rough Mix (A Collaboration Between Pete Townshend & Ronnie Lane) Stole The Accolade Of Best Album Released In 1977. Pistols, Clash & Costello Eat Your Hearts Out!

Produced by Glyn Johns and issued in 1977, this collaboration between Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane was voted album by the year by Rolling Stone. Wenner’s gang were not the only ones dazzled by it. Pete’s record company gave the album little promotion, certain that he was to leave and form a supergroup with Lane. The Who had just signed a new contract, and the album did nothing but highlight how much Pete needed a change of scene.

Rough Mix is blistering in terms of sidemen: Eric Clapton, Charlie Watts, Boz Burrell, Ian Stewart… Pete could have snapped his fingers and have a new band within seconds. And it would have been a more fulfilling band than The Who to him at that point for certain.

The album itself is not really a collaboration in the sense of the two former mod champions sitting down and writing an album. (“What?! And split the royalties?!” Pete joked to Ronnie at the time). Rather, Ronnie had some songs, Pete had some songs and together they came up with “Rough Mix”. They only sing together in the penultimate track, “Heart To Hang On To”. They also shared a writing credit for the title track, an instrumental were Clapton and Rabbit Bundrick have their way.

There are no videos of Pete and Ronnie playing together. There is, however, this one of Eddie Vedder singing with Pete in 1999. They mix up the lyrics, and Vedder is a bit off. But it is the best that I could find for you:

Continue reading →

Who Came First (Pete Townshend) – Album Review (Part 2)

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Read the first part of this review here.

I haven’t talked a lot about the tracks that were contributed by fellow musicians yet. “Evolution” is Ronnie Lane’s all-acoustic take on a Small Faces track named “The Stone”, with him playing rhythm and Pete leading the way. For its part, “Forever’s Not Time At All” comprises mostly Billy Nicholls’ vocals and Caleb Quaye’s instrumentation – he handles bass, drums and guitars. “Forever’s Not Time At All”, incidentally, was a phrase inspired by Meher Baba. And the same applies to the coda of “Let’s See Action”, as “The Nothing & The Everything” was one of Baba’s teachings.

As far as Pete’s original compositions go, we have “Time Is Passing”, yet another song from the aborted Lifehouse project and one that did not surface as a Who recording until the remastered “Odds & Sods” saw release in 1999. A note on the Who’s version on that disc: what you listen to is only half the song. The other half (including a French horn and the full bass part) are missing, although the exactly opposite version of the song does exist, featuring the missing instruments and lacking the other ones. Some bootlegger even managed to combine the two mixes and come up with the “definitive” version of “Time Is Passing” by the Shepherd Bush’s combo.

The other original track is “Sheraton Gibson” a small ditty about hitting the road. Whether Pete alludes to touring or striking down the pathway of spiritual enlightenment is up to each listener… Continue reading →