R.I.P. David Bedford

The composer and arranger David Bedford died in the UK on October 1st. While not that well known around the world, he had quietly built an impressive and electic body of work. I first found his musical imprints in the form of the arrangements he did for Roy Harper on his LPs "Stormcock", "Valentine" and "Flashes From The Archives Of Oblivion". The string arrangement for Harper's version of the traditional tune "North Country" is a masterpiece of drama addition, by turns staccato and swirling, totally compelling but devoid of cliche.

10.5.2011 • Artists • PermalinkPermalink

This is not good - R.I.P. Gil Scott Heron

Link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/05/27/136731274/gil-scott-heron-poet-and-musician-has-died

Sad news from the USA...Gil Scott Heron died this afternoon. Forget all of the silly smartass rhyming couplets and monotonous backing tracks in modern rap and hip-hop, Gil Scott Heron was The Man...for about 8 years, Gil Scott Heron, mostly working in a close collaboration with Brian Jackson, made a series of thoughtful, pointed, poignant and erudite albums, with striking lyrics born of Scott Heron's former life as a poet, set to jazz-inflected song structures with African percussion. The 1975 album "South Africa to South Carolina", from it's opening chant-tune "Johannesburg" to the simple, optimistic "Lovely Day", was a classic LP of the time that I persistently listened to, and now, in newly reclaimed-from-vinyl form, it is an integral part of the iPod song collection. The LP is full of interesting invention, especially the unique keening vocal harmonies on "Beginnings".
Scott Heron was a good enough keyboards player to hold down keyboards on albums and in live settings, and his liquid voice, although limited in range, was versatile, moving from tender thoughts to pointed excursions such as the evisceration of Ronald Reagan in the rap poem "B Movie", still one of the great poetic demolition jobs, and his seminal rap on Watergate and Gerald Ford's pardoning of Richard Nixon in "We Beg Your Pardon", skilfully using repetition of a core mantra ("The pardon you gave was not yours to give") along with scything prose.
Sadly and ironically, Scott Heron appeared to ignore his own stern injunction to his audience ("The Bottle") about substance abuse and himself lapsed into all manner of addictions in the mid-1980's, which resulted in the last 25 years of his life being a blur of aborted projects, arrests and eventually several spells in jail. He had released a well-reviewed new CD in 2010, but I suspect that his long years of substance abuse shortened his life, much like his British contemporary John Martyn.

05.27.2011 • Artists • PermalinkPermalink

R.I.P. Roger "The Immortal" Nichols

Roger Nichols, the original engineer on all of the Steely Dan records from the 1970's, died last month after an extended battle with pancreatic cancer. His website is here. His fight against cancer has all but bankrupted his family. I donated to his cancer fund and I encourage others to do the same.
Nichols was a product of his time - he grew up in California interested in all areas of science, including astronomy and aeronautics (he was a qualified pilot, and counted John Denver among his close friends until Denver's untimely death in 1997). However, his inestimable contribution was to the art of studio recording for Steely Dan, where his own obsessive inquiring perfectionism found a perfect foil in Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, whose New York origins were almost diametrically opposed to his own upbringing. Nichols invented drum loops before they were given that name (the backing drum track on "Show Biz Kids" was rigged from a length of tape that was looped around various points in the console room to allow for a steady drum track), and later invented the first computer (named Wendel) to perfectly align drum parts for the album "Gaucho". Nichols worked on a rich variety of recording projects over the years, and continued to engineer and assist Becker and Fagen on Steely Dan and solo projects. He was a quiet giant, a man whose name rarely made it into the public eye, but he leaves many artists grateful for his engineering skills, and recording engineers the world over either use his products or have been influenced by his skills in advancing the recording of music.

05.9.2011 • Music Industry • PermalinkPermalink

Prefab Sprout and Paddy McAloon - Insight from Thomas Dolby

Link: http://blog.thomasdolby.com/?p=944

This blog posting by Thomas Dolby explains some of the background behind the non-release of "Let's Change The World With Music" when it should have been released back in 1992 or 1993. Along the way Thomas also manages to very nicely slap Paddy about concerning his unwillingness to "get with the program" and release his music across the Internet.

12.12.2010 • Artists • PermalinkPermalink

Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen

"Steve McQueen" was the second Prefab Sprout album, released in 1985 (in the USA, due to legal problems with the estate of Steve McQueen, it was re-titled to "Two Wheels Good").
The album came about as the result of a collaboration between producer Thomas Dolby and Paddy McAloon. Dolby selected the songs for "Steve McQueen" from a pile of demos and from "strum and sing" sessions held with McAloon. The songs were then recorded and elaborated into the finished album, with Dolby's state-of-the-art keyboards playing a major part in the soundscapes of the album. Specifically, Dolby sampled Wendy Smith's voice and processed the samples to create keyboard samples that appear in various places throughout the album (most notably on "When Love Breaks Down").
"Steve McQueen" is sonically integrated in a way that most other Sprouts LPs are not. It sounds like it was recorded with the same band throughout, unlike "From Langley Park To Memphis" which sounds like a patchwork quilt of different songs recorded with different line-ups at different times. It is also a stunningly beautiful-sounding but sometimes lyrically dark set of songs, tackling gritty relationship subjects such as infidelity ("Moving The River" and "Horsing Around"), relationship break-ups ("When Love Breaks Down"), out-of-wedlock births and the death of Marvin Gaye ("When The Angels"). In a way, Paddy McAloon followed the Steely Dan model of setting subversive and edgy lyrics to sweet-sounding melodies and song structures. The result is a totally balanced integrated LP, a classic 1980's pop LP that still sounds great over 25 years after it was recorded.

12.12.2010 • Music I'm Currently Listening To • PermalinkPermalink