I Suffer For My Art

What with my birthday looming ahead and my old Autoharp hors de combat for lo these many years in need of refelting, I decided to get myself a nice new Autoharp.

I had recommended an Oscar Schmidt OS45CE model to a friend as a possible present for his partner, and in doing so I fell in love with the thing myself. It's a very pretty thing indeed.

I had originally intended to purchase the harp from Amazon, but was disturbed by the number of reviewers remarking on rusty strings and complaining of them breaking when tuned up. This would be a significant purchase for me and I wanted to make sure I got an instrument in the best condition possible.

It was while searching for places that could supply a replacement set of strings I rediscovered The Autoharp Store, and realized I could buy any model Autoharp in production from them. I had some trepidation in making a deal with people I had no prior relationship with, but my experience has been so good this time that I shall be buying my spare parts needed to renovate my other autoharp from them, and I have no hesitation in recommending them to all my readers (two at the last count).

The instrument is far more beautiful than pictures suggest, with a high gloss finish and strings gleaming and new. It arrived in the original Oscar Schmidt packing along with two massive bags of silica gel desiccant. Job done properly.

Naturally, it was badly out of tune when it arrived, and it was then that the vile anti-musician demons of Chateau Stevie manifested to make fiasco from the fabric of extreme happiness.

I managed to find my Boss TU-12 electronic tuner lurking in the Basement of Forgotten Projects, and switched it on to be confronted with a flashing "batt" light. Grimacing, I popped off the battery door, but for once was not confronted with burst batteries and foul chemical encrustations so typical of a battery device left on a shelf for a couple of years. Mistaking this for Good Fortune instead of the Opening Movement of the Symphony of Suck I pried out the 9 volt battery and pulled off the connector.

One of the battery posts popped off the connector. The other popped off the battery.

I tried prying with my Swiss Army Knife, then deployed my Leatherman Wave pliers, Class Four Words of Power that set light to the curtains, goose grease, cat o' nine tails and Nurse McReady's Surgical Bruise Lotion, but nothing would persuade the blasted claw-like battery post to let go of the connector. Best guess is that it is welded on with the afore-mentioned chemical encrustation.

So, in order to enjoy my new autoharp, I first had to cut off the connector to my classic and now unavailable Boss tuner - thus rendering it less collectable, solder in a replacement connector and shrink-wrap the repair, only to find it wouldn't work afterward.

I let forth some Class Threes and stamped off to see if I could replace the tuner. Turned out I could, but it would cost about $100 for the latest iteration. I nipped off to eBay and bid successfully on a secondhand unit of the type I already had for about $40, but was told it wouldn't arrive until the end of next week. Blast.

Then I had a brainwave and downloaded a tuning app to my phone. In a trice - about 15 minutes - I had the autoharp in tune (ish) and was able to coax some lovely music-like noises from it.

And so to bed.

This morning I pried the case of my old tuner apart and poked around and it started working again. Huzzah! For though the phone app is tres spiffy indeed (something called "Pano Tuner", find it in the Google Play store) it isn't able to be coupled to the pick-up and thus is not usable during noisy get-togethers. Not only that, for reasons I've never understood the acoustics of my old autoharp play hob with the discriminator circuits in mic-type tuners, causing the needle to bounce all over the place, especially in the lower registers. That's why I like the Boss TU-12; it couples inline between the instrument's pick-up and whatever amp one is using (if any).

My old harp desperately need refelting¹ and other work doing, but right now I have nowhere to work on it. The footprint of a dismantled Autoharp during refelting is about the size of the average 10 seater dining table. So I think I might spring for a set of replacement chord bars from The Autoharp Store. Expensive, but worth it to get the old girl up and singing again. A new set of strings wouldn't go amiss either. That will probably cost about 2/3 the price of a new autoharp. New bars come in at 7 bux apiece and I'll need 21 of 'em, and a full set of 36 strings come in at a shade over 70 bux.

All for the love of music².

1. The autoharp works by using felt pads to mute some of the strings, leaving others to ring when strummed and sound chords. The felt gets ridged and goes soft over the course of the years and eventually needs to be pulled off the bars and replaced. This involves heating the bars to unglue the old felt, gluing new felt in place, and cutting notches where the strings you want to sound are. You did remember to make a diagram before you pulled the old felt off, right?↑
2. Or as Mrs Stevie calls it "Stop that bleeping racket"↑

So Long, Lou.

Long Lou came from out on the island
Made an album just to be a dbleepbag¹.
Then I guess he had to crash
Old Wild Man just ain't the fashion said hey Lou
Take a walk on the wild side
Hey, man, take a walk on the wild side

And the colored girls go do, d'do, d'do, do d'do, do, d'do, d'do, do d'do...

1. Metal Machine Music↑

Now Listening To...

The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other by Van der Graaf Generator.

This album first saw the little round rubber mats of the turntables of the UK sometime in early 1970 if I remember right.

The mix features some odd choices, such as putting the vocal in one speaker only and the sax in the other in "Darkness" for example, which emphasized the then-new and novel Stereophonic effect but sounds less than optimal in headphones. I'm surprised the remixer didn't allow just a little bleed into the other channels so the voice and sax would blend properly into the stereo panorama.

What we have here is arty prog rock by people who could play the paint off their instruments, made in a time almost before prog rock was an actual genre.

I saw VdGG at UEA, on the Godbluff tour in 1975 (I think). The image of David Jackson prowling the stage playing two saxophones at the same time (for the hook in "Darkness") is vivid decades later.

Because money was always short in them days the only VdGG album I owned then was a compilation called 68-71, which commands a ridiculous price on Amazon these days - if you can find one - and hasn't at the time of writing been published as a CD.

I caught an article in the press two days ago that led to looking for an actual Van der Graaf generator (a machine for making static electricity) and thence to the Amazon listings for the album above (along with a couple of others.) and a wallow during my commute today in some music history I largely missed the first time around.

I love The Internet.

Now That's A Pretty Song

Bad, performed by Luka Bloom.

Having audio taped the entire Live Aid concert as transmitted in New York (two tape recorders meant no break in continuity) I was instantly impressed by U2's performance of this song, and generated much bad feeling between my good self and the girls I shared the apartment with¹ by belting it out on volume number 11² . It is a song I've loved for a long time despite my not having a single U2 album in my collection.

Not even The Joshua Tree, and everyone has a copy of that. I've often thought about buying a yard of U2 CDs but have never actually done so.

Not sure why that is.

Anyway, I was in Sid's hardware Store on Jay Street last week and heard an absolutely beatuiful acoustic version of Bad playing on their P.A. system, so good I hung out in the store just to hear the whole thing. I was so impressed with it I initiated a search for cover versions as soon as I got home. I suppose I could have asked someone in the store who it was, but in all the times I've done that I've never gotten the right answer (and I've got the CDs to prove it too).

Amazon, Wikipedia and Google were not helpful when presented with my knowledge as search criteria, which boiled down to "Bad Acoustic". Much of interest did pop up, but nothing useful ³. Luckily The Stevieling had a problem with her iTunes account ⁴ and after I had fixed the issue (which essentially boiled down to Apple's design crew not having enough imagination to figure out how their stuff might be used in the real world ⁵) I scanned the available versions of Bad and located a couple of likely candidates. I thought I could use the free sample to positively identify the right song, but was all-but foiled by the clip editorial staff having selected a segment in which 99% of the sound is of unaccompanied guitar. This isn't the first time I've discovered that an iTunes sample clip, the one they presumably feel will hook an opportunistic buyer, is about as representative of the actual song it was taken from as a fried Mars Bar. Fortunately, I was able to positively identify the voice from the few words included and am now able to pass on the recommendation to you.

The piece is performed solo, accompanied by acoustic guitar. The guitar work is melodic and crisp in execution, and the vocals have just the right tremulous edge to convey the subject matter at hand in the proper manner (albeit a very different manner than U2 used).

I don't own a CD of Luka Bloom's music yet, but this song ensures that I will, soon.

1. Long story, love involved, none directly involving me↑
2. I've also got the bit where the concert organisers pulled the plug on U2, which was curiously not part of the DVD released purporting to cover the same concert in it's entirety↑
3. So often the case when doing internet searches↑
4. Again. Oh yeah, Apple's stuff "just works" all right↑
5. Again. Apple's designs are so much "better" I can't understand why they aren't the industry leader in everything. Oh wait, yes I can↑

Tuesday Night and The Police

At Jones Beach, for one of their last concerts in their farewell tour as it happens.

Me 'n' The Stevieling 'n' Mrs Stevie had tix because it was my birthday present (my precious). Mrs Stevie provided said tickets, but I still haven't found out what manner of perfidious skullduggery she's feeling so bad about that it prompted a dig into the handbag of such generous proportions. No doubt it will all end in tears¹.

The evening was perhaps a little muggy, but we saw no sign of the promised thunderstorms, which was good because Jones beach is an open-air theater and wet comes in when it comes down. This was the Stevieling’s first real Rock concert and I wanted it to be as good as it could be. My night was slightly marred due to one ear being blocked (again) and making the whole affair one of glorious monophonic reproduction.

I wasn't disappointed though.

The opening act was Elvis Costello, who was superb even though I'm not a great fan of his recorded work ², and I enjoyed his set immensely. Sting came out and joined in on one song (the title of which escapes me now) and at another point he was surrounded by three guys "playing" guitars and dressed like he looked in 1977 (complete with black suit, thin tie, Elvis hairstyle and fat framed glasses) - the Police in drag of course. Hilarious to them wot was there.

It was the first time I'd seen The Police live too. In fact, apart from Fairport Convention (who play smaller venues all told than the 16k seaters like Jones beach) we haven't seen any groups since 1995, when we saw Yes on the Talk tour. At Jones Beach.

Anyway

The band were in good form and played forever, material from all their studio albums. I wasn't impressed by one of the arrangements, but it was more a case of "not to my taste" compared to the better known studio version than "naff". I won't even say which song it was because honestly, I was the only one not cheering like a loon at the end of it. Ergo, must've been me³.

The set list, as best I can remember it, went like thuslywise:

Message In A Bottle
Walking on The Moon
Demolition Man
Voices in my Head segue into When The World Is Spinning Down
Driven To Tears
Don't Stand So Close To Me
Hole In My Life
Invisible Sun
De Do Do Do De Dah Dah Dah
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
King of Pain
Can't Stand Losing You/Reggatta De Blanc/Can't Stand Losing You

Encore time.

Purple Haze
Roxanne/Secret Love/Roxanne
Wrapped Around Your Finger
Deep Blue Sea⁴
So Lonely

Encore time. Dos Maas.

Every Breath You Take

Everybody go home time.

Somewhere in there, probably in the first encore between Roxanne and Wrapped Around Your Finger, they played Next To You. Understand that I had no writing materials to hand and had to use an old stage magician's trick of making a rebus out of the whole thing as it happened. This involved storing stuff in Mr Brain⁵ and, well, the rebus broke on the drive home. It hardly matters, except to note the two glaring problems with the evening.

1) No Synchronicity I.

2) Although there were three huge TV screens, each of them showed the same view, usually Sting.

Now I'm the first to admit that Sting is a bang-up songwriter and performer, but there's three of 'em in the band and one might have thought that they'd put a camera on each of 'em. One would have been an idiot to have backed that thought with money though.

Even though Copeland is probably one of the most energetic and inspiring percussionists on stage when he's on form, there was precious little tv coverage of his work at the concert. Summers got some shots, but even during his one big solo, during So Lonely, when Sting walked to the end of the stage (and it's a wide stage at Jones Beach) to clear the area for Summers to work, the TV followed Sting walking stage left instead of watching the soloing Summers. This, combined with the stage setup involving Sting standing twenty feet away from the other two could lead anyone to believe that the rumours of friction between the band members is still alive and well.

But they played well, and they played long. We got our money's worth, and I share with the others fortunate enough to have been to one of these shows the no-doubt smug feelings of canary-stuffed cat.

The stage lighting effects were interesting too, with a sort of headband across the front hiding the gantry upon which various colour themes were displayed as each song played. At first they seemed to be inspired by the album from which the songs came (red led segments on a black background for stuff from Ghost in the Machine, shades of blue for Reggatta De blanc and so forth) but then they seemd to become more random, but in all honesty I wasn't watching the lights, much, and I could easily have missed a whole subtle subtext painted in light to reinforce and compliment the sonic wash of the compositions as they unfolded a greater narrative encompassing the whole performance. Like I said, I wasn't paying them that much attention.

I've already said that it's been a long time since I rock and rolled at an event of this sort, so I might just be out of touch, but it seemed to me that there were an awful lot of strobes flickering from the stage out into the audience. It occured to me this might be an attempt to prevent the hundreds of iPhoners from videoing the affair by futzing up the auto exposure of the teenytiny cameras. They were trying anyway.

Before the show started I became bemused by the faces around me. I looked at one guy waiting to buy a tee-shirt and asked "When did we all get so old?"

He responded "Well, everyone here's on drugs. Mostly Lipitor, but some Crestor and a few Blood thinners."

He wasn't wrong either. There were more than a few of the crowd who obviously had secret portraits in oils stashed somewhere safe, and the median age couldn't have been much under fifty, and the buch manning the Harley Davidson display looked like they might have been founder members of the Hell's Angels.

Bizarre moment of the concert: Sting came out for the second concert without his shirt (I'm told this is a "trademark: of his) and a total stranger waltzed over and asked to use my 7x10 binoculars to go nipple watching. Since the neck strap was tangled in my collar and I wasn't about to surrender the glasses to some strange woman I'd never seen before in my life I leaned over in order to let her look. After about twenty seconds An eternity when you are balancing precariously on one leg to accommodate someone who is showing no signs of going away when you desperately want them to I noticed that the Stevieling was ducking down to accommodate this nitwit and couldn't see the action herself, so I said "you're done". Nitwit pretended not to hear. I repeated "You're done" and pulled the binoculars out of her hands and told The Stevieling to stand up so she could see. Nitwit grudgingly left without so much as a thank you.

As always, it took over an hour for the carpark exodus to clear enough to make it worthwhile trying for home.

It was just great.

1. Mine↑
2. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I like Watchin' The Detectives and Oliver's Army but so does everyone in the whole world. Big deal↑
3. In the interests of full disclosure I should point out that I have never cared for any of the songs from Ghost In The Machine, partially because of the nauseating Every little Thing She Does and the turgid Invisinble Sun but mostly because of the "woolly sounding" production on the whole thing. I regard this album as a low point in an otherwise notable (if all-too short) recording career↑
4. A Blues number I wasn't familiar with↑
5. Who is not my friend↑

Now That's A Pretty Song

Secret World by Peter Gabriel, from the Album Us.

A longtime fan of Gabriel's work, I find this song has just enough of everything to please my ear and engage my mind, and I actually understand what the lyrics are trying to tell me (which I don't, sometimes, with Gabriel's songs¹).

Written around the time he was breaking up with his first wife, it tells the poignant story of a breakup from the point of view of someone both relieved to be out of it but at the same time sad beyond bearing that it came to that. The instrumental arrangement is complex, the lyrics clever and the rhythm driving and relentless, rather like the subject under consideration. I'm especially impressed with Tony Levin's bass and the very restrained piano part. I often play this track through again after hearing it.

The album includes the hit "Steam", a song I never really cared for in the version that charted but like better in the slow mix available on the CD-ROM "Peter Gabriel's Secret World²", and "Digging in the Dirt", which I liked a lot on first hearing it on MTV (I think). The Stevieling likes "Blood of Eden" particularly, and we both like "Kiss that Frog" so much that an alternate version of the percussion track was the wake-up wav for my first computer for years (another benefit of the CD-ROM).

I rate the Us album very highly, and if you are only going to listen to one Gabriel album, I recommend this one without reservation.

Listen to the last track twice.

1. Shock the Monkey springs to mind↑
2. If you see a copy of the CD-ROM and want to try it, you should be aware that the non-Mac version will only run properly on a Windows 3.x system. On Windows 95 the mixer controls are not moveable, though they work fine on XP where other things stop working. I've ranted elsewhere about the lack of a modern port of this product which is otherwise a fascinating snapshot of life during a recording session in the Gabriel Secret World studio complex.↑

Now That's A Pretty Song

Driving The Last Spike by Genesis, from their 1991 album We Can't Dance.

The album itself is a mixed bag, and I've found myself skipping tracks when it's been on the player, but Driving The Last Spike stands out as a particularly good swan song for the Rutherford/Banks/Collins line up. Great production, interesting subject (The life of the 19th century railway navvies in general, centering on a tunnel collapse) with superb melodies. I am particularly fond of the middle movement of the three-part piece. Genesis at their best in their long form, and one I find myself wanting to hear live at Jones Beach on a cool evening in late July with an onshore breeze, when the inversion layer forms and the acoustics in the amphitheater become something transcendant.

Which will never happen of course, since a reformed Rutherford/Banks/Collins Genesis probably wouldn't even consider playing a venue any smaller than Lichtenstein.

You either love Genesis or hate 'em, and there's some justification for arguing that a certain "sameness" has occasionally entered the formula under the Collins-as-songwriter lineup. Collins brought the band the commercial success they couldn't find during the years prior to the breakthrough with Follow You, Follow Me, but his style isn't to some tastes.

I've been an avid consumer of genesidal sounds since Selling England By The Pound, and was one of the few people who didn't think it was all over for the band when Peter Gabriel quit in '75 since Collins had performed one track, More Fool Me, on Selling England By The Pound and most people didn't know it wasn't Gabriel singing.

I think it was the last time I was right about anything.

You can also find Driving The Last Spike on the live album The Way We Walk, Volume Two: The Longs if my vague comments about track skipping put you off the idea of We Can't Dance.

I prefer the studio version, but the live one is pretty damned good too.

Now That's A Pretty Song

"Be A Good Day" by Yes from the 1999 album The Ladder.

This five-minute opus is an example of Classic Yes¹ at their best. Superb production, amazing arrangement, stunning harmonies and incomprehensible lyrics.

Yes have suffered over the years from a malady that strikes all too many bands: Their best and most creative personnel cannot stand the sight of each other. I've lost count of the number of times Rick Wakeman has joined and left the band citing musical differences, but the fact remains that he is an indespensible component of the classic Yes sound.

Or was.

The Ladder was recorded with a Wakeman-free line-up with Keyboards being played by Igor Khoroshev, and the sound is pure Classic Yes at their best.Howe's exuberant guitar work soars over vocal harmonies that can make the sun come out, while the keyboards, bass and drums pin everything nice and tight.

An "And You And I" for the new millenium.

Who cares if you can't understand a word?

1. The sound-style made justly famous on Close to the Edge↑

Now That's A Pretty Song

A Marriage Made In Hollywood, by Paul Brady, from the album Spirits Colliding. The vocals soar, the guitar-work is restrained and clean, the mix is damn-near perfect for the Stevie-ears, the song is melodic and the lyrics are clever. Why this guy hasn't taken the popular music world by storm is beyond me, since this singer-songwriter has what it takes in spades.

I bought the Spirits Colliding album after a fairly long search process. I was fascinated by the theme music and incidental music snippets (which turned out to be extracts from the theme) of a British comedy show called "Faith in the Future" if memory serves, but could never read who wrote it as the credits raced over my field of vision. I eventually managed to catch the credit for the music as it zoomed across the screen of my TV by videotaping the show on a top-of-the-line Sony machine with superb freeze frame and jog-shuttle capability, then playing the credits back one frame at a time. Then I made Mr Brain remember the name Paul Brady by visualising my friend Paul the Globetrotting Wargamer and the splash screen for the Brady Bunch (which is all I've ever seen of that show) and went a-huntin'¹.

The album that the theme music (The World Is What You Make It) is on was quite hard to find, but I turfed it up eventually in Splurgin Records.

And had my socks blown off when I ran it through my CD player.

It was one of those extremely rare finds, an album that was bought for one track and that track turns out to be the least interesting on the disc. In my opinion I don't think there's a clunker on this album. Every track stands out as a wonderful addition to my collection of over 500 CDs and I have no hesitation in recommending that either of my readers run straight to their nearest browser and buy it for themselves online.

I was employed to build and maintain several small websites at the time, and I did 90% of the design work for the most challenging one while listening to this album. I still use it to help me concentrate when the going gets tough, and when Paul the Globetrotting Wargamer gave me the Steve Harley recording that was the subject of the very first "Pretty Song" posting in this blog, I pissed him off royally by shelving his gift² and insisting he listen, no really listen to Spirits Colliding.

It turned out that I had been a fan of Paul Brady for some time before I got this recording too. Years ago I bought a cassette version of an album I wish to heck I had had the foresight to get on decent media, a sampler called "The Transatlantic Years" which had a couple of keepers on it, including a variant of Ralph McTell's Spiral Staircase and my favourite track, Continental Trailways Bus by The Johnsons. When I read the sleeve notes to Spirits Colliding I found out that the lead singer and the guitarist who did the stuff I really liked on Continental Trailways Bus was Paul Brady.

And you really should listen, no really listen to his album, Spirits Colliding³.

1. If I don't resort to rebus-like techniques for stuff like this, Mr Brain carefully files the data in the Mental Wastebasket of Forgetting Stuff↑
2. And what a scorcher of an album that was too. When I realised what he had given me I felt like a git for not listening, no really listening, to his kind and now much-prized gift when he gave it to me ↑
3. So why don't you link to these so-called "Pretty Songs"? I hear you ask. Surely if you want me to go out and spend my hard-earned cashmoney on some pile of drool, he least you can do is give me a link to it.
   
   To which I reply: If you can't figure out how to use Google for yourself to locate the fine examples of musical talent that I painstakingly locate and point out to you, you certainly don't possess the wherewithal to properly appreciate the sheer superbness of the works themselves
   
   And don't call me Shirley ( oblig.)↑

On Serendipity With Special Reference To Buying Music And The Sadness That The New Paradigm Brings

I had a rare moment of pleasure yesterday.

I have been struggling with a new piece of technology, a particular "Open Source" package that has received much good press but unfortunately is leaving me high and dry in a few key critical areas. I was never so on the bleeding edge, even when I worked for a Microsoft Strategic Partner in the heady days of the Windows 95 rollout. I expect future generations will have it easier.

Anyway. I finally hit rock bottom the day before yesterday when the online documentation (generally thought of as being a strength of the OS world¹) refused to divulge a fairly basic piece of information no matter how I phrased the search query. I did a bit of digging, both at work and at home and found that there was an O'Reilly book that covered the missing information. For those lucky enough to not have derived income from the cowing of recalcitrant computers, O'Reilly is a publisher that produces computer and IT books, mainly concentrating in the Unix and Unix-like² world but covering a very wide field. O'reilly books have a good reputation with most people, though I have found them a bit patchy and uneven in content of late since I've been forced to use them more and more, and I've never had much time for most of their Windows books³. For some subjects they have been, for years, the only game in town if not the best, and they are well made and can take much use. They come in at around $45 apiece generally, which makes them very much a "company pays for them or we do without" prospect usually. This time I couldn't wait and so I went into Manhattan for an extended lunch hour search for the book. Which I found in the Union Square Burns & Nobble, and now that I've gotten us into Manhattan, plausibly if boringly, we can forget about computer books.

On the other side of Union Square sits a massive Splurgin Records store, and when I'm in the area I always drop in with my little want list of eclectic hard-to-get music for a spot of opportunistic shopping. Today I would be looking for "Hummingbird" a little-known album put out by Wakeman⁴ and Cousins⁵. I had seen a promo on a Strawbs video I got last year and it sounded good. I looked under Wakeman's shelves and couldn't see it. I was about to move on to the "C"s and "V"s⁶ when I idly flipped one of the CD-sized deviders on another shelf and there was the only copy of "Hummingbird" in the store and in all likelyhood on the island of Manhattan too.

That gave me a little glow inside. I was hopeful but not expecting to find it when I went into the store, was disappointed but unsurprised that it wasn't where it should be if they had it in stock and then really happy to find the only one they had by accident. I get the same feeling when I find a hard-to-locate book during a general browse. I got it every time I found one of the missing B.C. collections, and when I found a missing part of a multi-book set in a second-hand market stall back when I was a poor ex-student with hardly any dosh for luxuries. I can't describe the sensation. It's like a combination of happy and smug and surprised.

I haven't expeienced the rush for a long time because all I have to do to find that rare recording or that missing second volume of a Jack Vance trilogy is to boot up the family one-stop pr0n portal and fire up Google. I hadn't realised that I had lost what was formerly a big part of my shopping experience either.

It's that great that I can just get the stuff I want that I forgot what the serendipidous find felt like.

1. Next to the fact that it is free, of course ↑
2. Next to the fact that it is free, of course ↑
3. The problem is that O'Reilly books are written by and large by people in the Unix community, many of whom just don't "get" how Windows computers are used. For example: A book entitled Windows Annoyances urged the reader to get rid of the "My Documents" and "My Computer" icon from their desktop, clearly not grasping why they were put there in the first place. The exception that proves the rule was the first edition of "ASP In A Nutshell", an outstanding volume for its time ↑
4. Rick Wakeman, Keyboardist. Ex Bowie, Strawbs, Yes ↑
5. Dave Cousins, Guitarist, Vocalist, Songwriter and frontman for The Strawbs amongst other things ↑
6. "Cousins" and "Various". Keep up! ↑

Now That's A Pretty Song

Cold Frontier by Show of Hands. From the album Cold Frontier.

Wonderful guitar work, great lyrics, Excellent vocals. Lucky find in my case. Mrs Stevie had it sent to her when she entered some kind of suspicious internet raffle promotion. Under such circumstances, it was bound to be naff.

'cept it wasn't, not at all.

Now That's A Pretty Song

Joe Cocker pounding out a hard rock version of Leonard Cohen's First We Take Manhattan. Bad news: this version is shorter by at least two verses and a chorus than the original, and the arrangement is good enough that I miss 'em, daft words and all. Good News: It is so far ahead of the original arrangement¹ that radio messages take several minutes to travel between the two. Within one bar it had me hooked, and there was only a piano playing at the time. The driving drum beat had yet to cut in, followed by Cocker in fine voice. Absolute bloody magic.

Check it out for yourself on No Ordinary World, an album of covers that concludes with a version of Paul Brady's excellent Love Made A Promise², by itself a darn good reason to buy the thing.

If the only time you've heard Joe Cocker is on the soundtrack to Woodstock you'll be impressed how he sounds when he's sober.

1. Cohen went for an (unusual for him) electronic treatment a-la Kraftwerk on his. You can check that out on I'm Your Man↑
2. From one of my all-time favourite albums, Spirits Colliding³↑
3. A track or two from this will certainly feature in some future Now That's A Pretty Song since the album is packed with suitable songs

Now That's A Pretty Song

Steve Harley¹ performing a very stripped-down version of "The Best Years Of Our Lives" on Dulcimer, live. You can check it out too, on an album called "Stripped To The Bare Bones", if you can find it. Now Tower Records is defunct² it'll be that much harder Stateside.

I dunno why people are so down on the 70s when talent like this came out of them.

1. Once a rebelious cockney, but much calmer these days ↑
2. As reported in the previous post. Keep up! One day I should tell Paul the Globetrotting Wargamer how much I appreciate his giving me this album ↑