1979-91 The Best of ...
Sunday 21 June 2009
... Julian Cope and the Teardrop Explodes
This has a much better sub-title -- Floored Genius.
Man this is a good album, from the opening brass section in Reward to the grungy guitar on Safe Surfer, I love every single song. You could argue that Jellypop Perky Jean and Spacehopper are somewhat slight affairs, but the sweep of the twenty tracks is wonderful.
Mr. Cope's eccentricities are on show (especially on Reynard the Fox) but he's just such a good tunesmith and though he's on the madder side of say, Kate Bush, he deserves recognition as one of English pop's true originals.
Definitely in the top twenty.
13
Like most old people I am continually amazed at the passage of time. It's ten years since this album was released -- ten!!
The opening track of this thing, Tender, is one of those songs that's hard to be indifferent about. I like it well enough, but I can see where one reviewer was going when they described it as like Hey Jude.
Depending on how you feel you might be disapointed or delighted when that track in no way indicates what's to come. The mild, bland Coffee and TV aside, the rest is horribly grating and cacophonous. I couldn't even listen to the end.
Record Collection
Tuesday 19 May 2009
Having spent some time tagging my MP3s and collecting them centrally to allow them to be played from any of the computers in the house, I realise that I really don't listen to music much any more.
I used to collect CDs pretty prolifically, but I haven't bought much new music in, say, the last 5 years. I'm also not that well versed in that music I have. I'm sure I've forgotten some gems, and I bet I have stuff I've never even heard.
So I'm going to go through my collection and try and listen to an album a night. I'll do this alphabetically according to my Winamp library (although I'm not that convinced I tagged everything corectly) and I will then put whatever thoughts that particular aural experiment puts into my head 'out there'. Or rather, here.
There are a bunch of MP3s that one picks up here and there that do not have an 'album' associated with them and I'll probably stick to the complete albums I have. Random songs will get a mention.
In fact, a couple of tracks with no album tag got an airing tonight: He Really Wants You by Aimee Mann and No Myth by Michael Penn. The first is a live track and Aimee's voice seems a little more nasal than usual, so maybe the post production softens that normally -- although I've seen her twice and I didn't notice it in the flesh as it were.
Michael Penn is Mr. Mann and he played No Myth at one of the concerts, which lead me to seek it out online. They were both members of Artists Against Piracy, so I guess he'd not be pleased. It's a good song and appears on the album, MP4.
Artists Against Piracy don't seem to exist any more.
last.fm
Monday 15 October 2007
I've been listening to last.fm for the last week or so. I find it a useful noise filter for work -- just plug in 'Underworld' in the 'artists similar to' box, stick on the headphones and all the local distractions fade away. A couple of times it's been a bit jarring when an unfamiliar re-mix of a familiar song comes on, but that's what the 'skip' button is for.
The 'classical' tag works well too. Great for a free service.
The 'classical' tag works well too. Great for a free service.
Labels: music
