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Dizzee VU of the Preachers Ives


Not posted in a while, nothing meaningful anyway apart from the tracklistings below which hardly make scintillating reading. Nothing interesting to say I suppose. My SOTT tracklisting is basically there. Listened to it a bit much so I'm starting to get a wee bit jaded with it so probably the time to put it to bed and accept what it is. Not too different to what I posted below but some changes to help the flow and a couple of different tracks added. I'll post it in due course. Just have to dub 49 copies now!

Visited the library the other day and got another small pile of things to listen to. Dizzee Rascal's Showtime which I've only listened to bits of, Reed/Cale and Nico live at the Bataclan in 1972 doing some solo things and, of course, some VU stuff. It's acoustic so makes for some very pretty versions of the Nico tracks from the first VU album. Haven't had the stomach for the tracks from Nico's solo stuff yet. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. Also, The Essential Kris Kristofferson 'cause sometimes it's interesting to delve into these hard living country guys who can write and perform a country song without turning your stomach. There's a certain attitude to this that I like and a kinship with Johnny Cash which can't be a bad thing. The discs mainly cover the late 60's and early 70's which again is a good thing. No scrabbling about in the 1980's with synthesised drums trying to find a voice.

Not often classical music crosses my path but there's an article in the Look!Listen!Vibrate!Smile! book compiled by Dominic Priore that compares some of what Brian Wilson was doing with Smile with Charles Ives the American composer. I've heard something of his before which I seem to remember sounded like two marching bands crashing into each other. His 4th Symphony which I was listening to yesterday has elements of that and in places reminded me of Carl Stalling's work for Warner Brothers cartoons of all things. This is down to Ives taking popular American tunes and weaving them into the fabric of his work and this is evident in the second movement. This symphony was deemed unperformable until it was attempted in 1965 as it requires more than one orchestra plus choir on stage. It also needs two conductors so I can't imagine it's been attempted too often. An interesting listen though it won't be entering regular rotation.

Finally, I got the Manic Street Preachers 'The Holy Bible' which I haven't heard in 10 years and was impressive if only for James Dean Bradfield being able to fit the labyrinthine lyrics into any sort of tune. It's the only album of theirs that perhaps lives up to what they set out to be and if Richey Edwards hadn't gone missing who knows if they could have survived as a band having this album's weight on their shoulders. As it is he did go missing and they were able to move on with a fresh slate though maybe they were merely swapping one set of baggage for another. Can't get round to really liking them though, still can't get passed the fact that their drummer wears leather gloves for God's sake. For all the apparent rock 'n' roll posturing, 4 real and all that, I still can't get passed those damn gloves.

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