What Kind of Music Makes You?

There's a pivotal scene in Woody Allen's Manhattan where he reels off the things he couldn't live without into a tape recorder. Although you might argue with some of them, it's difficult to defend anyone who says they could live without the voice of Frank Sinatra. 

I really only have two loves, reading and music. I tried to make a quick list. I realise how useless these lists are (and the longer, the more useless, I have found). Perhaps, however, such a list might help me find a core interest.

Musicians and composers Irving Berlin Johnny Mercer George Gershwin (especially Porgy & Bess) Bessie Smith Pink Floyd (with and without Syd Barrett, but not without Roger Waters) The Beatles Joe Meek Tom Waits Bob Dylan (any period) Louis Armstrong Music hall legends (Sam Mayo, Ronald Frankau, Talbot O'Farrell) Tchaikovsky Aaron Copland Mabel Mercer Noel Coward Stephen Sondheim	Poets Philip Larkin John Keats Wallace Stevens Ted Hughes Sylvia Plath Carol Ann Duffy W.H. Auden
Novelists Martin Amis Armistead Maupin Margaret Atwood Ian McEwan Milan Kundera Saul Bellow John Updike Henry Green Flann O'Brien Albert Camus	Assorted (Critics, humorists, non-fiction writers, short story writers) V.S. Pritchett Richard Rorty St. Augustine S.J. Perelman Martin Heidegger Whitney Balliett Thomas Nagel

If you are a regular reader of this site, has a similar list of interests brought you here? Are there things I should be getting into that my Amazon recommendations have missed?

Timbre! Unusual Instrumentation Playlist - Vol. I

Timbre, as Frank Zappa says in the Real Frank Zappa Book, is everything. But it’s also confusing. To a Westerner, the sitar eternally signifies the mysterious allure of the East, while – as Talvin Singh once pointed out – ‘in Bombay, an electric guitar is exotic’. Why is this?

ABOVE: A rare and dangerous example of the urethra flute.

This playlist argues that context, rather than the instrument itself, is the key. I hope to demonstrate this by putting fifteen instruments in an unexpected context.

It’s a playlist that plunges into the world of exotic tones with a banjo in one hand and an ocarina in the other, and comes out the other side with a sore head, yodelling.

It would be doing the merely obvious
to include such gimmicky instruments
as the trapezoidal harp (ABOVE).

I have deliberately steered clear of the more familiar examples of instruments being used in an unusual context. Much as I love the sitar on the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood, or Jethro Tull’s use of rock flute, and the whole of the Tubular Bells album, I’m looking here for juxtapositions of timbre that still have the power to surprise.

I hope you find yourself marvelling at the sound of a violin screeching across a dub track, or a sousaphone powering an rock tune, as much as I did.

Jungle Flute – Don Tracy & the Voodoo Family

Flute

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(Dance to the Music of) The Ocarina – Irving Berlin

Ocarina

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The Twisted Nerve – Bernard Hermann

Harp

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Jan Pahechan ho – Mohammed Rafi

Electric guitar

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Got a Match – Frank Gallop

Harpsichord

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I Touch Myself – Rolf Harris

Wobble board

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A Day In The Life – The Koto Ensemble

Koto

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K.G.’s Half Way Tree – Augustus Pablo & The Simplicity People

Violin

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Yaman (The Colonel’s Lady) – The Indo-British Ensemble

Sitar

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Donna Lee – Tom Slavicek

Banjo

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Prodigy Medley – The Banana Sessions

Sousaphone

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Take Five – Cayman Islands Steel Pan Jazz Trio

Steel pans

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Bag’s Groove – Leon Thomas

The yodel

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Oboe Mambo – Machito And His Afro-Cuban Orchestra

Oboe

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It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ’N’ Roll) – AC/DC

Bagpipes

Timbre! Unusual Instrumentation Podcast – Vol. I

 
If you can suggest any more for the next playlist, please leave a comment or contact me.

Oh, and have a happy new year!

Let’s Put The Beatles Back Together Again: Book Review

About the Beatles it’s hard to write anything new. The Beatles already have their chroniclers: their Lewisohns, their Ryan & Kehews, their MacDonalds. Everyone with any claim to be the Fifth Beatle already has a book to their name.

One thing that is certainly left, and a thing that is accomplished with fearless dilettantism by Jeff Walker in his book Let’s Put The Beatles Back Together Again, is the job of pruning what exists. This book is a veritable orchard of the resulting bonsai trees. To put it more crudely, this is a listmaker’s wet dream. ¹

Walker structures the book around the idea that, contra Lennon’s song ‘God’, the dream is not over. That is to say, there is a way to claw back the Beatles’ solo careers and construct a Beatlesque canon. To do this, Walker proposes a thought experiment. Suppose the Beatles, upon officially splitting up, had made a pact to continue to group their best recordings together under the moniker of the Beatles Recording Collective (the BRC).

Some amusing hypotheticals fall into place here. John still dies on December 8, 1980, but he ‘survives’ as ‘ghost-John’ as a recording artist through the virtue of having a fair bit of unreleased work in the can.² They still release their various solo albums, although the best tracks (‘Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five’ but not ‘No Words’ from Band on the Run) are creamed off and packaged for the BRC.

Hey John: 11 Beatles-Related Web Goodies

First of all, a musical treat: Blossom Dearie extends her tiny-voiced affection to John Lennon, whom she met on a chat show:

“Hey John, look at me digging you digging me!”

It’s a lovely little soufflé called Hey John.  Kind of makes you wonder what Dearie would've thought of the Plastic Ono Band record he was making? Now that would be some cover version!

Right, now onto the links!

The Fool on the Hill: The Beatles Songbook Vol. 1

It contains multitudes (of cheesy crap) but there is something spirited – and, dare I say it, “cool” – about this at times amateurish instrumental tribute to the Four Horsemen of the Popocalypse.

Why Harrison Preferred Minors: Notes Towards An Analysis Of The Beatles’ Use Of Descending Chord Progressions

Whenever someone proclaims in a review of a new single that it is ‘Beatlesque’, my ears prick up. Of course, you’re going to give any song with this kind of press a hard time, but what really bugs me is when lazy reviewers describe as ‘Beatlesque’ any song that features a descending chord progression.

I wondered if there was any truth in the idea. I looked around on a few sites and forums and found nothing on this topic – in fact, I was told it was unquantifiable. I liked the idea of the challenge. So here is my attempt to quantify the Beatles’ use of such figures.

The Best of The Alternate Beatles

To those who thought the Beatles couldn't be covered, I am offering a sampler of tracks - one representing each album - in the hope that it might win you over to the virtues of this downloadable 15-album collection of cover versions!

From Sandie Shaw to Lord Sitar, from Ruben Blades to Swan Arcade, this CD-length collection hints at the wonderful range of covers available on each album.

The Alternate Past Masters I & II

And that's it. The last of the Alternate Beatles. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And a double whimper, at that.

The singles collections aren't among the most played albums in my collection, but after listening to some of the more excruciatingly bland covers of the B-sides, I have to say the Beatles have gone up even further in my estimation. They really were geniuses to be able to perform the hell out of those songs and make something as trite as 'I'll Get You' into an exhilarating experience.

The Complete Alternate Beatles - Let It Be

The complete Beatles project is now here. Sorry for moving – it’s for a good reason.

The Alternate Abbey Road

A lovely collection of covers of the album better known as The One That Should Technically Be Their Last But Isn't And Doesn't Really Feel Like It Anyway.

Image courtesy of the visual quoteurs at Music Philosophy.

In terms of subtexts, there's far less jazzy noodling this time, with more funky, vocoder-laden surprises and curious combinations (Steven Tyler and Frankie Howerd, George Benson and Helen Merrill, alongside the more traditional pairing of Brian Sewell and Latin American rhythms). I've tried to preserve the segues in the original second half, although I am not entirely sure how successfully.

Next week I'll be adding the Past Masters covers to this post, so check back here then or subscribe to our feed.

The Alternate Abbey Road

The Alternate Yellow Submarine

One thing was clear: I wasn't going to fuck with Pepperland. So St. George's contribution to the album remains unspoiled by imitation.

(Above) "What's terrifying is that they're recognisable."

The Alternate Yellow Submarine

The Alternate 'White Album'

The double album known as The White Album is the most unrestrained and eclectic album the Beatles ever put out. And that is about the only thing about it that people have agreed upon, as far as I can see.

I love it, disagreeing with those who argue it should be boiled down to one 'good' album, and now I can add that its songs have also attracted some excellent cover versions. The very multifariousness of the songs that comprise this alternate version represents, to my mind, an excellent tribute.

The Alternate White Album - Disc One

The Alternate Magical Mystery Tour

My latest revelation in compiling these cover albums is as follows: the songs on Magical Mystery Tour are far more amenable to cover versions than, say, those on Sgt. Pepper's. They're just made of stronger stuff.

The Alternate Magical Mystery Tour

Read The Alternate Magical Mystery Tour Tracklist

01 Magical Mystery Tour - Ska Ska Club
02 The Fool On The Hill - Petula Clark
03 Flying - Shockabilly
04 Blue Jay Way - Lord Sitar
05 Your Mother Should Know - Bud Shank
06 I Am The Walrus - Spooky Tooth
07 Hello Goodbye - Los Papines & Don Carlos
08 Strawberry Fields Forever - Hayseed Dixie
09 Penny Lane - Hannover Harmonists, Wilson Malone, Jalopy Five
10 Baby You're A Rich Man - The Session Men
11 All You Need Is Love - Echo & The Bunnymen

The Alternate Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Now, as you would expect for one of the most discussed albums in rock history, there's a rich seam of cover versions, and the choosing weren't easy.

Sheharrazam's Youtube channel

I don't know who's behind it, but someone who can certainly do pretty good impersonations has a great Youtube channel with, among other things, Noël Coward's original of the Prodigy tune Firestarter and a new Beatles album.

I particularly liked the accuracy of his George Martin impression.

The Alternate Revolver

Carefully staged studio shots like the one below, taken at John's 26th birthday party, masked the tension underlying the recording of the Revolver album.

The Alternate Revolver

Show me the Alternate Revolver Tracklist

01 - Taxman - Junior Parker
02 - Eleanor Rigby - Cassia Eller
03 - I'm Only Sleeping - George Martin & His Orchestra
04 - Love You To - Sukilove
05 - Here, There and Everywhere - Claudine Longet
06 - Yellow Submarine - Akiko Kanazawa
07 - She Said She Said - Tom Newman
08 - Good Day Sunshine - Jimmy James & The Vagabonds
09 - And Your Bird Can Sing - Jim Reid
10 - For No One - Emmylou Harris
11 - Doctor Robert - Luke Temple
12 - I Want To Tell You - Thea Gilmore
13 - Got to Get You Into My Life - Marian Love
14 - Tomorrow Never Knows - Monsoon feat. Sheila Chandra

You'll begin by nodding absently to Junior Parker's cataleptic 'Taxman'. Then you'll be gaily picturing a sleazy striptease to George Martin's 'I'm Only Sleeping', wondering if any moment could be more joyful than the chorus of Akiko Kanazawa's 'Yellow Submarine', and penultimately rollicking along with Marian Love on 'Got to Get You into My Life'.

The Alternate Rubber Soul

The Alternate Rubber Soul can now be found here, with all the other Beatles stuff. As you can guess, we’ve moved. The new place looks a bit different, but a lot of the old furniture is still there. Hope it’s not too out of place among all the new bits and pieces.

Thanks

Tardy

The Alternate Help!

The fifth in the series.

The Alternate Help!

Click here for the tracklist

01 Help (Aria) - The Baroque Ensemble
02 The Night Before - Ringo Ska
03 You've Got to Hide Your Love Away - The Mamas and the Papas
04 I Need You - Phil Seymour
05 Another Girl - George Martin Orchestra
06 You're Going to Lose That Girl - The Oohs
07 Ticket to Ride - Alma Cogan
08 Act Naturally - Betty Willis
09 It's Only Love - R Stevie Moore
10 You Like Me Too Much (Me gustas demasiado) - Hugo y Osvaldo
11 Tell Me What You See - Teenage Fanclub
12 I've Just Seen A Face - Charles River Valley Boys
13 Yesterday - Bob Dylan
14 Dizzy Miss Lizzy - BZN

And you can click on a picture to download any of the other Alternate Beatles albums:

The Alternate Beatles for Sale

Number four... number four... number four...

Sorry, moment of madness. What I mean to say is that this is the fourth in the series of Beatles cover albums.

Putting together The Alternate Beatles for Sale has been fairly illuminating. I'd never noticed how cover-heavy the original album was, and this leaves the compiler (as I shall henceforth refer to myself never, ever again) with all sorts of judgement calls to make: often I was tempted to plump for the very song that inspired The Beatles, but since they tend to be overqualified (take Holly's 'Words of Love'), I invariably opted for some more obscure gem.

Well, all that stuff's boring, so what do you make of these:

>>The Alternate Beatles for Sale<<

Click here for the tracklist

01 No Reply - The Last Words
02 I'm A Loser - Bola Sete and Vince Guaraldi
03 Baby's In Black - Ruben Blades
04 J'aime le rock'n'roll (Rock'n'Roll Music) - Eddy Mitchell
05 I'll Follow the Sun - The Four Brothers
06 Mr Moonlight - I Rockings (apologies for the sound quality - you'll understand why it had to be included)
07 Kansas City - Hey Hey Hey Hey (Medley) - Freddie & the Dreamers
08 Eight Days a Week - Enoch Light
09 Words Of Love - The Diamonds
10 Honey Don't - Wanda Jackson
11 Every Little Thing - Yes
12 I Don't Want to Spoil the Party - David Tice
13 What You're Doin' To Me - Lisa Lauren (Update: this replaces Hup Kapp's version)
14 Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby - Johnny Cash

Comments/quips appreciated!

And you can click on a picture to download any of the other Alternate Beatles albums: