Berg Piano Sonata op 1

Two posts in one day!

Do you remember that picture where, if you look at it one way it looks like a young woman with a feather in her hat, and if you look at it another way it looks like an old woman in a headscarf. That is how I feel about Berg’s Piano Sonata. If you listen to it one way, it is ripe Romanticism; if you listen to it the other way, it’s atonal. It is interesting to compare it with Scriabin’s “Black Mass” sonata, which is undeniably Romantic, but pushing the boundaries. It doesn’t get me nearer to an answer with the Berg, but at least it shows I am not way off beam.

Old blues - a shameful confession

This is a shameful confession but I can’t listen to old blues songs (see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2009/04/some-pre-war-blues.html) without subconsciously imagining what they would have sounded like played by Led Zeppelin. For example, Willie Brown’s “M&O Blues” is superb, but my mind’s ear can hear John Bonham’s drums crashing in at the end of the first verse. I will persevere.

Various

Yesterday I was feeling down, but a blast of "Inside Flaming Hotz" by Carioca Funk Clube cheered me up (as it always does).

I wasn't going to listen to anything walking back from the station, but I did. This is what I enjoyed:

Blurt - "Get" and "My Mother Was A Friend Of An Enemy Of The People"
The Clash - "Clash City Rockers"
The Fall - "Christmastide" (probably the weirdest Xmas song ever recorded)
The Congos - "Feast Of The Passover".

The Clash - The Essential Clash

Round about the time when the Shea Stadium live album and the book came out last year, there seemed to be a bit of an anti-Clash backlash, and I started wondering whether The Clash were really as wonderful as they are cracked up to be, and as I remember them. Yes, they were. I'll say that louder. YES, THEY WERE.

It’s hard to analyse what was so great about them. Part of it was the feeling of unbounded confidence and (paradoxically for a band which was so anti-authoritarian) authority. That feeling started to trickle away after “London Calling”: for me, the watershed was “Bankrobber”. What were they doing? They weren’t gods any more. After that, they did some good songs, and a few remarkable ones (“Ghetto Defendant”, for example) but they just weren’t the same old Clash. That is why “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” (which was fairly unremarked at the time, as far as I remember) was so special: just one last flash of the old spirit.

Purists probably don’t like compilations like this, but it is a pretty good potted history (ending with Mick Jones’ departure, which is just as well). There isn’t any point whinging about the track selection, though, for example, “Armageddon Time” was surely important enough to merit inclusion. When I started to list (mentally) tracks which deserved to be here, and I realised that there weren’t any on “London Calling” that didn’t, it became clear to me that it was the band’s masterpiece.

I’m not going to attempt a track-by-track. Just a couple of comments. I had only heard “Clash City Rockers” a couple of times, and discarded it as lightweight. Big mistake, great song (the surreal take on “Oranges And Lemons” – “the bells of Prince Far-I???”). And, excited as I was by the original, I was wrong about their “Police And Thieves” (http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2009/02/lee-scratch-perry-and-various-arkology.html). And the best of their best – “Complete Control” and “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” – weren’t just great. Those songs had something – the nearest I can get is to call it a nobility - I can’t explain.

Back again

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted here. We had an eventful summer when we moved house, a lot of stressful stuff, but as the song says, “All Right Now”. I didn’t listen to any music at all while all this was going on - I didn’t have time - and when I started again I didn’t really have the motivation to write about it. Until now.

No time to write this so instead of individual posts for each item, here’s a brief note.

Adam & the Ants - Prince Charming
I wanted to break my aural fast with something trashy. I started getting disappointed with this even though my expectations were low, but it somehow seemed to improve around what would have been side 2 of the album. “S.E.X”, though slow and relatively quiet, has the seedy allure of some of their early material.

Captain Beefeart & the Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica
My favourite LP of all time. Listening to it for the first time in 3 years, I loved it a bit less but understood it more. It’s not as musically shambolic as it seems.

Telemann - Various
I’ve never taken Telemann seriously but I loved this.

Black Sabbath - Greatest Hits
I’ve never taken Black Sabbath seriously either. I was disappointed the first time I listened to this - even though everyone laughs at Sabbath and heavy metal in general, their music is regarded as seminal rock music. So I listened to it again, and was more impressed, especially with the stuff from the first two albums. But the best track is “Sweet Leaf”.

No Se - Bez Wdzięczności (Without Thanks)
I had to listen to this again (see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2009/02/no-se-bez-wdziecznosci-without-thanks.html), and thought it was even better. Really ferocious.

Mozart - Symphony No 34
This is great, but I am still trying to work out what marks out Mozart’s last 6 symphonies (No 35 onwards) from the rest.

Schubert – Piano Sonata in B flat, D960

This is Schubert’s last piano sonata, and given the reputation of his late piano work I don’t know why it took so long for me to listen to it. But it hasn’t been a good time for me to listen to something like this (too much distraction and angst), so I haven’t come away with much more than the obviously banal conclusion that it is great music, and I need to listen to it again soon.
Great it is, though, because in a very stressful week it has at least made me feel human again.


I found myself wondering how I could tell that this was Schubert and not Beethoven, since they inhabit roughly similar sound worlds. My answer (banal again) is something like this. Schubert says “it is like this, but I very much wish it were different” (yearning, Sehnsucht if you want to be pretentious). Beethoven just says “it is like this”. (I wrote this, and then I remembered the “es muss sein” rubric from Beethoven’s last quartet, so I might be less wrong than I thought).

Downloads from All About Jazz

The last downloads I got from AAJ were a bit disappointing, with the exception of Sam Sadigursky’s brilliant “Such Fruit” (with Becca Stevens) – see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/09/downloads-from-all-about-jazz-itmos.html. These are far better.

The best tracks is Bethany & Rufus’s blues/gospel “Linin’ Track” (is it my imagination, or is the bassline like the Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin’ Beat”?) and Eric Astor’s effervescent guitar piece “Brooklyn” (a bit Santana-esque, I thought. Fusion usually NMCOT but this is an exception). Also good were “My Gun’s Empty” by Machinegun (free jazz, building up as the sax gets more and more agitated. Hardly unique, but still pretty interesting) and “Metamorphing” by Plunge (a bit of austere “classic” modern jazz). Bill Hartzell’s “Tainted Rose” (more fusion electric guitar) was OK, but a bit repetitive. The only track I didn’t like out of this bunch was “Redux” by Tamandua – atmospheric, brooding but rather dull. But overall, very good.

Download (free) at http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownloads.php.

Culture Club – Colour By Numbers

Since it is going to be the Eighties all over again soon, I thought I would get in the mood, courtesy of last year’s Daily Mail 80s record collection. Of course, back then, I couldn’t stand the New Romantic thing (what hardline Fall fan could?). But to my amazement/horror I found myself actually enjoying Culture Club’s music. When I started listening to this again, over a quarter of a century later, I must say it sounded rather bland, but it started growing on me again. Best tracks here, as before, are “Mister Man” and the singles “Karma Chameleon” and, especially, “Church Of The Poison Mind”. This time round I can even see what a good song “Victims” is, though let down by its cheesy arrangement.

Then as now I find Boy George’s half-teenage-boy-half-teenage-girl persona a bit perplexing, but if you listen rather than psychoanalyse, it’s worth the effort.

Sibelius – Symphony No 6

Before starting to listen to this I couldn’t remember anything at all about it from the previous times I had heard it (about twice). That is unique because with all the other Sibelius symphonies I could remember something, if only (as with the Seventh) a vague recollection of pleasure. As I started to listen to the Sixth, it all started to come back. For the first few minutes, the slow intro to the first movement, I thought that this was something really good which I had totally forgotten about, which was a bit worrying. But as the work went on, this feeling subsided, and I started to remember why I had forgotten Sib 6. Except for those first few minutes, yes, this is unmistakeably Sibelius. It’s not bad Sibelius (if such a thing exists: his quality control is pretty rigorous). But there doesn’t seem to be anything extraordinary: nothing which made me sit up and think “gosh”, let alone “F***ING HELL!!!”. I’ll come back to it again, when I have time. But it didn’t fire my enthusiasm.

Coldplay – Viva La Vida or Death And His Friends

I haven’t always hated Clodplay. I actually quite liked some of their older stuff, especially “Yellow”. The hatred took hold when they went stellar with “X&Y” and Live8. I remember with derisive amusement the look of rage on Chris Martin’s face when someone (I think it was Jonathan Ross) reminded him that they had been denied the number one single spot by Crazy Frog. So I would have passed this by on the other side, if I hadn’t promised Ed on the 17 Seconds blog that I would listen to it if I got the chance. Ed had rated VLV way higher, in his best LPs of 2008, than The Fall’s offering, and I had expressed some doubt about this judgement, so in the interests of fairness I promised to listen to this.

Which I have now, and what a load of rubbish it is. The thing that grates most is the inflated pomposity of the lyrics. If it were not for the lyrics, the music would not seem as bad. But lyrics and music together are unspeakable, delivered with an unfounded confidence that says “We are singing songs about grown-up stuff like death AND we’ve got Eno on board with his soundscapes (whatever that means) so we are dead clever”. I suppose “Yes” is listenable, even perhaps “Strawberry Swing”. But any quality these possess deserve is outweighed by the sheer, jaw-dropping awfulness of “Cemetries Of London” (whose lyrics sound like the sort of idea Iron Maiden might have had and discarded as being too daft), the title track, and “42”, which surpasses even “Fix You”, the previous ne plus ultra of Clayplod badness (you know I am getting excited when I lapse into Latin).

Dvorak – Symphony No 8

When I listened to Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony (New World) a few months ago, I didn’t get on with it at all (see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/09/dvorak-symphony-no-9-from-new-world-or.html). Part of the problem was that it sounded very shouty. The Eighth is not without its shouty bits, but I loved it, more light and shade, especially in the second and third movements.

Worth mentioning also is the performance, a free download by the Peabody Concert Orchestra, from the conservatoire at John Hopkins University (go to http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/pcorecordings, 2001/02 season). A lot of free classical downloads I’ve listened to have frankly been rather mediocre, but this performance is really good. (Why the tuning up at the start of the third movement?)

Miles Davis – Birth Of The Cool

I enjoyed this a lot, especially the opening track “Move”. But I prefer my jazz a bit less relaxed, a bit less cool. I wondered if this was a bit unfair, but after listening to a few minutes of Charlie Parker I was right.

Some pre-war blues

I read about the Pre-War Blues blog, aka “Honey Where You Been So Long”, http://prewarblues.org/ a long time ago, but only just got around to downloading a few tracks at random. I am never going to be a hardcore blues fanatic, and this is the first time I have heard any really old, acoustic blues, but the tracks by Kid Bailey (“Mississippi Bottom” and “Rowdy Blues”) are great, and Willie Brown’s “M&O Blues” thrilling in its austerity. By accident (it was posted instead of another track by Brown) there is an amazing song “Make Me Know It” by Evelyn Preer, better known as a film actress. Less sure of Blind Will Dukes’ “Dead Shrimp Blues”, apparently recorded in the 1970s, sounds a bit contrived.

Haydn – Piano Sonatas

Haydn - Piano Sonatas Nos 48-52, Hob XVI: 35-39
Due to pressures elsewhere these are getting more like tweets than proper blog entries but ploughing on regardless. I expected these pieces to be vaguely pleasant, but they were amazing. There is a depth of expressiveness here, almost Romantic, which I have never noticed in Haydn before. There seem to be three Haydns – the sensitive Haydn who wrote these sonatas, the urbane Haydn who wrote the string quartets, and the clodhopping moron who wrote the symphonies (as to which see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/12/haydn-symphonies-nos-100-military-and.html).

Killing Joke - Killing Joke

Despite the ostensible nastiness of punk and post-punk acts, there were only three bands I found genuinely unsettling. Those were the Stranglers, the Birthday Party - and Jaz Coleman (who, I recently discovered, was later described as "the new Mahler" by conductor Klaus Tennstedt) and his unmerry men. Listening to this nearly 30 years after it was first released, I found it rather disappointing. Worse, bits of it made me laugh, for example the distorted vocals on "Wardance", which sound like a baddie out of "Doctor Who". It's not all bad - "Requiem" is a genuine classic, and "The Wait" is quite good - but it's nowhere near as good as it is cracked up to be. Most revealing, perhaps, is "Primitive" - wonderful, crunching, syncopated bass, then a majestic guitar riff, then - rubbish vocals and lyrics. Maybe I just don't scare as easily these days. It's a shame that the reissue didn't include "Psyche": that really was terrifying.

REM – Accelerate

REM have been my second favourite band for 20 years now (favourite being The Fall). I had lost touch with them after 2000, so that until now the most recent record of theirs I had heard was “Up” from 1998. I wasn’t expecting to be impressed – I sort of assumed that having been at the top for so long they would have lost their edge – but this is a damn fine album. Not quite in the same league as “New Adventures In Hi-Fi”, which is probably unsurpassable anyway, but still excellent. If it takes eight years of George W Bush to produce songs of the quality of “Living Well Is The Best Revenge”, then (sorry Barack) roll on President Palin.

Sibelius – Symphony No 5

This (or another recording of this, to be accurate) was one of the first classical records I had. It’s hard to listen objectively to something as well-loved as this, and in fact I found the first and third movements a bit disappointing. The slow second movement was the one I appreciated most – not just pretty, there are some moments of absolute peace that feel almost Mahlerian.

Joy Division – Closer

This record must have been in my top 10 of Albums I Am Ashamed I Have Never Heard (top 3 being “Pet Sounds”, “Revolver” and “Blonde On Blonde”). Monumental in every sense of the word, it really was Joy Division’s masterpiece (was ever a band less aptly named?). Musically most of it leaves me open-mouthed in admiration –“24 Hours” and “Decades” are, for me, their finest songs, far better than - “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, but emotionally it leaves me strangely cold.

J S Bach – Flute Sonata in E minor, BWV1034

I enjoyed this. I was going to just play it once, but I ended up playing it over and over again. Not as jolly as a lot of flute music tends to be, rather on the solemn and austere side, but none the worse for that.

Ruth Theodore – Worm Food

I wrote a very short but enthusiastic post on this LP (free download on Jamendo) when I first heard it last summer – see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/09/ruth-theodore-worm-food.html (I think Theodore used to be based in Hampshire but now lives in London). Due to multiple misfortune in the Terrapin household – I won’t go into details – I haven’t had time or opportunity to download anything new, so I listened to this again. I had psyched myself up to be disappointed – some things aren’t as good the second time you listen to them - but I still think it is very, very good. If I described it as English folk (with bluesy influences and the odd burst of jazz) it would be too much like pigeon-holing it, so I won’t. Great songs, with bitter, witty lyrics, great singing, great guitar. The only tracks I don’t get on with are “Overexpanding” (a bit smug, IMHO) and “Home” (maudlin). I was intrigued by the strange, raucous live singalong at the end of “Threat” (seemed to be called “Controlled Demolition”). Best though are the incandescent “Rash”, also “Grounded”, “Murray’s Wives” and “3 Floors”.

Brahms – Piano Quartet in C minor, op 60

The trouble with Brahms or, more accurately, the trouble with me when it comes to Brahms, is that I have never yet been able to listen to him as Brahms, as opposed to as a composer who sounds a bit like Beethoven.

The first time I listened to this, I just wanted to get it over with and listen to something else. I just registered it as an agreeable German Romantic piece, and that was that. But when I got to the final movement I found myself enjoying it more and more, and I had to listen to it again. So I did, and I really liked it. But here’s the thing (as Adrian Monk says). I still don’t think I like it purely as Brahms, I like it because bits of it sound (to me) like Beethoven and Schubert, albeit good Beethoven and Schubert. So I need to make more progress before I really manage to hear Brahms as Brahms.

But perhaps if Brahms really, really wanted to be heard on his own terms he shouldn’t have done things like the (apparently) obvious reference in the final movement to the rhythm in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

The Specials and the Battle of Midsummer Common (too much fighting on the dance floor!)

This interview with the reforming Specials was very interesting for a number of reasons, apart from the fact of the band’s (at least partial) reunion. I really liked the Specials, although they weren’t one of my very favourite bands. I think that was because of the rather whiny, preachy nature of some of their songs, such as “Racist Friend”, “Rat Race” and probably everything they released after the Fun Boy Three departed. But I suppose a bit of preachiness was hardly surprising given that Jerry Dammers’ father was a senior canon at Coventry Cathedral.

It was interesting (and a bit alarming) to see how much Terry Hall had aged. It was also interesting to see John Bradbury get a bit of publicity, given his virtual invisibility during the Specials’ existence. But most interesting of all was the mention of the chaotic concert in Cambridge in 1981 which resulted in Hall and Dammers being convicted of public order offences (though not incitement to riot as the article claims ), and possibly inspired the “too much fighting on the dance floor” line in their (much overrated) song “Ghost Town”. And I was there.

Unusually, the concert took place in a marquee on Midsummer Common. Most major gigs in Cambridge happened at the Corn Exchange, squalid, uncomfortable, perfect venue for punk. (I’ve just looked at their website – it’s still there and it’s got SEATS!!!). Fights happened but it was nowhere near as dangerous as student folklore suggested. I think for a while in late 1980 and early 1981 there weren’t any gigs going on there, something weird to do with the noise disturbing experiments going on in the university labs next door.

Anyway, too much digression. The odd thing is, I can’t remember much about the event itself. I think we had a few pints beforehand in the Salisbury Arms (now back in the Good Beer Guide, but I’m not going to digress again), whereas I didn’t usually drink before gigs. Perhaps that is why I wasn’t more afraid. I don’t think we even had tickets: we were going to buy them on the door but by the time we got there (I think the Specials were already on stage) things were already so tasty that there wasn’t anyone there to take money. I don’t remember if the music was good or not, it just got interrupted a lot. The incident that got Hall and Dammers into trouble was (as the song says) a little bit frightening but the thing that stood out in my mind was the ridiculous cap Jerry Dammers was wearing. The only songs from their set I actually remember were particularly angry renditions of “Pearl’s Café” and “Do The Dog”, and the whole thing ending up with a manic “Skinhead Moonstomp” with uninvited skinheads dancing on the stage.

Interesting experience? Yes. History in the making? Not really.

An old Craig Finn podcast (and a digression on positive hardcore and posi-punk)

A few months ago, when their last album was coming out, there was an interesting article about The Hold Steady in the paper and I thought I had to hear what they sounded like. So I headed for their website and downloaded this twenty-minute podcast by singer Craig Finn, recorded in 2006. It was a disappointment in that it contained absolutely nothing by THS, but what was there more than made up for it – five classic American punk tracks from the late Eighties / early Nineties. I was going to delete it but then I read Finn’s article about American hardcore in the Guardian the other day (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/13/us-punk-rock-hold-steady) and I had to listen to it again.

Replacements – “I Will Dare”
Bad Brains – “Right Brigade”
Soul Asylum – “Sometime To Return”
Gorilla Biscuits – “Start Today”
Descendants – “Sour Grapes”.

The song by the Replacements is especially worth a mention. All of this podcast is great but there is something about it that makes me feel a bit sad. This is young people’s music. And I am getting old.

Unfortunately, the podcast disappeared from The Hold Steady’s site a few weeks later so I can’t do a link, and I don’t normally post music here because it is more hassle than it’s worth. But if anyone really, really really wants to hear it let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

To digress briefly, I was intrigued by Craig Finn referring to the Gorilla Biscuits as “positive hardcore”. About 20 years ago I was puzzled by a reference in Marc Riley's song “Snipe”, to something called “posi-punk”. I had assumed I had misheard it but I wondered if it meant the same as Finn’s positive hardcore. It turns out that they are entirely separate sub-genres of punk, posi-punk being an early name (coined by the NME, which explains why I never heard it, being a Sounds person back then) for what became known as Goth (Goth music? positive?!?). What interests me about this is the fact that punk, for all its apparent emphasis on freedom and spontaneity, attracts such trainspotterish distinctions.

Silos Abbey – Canto Gregoriano (Gregorian Chant)

I’ve got to be brief. I’m sorry, but this (a big hit during the last plainsong craze in the 1990s – they happen about once every decade) didn’t do much for me. It is very serene – more serenity than you can shake a stick at – but there just doesn’t seem to be very much happening. It’s not the monks’ fault - I suppose we are so used to polyphony that anything else comes as a shock.

No Se - Bez Wdzięczności (Without Thanks)

I chose this album on Jamendo, released in 2002 by Polish punk band No Se (from Bytow, west of Gdansk - I think this was their first) more or less at random and I was not expecting much from it, but it is very good. Hardcore sound, sometimes (at – relatively - slower speeds) with heavy metal influences.

The standout tracks are “Noc Sylwestrowa 98” (New Year’s Eve 98) and, best of all, the furious rap-style “Przemoc” (Violence). The only track which is not quite as convincing is the slower, longer “Koniec” (End). But overall, powerful stuff.

Download at http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/no.se.punk.

Lee “Scratch” Perry and various – Arkology

I feel I ought to know this music inside out, but I am only vaguely familiar with it. I tended to tune out a bit mentally when John Peel played dub, not because I didn’t like it, but because listening to it didn’t seem to take much effort, and by extension I got the impression that creating it didn’t take much effort either. I now see that that is totally wrong, and I can see, at least sometimes, the great subtlety of a lot of these pieces. This is wonderful music – the peak probably being Junior Murvin’s “Police And Thieves”, whose almost sublime beauty makes The Clash’s cover (much as I revere them and much as they obviously revered the original) sound clunky and loutish.

I must confess my attention started to wander during disks 2 and 3 (apart from “Police And Thieves” and “Roots Train” (Junior Murvin again, with Dillinger)), but it came back in a big way for the last two tracks, the Congos’ blissful “Feast Of The Passover” and Perry’s “Roast Fish And Cornbread” (weird weird weird but wonderful wonderful wonderful).

Listening to dub for three weeks on end, if only at a rate of 15 minutes or so a day (this is a 3-disk set), with a Friday afternoon off, is a bit much, though, a bit like (I imagine) smoking a Camberwell Carrot, or (I recall) eating a whole Sainsburys family size Black Forest gateau alone on a Sunday afternoon. I am going to give it a rest now.

Sibelius - Symphony No 4

I am working through Sibelius's symphonies at a rate of about one a month (though I'm a bit behind) and this is the halfway point of the cycle. I had forgotten how good the Fourth was, with the exception of the bleak beauty of opening of the first movement. I really enjoyed it all (or did I? It's too gloomy a work to talk about enjoying, exactly). Things I had forgotten or hadn't noticed before: the similarity between the start of the scherzo (the 2nd movement) and the final movement of the Third Symphony. The abrupt and anticlimatic way the whole thing ends (the 2nd movement too). A lot of it is amazingly dissonant, for Sibelius.

Slang Tang, Episode 7 (Dec 2008)

I must say that when I started to listen to this, I was thinking that with a head full of New Year angst, a load of repetitive electronic robot music was the last thing I wanted to hear. Fortunately that feeling evaporated quickly. Most of this is really good and (with the odd exception) not in the least robotic. Best tracks were “Nqayi” by Maga Bo and Teba. Also “5x8 Cell” by Mutamassik – I had heard and enjoyed the two tracks from the “That Which Death Cannot Destroy” album which were posted on Slang Tang’s sister site Fat Planet last year, but this is even better (more irregular beat, more interesting ambience). The track by Digitaldubs & Tippa Irie was also good.

The last three tracks, by Kid606, Kampion and Lackluster, were a bit less interesting. I’d say the Lackluster sounded a bit like Jean-Michel Jarre, but that is probably a mortal insult in electronic circles, so I won’t. At least there wasn't any of that damned skweee this time.

Download and info at http://www.slangtang.com/.


It wasn’t featured in this podcast, but I can’t help mentioning that just before Xmas I had another listen to “El Ventana Esta Abierte” by El Hijo de la Cumbia, from Argentina (see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/09/el-hijo-de-la-cumbia-el-ventana-esta.html). Awesome.