Prog Britannia on BBC Four

I've just been watching the BBC's documentary on progressive rock on iPlayer. Wonderful.

I wasn't into what you might call hardcore progressive rock - Yes, ELP, Genesis, King Crimson - myself, though I respected it. (We didn't call it "prog": it didn't sound serious enough.). Partly this was because I found the lyrics too whimsical and the music somehow not muscular enough. Partly it was a money thing: I could only afford to buy an album every other month. If you don't like one of the tracks on an album with eight tracks, it's liveable-with; if the album has only three tracks (like, for example, Relayer) it's a disaster. So I didn't take the gamble. I finally bought The Yes Album in the early 90s, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The key to enjoying prog is not to take it too seriously.

Two criticisms of the programme - there was hardly a mention of Pink Floyd (though bits of their music could be heard in the background) even though they could surely be categorised as progressive up to including 1971's Meddle ("Echoes" is surely one of the archetypal progressive pieces, with its length and episodic nature, its nebulous lyrics and musical virtuosity). The other was the way in which it made prog out to be an exclusively English thing but (although I don't know about Scotland) there were important bands in Ireland (Fruupp and Horslips, the latter marrying rock to Irish folk music) and especially Man (from Wales), who showed that you could do progressive and heavy blues at the same time.

Mark E Smith on art etc

Just found this short video of Mark E Smith on the Tate website. Don't know about 50 Year Old Man: he looks more like 70!

http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/71190048001

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

Bloc Party are another band I had missed out on so far. Influenced by a whole bunch of circa 1980 bands which I loved (early Cure and, especially, Gang Of Four) or, at least, respected (Joy Division) I was expecting to love this but I was a bit disappointed. I can't pin it down, but it seems to be somehow detached, slightly lacking in real fire. Maybe it comes out live, and didn't on this (debut) album. It's there on "Helicopter" and "Luno" - nearly. Don't get me wrong. I thought it was very good. Just not as brilliant as I had expected.

PS - I am really mystified by the comparisons which have been made between Bloc Party and The Fall (as I was by comparisons between Franz Ferdinand and The Fall). Beyond a certain abrasiveness, they are a totally different kettle of fish.

Schubert - String Quintet in C

Another old favourite. Listening to the first movement again, I wondered if it sounded a bit too sweet, somehow. But it is like drinking a Beerenauslese - you get the sweetness and then you get the acidity, and it is perfectly balanced. The unbearable tenderness of the slow movement: I don't think Schubert surpassed this. I don't think I had noticed before how rustic - rough, almost, by contrast - the 3rd and 4th movements are.

Haircut 100 - Pelican West

I confess to a liking for Haircut 100 the first time around, and I really loved this. Music of almost insane cheerfulness - in "Milk Farm" they launch into the children's hymn "Glad That I Live Am I" - Prozac in MP3 form. Best tracks are "Fantastic Day" and "Love Plus One".

Beethoven - String Quartet in F major, Rasumovsky No 1

Heard this again last night. Wonderful, I keep getting more and more from it. I think I was right about the Violin Concerto.

Regrets, I've had a few...

I only listened to the Chemical Brothers' "Dig Your Own Hole" once (up until last week), but I still didn't regret buying it. There are only three LPs which I actually wish I had never bought. There was Mark Stewart's "As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade", which was bought on the strength of a brilliant set at ULU, but the sound was more electronic and experimental on record than live. I also bought the Redskins' "Neither Washington Nor Moscow" again largely because of a live performance (supporting the Dead Kennedys in late 1982), but by the time they released the album their musical style had shifted a lot from punk towards soul. And finally, there was Kingmaker's "Eat Yourself Whole", purchased at the late lamented Tower Records after a few pints, which I hated as soon as I heard it.

Beatles - Revolver

This is the very first time I have heard "Revolver" (with the exception of a couple of a couple of obvious tracks). There is only one LP I am more ashamed not to have heard, and that is the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds".

I was too young to be into the Beatles the first time round, although a few of their songs - "All My Loving" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand", for example - give me a sort of warm glow. I first started to listen seriously to the Beatles (and the Rolling Stones) around 1977, when all the bands I liked at the time (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin etc) were running out of steam, and punk (which I was still to loathe for another few months) was in the ascendant.

Back then "Sergeant Pepper" was the undisputed masterpiece, but opinion has shifted and there seems to be a widespread view that "Revolver" was the perfect pinnacle of the Beatles' work. That is strange, because to me it is anything but perfect, but rather imperfect and transitional. When you subtract "Eleanor Rigby", which has a sort of perfection, as if it could never be otherwise, and the awful "Here, There And Everywhere" (the token slushy love song), the thing which makes it so thrilling is the way in which it is striving for a new language (musical and verbal) but not quite succeeding - a struggle which is obvious in "Love You To" and made explicit in "I Want To Tell You" (both Harrison songs). And breaking through in "Tomorrow Never Knows".

Beethoven - Violin Concerto in D

This was the very first CD I bought, in May 1989 just before going to the Bavarian Alps for the first time. So I associate it with memories of stepping out from Garmisch on a beautiful golden morning, across the meadows, heading for the Ostfelderkopf.

This really was a favourite piece of mine, but I found it less interesting this time. Unlike so much of Beethoven - eg the F major Rasumovsky quartet I am listening to a lot at the moment - there is a lot of (wonderful) material but he doesn't seem to do so much with it. Listening to the first movement, I wondered "where's the development?". Maybe I don't get on with concertos as well as I did before - too much decoration.

Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole

"DYOH" was the last record I bought because it was trendy. I think I only played it once, and found it rather boring. I thought the same when I played it the first time last week, but it grew on me the second time. I had totally missed the gentler "Lost In The K-Hole" the first time before (I think young people call this sort of thing a chill-out track). And "The Private Psychedelic Reel" is glorious, it goes on and on and on in a good way (a reel both in the sense of a dance and in the sense of something cyclical). The only time it isn't so good is when the Chemicals try to involve human beings, and they tend to come off second best - Noel Gallagher in "Setting Sun" and Beth Orton in "Where Do I Begin".

Gosh, I bet the drummer needed a rest after recording this lot.

BBC6 Music - is it worth saving?

As a middle-aged, alternative, indie kinda guy (and the witty sort of person who uses the expression "kinda guy" in an ironic sort of way - a kinda guy kinda guy, if you will) BBC6 Music should be right up my street, and sure enough I felt sad when I heard about its probable deletion from the schedules. But I hadn't listened to it for some time, and before rushing to the barricades I thought I ought to find out exactly what I was defending. When I did, and I actually managed to find some music (because the first two attempts yielded an interview with Sir Geoff Hurst and another rather patronising interview with an elderly woman who runs a postal museum in Bath), it was very ordinary. It may seem like heresy, but is BBC6 Music really the national treasure its supporters make it out to be?