Where Worlds Collide

After a 25 year absence, VDGG are back with a new album. They were one of the seminal 70s progressive rock bands, a bit too leftfield for mainstream success, although Peter Hammill’s distinctive vocal style influenced artists as varied as Johnny Rotten and Fish.

According to the sleeve notes, the four members of the band, Peter Hammill, Guy Evans, Hugh Banton and David Jackson, kept meeting at the funerals of former roadies. They decided that if they were going to have the much talked-about reunion, it would have to be while all four members were still alive.

It’s a double album, and the two discs are very different. The relatively short first disc, with a running time of about the length of a vinyl LP, contains six numbers. The album kicks off with the classic VDGG sax-and-organ sound of “Every Bloody Emperor”, with caustic lyrics that suggest Hammill is not a terribly great fan of Bush and Blair.

Yes and every bloody emperor’s got his hands up history’s skirt
as he poses for posterity over the fresh-dug dirt
Yes and every bloody emperor with his sickly rictus grin
talks his way out of nearly everything but the lie within
because every bloody emperor thinks his right to rule divine
so he’ll go spinning and spinning and spinning into his own decline

Other high spots on the first disc are the Hammond-heavy blues of “Nutter Alert” with some great playing by Hugh Banton, and the splendid instrumental “Boleas Panic”, with some equally great soloing from David Jackson. If this disc has any faults, it’s that it’s too front-loaded, as these first three numbers are by far the strongest on the whole album.

The hour-long second disc is entirely instrumental, largely made up from improvised jazz-rock jams, dominated by David Jackson’s sax playing. Much of the playing is frenetic and angular, with a few quieter reflective passages. This is difficult to sit down and listen to, but it works quite well as background music while you’re doing something else.

The whole thing, like all of VDGG, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be filed under ‘easy listening’. But, like a lot of ‘difficult’ music it’s ultimately rewarding if you persevere with it.

A few days ago, Harry listed a few artists he describes as ‘musical broccoli’. The sorts of music he would have spat out instinctivly in his youth, but which he’s grown to like in recent years. His list includes Steely Dan (who I’ve never listened to, but suspect I’d probably like), and the late, great Frank Zappa, who’s reputation for sexist and scatalogical lyrics sometimes got in the way of his musical genius.

My list would include a lot of stuff I spent the late 70s and early 80s trying to avoid. It took me years to get past my reaction against music press Stalinist revisionism and admit that some of the 70s punk bands actually did make some great rock’n'roll records. And that not all 70s disco was rubbush either. Perhaps it’s because the passing of time has winnowed out all the third rate drivel, and left the gems. Or perhaps it’s because I’ve grown out of the musical tribalism of my youth.

An announcement out of the blue from the Karnataka official website:

We are very pleased to announce the return of Karnataka with an exciting new line up:

Ian Jones - bass/guitars

Gonzalo Carrera - keyboards/vocals

Nick May - lead guitar/keyboards

Bob Dalton - Drums/vocals

Alquimia - vocals/multi instrumental

For those who don’t know the history, Karnataka were a six piece progressive rock band, who suddenly and unexpectedly announced they were splitting last year, cancelling the tour they’d already booked. The band never gave any reason for the sudden split. The excellent double live album Strange Behaviour turned out to be the band’s swansong.

Reactions on The Storm, the Karnataka mailing list, have been decidedly mixed. The viewpoint of many is ‘wait and see’. Others wonder whether Ian Jones, although the legal owner of the name, should really be resurrecting it for what’s effectively a completely new band.

Not sure what the other five members of the original Karnataka are making of this.

This meme appeared on Ken Macloed’s blog, although it doesn’t seem to have spread very far, at least through the sections of the blogosphere I read. It appears to be a mutation of the earlier music meme.

1. How many books to you own
Never tried counting them all, but adding up all the SF novels, railway books and RPG rulebooks probably comes up with a figure in the high hundreds. Don’t think it’s in four figures yet.

2. Last book read
Neil Stevenson’s Quicksilver I’m about halfway through so far.

3. Last book purchased
Blue Pullman, by Kevin Robertson, purchased yesterday at the DEMU showcase.

4. Name five books that mean a lot to you

The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe.
An epic in the true sense of the world. I can’t think of any other fantasy or science fiction work that rivals this for atmosphere; it’s been a big influence on my own RPG worldbuilding.

Pebble in the Sky, Isaac Asimov.
Asimov’s first novel, not his best work by any means. Probably very dated now, like so much ‘golden age’ SF. The reason I’m listing it is because it’s the book that first got me hooked on SF, borrowed from the school library when I was about 14.

Red for Danger, L T C Rolt.
Tom Rolt’s history of railway accidents. Rolt avoids the tabloid-style lurid descriptions, and concentrates the technical aspects. He shows how the worlds railways are a safe means of travel today because of the lessons learned from the past.

Diesels in the Duchy, John A M Vaughan
An odd choice for “Books That Changed My Life”. When I returned to railway modelling in the mid 80s, I was looking for a suitable prototype to follow; John Vaughan’s wonderful photographs of class 37s, 50s, and Westerns in the beautiful Cornish scenery made that choice for me; the end result was several Cornish holidays doing ‘research’, and far too many N gauge locomotives.

The Bible.
Read the whole thing, and discover how the random verses the fundies love to quote often mean something quite different when read in their proper context.

5. Five people to tag
Since I didn’t wait to be tagged, anyone not on this list who wants to pick up the meme shouldn’t need to wait either! I’m still going to pass on the baton anyway, to Carl Cravens (responded), Ken Hite, Patrick Crozier (responded), Ginger Stampley (responded), and of course, Scott

Liberal England sees the changing nature of the Eurovision Song Contest entries as a symbol of the changing nature of Europe.

It is that the heart of Europe has moved east. You could tell that from the Eurovision entries. When Britain’s was chosen we probably thought we were daring to pick a song with a Bollywood sound. There turned out to be nothing daring about it. Poor Javine was lost in a crowd of eastern sounds, led by that Moldovan granny and her drum.

Which means we are going to have to reconsider what Europe means to us. For a couple of generations it represented a more civilised way of life. They had subsidised public transport, sane labour relations and adventurous sex lives. Even more exciting, they had proportional representation.

This Europe to which Liberals owed allegiance, which convinced them that, despite appearances, they were the party of the future, was the Europe of the six original Common Market members. That Europe no longer exists.

What we see instead is a more diverse and interesting Europe. Yet it scares some, as the prominence of Turkey in the French referendum campaign shows. You also wonder how long Western voters will be happy to go on funding it - or the song contest, for that matter.

I still think we should have got Mötorhead to perform the British entry. What would the Moldovan grannies have made of that? Probably they’re as tough as Lemmy anyway…

With great fanfare, which should ideally be played on a parpy 1970s mini-moog by a man in a cape, I’m pleased to announce this blog now has category-level RDF feeds. They’re linked from the individual category sub-blogs (actually the links were there already, but now they actually point to something other than ‘The cat tore up this page’) Unlike the existing feed, these ones contain the full posts rather than the short excerpts.

They look OK in Bloglines, though I still need to do a few minor tweaks (tweakettes?)

If RDF feeds and XML aggregators are just incomprehensible geekspeak to you, then I’m afraid this post is going to make as much sense as one about CDAs or 4dFs does to Mundanes.

One of the few decent blogs I’ve found from BlogExplosion, amid the sea of frothing wingnuts and vapid musings. This has to be one of the most kick-ass blog templates I’ve seen for a while. And the blog itself seems to be successful at getting up the noses of the wingnuts. And what’s Eddie’s real agenda?

Electric Nose goes Rivet Counting. Not really work-safe, especially if you work in Texas.