A Lark Ascending

I love that album - great take on 'Surrey with the Fringe on Top' too. Less enamoured of the albums that came after - stray into a more soul/singer-songwriter mode.

Why all the fuss? That's how they pronounce 'house' in the East Midlands (of the UK, not Tibet).

Yes, easily their best. Lots of instrumental piano/bas/drums with no added synths. And where the synth does come in, it is such a steam-driven thing it sounds quite glorious. Though large swathes of that album are lifted from classical music. I didn't know that at the time so it hardly mattered; still sounds good now. Common practice at the time. You get the impression that the classically trained keyboard players were stitching in their practice pieces from college! Made for some nice 'now where did I hear that before' moments later on. 'La Cathedrale Engloutie' (Debussy Preludes) in particular, which was used on a Renaissance album. I think they 'borrowed' a whole chunk of a Beethoven piano sonata another album. Is there a link there, chewy?

I thought that was the classical influence, The Rite of Spring and Petrushka are like that too. Relayer may be the album where they got the closest to that music, they barely got there* with Wakeman in the band. Perhaps. Though with Stravinsky's 'cut and paste' there's a melodic, harmonic or rhythmic logic that unites the disparate parts. They might seem episodic but it hangs together and I'm sure anyone with a score and an analytical brain could trace the links. I don't get that sense with Yes (understandably...they were working in a quite different environment) - seems more 'This sounds good, lets add this bit, how about this."

...unless I'm mistaken, this perfectly sums up the blues. play a phrase, play it again; play another phrase, then play it again. Well, I'm sure it happens in any instrumental music where the players improvisational abilities (or imaginations!) are limited. I'm talking mainly here about instrumental passages presented as 'solos' - the skilled improvisers seem almost incapable of playing the phrase the second time without varying it to a greater or lesser extent. There are a number of fascinating cheap box sets from Island, Harvest and Decca that collect examples of the wide swathe of the music of the late 60s and early 70s. An awful lot of it has not worn well - wooden rhythm sections, dreadful vocals (and lyrics) and those repeated phrases I'm talking about. In fact I played a disc from one of the two Decca sets a few days back - on two occasions I was taken aback at how wooden the tracks sounded. Camel on both occasions. There's a reason the likes of King Crimson, Yes and Genesis are still being listened to and these chaps aren't.

Camel I could never cope with. They do that thing that drives me nuts in the weaker areas of prog-rock (and metal!) - play a phrase, then play it again; play another phrase, then play it again. I really wanted to like the line-up with Richard Sinclair, but...

I always felt it was his reaction to early Mahavishnu, maybe their heaviest album. Mahavishnu had stunned everyone a couple of years earlier. I'd say the opening few minutes of 'Close to the Edge' come from that. Maybe his playing on 'Relayer' was taking that further...it just sees dirtier, less neat than previously. Which might be McLaughlin again. I recall interviews with Phil Collins c.1974 where he was insistent that 'more Mahavishnu' was the direction he wanted Genesis to go in. The strange time-signatured, long instrumental section towards the end of 'Supper's Ready' was his response. Ironic when you consider the direction that both he and they eventually took. But then Mahavishnu became unfashionable almost as quickly as they became flavour of the month.

Listened to this for the first time since the late 70s yesterday. Enjoyed it far more than I did at the time. I remember the whole album was played on the radio just before release - a group of mates sat, listened and we were all horrified. I bought a copy...just in case...but never warmed to it. Enjoyed it far far more yesterday. It doesn't seem that well recorded, Anderson's voice seems strained and it lacks the melting melodies (apart from 'Soon') that were at the heart of the group previously. The songs themselves sound even more cut-and-paste than usual - fragments stiched together. But Steve Howe seemed to be having a wail of a time - it really does seem to be his record with a level of grittiness and menace he had rarely shown before. Maybe it was their 'punk' record, two years before punk!!!!! Happy to have been reaquainted.

Yes, I downloaded it last weekend. Abstract but engaging.

Not nearly as baffling as why we are awarding goings on behalf of 'the British Empire'.

Another marvellous record, Alex. Really varied - from the very free to the lyrical - but always sidestepping the obvious. Lovely ending with that kwela/calypso (can't make my mind up which!) final song. You should have got it out as a World Cup single tie-in!!!! Experiment with it, folks. It's what e-music is for!

Downloaded it and played it today. Hmm! Grant Green and Jimmy Smith Play Yes! Interesting to hear the Yes pieces shoehorned into an organ trio format; pleasant enough as an album, but a bit snoozy. I'm no expert but it sounded a bit under-rehearsed on Howe's part - notes not quite clicking in with the overall time, just a bit inflexible rhythmically on his part. His son seemed well up for the job. The 'live' audience applause also seemed artificial - I'm sure it was just turned up at the end of tracks but it reminded me of canned laughter.

"80/81" is one of favourite jazz records. I wish he played like that more often - a nice mix of Ornettian abstraction and sheer melodic beauty on the final side.

Stephane Grappelli really grates on me...I put up with him for the Django. Though I'm not keen on jazz violin in general - has the same effect on me that flutes and sopranos have on others.

I wonder if he got this based on his music or on his significant role as a music educator. Hopefully both, though the latter is more likely to get you picked up on the radar of the Gongsmiths.

Interested to see the references to Metheny here. I really like him when he plays straight jazz guitar in a jazz setting or acoustic...I enjoy his pastel side (as on 'Watercolours'). But on far too many of the Metheny recordings I own he insists on sticking his guitar through some sort of effects machine. I must have half a dozen discs by him that just don't get played. Joe Lovano has always lost me. I've learned to tolerate Brubeck's rather mitten fisted piano style because of the other things going on around him. But I can't claim to really like it. Two of Britain's most internationally respected tenors - Tommy Smith and Tim Garland - have never really done it for me. I often enjoy the projects they do but am left with no memory of them as players (and I know they are both highly accomplished). I'd rather hear Iain Ballamy or Mark Lockheart (from the same generation). And I don't get Ahmad Jamal at all. The music grins too much.

This is one of a number of issues that currently bedevils downloading. The other two that irritate me are: a) Where albums are faulty there is no way of knowing when they have been corrected. You always get your money back but I'd like to know when it's safe to download again! I think we can all appreciate that errors will happen - it would just help if the company flagged up a 'Currently being repaired' sign and a 'Repairs completed: now perfect' sign. I think this is a bit like early CD days when anything and everything was transferred with minimal care. I suspect we will have a new generation of 'Remastered Downloads' to entice us in a few year (iTunes are already trying to get me to upgrade tracks bought in a lower format at 10p a shot!). b) In the online stores, the utter confusion caused by endless cheap out-of-copyright versions. Wading through Amazon_mp3s new releases pages is no fun as there is so much brick-a-brack. Rscord shops used to have cheapo labels in a separate area. I wish they'd give some thought to the presentation of the recording they have available. However, a good story. A few weeks back I downloaded an album of David Matthews string quartets from a small label called Toccata. A complete mess - for some reason Winamp/iTunes were reading some of the tracks as being ten times their actual length. So of course I got a 'will not fit on disc' response. E-mailing the company I immediately got a very friendly response - there was clearly a big problem with encoding which took a week to resolve. But in the end they got it right and were determined to. I don't mind these blips - it's a new technology - as long as someone is paying attention and correcting the errors.

The whole issue of 'gapless' strikes me as a glaring 'glitch' that I'm surpised Chandos (and other) have not dealt with yet. I've never used FLAC - I'm generally quite happy with mp3, sometimes go for the slighly more expensive lossless though I'm not sure I hear the difference. As a rule I find that Winamp will burn gaplessly (I think I had to do something a couple of years back, but can't recall what). But Winamp won't take the lossless ones so almost certainly not FLAC...not without some tweaking that I'm unaware of. In iTunes Chandos recommend that you import as 'Apple Lossless Encoder'. This page is useful: http://www.chandos.net/HelpiTunes.asp I find you also have to set 'burn' to 'gapless' and, when buring each album, highlight the tracks, go to 'Get Info' and the fourth 'Options' tab and change 'Gapless' to 'Yes'. Works most of the time...though not always! Be careful trying other burning systems. I experimented with a few and totally confused Winamp and iTunes - too many things reading off the CD burner, I suspect. I had some problems in iTunes with Hyperion downloads a while back - for some reason they burn seamlessly in Winamp. If downloading is going to become the wave of the future...and it's my preferred option...they need to get this simplified and sorted. I suspect a system that began as a way of getting individual songs has been slow to realise the problems of downloading a continuous, multipart piece like an opera.

Anyone know when this music got labelled 'prog'? My memory from around 1970 when I started listening to music in earnest was that 'progressive' was a more general term used to describe music that tried to do a bit more than commercial pop (pop had yet to have sociological studies written about it proclaiming its importance). I vaguely recall pompously declaring my preference for progressive music to pop to my guffawing mates around that time. I thing Progressive with a capital 'P' started to be used around that time for the likes of Genesis, Yes etc but the 'Prog' diminution seems to come from later - initially, I suspect, used mockingly to deflate the grander word, later by the musicians themselves to demonstrate their ability to laugh at themselves. At the time the appeal of the music was not so much it's 'progressive' nature as the fact that it didn't stick to standard blues progressions (Britain was awash with heavy blues-rock bands) and that the singers sang in an English accent (nothing against Americans singing in American accents, but Brits...!). As with folk-rock at the same time, there was a sense that this was a rock music made indigenous. I think my hey-day with the music was at the time when it was still pretty home-made. I largely lost touch after '76, partly because it vanished from the airwaves, partly because what I did hear seemed more stadium orientated. It also seemed to fuse with metal at some point later - in the early 70s, although it ran parallel with metal, it was definitely an alternative. I had to laugh at that Haken cover - guaranteed to scare off all but the core audience for prog/metal!

I lost interest in Yes around the time of Relayer but took a chance with Magnification a few years back - really liked it. Strong songs. It think it benefits from not having a keyboard player. I've never heard any of Steve Howe's solo music; but I notice a recent live album with his 'jazz' trio. Includes versions of Close to the Edge and Siberian Khatru!!!!! Might use up my e-music credits on that, just out of curiosity! They've even got a Dylan album by him which includes a 12 minute version of Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands with Jon Anderson singing! Now I understand why he called his drummer son Dylan! [Just checked and it says the son is named after Dylan Thomas! Also that 'The Clap' was written for him as a baby. And I thought it was about something else!)

Given how unfashionable prog rock has been in the UK since '76 - the music that shall never be rehabilitated - it's a wonder that programme got made at all. Even the most sympathetic of commentators cannot approach it without heavy layers of irony.

Jimmy Hastings and Pye Hastings. Well, Jimmy is a jazz musician. Pye was the guitar/vocalist in Caravan. Jimmy made many a memorable contribution to their early records.

Looks wonderful, World B3. One thing a garden has done for me is make me appreciate rain.

The Boswell Sisters?

Stan and Clark Tracey Henri et Sebastien Texier The Mondesir brothers Zoe and Idris Rahman John and Dave Horler Wolfgang und Christian Muthspiel John Taylor and Leo Taylor (or perhaps Norma Winstone and Leo Taylor)