A Lark Ascending

I played 'Machine Head' last night and it didn't sound all that heavy, just a normal rock record. Shows what has happened since!

I recall being very impressed by them on a TV programme called 'South Bank Summer' c.1970 - Ritchie Blackmore smashed his guitar up. Worth it for my Dad's reaction - 'That's not music' or 'They should bring back National Service' or 'Are they boys or girls?' Or something similar. What rock music is meant to do to parents (it must be awful being a kid today when your parents are likely to enjoy your Coldplay album). Jon Lord seems to have reinvented himself as a writer of popular, tuneful, light classics: Both have received pleasant reviews in Gramophone magazine. I suspect they gave the reviews to sympathetic writers rather than the snooties who see it as their duty to guard the portals of high culture from the barbarians. Must give them a try. The general view is that they are very derivative of 19thC classical music and you can easily spot the influences. But I'm always up for a good tune.

I can't even begin to imagine what the music on that record sounds like. So many contradictory signals!

Nancy Sinatra should be less dangerous. But Sandie Shaw will be in her element.

Probably illustrates the dangers of trying to draw broad stereotypes about class - the demarcations between working and middle class are far more blurred than they once were. An awful lot of working class people have middle class lifestyles (perhaps without the intellectual pretensions that education can bring); and an awful lot of middle class people affect a working class persona, embarrassed of being middle class. My dad started working class (farm labourer, head of the family at 13) - I'm not sure he defined himself by his job (in the RAF) or any particular hobbies. He defined himself by his determination to make something of himself. The result was that by the 70s he had an essentially middle class lifestyle and his kids emerged as educated members of the nouveaux middle class. Most of the people I work with are just that - nouveaux middle class, that very wide tier that emerged as a result of post-war prosperity/social policies. They are educated, aspirational but don't come from wealthy backgrounds or have parents with established businesses to fall back on. They are totally varied in their response to leisure-time interests - for some, their career matters most; others get excited by sport or mountain climbing or just building a home in a very personal way.

Think I would prefer a dead man to Gordon Brown. Yikes, is Brown that bad? Ineffective, yes. And the Labour Party have been a huge let down (13 years and we still have private education!!!!). But Cameron and co are the same old same old. Bright smiles, caring surface but you can bet the City is licking its lips.

Thanks for the recommendation - seems to get rave reviews all over. I'm always a bit wary about recordings by individual members of great bands (solo project syndrome) - been burnt so often by indifferent recordings. But this one looks interesting.

I know what you mean. I think of someone I know very well who led a very full and exciting life but never developed a passion for anything like music or sport or whatever. In retirement he is lost. Nostalgia, raging at the papers and TV news and constant revisiting his own personal past is all that is left to him. One of the problems with the often solitary nature of trainspotting is that it can often be a bit of a jolt when you end up somewhere like here and find you are not alone. You've worked out your worldview on the music you love and suddenly - bang - someone is challenging it. Might explain quite a few of the hairy exchanges that take place.

That wasn't a dead man. It was David Cameron launching his election pitch.

One of those smileys with a big grin.

Oh, quite. I'll get just as waspish with someone who tut-tuts at me for listening to old jazz records when I should be listening to this or that contemporary indie band as I will with someone who tut-tuts at me for enjoying something current rather than a 1932 78 rpm version of a Mississippi blues song (much the same thing is going on - 'look how exclusive my tastes are, look how hard I am to please'). I'm all for evangelising - just think it works best with the focus on the beauties of the saved rather than the sins of the damned. I think that's an all round cultural phenomena. Concert halls and arts centres that were once very restricted in what the put on have now had to respond to a much broader set of genres. The idea that the person turning up for a Beethoven piano sonata would not be interested in a bluegrass band or a singer from Tibet is long gone. There's a radio programme on the BBC that has been going for ten years or so that mixes up jazz, blues, contemporary classical, world music and Medieval/Renaissance type music. Tends too veer a bit to far to the ambient for my taste but I think it reflects the times we are in. There are, of course, grumpy buggers who dismiss it all and insist we should all choose one area and get to really know it. An option, yes. An imperative, certainly not. I envy you having the record shop you talk of there - they hardly exist in the UK any more (the subject of many another thread).

My perspective entirely. With country/bluegrass I'm more engaged by the contemporary but enjoy exploring into the past. With rock music the reverse is true - I'm happiest in the past of my youth and before it...occasionally I'll venture into the present but 99% of the time I hit a brick wall. But I put that down to my lack of sympathy, not anything inherently wrong with all current rock music. My interest in outside-the-immediate-mainstream music has been a mainly solitary affair. My friends, relations, work colleagues see it as an eccentricity. Which actually makes me more sympathetic to their perspective. Music may be an only occasional pleasure in their lives but their enjoyment is honest and heartfelt. They don't need me telling them that what they listen to is second-rate. I haven't, but I'll look into it.

I put my hands up to being a musical train spotter. But I'm quite genuine in believing that many of the new trains are just as worth spotting as the old. When it comes to the country/bluegrass area I'm more drawn to the new trains than the old. Though that might change. As for speaking up for the common music fan, well, I think we trainspotters are terribly guilty of patronising those who haven't listened to as much or in as off-the-wall places. We might be good at intellectualising it but it rarely boils down to more than 'Zepp rule, Sabbath are crap.'

True...except that the amount of music available now from so many eras in so many different genres makes it impossible for even the most obsessed to hear but a fraction. So why should anyone feel compelled to explores the gems that we stumbled on? I'm sure that somewhere in the world a Renaissance polyphony fan is bewailing the fact that people today listen to pop, rock, jazz, folk etc, unaware of the sublime 16thC music they could be hearing. We've discovered something, it excites us, we want to talk about it share it. Even that can wind people up ('there he goes again, on about his precious jazz'). Start telling them that what they are missing is what they ought to ne listening to and, at best, you might just get politely ignored. When I was in my teens I started veering into odd places I pretty soon found myself on my own. I'm not sure chasing the 'shiver factor' in music has ever been much more than a minority sport. For most people music becomes of little more than background use once the days of courtship and teenage rebellion are past. Most of the kids I teach have no interest in anything beyond standard pop - but there are some who have a passion I recognise, for music I don't. I think that will always be. As the music catalogues grows longer and deeper, will there always be this need to go back to the origins? Perhaps. Or perhaps we grew up in an era just one or two steps away from the origins, where the influences still showed and were celebrated. The number of 'tribute' albums and 'Roots of Led Zeppelin'-type compilations would suggest the curiosity is still there. But I'm also aware that for some bands roots means The Beatles, Queen or Abba. It's hard to predict - with so many other possibilities for providing entertainment now available. But I find it hard to imagine that the riches of music will not continue to attract the curious.

Here's a different spin on the subject, which might explain why the earlier music might not have the popularity (currently) of the more recent performers. Since the '50s the craft of putting an album together has been well honed. So a contemporary bluegrass or blues or whatever album will have songs and arrangements chosen for difference of pace, mood, key, texture etc to make it a varied experience for the listener. The original performances were designed for a single side of a 78, not to be heard in the batches of 24 as you hear them collected on CD today. Now if you are approaching such a CD in a spirit of investigation, research or simply as someone who has got the bug, then that isn't a problem. But to a casual listener (and there is no derogatory intent in the use of the term casual) it can get a bit wearing. I'm much happier listening to Billy Monroe suddenly appearing amidst a compilation or mix-CD I've made than listening right through the collection CDs I have.

Fair point that bluegrass gets probably more brickbats over this than many other genres. I'm not sure that, proportionate to the number of people who bump into it, it gets any more hostility than ECM.

I think many people play in a formulaic manner. I'm sure you're right. And if you are outside a style of music or an approach to music all you can often hear is the formula; which doesn't mean that something genuine is not going on there.

Huh? Did anyone say that? Really? I must have missed it! I'm exaggerating 224, 225 with their 'things ain't what they used to be' vibe (which, I know, are in themselves exaggerations to make a point).

Ah! So it was 'musical differences'. Thanks, Quincy.

That's a marvellous record. I saw one of the concerts they did over here to promote that album. Great fun. Though I think they fell out not long after - recall reading that McCoury was not too fond of some of Earl's language. Or maybe it was his political comments? Or both? An old favourite - but I owe it to Emmylou for acclimitising me to much in the country/bluegrass area. Done well (and with a little imagination) bluegrass can be thrilling. It can also sound highly formulaic to a casual listener like me. Thanks for the recommendation. Someone I think I need to follow up.

Ignore this if you have no interest in iPods/MP3 players (or if this is stating the obvious!)... But the iPod (and other players, I imagine) can do this far more flexibly than any multi-CD player. You have to 'rip' your CDs first (a few minutes each) but once there you can shuffle them in endless ways. Apart from the convenience of taking a lot of music anywhere, it's this shuffle facility (the whole iPod or individual albums or specially set up playlists) that I like most from the iPod/Mp3 player format. I still play albums in the house via CD and CD-r (even downloaded ones). But if I want to be surpised then I'll rig up the iPod to the stereo and let it take over. With a bit of wiring from your PC you can also get a 'jukebox' effect from there, without needing an MP3 player.

I've never read the book. But I recall reading the Beach Boys essay when it appeared over two issues of the NME in the mid-70s. Certainly influenced me - turned them from a pop band, some of whose singles I secretly liked, into a band with 'coolness' credentials. Sadly, this was at exactly the moment they completely blew it with things like '15 Big Ones'. ************** Just finished: A fascinating, if chatty, account of how revival jazz, skiffle and rock'n roll hit Britain. Some wonderful descriptions of completely bemused BBC and record industry types, failing totally to understand what was going on and desparately trying to put the genii back in the bottle (or at least keep it off the airwaves). What fascinated me most was how differently the history looks followed chronologically. I was born in 1955 and so by the time I was listening to the radio this was all over. In fact it wasn't until 1970 that I became consciously interested, by which time the likes of Chris Barber, Ken Colyer, Wally Whyton, Billy Fury, Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard were part of the old fogey scene (to the mind of a 15 year old, anyway. Of the names in this book, only Alexis Korner had retained an image of cool by that time). Yet reading from front to back they all come across as having, for however brief a moment, taken what was trickling in from the States and conveyed it with something of the original spirit. I never thought I'd want to hear Cliff Richard doing 'Move It'!

You might like to try out this one if you can find it on one of the streaming sites: My favourite of her 'mainstream' records - includes a wonderful duet with George Jones on 'You Don't Seem To Miss Me' (a Jim Lauderdale song, it so happens!). The sort of 'star' guest appearance that can be the curse of records like this - but the performance here is thrilling.