Jacob's Ladder

2006-05-03T02:59:00.000-07:00

The problem with writing a musical blog is that when you can't afford to buy new records, you really can't write that much.

But here's two new arrivals, and don't complain, there's no accounting for musical tastes - mine are just all over the place.
I've been listening to the latest Goo Goo Dolls album, "Let Love In". The Goo Goo Dolls are a bit of an obscurity here in Europe - they seem to belong to the same category of competent but faceless bands as Dave Matthews Band and Hootie and the Blowfish, or even Counting Crows, that make it huge in America and are met with disappointed bafflement in Europe. The difference being that I always sort of liked The Dolls. Sure, they are a poor man's The Replacements, or were, anyway. But they have somehow, imperceptibly, slid up (or down, depending on your perspective) the scale from ramshackle power pop to polished stadium rock. And let's face it, what's stadium rock but power pop played to a larger audience. Isn't Boston just Big Star with the amps cranked up to reach the folks in the back of the stadium. And doesn't Cheap Trick prove that the sliding scale from power pop to stadium rock is pretty short? So anyway, on their last couple of records, The Dolls have gotten production values and chops and more focused songwriting abilities. I thought "Gutterflowers" was pretty darn good. And I think "Let Love In" is the same. It's a bit more optimistic at times, lyrically, and the production really shines with little pro-tooled details and some tasteful washes of Hammond and Mellotron, but as always it's Rzeznik's quite brilliant, somewhat emo-ish songwriting that saves the day, along with his vocal delivery that is part Westerberg, and part Springsteen/Mellencamp/Seger. In fact, The Dolls are like a noughties update on that whole blue-collar, Chevy-to-the-levee suburban-ersatz-Dylan thing.
Anyways, I like it, and Glen Ballard's production is huge, almost Floydesque, especially on "Become", with it's "The Wall"-references.

That was the good news. The great disappointment of the week was the new Survivor album, "Reach". Now, I always thought that Survivor are a misunderstood and underrated band. They are NOT just "Eye of the Tiger", brilliant though that song might be. To me, Survivor are all about passionate, storytelling AOR. Less muso-ish than Journey, way less prog than Styx, but at their best maybe better songwriters than both those bands. To me, "Too Hot to Sleep" represents the last, glorious gasp of AOR, the swan song of the genre. It's polished, passionate, sensual, and it has more fire/desire rhymes than any record in the history of rock! After that I've followed them on and off. Jimi Jamison has been in and out (didn't he even release an album under the monicker "Jimi Jamison's Survivor" at one point") and Jim Peterik has spent a lot of time writing tunes for other people as well as doing some decent solo work. But now Jimi's back for real, and my expectations were way up - I was hoping that this was one band that might age gracefully. No such luck. I turned it on (without having looked at the credits), bracing my ears for that classic Peterik sound, earcandy washes of ethereal synth chords mixed in with the stylish AOR guitar riffs. But then the sound comes on and it just... guitars. And a tinny digital piano way in the back of the mix. Mediocre guitar riffs, harsh guitar sounds, uninspired drums and NO fucking keyboards! What's up. I grab the CD desperately. Peterik isn't there. What a bummer. Had I known, I would've never bought it. He was the brain and the sound of Survivor, his keyboards were the aural signature, and his songwriting was head and shoulders above almost any other AOR in the late 80's. So who cares about a Survivor record without him on it? Not me. For the record, the album consists of short, unexciting tracks of guitar-driven pop-rock. And Jimi Jamison does not sound like Jimi Jamison anymore.

2006-04-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

This takes a while to download, but I just had to post this, since I am one of the planet's biggest Eddie Jobson fans, and this video is... well, out of this world...

It's sort of important to know a little about this video. Eddie Jobson (UK, David Bowie, Roxy Music and briefly Jethro Tull and Yes) was the great overlooked keyboard genius of prog - for my money he is better than Emerson and Wakeman combined. After the demise of UK, he started a solo project called Zinc, and I think he envisioned a trilogy of semi-conceptual albums. As things were, his progged up synth-pop was way to left-field for most people, so only one album got made, "The Green Album". It was released in 1983, which I guess means that this promo video was made the same year... check out those computer animations. Like the UK albums, "The Green Album" showcased Jobson's mastery of the Yamaha CS80, which was the only synth apart from some mini-moog that was used on Zinc's sole album. The CS80 is of course the phattest polysynth ever to have existed. Enjoy.

2006-04-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

Easter vacation. I didn't think I had one, but then the magazine I thought I was working for in Easter tells me no-one's gonna be at the office until Monday. So there I am - with Easter off. I dunno when I last had a vacation. And with nothing else to do either. So I've gone for walks, sat in the sun, listened to neglected records, eaten too much food and enjoyed the company of my family.
I've also made a cover of "Like a rolling stone" that I'm pretty sure Dylan would hate if he ever heard it. It's sort of a mash-up of Dylan's tune and "More than a feeling". Very catchy and very tasteless. Those are the kinds of useless and entertaining exercises one gets into when one has too much time on one's hands...
I downloaded some BBC live album with Renaissance. Ever since we started with White Willow people have compared us to Renaissance, and eventually I had to get one of their albums and check it out - the first one I got was "Ashes are burning", I think. It's been sort of an ongoing process, I keep buying Renaissance albums trying to like them and to understand why we supposedly sound like them. So this is what I've learnt from years of trying to undestand this band. OK, Annie Haslam has a great voice, no doubt. It's beautiful. But it's also baffling. She sings in a complete 60's style, very vocally conservative, very straight, very pretentious and filled with what I consider to be artificial pathos. I don't really understand how they could get so popular in the 70's with what must then have seemed like a very unhip vocal style. Then there's the music. It's pretty, it has a slight classical and folk influence and I suppose it's meant to infuse some vague sense of nostalgia and melancholy in the listener. Those are the superficial similarities with my own band, apart from the chick singer thing. But it is SO bland. Considering that these were well-trained musicians with a respectable amount of theoretical understanding, I find their music to be almost shockingly un-exciting, harmonically and melodically. There's NO harmonic tension, and even when they at very rare occasions stray from tried and true sunshiny major-chord progressions, they never manage to sound anything but slightly overcast... So I don't really get it, the band or the comparisons. Except maybe our first album, but I say that grudgingly. We are basically a minor-key band, even when we're not ACTUALLY playing in minor keys. Renaissance is the excact opposite.
That being said, I have to admit to quite liking some of their music. Bland music is no stranger to my ears - as I've mentioned before here, there are times when nothing beats a vacuous pop song. "Turn of the Cards" has some really nice moments, and I really like some of their later, synthier pop stuff. "Ashes are burning" and "Schehezerade" or whatever are supposed to be their masterpieces, but they don't do much for me. But at their best they do manage to invoke some of that wintry, British pastorality that, say, Anthony Phillips is so good at. And the keyboard playing is always impressive, although I preferred John Hawken with the Strawbs.
One thng I will never understand, though, is why Renaissance is considered prog. They're classic symphonic pop, not as good as Supertramp but possibly better than early ELO. Curved Air in their Francis Monkman days, that was chick-fronted prog, but only briefly. Dagmar Krause with Henry Cow, now THAT was prog all the way.
Anyway, I never understood why we are considered prog, either. Oh, and the BBC download? Pretty cool if you're into that Joan Baez with string synths thing.

2006-04-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

I'm kinda on a little vacation from blogs and music and all that. It's really nice, but it won't last, I can already feel the itch to write some new tunes - and some new blog entries...

In the past few days I've been relaxing with Cheap Trick, 80's ELO - and, unbelievably, Elvira Nikolaisen. She's very hot in Norway, and my instinct is always to step away from that heat... if anything gets talked about, you can count on me to say, don't talk about it, 'cause it's nothing special. So I've been resisting Elvira ever since I first started hearing about her. Then one day I heard this song on the radio, liked it, then realized it was hers and went "bugger!". But there you have it - she has an incredibly beautiful and soothing voice - I love the timbre and texture of it - she writes nice tunes, and the arrangements on her album are extremely tasteful and mature, like you can't believe it's a debut album. She's from a musical family - I believe she has siblings in the rather charming X-ian glampunkers Silver and the very competent but somewhat overhyped Serena Maneesh or however you spell it. Elvira is singer-songwriter stuff, squarely. It's all very traditional and safe, but just so impeccably and lovingly done that you can't help but like it. I see it like this: In the 70's, the undisputable golden age of singer-songwritingism, the field splintered into two separate, easily distinguishable directions. You had Joni Mitchell on the one hand, harmonically and melodically adventurous, genre-mashing, lyrically trailblazing etc type stuff. My kind of stuff - the legacy continued through anyone from Rickie Lee Jones to Tori Amos. The whacky ones. Then you had Carole King. Now, don't get me wrong. She was great too. She had an incredible voice, she sang some of the greatest songs ever, and she put her definite stamp on the genre for millennia to come. But she worked within a traditional framework. She kept to the harmonic and melodic structures of traditional singer-songwriting, she stayed true to the time-honored lyrical themes. What Carole King did new, was simply that she outdid everyone else - she just did everything a million times better than they had ever been done before. So, THAT is where Elvira's at. She from the Carolian current of s-s-ing, and she does it darn well.

Did I mention that I'm on myspace now, and you can hear a couple tunes...
Here: www.myspace.com/opiumcartel

Later.

2006-04-04T04:37:00.000-07:00

We've finally finished all the essential overdubs for the new album. I cannot wait to enjoy my newly found freedom to do NOTHING. Tonight will be the first night I spend at home for like a month! I'm gonna watch TV, eat potato chips, play with my son and not think about anything in particular. Except I have to figure out how to pay the IRS what I owe them, 'cause they're on my case and they ain't friendly - or patient. I'm officially super-broke. But hey, it's only money. Things aren't quite as bad as I thought at first - when I started looking around the house to see what we'd get if we sold all our stuff. Then I realized we don't actually HAVE any stuff... anything of value that we have, is not really ours. The car belongs to the bank, my beloved powerbook is on lease - and the only other things of any value I have are my guitars, and I'd have to be actually starving before I'd part with them.

Did I ever get around to talking about what I thought of Donald Fagen's "Morph the Cat"? I guess not. It sounds awesome - of course. But it sounds better than awesome - or rather, better than the last two Steely Dan records. They were sort of cold and hard sounding - just like the recent Becker and Fagen solo albums. Like it was a bit hard for them to handle the transition to all-digital recording, and they mistook perfection for sterility. That's all over with "Morph the Cat". There's still the ultra-precise beats, the ultra-clean signal paths and the super-tidy performances. But there's a warmth there, that I think stems particularly from the vocal production. It's rich in mid-range, and the harmonies have all the lushness of "Gaucho"-era Dan - and that's a very good thing! The tunes are pretty good, too - as always with Fagen solo, they're even jazzier than the Dan, and that's OK. It's not really rich in melody, but all the more so in harmony - and the grooves as simply silky. It flows better than either of the last two Dan records, song wise, but on the other hand there aren't any songs that grip me emotionally in quite the same way as the most poignant moments of "Two Against Nature" ("Almost Gothic", for instance) or "Everything Must Go" ("Pixeleen"), although there's plenty that out-grooves and outwits those albums ("What I do" is a standout). All in all a wonderful album, not as great as "The Nightfly" but way better than "Kamakiriad" - which wasn't a bad album either.

Later.

2006-03-28T06:42:00.000-08:00

string driven things

2006-03-28T06:41:00.000-08:00

the police box

2006-03-28T06:40:00.000-08:00

some of the fun stuff I used in the studio this time around.

2006-03-28T01:10:00.000-08:00

Yowsa, I'm back!

Spent a week in Denmark recording vocals and overdubbing guitars - it was a wonderful experience. We pushed for a lush, Beach Boys-like vocal sound with beautiful dense harmonies. And I did a lot of guitar parts with a set-up that I think duplicated Andy Summers' 80's rig almost exactly. Yummy!

I read this book by Daniel Barenboim and Edward W. Said recently, "Parallells and Paradoxes" or something to that effect. A good book about music, but entirely classico-centric, like other music doesn't exist. It made me think about the stuff I was going to write about classical music again.

Classical music. So silly. What does the term mean. It includes sacred music from the 16th century, dance music from the 19th century, tafel music from the 18th century and event music from almost any era. And the occasional piece of art music from the last 400 years or so... How can anyone possibly, and with any conscience, put all this music into one category, and then on top have the balls to say: This is Serious music, listen with respect.

The respect that is bestowed upon classical music is what bothers me the most. People have a reverence towards it that makes them take any piece of crap seriously, they sit there and listen to the most appaling drivel that Haydn wrote with his left hand while he was banging some babe - like it is the word of God or something. It just ain't right!

So: Can't we dismantle this meaningless category, and start talking about the actual music, rather than some ancient, feudal, semi-fascist socio-cultural category. Classical music is not art music, for instance. Yes, there's a lot of art music within that framework, from Mozart's Requiem to Beethoven's sonatas to Shostakovich's symphonies to Wagner to Schönberg to... tons, yes. But there's even more that would fall into the category of popular music, dance music, utilitarian music, church music etc.

And today the label is doubly problematic for pretending to be today's art music as well, although most musicians and composers would agree that the "art" these days is happening in jazz, electronica, rock and even pop. Contemporary classical music has disappeared so far up its own arse that it will take a half century for us to be able to appraise what those composers are trying to do. (And those composers that haven't disappeared up their own arses are just rehashing "classical" cliches.) Until then we must enjoy the artistic labours of genres that are actually in touch with reality.

Classical music is basically a survival from the time when the distinction between "high" and "low" culture had some dubious shadow of a meaning. Today it doesn't. The most lasting legacy of the modern and post-modern deconstruction of "culture", is that the social barriers and associations of culture have irrevocably been torn down. A genre that is basically defined by the fact that old people with too much money and too little taste gather in sterile concert halls to applaud sterile performances of any bizarre manifestation of music from the last 4-5 centuries as if it were all the same thing - has no right to life in the 21st century.
Goodbye, classical!

2006-03-16T06:37:00.000-08:00

OK, I always have time to bitch about the follies of the music biz: The New Cars. What an incredibly silly and depressing idea. They're reuniting The Cars - but without Ric Ocasek - and with Todd Rundgren as his replacement. I am a huge Cars fan - and also a Rundgren/Utopia fan - who isn't? But how can they put together The Cars without Ric? It's like The Jam without Paul Weller or something. The Smiths without Morrissey. It just doesn't work. And Rundgren is far too much of an artiste and auteur to be stepping into someone else's shoes. I don't get it.

Besides, The Cars' history is so glorious - why taint it with some half-assed reunion tour, or - shudder - album? They were cool. Why be uncool. Leave that to Yes. Don't misunderstand - I love Yes - but embarrassing reunions are their forté. Being Yes is being uncool. And thank God for that. Now let The Cars be The Cars. We don't need any New ones. At least Ric Ocasek is still making good solo albums.

I have hereby bitched.

2006-03-14T01:37:00.000-08:00

I won't really be able to blog on a regular basis until I'm done with our marathon recording sessions. I just thought I'd check in and touch base.

Our keyboard player and myself are in a race against time to complete keyboard and guitar overdubs in our home studios before I return to Denmark to record vocals and start some preliminary mixing. Modern technology is wonderful - it allows us to record with pristine audio quality in the comfort of our own homes. But the expectations of increased efficiency are something of a bother, so I still feel pretty stressed out, even though I no longer have to spend endless nights in a studio. You gain some, you lose some.

I've been so busy that I haven't even noticed that Donald Fagen has put out his 3rd solo album. "The Nightfly" is one of the best albums ever, and "Kamakiriad" was pretty cool, even though I preferred Becker's quirkier "11 tracks of whack". Anyway, Fagen can do no wrong in my book, so I'll have to put it on top of my "to-do-when-I-have-a-life-again-list".

Laaaater.

2006-03-10T02:30:00.000-08:00

Don't lose your shoes, baby, here's the

Barefoot Blues

Woke up this morning
Couldn't find my shoes
Called out to my neighbour, he said
"Ain't you heard the news?
Well your baby left you,
Took your records and your shoes,
Yeah, your sugar baby left you
With them barefoot blues"

2006-03-07T14:58:00.000-08:00

Back from Denmark. There is this thing called the White Willow Jinx: Everytime we travel, or even attempt to do something slightly out of the ordinary, like actually leave our home town, some kind of accident or mishap occurs. Well, this time we were off to Denmark to start recording our new album, as regular readers will know. But on the eve of leaving it turned out that 3 of the 4 of us that were going, had gotten colds! OK, so that must've been the jinx, then - right. We thought so, and happily went off, sniffling and coughing. Then the car starts acting weird, wobbling from side to side, shaking at high speeds. We consider turning back, but we keep going, mortally afraid that we're all gonna die on the road to Larvik, but thinking that the music might be worth the risk. So, shakily, way late, we arrive at the harbour in Larvik where we're supposed to take the boat to Denmark. But where's the boat? Not there. In fact, the whole harbour looks pretty damned closed for the night. So I take out the ticket to see if we missed something. We did. The boat isn't leaving from Larvik, but from Oslo. Where we had left 2 hours ago... No chance to turn back and make it... Long story short, the White Willow Jinx is no longer a singular thing, it is a plural constant. We did eventually get to the studio though, and once we did, we had the acest time. Tommy Hansen is such a cool guy, and talented beyond anything we could've expected. Everything in the studio went super smooth, Tommy worked incredibly fast and efficiently, and the sound we got was just incredible. And at night we all had a really good time, hanging out in a big house adjacent to the studio, eating good food and feasting on champagne and cognac and bad TV. We all enjoyed ourselves I think, and now I can't understand why we didn't always record like this.

Anyway, I just got home after a 12 hour journey, so I'll crash now and write more later.

2006-02-28T17:11:00.001-08:00

Gullwing

2006-02-28T17:11:00.000-08:00

Shopping cart with engine

2006-02-28T16:48:00.000-08:00

OK, so I am perfectly aware that my blogging hasn't quite been up to my usual standards the last few days, but I really have had no free time lately. But here's some stuff that's been moving through my head. (And don't worry, I'll get to the Mercedeses soon.)

A: It's hard to be trying to do stuff when you're a family man. Not like, it's hard to GET stuff done - well, there's that too, too little time, too many ambitions. But mostly, I just feel bad for all the time I have to spend away from home. I practice with my band twice a week. On those days I'm away pretty much all day, 'cause I work the first half of the day, play the second. Then I try to dedicate two days a week to songwriting and arranging, and some guitar practice. That's four days already. Oftentimes other music stuff comes up during the week too. So that's most of the week gone. Then there's just normal social stuff, catching up with friends - hell, I can just forget about that. Because I can't stand being away so much. My son really misses me during the day, and it tears me up. And I miss him too. Besides, I feel bad for my wife having to shoulder the load for the better half of most of the days of the week. Now I'm going to be busy for almost two months with recording an album. God knows when I'll have time for, well, quality time with my family. Now I'm first gonna be off to Denmark for 5 days or so, and everytime I think about my boy saying goodbye, and then every day saying "Daddy?" to my wife and walking to the door where he expects me to come in any moment... Well, it breaks my heart. How do touring musicians do it if they have families? How do you stand spending most of the year off while your loved ones are waiting at home? Well, I guess I'm just mushy and over-sensitive. Not rock star material.

B: The other day we were watching TV, and there was a commercial on for one of those silly little inner-city Mercedeses, like a housewife-go-shopping kind of Mercedes. So I ask out loud, why do Mercedes make those stupid tiny cars? (You might think this is extremely peripheral to anything you might imagine this blog to be about, but cars are like my main interest in life besides music and obscure religions.) Whatever happened to Mercedes being exclusively compact-and-above? Why do they have to make cars that look like some dinky Japanese toy? And then my wife, sagely, says: We're living in the age where the customer controls the market, not the other way around. Companies don't make cars according to their own ideals or standards anymore, they make the cars the market wants, or the cars they think the market wants, or the cars the market thinks it wants - whatever. And this is so true. The marketplace has really turned into a complete democracy, where market research, analysis of what the public wants, is what dictates the products that are being made for us. There was a time when Mercedes simply told their engineers and designers: Make a great car, make a dream car, and they would come up with something like the Gullwing or the 350 SL, something truly innovative or beautiful. These days, they tell the same people: Make something cheap, find out what people want, and make it cheap. So they come up with these ugly, insubstantial shopping carts with engines. That's not Mercedes! I don't like it. But it's the same with music. There was a time when record executives were in the business at least partly for the betterment and advancement of music. They would sign someone like Miles Davis or Yes not because they were easy going, fun-loving fellas that would sell a truckload of records and never give their bosses a hard time. They were signed because at least a few people in the corridors of music power actually believed that spending some time and money, showing some patience and understanding towards the needs of the artist, might result in better music, and that contributing to improving music was actually a worthy goal in and of itself. And by extension that exposing the audience to better music might improve the audience as well. Do you think that anyone in Sony or BMG thinks like that today? I don't. And I don't want to be the grumpy type that thinks that everything was better before. It wasn't, and music is still as good as ever - only not on the major labels. The problem is that this idea that the marketplace should dictate everything is simply not good. To get back to the car issue: An engineer in Mercedes has spent decades learning what constitutes a good car, and figuring out how the automotive industry can move forward. So what good is it letting the customer decide what that engineer should do?: Does the average Mercedes buyer know more about a good car than the engineer? No! And the average music buyer does not know more about good music than a seasoned producer or an experienced songwriter. Those people are there to expand our horizons. Without them we'd only go out and by the same records and the same cars over and over again. Like my wife said, it's like trying to converse with someone that only ever tells you what you want to hear and what you already know - it's not going to be a very fruitful conversation.

I know, this wasn't very profound stuff after Allen Ginsberg, but some things you just need to get off your chest.

That said, I'll go back to watching my Shania Twain DVDs. All this is not said to slight anyone, or to elevate myself. I have never done anything to advance modern music, and I voraciously devour vacuous pop music every day, because I simply love the craft involved in pop production. But I do believe there has to be a balance. Popular music is of course dependent on the populace, but not without the input of the musicians themselves. Letting the audience dictate what the musicians play is what they do down the pub - and that's why they're still playing the same jig they did 300 years ago...

Signing off.

2006-02-26T03:23:00.000-08:00

More busy days, sorry. But there's always poetry. Here's one of my favorite Allen Ginsberg poems. You don't often think of beat poets as making downright beautiful, mystical poetry, but Ginsberg frequently did - after all he was a Blake fan. Here's "Song"

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in the imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--

Looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in arms
of love.

Not rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
cannot be bitter,
cannot deny.
Cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

Yes. Yes
that's what
I wanted
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

2006-02-23T16:15:00.000-08:00

My diving buddy

2006-02-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

So I was puzzled, mystified, nonplussed and bewildered today. I step into the shower, and in the revealing light of the fluorescent tube in the bathroom I see a huge wound on my leg. (My wife will laugh when she reads this, appearantly it's not huge at all - or a wound, more like a scratch, well that's what SHE says, but to me, who rarely has scratches OR wounds, it's a huge wound, a puncture in my precious flesh, end of story.) And I realize I have no idea how I got it. It's a bloody gash on the front of my calf, and I don't know why it's there. It didn't hurt, to alert me of it's presence, but once I see it, it hurts BAD, and I complain to my wife and ask if something might be wrong since it hurts, like maybe some dangerous infection, and she just cracks up... Even worse than the other day when I was feeling really cold and asked her if I might have hypothermia... The laughter resounded through the house... Well, how the fuck should I know, I'm no doctor. I just know if you have hypothermia you feel cold - and I felt cold... but OK, it turned out I wasn't hypothermic. Appearantly it's something that mostly happens to arctic explorers and drowning ice-fishers. Again, in my defense, how am I supposed to know all these things. I know who replaced Rick Wakeman in Yes, isn't that enough? So anyway, here I am with a throbbing wound on my leg that appeared out of nowhere like some frigging stigmata or maybe an alien tissue-theft. It's like the goddam X-Files. I know, you don't care. But then I bet you don't have a gold membership in Hypocondriacs Hanonymous either. Loser.

I wonder what it's going to be like recording in Denmark, with Tommy Hansen. Some people think he's an odd choice for us. He's mostly associated with melodic hard rock and power metal. Well, it's strange. I'm very interested in production - and I've meddled in it a few times myself - and in the early days of my band we dreamed of getting someone like Tim Friese-Greene to produce us. One of those hyper-tasteful, understated producer guys. But that's sort of a place we've already been. I'm real interested to see what happens when a band like mine joins forces with a guy like Tommy, whose philosophy is definitely more of a more-is-more kind of thing. See, that to me is where interesting stuff happens, in the juxtaposition of appearant opposites. Nothing is more satisfying than a musical oxymoron. Plus, we are ALSO a more-is-more band, as WELL as being a restrained, low-key band, and we've never worked with anyone with the guts to bring out the hubris, the extravagant side of us. So I'm excited. I think it will be good. We'll both learn from each other, producer and band.

On top of this entry is someone who doesn't have a gash in her leg, who dives with barely any clothes without going all hypothermic - god, how admirable.

2006-02-21T03:57:00.000-08:00

My mind is a little preoccupied with practical things regarding our impending departure to Denmark to start recording our new album. So even though I had sort of written an entry in my head that was all about deconstructing the term "classical music", I think I have to let it wait until I've sorted some other stuff out first. Meanwhile I'll leave you with the lyrics to a song whose praise I've sung previously on this blog, "Passenger seat" . Later.

i roll the window down
and then begin to breathe in
the darkest country road
and the strong scent of evergreen
from the passenger seat
as you are driving me home.

then looking upwards
i strain my eyes and try
to tell the difference between
shooting stars and satellites
from the passenger seat
as you are driving me home.

"do they collide?"
i ask and you smile.
with my feet on the dash
the world doesn't matter.
when you feel embarrassed then i'll be your pride
when you need directions then i'll be the guide
for all time.
for all time.

2006-02-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

Raison d'blogging. Why blog, and why read a blog? I talked to someone today who suggested that reading blogs is simultaneously tempting and disturbing - that getting insight into a private sphere is unsettling, and that maybe it's better not to. Well, it's up to you. A blog is simply something that's out there, and you can ignore it or explore it as you please. This is how I see it: Mine isn't a particularly private blog - it's primarily a music blog - but it is interspersed with private stuff because I believe that the whole point here is that you get one guy's perspective, no pretensions to objectivity or anything, just one opinionated person's musings. So getting an insight into who I am, and the life I lead, gives a picture of the perspective I have, the angle I'm coming from. That's one side of it. Also, to me this is as much a place to muse about music as it is to track my own life to a certain degree, a sort of mild, reader's digest version of a diary. If I have stuff happening in my life that I have a need to sort out or talk about, then writing about it here serves two purposes: One, it's therapeutic. Two: I figure that any challenges we face in life are basically common to humanity, so reading about fellow human beings' responses to certain challenges is helpful.

And here we are at the core of what blogging is really all about, underneath it all. It's about knowing yourself. We like to read about other people's lives because it helps us understand our own lives. People talk about voyeurism so much these days, whether it's about blogging or reality-TV or gossip magazines... like voyeurism is in and of itself a bad thing. It really isn't. Voyeurism is a very basic human compulsion. The need to peek into other existences, other lives, is truly fundamental. Life is a riddle, a challenge, a huge, complex knot. We spend our time untying it, figuring out how it's all connected, where the ends lead to.

But each and every one of us is all alone in this attempt to untie the life-knot. It's not like that poem, "No man is an island" - no dude, it's the opposite, we ARE islands, we are all alone, entire unto ourselves, whatever. And life doesn't come with an instruction manual, we have no clue, we LIVE by the seats of our pants, all of us. So we need reference, we need perspective, we need to see how other people figure it out. Why do you think so many people read those gossip magazines, like the ones I write for? Is it really just to get a gleeful, tantalizing peek into the high life, the glitz and the glory? No, we read to learn, and celebrities are, like it or not, our heroes, our models, that's where our society is at.

In ancient Greece the heroes were the people of myths, and myths were archetypes of the human condition, the human drama. People read the myths, identified with the heroes, lived with them through tragedy and triumph, comedy and confusion. Through the myths they learned to understand their own lives, existence, the cosmos, the basic patterns underlying everything. This is so true that it's actually a cliche, any pre-grad knows it, but it needs to be said. Celebrities are the heroes of the modern age, and their lives are the models for our lives. It sucks, but it's true.

So, come the blogosphere, and suddenly people are reading about the lives of completely ordinary people, and learning from THAT instead. We are reading the REAL myths of humanity, the real life-stories of our brothers and sisters, real comedies, real tragedies. It's the democratization of the archetypal, it's turning the mundane into the transcendent, it's reaping gnosis from the bitter or sweet harvests of Jane and John Doe. I think it's wonderful. And that is basically why I write - and read blogs. In the belief that human knowledge and experience is the most valuable commodity that we have, and that, as in any market, the market of human gnosis is kept alive by passing it around as often and as much as possible. Whether it's how I feel about music, whether it's about how you feel about your government, whether it's about how he feels about anchovies on his pizza, whether it's about how she feels about God. It's all valid, it's all worthwhile.

Later.

2006-02-18T17:24:00.000-08:00

Fairly typical spacesynth cover

2006-02-18T17:23:00.000-08:00

I suddenly made this connection in my head between M83, Air and Daft Punk on the one hand and what we used to call spacesynth in the olden days. Looking at the Blade Runner-ish cover photo on "Before the Dawn Heals Us", and also remembering the retro-futuristic illustration on Air's "10.000 hz legend", it came to me where I last saw architectural sci-fi imagery on record covers (outside of prog and Roger Dean, of course). Back in the 80's, Italo Disco was a genre that was shunned by all harbingers of good taste, and I was supposedly one of them, even at such a young age. Even so, me and my proggy friends had a definite soft spot for Giorgio Moroder - I remember the soundtrack for "Electric Dreams" being as much a soundtrack to our teenage lives as "Supper's Ready" or "Close to the Edge". Towards the mid-80's, the instrumental side of Italo Disco sort of crystalized into this strange subgenre of electronic music called spacesynth. It took the simplistic melodic synth hooks of Italo Disco (esp. Moroder) and fused them with the more grandiose, semi-orchestral backings of J-J Jarre or Vangelis, but always against a backdrop of a solid 4-to-the-floor drum machine beat. Harmonically it was as simple as anything, melodically it was laughable (think "Popcorn"), rhytmically it was, well, danceable, but all the same the music had a strange, evocative power that came probably as much from the spacey timbres of the synths as from the cover art, which usually depicted futuristic cityscapes and vehicles, as well as space opera type scenes. The whole thing was totally kitschy, and I can't say I ever really liked the music much (from a songwriting or performing point of view it really was quite pointless), but I was definitely fascinated by it. And in retrospect I see how spacesynth provided a similar ideological refuge from the earnest mundaneness of so much 80's pop and rock as prog did. Being a spacesynth fan must have been a similar social experience in the 80's to being, say, a Marillion fan.

Interestingly, spacesynth lives on on the continent. It was largely an Italian and Dutch phenomenon, and today there is appearantly a renaissance in the same areas for this type of music. More relevant for me, though, is the fact that it also echoes through the Paris electronica scene I love so much. In Air I guess mostly as an aesthetic idea, but in Daft Punk musically as well. Especially "Discovery" and "Human After All" has quite a few references to spacesynth - and of course their image - and the imagery conveyed in their videos - reveals the same fascination with sci-fi and japanese pop culture as their 80's forefathers.

So now I have to go back and listen to some of this stuff. Remember Koto? That tune "Visitors". Were they Italian? I think so. Or what about Laserdance...? Nah, I'm probably the only one who remembers.

Be that as it may. Last night I watched "Into the Blue", which I got solely because it has Jessica Alba in it. A movie about modern day treasure hunters on the Bahamas doesn't really strike me as anything potentially good. But when I got it, and read the blurb, it turned out it was made by the same guy who made "Blue Crush", John Stockwell (does this guy have a color fixation?). " Blue Crush" was a genuinely good movie, as real sociological document of the surfer mentality, so I managed to get my hopes up just a bit about this new one - in spite of the treasure hunter theme. Now, let it first be said that a movie can be as bad as it wants to if it has Jessica in it. And in a bikini most of the time? You just can't go wrong. I'm that simple. But it was a fairly enjoyable flick even outside of those lingering shots of Alba, and again Stockwell manages to paint a believable if stereotyped portrait of another aspect of the beach bum universe. Incredibly well cast, solidly acted and quite beautifully shot in a very unpretentious and un-artsy way. Nice underwater shots, friendly sharks, the works.

2006-02-17T03:27:00.000-08:00

Snow, snow, snow. We're snowbound, snowed in, snowed down, snowblind. I haven't seen this much snow since back in the 70's and early 80's, when we still had "real" winters. In fact they're telling me there hasn't been this much snow since 1968!

Anyway, as a way of weening myself off my current indie obsession, I've been listening to "In a Silent Way" by Miles Davis - and also by way of re-educating myself in the roots of fusion, which I've been pushing on my band lately. "In a Silent Way", along with "Bitches Brew", was of course the genesis of jazz-rock - later called fusion. It is a record of stark beauty, minimalism and invincible grooves. Part one, which is basically a 15 minute one-chord vamp, never did that much for me, but the rest is stunning. And one of the nicest things about the record is that for once, to me at least, it's not Miles Davis who is the star of the record, but Wayne Shorter, whose melodious and emotional lines give warmth and fluidity to what could otherwise have become a somewhat dry experiment in ambient jazz. All this in 1969, if memory serves me right.

The remaster I recently bought is extremely hissy, but I've realized that this must be a conscious decision on the part of the mastering engineer, to retain the very fragile crispness in the top end, which makes the electric piano and guitar notes sound like icicles and frail crystals... I'm sure they could've dehissed a bit without losing much of that crispness, but they probably though "Why tamper with it" - and I'm glad. Crispness is a quality that is usually lacking in 60's jazz recordings.

Apart from that - uh-oh, back into indie hell: Pixies. When you feel frustrated after having spent forever digging your car out of a mountain of snow, scraping ice off the windows and getting into its icebox interior and getting it going, sluggishly, jumpingly, into lethal, ice-slippery traffic that moves at turtle pace and you're already an hour late for whatever... When that's where you're at, nothing makes being in a shitty mood for fun and inspiring than cranking up "Debaser" on the car stereo.

I'm also reading this fascinating book right now: "Perdido Street Station" by China Miéville. It's very rare these days that I read a new book that is actually - new... Like, not just a retelling of something you've read a million times before. "Perdido" is a truly original story, set in a truly original world. A city, like a steamdriven version of "Dhalgren"'s Bellona, peopled by the most bizzarre creatures I've ever encountered, and described with an efficient poeticism that is so rare these days outside of William Gibson's books. If a crossbreeding of Mervyn Peake's "Ghormenghast" and Samuel Delany's "Dhalgren" sounds like your kind of thing, I can wholeheartedly reccommend this book. But it is really not like either...

Later.

2006-02-15T06:34:00.000-08:00

So one of my more esoteric interests - which peaked sometime in the mid-nineties, but I'm still keeping up with it occasionaly - is all those World Serpent artists - don't think the company even exists anymore, but that's how I think of them. David Tibet/Current 93 is one of them - he's one of my heroes since he's the only other musican I know of who has managed to combine and transform his interests in Gnosticism, British folk-rock and Blue Öyster Cult into his own musical expression. Now I've read about his forthcoming album, "Black Ships Ate the Sky", and I thought it was sort of interesting:

"Tibet recruited crooners Antony and Will "Bonnie 'Prince' Billy" Oldham to sing on the forthcoming Current 93 disc, Black Ships Ate the Sky. The 76-minute opus arrives this May via Tibet's Durtro Jnana label and also features contributions from Soft Cell's Marc Almond, Colin Meloy-approved folk princess Shirley Collins, Mellow Candle's Clodagh Simonds, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Durtro labelmates Baby Dee and Pantaleimon." I'm quoting from Pitchfork.

The fact that he's featuring Clodagh Simonds is awesome - Mellow Candle will always be the best folk-prog band ever to have existed, and this woman is a legend and a genius. Shirley Collins, well, that's old news in the Tibet camp but always nice to hear. Will Oldham - interesting - my wife likes him. I guess they're both (Tibet and Oldham) equally depressed. Antony!!?? This is horrendous. I hate this guy. Why would my beloved Tibet taint himself with this ridiculous figure. And it's not a gay thing, but this Antony person is 100% annoying, writes horrible songs and has a horrible voice. It's so stupid with the hype - if people were allowed to react naturally to someone like Antony and his bloody Johnsons, they'd go, jeez, who let that guy into a studio. But because sensation hyngry and politically über-korrekt media decide Antony is the flavour of the month, everyone goes - oh, what a darling, oh what a talent... Nah, if David Tibet was REALLY cool, he'd get Buck Dharma or Eric Bloom to sing on one of his records. All the same, I look forward to the record.

Later.

2006-02-14T04:19:00.000-08:00

It seems blogs are where you find your old acquaintances these days. I was very happy to find Terje Dahl Bergersen's blog, and it seems he's found mine. Lookahere: http://weblog.bergersen.net/terje/archives/001166.html

Let it be said that Terje is The Man in terms of Gnosticism, I have nothing on him. My knowledge is a puny sliver of a fragment of what he knows. Gnostics all over the world respect Terje for his vaults of information and insight into anything Gnostic. Check out his libraries - they're the most comprehensive on the Net.

Anyway, we'll have to hook up one of these days. Me and Teresa keep talking about it, but then another half year rushes by and we don't even know it...

Pax Pleroma, Terje.

2006-02-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

I just thought this was kinda funny since I've been writing so much about them:

"The next record is seeming kind of weird. [Laughs.] There's no songs yet, there's nothing, but I'm dying to see what happens next. I think the next record's going to be the prog-rock record. [Laughs.] I think it's going to turn into Close To The Edge. It's going to be a whole bunch of little pieces of pop songs dropped into three tracks that are each 15 minutes long. [Laughs.] Yeah, I think it's going to be interesting. [Laughs.] Ben's been spending a lot of time with Dark Side Of The Moon—thank God for that. Jason and I are super prog-rock geeks, and Nick has this big theatrical metal sort of side to him, and Ben, he's pretty traditionally been the only sort of musical moderate or even semi-conservative in the band. And getting him to—I mean, all you would have to do is just tap the rest of us, and we would totally go over the edge. If we get the tiniest hint that we can crack something open and do something ridiculous, we'll totally do it. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm very encouraged by the conversations we've had so far."

- Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie on the record they're going to make after "Plans".

2006-02-12T16:56:00.000-08:00

Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole
Just like a faucet that leaks and there is comfort in the sound
But while you debate half-empty or half-full
It slowly rises: your love is gonna drown

Which means that I finally got "Plans" by Death Cab for Cutie. At the first hearing I thought that this was less immediate than "Transatlanticism", since there wasn't a line I immediately obsessed about, like that opening line "So this is the new year/and I don't feel any different", which was stuck in the heads of this household for weeks after hearing it. But of course it turns out that "Plans" has plenty to obsess about, like the above-rendered stanza. This is a somewhat more emotionally profound album, and the music is somewhat more subdued, more of an acoustic emphasis in the arrangements and an almost folksy profile to many of the melodies. Big Star meets Sigur Ros meets Codeine, I guess would be our conclusion here. And the melodies might be their most beautiful so far. And the lyrics are something else, love and death of course, but so intense in their quietness. I surrender to this band. DCFC express more in one verse than The Mars Volta do in two entire albums - if there's any debate as to who matters in Noughties earnest guy rock.

So I got through this weekend. I left you on a bit of a cliffhanger. And learnt that you make a right decision, and you immediately reap the benefits. I metaphorically, and I guess sort of literally, left the phone off the hook this weekend, and totally recuperated. I went on a walk Saturday, through a winter wonderland, six feet of snow around me, frost-covered trees, sparkling sun in an azure sky. And I noticed that it's been months since I've even seen my surroundings. So, eyes re-opened, I walked through some lucky events. I found a store selling an OEM copy of Amplitube, which I've desperately needed since my cracked version stopped working. It goes for 4000 NOK here, and here was this OEM copy for 995 NOK, all legit and stuff. I was so happy. I also got my hands on a DI box for half of what I expected to pay. I was stocking up on stuff I need for the forthcoming recording, see. I also ate a mountain of Chinese and Indian food, till my belly ached like crazy and my jeans ripped. I decided to not give a fuck about a single obligation, no music work, no work work, no phone calls, no e-mails, no nothing. I played with my son, I talked to my wife, I looked after myself and my pulse. It only takes a couple of days of that, and suddenly, you come alive. Or I did, anyway. It's weird how it happened, though. It's not like I lost my mind or plunged into depression or freaked out or anything before this weekend. I just felt tired like a million years of toil hit me in the face all at once, my mind reeled in exhaustion, my body ached and I just couldn't stand another day of that.

Anyway, I feel better. Now all that remains is to see if people around me start making sense again.

I guess others see it differently. I guess I don't make much sense to them. Like, why do I keep doing this band thing, now I'm all grown up and a family man and stuff. Lots of people don't get it. If I was real successful, and it was a living or gave some sort of measurable degree of glory or something, maybe. But here I am, pouring my heart and brains over one obscure prog album after the other. Moderately successful in the small pond wherein we swim, I guess, but in the big scheme of things we are plancton. How can I keep doing it, when it's so hard to keep it up, and the rewards are microscopic to the point of non-existent to the outside observer. Well, I have an ingrained scepticism towards success. See, my dad taught me the importance of success - and all that left him with was a divorce and an alienated son. And my mum laid the burden of expectations on me. But I've seen that success amounts to absolutely nothing. In the long run, it leaves you with nothing but the pang of the realization that one day it's all gone. I cannot measure what I do based on other people's expectations of what success might mean for me, of what a proper realization and fruition of ambition really is. I can only do what makes sense to me. And what makes sense to me, eludes almost everyone else. I follow a vision, of sorts, of a musical response to particular emotional triggers that are set off when you truly seem to be experiencing life. That's one thing, the "deep" thing. The shallow thing is that I take perverse pleasure in wrong-footing anyone's expectations of what would be tasteful or correct for me to do next. People look at one of our records and go, yeah, it would make sense to throw in some chamber-rock elements there or, I see how this could turn into an interesting update on the Canterbury sound or, their next album could really be a restrained masterpiece of retro-Scandi-folk. But then we don't turn into something predictable and hip like Dungen. Instead I realize that Blue Oyster Cult and late 70's Scorpions have a lot to offer a modern melange of mock-goth prog and chick friendly hard rock. And then we make an album so that some people go "What the hell were you thinking, Jacob? You should've just done another "Sacramant", whereas other people tell me the record changed their lives and the lyrics made them cry. Well, I'll listen to the cry-babies. You make someone cry with a song, that's all the success you could ever ask for, right there.
Now I'm gonna thwart everyones expectations again with an album even my band doesn't understand. Part 80s synthrock and arena rock, part sympho, part perverse fusion and part powerpop, we'll see what people think. Yeah, expectations suck. I was a wunderkind in University. Best grades, teachers all geared up, my family urging me into full-fledged academia. But I got my degree and ran. Educated in Comparative Religion, unique expertise on gnosticism and modern esoterica, and I settle for hacking a journo role for a bunch of gossip rags. And my family reels. Why are you writing about Jessica Alba's boobs, why do you waste your talent, your intelligence? I make no bones about it, I am the most intelligent person I know. I'll outsmart you anyday. But it also counts for nothing. I am also half-crazy. And the thing is, sure, I love talking about gnosticism, I ADORE discussing the finer points of Persian concepts of linear time with someone in the know. But: Maybe I like Jessica Albas boobs even more. Some people might think that makes a lot of sense. Those people would know why I do what I do. Anyway, I'll never do anything anyone expects of me. Never anything sensible or career savvy. Nah, I'll just write my blog and keep writing songs crammed with references no-one knows and hand in the occasional report on Jessica's single-or-married status. That's a good life to me.

2006-02-09T12:51:00.000-08:00

En ulykke kommer sjelden alene - or so we say in Norwegian. An accident is rarely an isolated incident, or more succinctly, when the shit hits the fan - duck for cover!

Today was one of those days. I've been working too much, worrying too much - about finances, about my band, about my strained relationship with my parents, I've been sleeping too little and been on edge with practically everyone around me. And today everything just stopped, shut down, I'd gone beyond exhaustion into the breakdown zone - I had to pull over and let the world run its course without me for a while. I had to tell people that they just had to count me out for a few days (certain people get furious) until I catch my breath. So far so good. Just doing that made me feel better - admitting to myself that I couldn't keep pushing myself. So I get home, and think, well, now I can chill. I'm having dinner, feeling my pulse go down a fraction, and then suddenly there's someone at the door. This dude shows up for this meeting I'd scheduled but forgotten, relating to my company. The house was a mess, my kid was running around and I was certainly not in a state to think biz. But he was there, and I couldn't turn him away since I was the one who had made the appointment anyway, so I had to go through the motions, and at the same time have the presence of mind not to get conned into some costly scheme he might be trying to sell me. I did it. He leaves. Then I hear this huge crash from the kitchen. A massive glass container fell down from a shelf, splattering the entire kitchen with fine shards of glass, everywhere, in the dishes, on the floor, on the table... Minor thing, but weird following the preceding incidents. Then it's finally cleaned up, we have to go out for half an hour. We come back, my wife goes to the bathroom and... screams. The bathroom is flooded, like completely. A tap was running, the sink was clogged, and there's like three inches of water on the floor, stuff floating, everything soaked and I'm thinking lawsuit, water dripping into the apartment underneath, houseowner furious... So we get out a bucket and start scooping water desperately - over and over and over... and finally the level is going down, we put towels all over to floor to soak up the remains, and pray to god the damage is minimal.

And I'm like, God, I ask for a break, a tiny little break, and this is what you hand me? I know He has other things to worry about now, what with people killing each other in the Middle East and stuff, but, hey, a little courtesy never hurt anyone, gods or men, right?

As for the Middle East, which I wrote about last time around, I think it's gotten a bit ridiculous now. I mean, we are all the people of the Book, right, Christians, Jews and Muslims, we are all spiritually speaking the sons and daughters of Abraham, and whether we call the big guy Allah or El Al or Our Father who art in Heaven, it's still the same hypothetical figure we're talking about, and wouldn't he, hypothetically speaking, rather that we, his theoretical offspring, hugged and made up rather than poke fun at each other and shoot each other? Am I silly for thinking that? Actually, I'm not usually silly, which is why I don't usually think that, but on a day like this I regress a bit to infantile perspectives, and hugging just seems like the universal solution.

Later - with music geek talk, I promise.

2006-02-07T14:43:00.000-08:00

There are terrorists in your backyard. Suicide bombers in your bathwater. Poisoned fragments of the Quran are mixed into your breakfast cereal. Before you know it you'll be down on your knees, desperately staring at the compass trying to figure out the direction of Mecca while praising the great Allah for his goodness, mercy and wisdom. Thanking him and the divine foresight of Muhammed for saving your life from evil Jews and Americans and Norwegians. Islam is taking over the world.
Not.
Terrorism is a strange thing. Terror means fear, right? The aim of the terrorist is not in and of itself to kill, or to spread Islam, or criticize the Bush administration. Terrorism is simply a political strategy to spread fear, thereby destabilizing the structure of whatever society it works within. Terrorism is like a degenerative disease that certain groups let loose on a society they are displeased with. The terrorists we hear about in the news these days are very successful. Our culture IS weakened by their attacks and their threats. Confrontations mount, cultures and worldviews stand pitted against each other. People are fearful. So, yeah, it works.
The politics of terror are as old as politics themselves. Any ruler must employ a certain amount of terrorism to stay in power. Nazi Germany was extreme: Be a good German or die in the gas chamber. Sheer terrorism. Norway is subtle, but you simply cannot avoid the politics of terror if you are at all interested in controlling a society, so we are no exception. If you do drugs, you'll go to jail - for instance. If you don't go to school you'll end up a loser. It's all a fear game.
So, these terrorists. They are part of a movement within Islam that is concerned about preserving the identity of Islam. In the West we call that kind of attitude conservatism, if we're talking about politics. With religion it often falls under the category of fundamentalism. Religious people who believe that certain texts contain the fundamental, perfect teachings of their religion. To deviate from what the text dictates, is a deterioration, degeneration of the core of their belief. It's a universal struggle: Religious source texts were generally written centuries or millennia ago. The world changes, people change. Should we stick with what the book tells us, even though it's strange and archaic, because we believe it to be the absolute truth, or shoud we instead try to find the more general truth and message behind the text and not get hung up on particulars that might change with time?
Should we be liberal in our relationship to our religious texts, or fundamental?
It has to be said that Islam has been through several periods of extreme liberalism. The golden age of Islam was characterized by tolerance, syncretism, great advancements in politics and science. During our middle ages, the muslims represented one of the most advanced cultures in the world. And if it wasn't for Arabs basically importing knowledge and ideas into the West, it's doubtful we would've gotten out the dark ages very soon. The whole Renaissance, the rebirth of an enlightened Europe, rested partly on the Arab reintroduction of Classical science and thought to Europe. They were the ones who reminded us of Aristotle and Plato and Plotinus, and re-educated us in maths and physics and so forth. It's a historical fact. But any liberal period has its backlash, because extreme tolerance often leads to a dissolution, or a thinning out of fundamental cultural characteristics. Fundamentalism in Islam began as a struggle to conserve the identity of the religion. But it has developed into a politicized, extremist view - just as Jewish orthodoxy and Christian fundamentalism has gradually become politicized.
So that's where it stands. Now Muslim fundamentalists are upset at Christian fundamentalists for making demeaning pictures of the prophet Muhammed. Predictably. Any dummy understands that unflattering depictions of the prophet is gonna upset orthodox Muslims. The Christians who did it, knew. They WANT conflict. It's part of the Armageddon count-down that the Christian right is so attached to. And basically I think it's fine if extremists of this and that colour and creed wanna fight it out between them. The problem is of course that it turns into something huge. Europeans go, oh those Muslims are crazy, they're all the same, they all hate us. Even though most Muslims could care less about some silly-ass Christian newspaper. And in the Arab world the whole affair becomes fuel to the general fire of discontent - poverty, unemployment, oppressive politics - all of Europe becomes a great canvas for the projection of the frustrations of the Middle East. Fundamentalist leaders eager for conflict go: Look at those Westerners, they're not only decadent, but disrespectful too. Which we are, really. But hey, that's our way. But anyway: Then the politicians in the Middle East sees the passion of their people and go, hey, this is a great way to remove attention from our domestic troubles, so they add even more fuel to the fire. Just like Bush uses the threat of terrorism to divert attention from the fact that the US economy is crumbling. You know the drill. And then the Europeans go: We should've never let the Muslims in here in the first place (I'm actually quoting my drummer), and now they're undermining the greatest thing Western democracy has to offer: Freedom of speech. Like the Muslims could ever do anything about that, even if they cared about it, which they don't. Bush takes away the freedom of speech, but I don't see any Arabs coming here and dragging our asses off to jail because we said something wrong. No. But they do use terrorism to try to control us just a tiny bit. And that's what I was really going to write about, but now I'm too tired. I was gonna give you a brief guide to the history of terrorism. Like the Assassins, or Hashishim. The Hash Eaters. They were one of the first freelance terror organizations with any degree of success. They were an Ishmailite branch of Persian muslims, meaning they recognize the seventh Imam, Ishmael, as the last proper keeper of Muhammed's wisdom. Persian Ishmaelites are invariably a little gnosticized and zoroastrianized, so you know their philosophy is going to be a little weird and cool. So were the Assassins. But they were also a little scary, and they specialized in a kind of guerilla warfare, sneaking up on opponents in the middle of the night and quietly killing them. I guess they had some sort of political agenda, but they probably smoked (or ate, rather) so much that it wasn't too clear, even to them. Anyway, the Assassins are sort of the fathers of modern terrorism. And interestingly enough, they are also the forefathers of Aga Khan and his dynasty - upholders of modern Muslim humanist values. Ironic.
This is just me rambling. It's the middle of the night, it's been a long day, I've quarrelled with my father, decided my band is a bunch of no-good losers (although I am, in fact, wrong about that), then changed my mind about that because all humanity is basically a bunch of no-good losers so it's unfair to single out my band, then changed my mind again and decided that I love everyone instead. Now I have to go to bed.

2006-02-07T04:18:00.000-08:00

This is what I'm listening to/watching at the time:

The Police, The Synchronicity tour DVD
Journey, Live in Houston 1981 DVD, from the Escape tour
Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism (because I haven't had the money to buy Plans yet)
M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us (naturally)
UK - Night after Night (if only prog had continued down that path)
Shania Twain - UP! (our daily soundtrack, it's my son's favorite record)
Wigwam - Lucky Golden Stripes and Starpose (I love Wigwam! And I love Love for remastering all those great albums)
Kayak - Kayak (the whole Euro-rock with indigenous names thing I guess, cf. Wigwam)
Survivor - Too Hot to Sleep (ah, that '88 drum sound...)

2006-02-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

I remember being scared. It's not a good feeling.
I can't remember the last time I was scared, but I remember how it was back when I was often scared. When I was a child. I remember when the babysitter would arrive at our house, and my mother would be all dressed up and ready to go someplace. She would put on her coat, grab her car keys, give the babysitter some instructions, kneel down and kiss me, and then leave. I remember hearing the engine of her VW Bug revving up, the tires on the gravel, the car pulling out of our driveway. And I remember being scared - so scared that she would end up in an accident, that her car would be wrecked, she would be killed - and never come back for me. I remember wondering if the people who found her would know that I was her son, if they would know to find me and let me know that she was gone. Were they gonna take care of me? Would my babysitter take care of me? Would she know which songs she had to sing for me at night? Could she love me like my mother did? Yeah, I was scared - even before that Bug had left our street.

I remember being in huge malls with my dad. In London. With millions, or so it seemed, of people. Parents, kids, big people, strange people. I held on to my dad's hand so tight. I was so afraid to lose my grip on him. To be separated, to drift into the throngs of strangers, lose my dad. Could I ever find him again in that place? It seemed as big as the universe - what if he looked for me forever - and still couldn't find me? So I held on even tighter, put both my hands on his. I didn't want to be an orphan in London. How was I gonna feed myself? Where was I gonna sleep at night? And who was gonna put me on a plane back to Norway, back to my mommy and my grandparents?

And later, when I was in school, I was scared of the road back from school. It went through a little forest, and I had to walk there all alone. Sometimes the school bullies would be waiting in that forest, waiting to jump on me when I was on my way home. They'd take my backpack, grab my hat, then grab me, tackle me, grind my face into the snow so it felt like I couldn't breathe. It seems so barbaric now, but that was life. I wasn't the only one - it was just the old schoolyard dynamic, the law of the blackboard jungle, be a bully or get bullied. So I didn't complain, didn't protest, didn't tell. But I was scared. Full of fear. Was I gonna make it home today? Were they just gonna tease me and steal my books, or were they gonna bury me in a mound of snow and leave me to freeze to death. No, when you're a kid rational thought is not your forte... Everything looms large, things are either divinely promising or pitch black and hopeless.

Anyway, I thought about this today. My son has been sick a lot this winter, nothing serious, just constant little colds and stuff, he's only one and a half and this is a Norwegian winter - it can be tough on kids. So, Gabriel, he's usually insanely happy, like, we want to find the chemical that tickles his funnybone so much and bottle it and sell it. He laughs and squeals and runs and jumps. But being sick is hard on the morale, so the last few days he's been a little under the weather. And then he gets scared. His mother leaves the room, and he is obviously scared she's gonna leave for ever. And I think it was only today I really understood and remembered what a serious and painful feeling that is. His mom went to take a shower, and Gabe just kept running towards the bathroom door, banging at it and crying. I picked him up, carried him around, soothed him, like I always do when that happens. But he just screamed more and more. I was really tired, sort of at the end of my ropes after a long, complicated day. Suddenly I just ran out of patience. I thought, "this is ridiculous, his mom is five feet away, and he can't take care of himself for three minutes". So I put him down on the floor, among his toys, screaming and kicking, and said "play, Gabe", and then went into the kitchen. And then, as if whole new reserves of miserability had been bestowed upon him by the gods of tearfulness, his screaming and crying quadrupled, and he just sat there on the floor, snot running like the Niagara, face red, fists clenched, tears spurting. And suddenly it all flashed back on me. The fear, the panic, the utmost terror of potential abandonment. The horrifying prospect of love being withdrawn, the cessation of care, the absence of warmth. So I picked him up again, held him tight, told him it was alright and took him into the bathroom. Slowly he calmed down.

I'm just saying this to whomever because it's so easy to forget how hard it is to be little and not know a thing, not understand, not have perspective, not know like we do now that everything always works out in the end. Being scared is something most of us stop being as we grow up. Life is too full of challenges to be scared, we just wouldn't function. We'd break down. And eventually you see that there is in fact very little to be afraid of. You could be scared of terrorists, I guess, but what's the point. What are you gonna do about it? Should I be scared of not being able to pay the rent? I'm always broke. But it doesn't scare me. It just keeps me awake at night, thinking about how to make the extra bucks. And then it works out eventually. It always does. If it doesn't kill you, it'll work out. That's adulthood. But catching a glimpse of that little mirrorworld that kids live in gave me that OTHER sense of perspective. Where you're the speck of dust, and the universe is a big swirling tangle of chaos and excitement and horror all rolled into one. It can be wonderful. It can be terrible. And I realize that that's true too.

Yes, this is supposedly a music blog, but man does not live on syncopations alone.

Later.

2006-02-02T05:35:00.000-08:00

I'll just share some poetry with you today - 'cause I feel like it. T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" has been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager - it never ceases to amaze me with its potency and fullness of meaning, as well as its strangeness... Here's the end.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

2006-01-31T03:29:00.000-08:00

Oh, just one more thing I should say about my life-changing, world-saving exegesis about mellotrons and hard rock: You thought Zebra were late using the 'tron in 1983, huh? (Interjection: When talking about late and early in terms of the mellotron, the thing to remember is this - the mellotron moves cyclically through rock history, in periods of over- and under-exposure. The late-60's to early-70's were the heyday. By the late 70's it was overexposed - and eclipsed by polyphonic synthesizers. Most prog bands had stopped using it by the late 70's, Genesis in '77. Yes in '78, for example. The early 80's were a bad time for the 'tron - it was pretty much a producer's anathema, an antiquated, unhip sound. It was marginally used in neo-prog - IQ, Pallas and Twelfth Night used it occasionally, Marillion did not. But in the mainstream it was invisible save for a few oddities like a couple of OMD singles. It wasn't until the late 80's, with it's sixties revivalism, that the 'tron started cropping up again, like with Crowded House. The mid- to late 90's was of course the initiation of the second heyday of mellotrons, and now we are yet again entering a period of over-exposure and 'tron fatigue.) Well, I just remembered that Orion the Hunter released their only record in 1984, and it even has the mellotron listed on the cover, along with Oberheims and Prophets. Now, I'm a real bloodhound when it comes to tracking down 'trons in a mix, but I gotta tell you, they are buried DEEP in this one. But I do hear some occasionaly, like a bit of choir on the minor radio hit "So you ran" - which is also the best track on the album. Anyway, keyboards-wise it's a pretty interesting record, the layering of 'tron and the Prophet is a not too-often heard combination that works well. This was of course Barry Goudreau's stop-gap project while waiting for Tom Scholz to squeeze out another Boston album, and this is basically a slicker, slightly more orchestral version of Boston with some interesting Blue Öyster Cult references here and there. The Boston link is intensified by Fran Cosmo being the lead singer and Brad Delp singing backup. And the vocal arrangements are extraordinary. But on the whole, this album promises a bit more than it delivers. The line-up, the proggy cover and band name, the listing of esoteric keyboards - this signals something more adventorous than run of the mill AOR. But it really is little more than that. Competent, efficient but slightly faceless AOR. Anyway, now you know. After Orion, I really can't think of anymore 'tron-featuring hard rock albums worth mentioning...

2006-01-29T16:14:00.000-08:00

A pointless picture, some might say. I say this is a poignant portrayal of the everyday drama of my life: Driving home from Drammen in a blizzard after having rented "Karate Kid" and gotten Chinese takeaway.

2006-01-29T16:10:00.000-08:00

Now, what to play next... some Dr. John or Rick Wakeman? Little boy Gabriel figures it out.

2006-01-29T15:18:00.000-08:00

Jeez, what a weekend. I really needed to grab some downtime now - and this is how I do it - typing... oh well. Thinking about Benjamin Gibbard. Once in a while you come across people whose work is so consistently interesting that you just have to follow them. Archer Prewitt (The Sea and Cake, solo work, comic books...) would be one, for me - never did a thing that didn't interest me on some level. Benjamin Gibbard is another - whose work I stumbled across while tracking yet another fascinating but elusive character, Rachel Haden. Rachel is one of the Haden triplets - offspring of famed bassist Charlie Haden. Rachel has what is simply the sweetest, most beautiful voice on the planet, and for years I've been tracking down records she sings on - anything from John Denver tribute records to Jimmy Eat World. So, she sings on this DNTEL record, and the music just amazed me, so I start tracking this guy down, Benjamin, that is, through The Postal Service (the duo, not the psycho killer institution) to Death Cab for Cutie. And I can never get past how talented this guy is. To me, anyway, he has the most uncanny ear for melodies - mostly modal, relatively simple stuff, but so captivating, haunting and so RIGHT - for my particular taste. And even though the songs he writes are pretty much the same regardless of what project he's in, that's just part of the charm: Seeing how his songwriting technique works in different settings - rock, electronica.

All this because we listened to "Passenger Seat" today and agreed it's the kind of song Chris Martin would've sold Gwyneth Paltrow to be able to write...

Went to the first "kjendisparty" of my life this weekend. The "kjendiser" turned out to be nice people, to my amazement. Had a good time, stayed out till dawn. And tonight we watched "King Kong" and agreed that P. Jackson is amazing, Naomi Watts is amazing and Jack Black (who, incidentally married, or will marry, can't remember which, one of Rachel Haden's sister - not Petra but the other one, me and names) is also way cool. And a good time was had by all.

Later.

2006-01-27T04:43:00.000-08:00

These are very, very busy days. I'll be back with a proper posting in the weekend. Yesterday: Finished mixing a demo for the new tune I wrote last week. Another one about driving cars. Is that the natural progression, the pull of gravity towards the black hole of rock topicality - from gnosticism and high literary references to cars, sex and the suburban sprawl... Another intellectual vampirized by rock'n'roll...

2006-01-25T02:07:00.000-08:00

Today I'm tired, 'cause I had to get up at 8.30 – which to me is hell. But, hey, I'm still writing!
I have this stat counter thingy going, so I see that to my suprise I have quite a few visitors – and from all corners of the world. Don't be shy – if you drop by, drop me a line in the commentary section – feed my vanity, soothe my ego or let me know I plain suck.

But back to business. New England. This sort of post-pomp band from Boston released an abolute gem in 1979, entitled "New England". I can't really think of many 70's tunes that are more catchy and emotionally engaging than "Don't ever wanna lose ya". It just has one of those irresistible pop-progressions that Big Star would stumble across from time to time, and lush, dense, celestial harmonies that would make Journey blush with envy. It actually was a minor hit way back when, as was "Hello, hello, hello" which has shades of ELO in it. This album was produced by none other that Paul Stanley – I guess he took a liking to the kids. Anyway, "New England" is a truly unique mixture of power pop, cosmic prog, pomp rock and crypto-new wave. I think at this point the Boston scene was bustling with activity, and there was a lot of genre crossover with bands that used to play prog or stadium rock leaning more towards new wave or art pop, and New England are right at this intersection. I guess one comparable band would be City Boy, in their later period, but New England sound bigger and more complex. Now, to get to the point: Is this hard rock? Sorta kinda. Does it have mellotron? YES! Lots, sometimes nicely mixed with string synth. Generally, the keys are what keeps this somehow prog related, they move into cosmic Eloy territory at times.

The only problem with writing about New England, is that their real mellotron epic wasn't to be found until the next album, "Explorer Suite" from 1980. This Mike Stone (Asia, Journey) produced album was really quite inferior to the debut, but the title track is a true masterpiece of pocket sized prog. It's only six and a half minute, but it packs more excitement than all four sides of "Tales from Topographic Oceans", with massive mellotron choirs, fat moog lines, some shivery mellotron flute and some neat quasi-baroque progressions. Very un-80's, for sure. But the rest of the album is pretty mediocre, and shows that maybe the guys didn't really have it in them to follow up the massive promise of the debut. Nice cover, though...

I find it interesting that we've been going through the inevitable 80's revival, and even hair metal got its props with The Darkness. But the one music that was really huge in the early 80's, competing with new wave, was stadium rock. I guess The Darkness sort of want to be a bit of that as well, but they don't have the chops or the vocal power to do it. And now that revived reality has moved on to the early nineties, I guess we'll never see young bands on MTV impersontating Steve Perry or referencing Boston or New England. What a pity – it would have been the pinnacle of post-post modern anti-hipness.

2006-01-24T03:18:00.000-08:00

Today I'm just going to be sour and critical. Although actually I'm in a perfectly good mood - but then again, that's a good time to be sour - because it won't really get to you too bad.
I saw the winners of this year's Alarmprisen (The Alarm Awards, Norwegian rock "Grammys"), and as always it makes me totally annoyed. See, the thing about Norway is that there is a seriously bizzare amount of good music here - and we're just 4 million people. I don't think many nations have more good music per capita. But you would never know from listening to the radio, reading the music mags or watching these ridiculous award shows. The good stuff is hidden, ignored, forgotten or plain shunned by the mainstream - same old story.
Like, Wobbler (whom the jury probably hadn't even heard of, talk about research) should've been awarded album of the year - even if I hadn't had anything to do with it. Rock is about excitement, strangeness, adrenaline, rebellion - well, Wobbler has more of that in one minute of music than most Norwegian "rock" bands could hope to achieve in a lifetime. That being said, I was almost a little disappointed that this year's Alarm wasn't quite as devastatingly annoying as it usually is - I rather like getting worked up about it. Like, I guess the godawful, puke-inducing Kaizer's Orchestra didn't release any albums this year - they usually take home 5 awards a show toting their stupid gas masks (like that industrial look wasn't already embarrasingly old in the late 80's).

Also, the hardcore fad of the last few years seems to have subsided - good for music, sad for my primal scream self-therapy. Anyway, here's the list of winners:

Årets Alarmpris: Sofian

Ridiculous. This dude has an OK voice, but it's the kind of thing that Norwegians don't get. Just because we have never had a remotely competent soul singer in Norway doesn't mean we have to throw ourselves at the first dude who can carry a tune and has "The Hardline" in his record collection. Grow up. He's mediocre - and the world is full of really great soul singers. Won't make it outside of Scandinavia.

Rock: Madrugada - The Deep End

Oh, how I hate this band. My wife hates them too. We're a two-man hate squad against the evil Madrugada. Norwegians love wannabe Nick Caves and wannabe Lou Reeds and wannabe Tom Waits - anything with a guttural, off key voice is ace with vikings. Well, they don't fool us. They are regurgutating every cliche in the most boring, rock-snob-politically-correct chapter of "The Rules of Rock", and they are SO pretentious and serious. Not a sliver of originality, just boring copy-cat rock.

Pop: Ane Brun - A Temporary Dive

Now, Ane, she's my girl. She's good. She can sing, she can write tunes with strange chord changes, she's an acoustic guitar hero. She's all about the music. The problem here is that Norwegians ignored her when she came on the scene - too advanced and subtle for our primal sensitivities, so no awards, no record sales, she fled to Sweden, musically advanced neighbours who recognized her talents, bought her records, at which time Norway woke up and went, well, if the Swedes think she's good, then I guess maybe she's good, even though I don't understand what she sings or why she plays that weird music but we better give her an award so she'll come back and pay her taxes here.

Metal: El Caco - The Search

Blaaah. Stoner rock is SO dead. Stoner rock was dead by the mid-90's - and that was the REVIVAL. So c'mon. And there is not a single stoner rock band that matches neither the California scene or the UK scene by even a fraction. What's the point? At least Cadillac has some groovin' tunes, but El Caco? Nope.

Hip Hop / Rap: Paperboys - When Worlds Collide

Norwegian hip hop is just a fallacy. A joke. Especially when they do it in English. Vinnie is funny, he's good at doing drugs. But his music does not belong in an awards show. And he's been around collecting them awards for too long.

Nykommer: Mira Craig

Mira actually deserved her award. More than people even understand, I think. Is she the new r'n'b-queen of Norway - a semi-hip-hop femme fatale. No, she's an auteur. She writes, records, produces and sings - in a style completely her own. I would venture to say that Mira is Norway's Kate Bush, and that we've only seen the small beginnings of where she's gonna go. Far, is where she's gonna go.

Klubb: Röyksopp - The Understanding

No argument, great band, great record. You can't fault Röyksopp, they're our most serious musical export. But don't but them in the club bin, please. Since when were they club? "Eple" is a long time ago. They're rock.

Jazz: Shining - In the Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster

Yes, good record. Not a milestone of modern music, but relatively engaging in the short term. Is it jazz, is it experimental rock? A semi-brave choice

Frimusikk/Electronica: Cloroform - Cracked Wide Open

Cloroform are always good, but since I haven't heard this record, I can't comment on it. Kaada knows his stuff.

Låt: Madrugada - The Kids Are On High Street

No, no, no!!! Turn that song off! Ban it from the radio! No more of that pretentious croon, OK? Thanks.

2006-01-23T02:22:00.001-08:00

So... hard rock with mellotron, eh? Well, I guess I have to make good on my promise... There are a few good records to mention, but I think I'll start with one of the odder ones. Zebra was one of those bands that just had the ill fortune to be a few years too late in releasing an album. Of all the melodic hard rock bands emerging out of the late 70's in the US, Zebra was definitely one of the very best - and their style was pretty unique, in its own, derivative way. They were from New Orleans - or, I guess their roots went back to Long Island, which is a bit more fitting for their style - and their debut, "Zebra", was released in 1983. Now, forget the year, and just look at the music. Gorgeous, energetic, virtuoso hard rock merging Zep swagger with pomp and a certain pop sensibility. They were a trio - echoes of Rush, but the singer, Randy Jackson, doubled on guitar and keys rather than bass and keys. Randy Jackson was the key to Zebra. His voice is like Robert Plant on amphetamine, and he's a mean guitarist - razor sharp and primal. But then there's the keys - and this is where you start thinking about the year. Analogue synths - sound like moogs or ARP's. Definitely a lot of Taurus. And tons of... mellotron! In 1983? On a hard rock album? Well, there you go - an odd one. So their sound was sort of a throwback to an almost pre-AOR melodic hard rock sound - just in the time when AOR itself was getting old-fashioned and would - a few years down the line - be replaced by hair metal and a horde of Zep clones like Kingdom Come. Zebra were the sultans of bad timing. But they were SO good. The hit, "Who's Behind the Door", is the grand symhponic epic The Zeps themselves were unable to make in their later years. Gorgeous, acoustic fingerpicking, lovely melody, and a slow build to a completely over the top climax with mellotron choirs and thundering bass pedals. Way cool. "Tell Me What You Want" was red hot pop-metal before anyone knew there was such a thing as pop-metal, and "When You Get There" was insanely catchy AND had that Bonham groove. Then there was the strange anti-love song "Take Your Fingers from My Hair", which starts as a melancholy folk-rock ballad and then mutates into hi-octane hard rock. And throughout the album, washes of mellotron, sinuous moog lines and lots of synth bass. There are some band's that SO deserved to be successful in this area of music. Zebra tops my list. New England was definitely another one. I think I'll tell you about them next.

And what happened to Randy Jackson? "American Idol", anyone?

Later.

2006-01-21T16:31:00.000-08:00

There are times when you just don't have time to think about the finer details of rock snob analysis. Today I a) shoveled tons of snow b) played with my son in the very same snow I had shoveled earlier c) worked for hours on finishing a new song d) visited my mums with wife and child and e) watched "Lords of Dogtown" which I adored - I knew I would - who can resist 70's teens skateboarding in abandoned swimmingpools?
I did think about writing about good hard rock albums with mellotron. Probably tomorrow.

2006-01-20T04:34:00.000-08:00

Ah, the 80's live on - and again I relate to a comment from Simon Reynolds - he tells me he thinks Prefab Sprout constitutes a development of Scritti Politti's deconstruction of 70's jazz-pop - or something to that effect, I don't have what he wrote handy now. Well, this is at the heart of one of my many musical obsessions - 80's UK artpop. See, it goes something like this: Scritti Politti were a bunch of marxist rock experimentalists on the 80's post-punk scene. But I guess partly because of singer Green's interest in black music, the band's sound suddenly shifted from avant-pop to highly polished, glossy and sophisticated pop - their jazz-pop was so smooth and impeccable that I bet Level 42 would have killed to be in their shoes. But it's funny to think they used to be unkempt, communal agitators. The story goes that Green and his court used to give parties in their apartment where they would play a lot of Canterbury stuff - favorites apparently included Robert Wyatt and Hatfield and the North - and that goes a long way to explaining their musical shift. The Hatfields also came out of a politically conscious, musically experimental community (70's Canterbury) but eventually opted for a (slightly) more accessible, melodic sound, mixing jazzy pop with melodic prog and eschewing Wyattesque political musings for absurdist, humorous lyrics that somehow downplayed the idea of Canterbury music as topical - The Hatfields were more music for music's sake. So that's the background. Then came Paddy McAloon and Prefab Sprout. I don't really know about any factual links between prog and Prefab, but there is no doubt that their debut, "Swoon", sounds a lot like an 80's continuation of the Canterbury sound - complex, shifting music with quirky, jazzy melodies and surreal lyrics. That song about Bobby Fischer just gets me everytime I hear it. They left the complex style of "Swoon" behind after a while and focused on shorter, more concise material, but pretty much everything they've ever done is amazing. "Steve McQueen" was the first Prefab I ever heard, a collaboration with producer Thomas Dolby where the textural explorations of the latter mix beautifully with the incredible songcraft of the former. The most stunning thing about Prefab is how they just keep being good. Their latest, "The Gunman and other Stories" is just as good as anything they've done - a concept album about love (like most of their albums, actually) using metaphors of the old West - and presented in a cinematic soundscape that meshes up their traditional jazz-pop with a Floydish, orchestral streak.

Apart from that, I got a call from our label prez, my boss - and it looks like we've got to get things moving quickly as he wants our new album out by June - we gotta learn them newie tunes - and quickly!

Signing off and saying: Later.

2006-01-18T15:07:00.000-08:00

Well, it's gonna be a girl! Anyone who knows me knows that makes me happy :-) And anyone who doesn't, doesn't care anyway. It's a 50-50 chance anyway, right? So, a little sister for Gabriel. Lucky boy.

So we were talking a bit about that transition between the 70's and the 80's, and the links between new romantics and prog and such... Now how about post-punk? Again, referring to mr. Reynolds, who has written extensively on post-punk. One of the things post-punk seems to share with prog is an interest in downplaying the blues roots of rock. Prog tried to "liberate" rock from blues and "elevate" it to Western art music - a very unworthy and misguided goal, if you ask me. But post-punk tried the same thing - getting rid of the macho, guitar heroics oriented remnants of blues rock and turning rock into something altogether more clean-cut, gender neutral and future-friendly - and also breaking with any middle-class notions of what rock is. The funny thing is, post-punk was quite successful at shedding the blues, whereas prog was not - the whole Cream/Clapton blues guitar hero as god syndrome survived in prog - as witnessed by endless Steve Howe solos and Keith Emerson's overbearing showmanship. So there's one for post-punk. Post-punk mostly had no solos at all - something that has carried forward to the "new prog" of post-rock.
And then there's that strange crossover between the infamous 80's neoprog and post-punk. Just the names imply a similar goal: Neoprog - an updated prog, bringing art rock up to date with new wave, punk, NWoBHM - neo - not the old bores but the new crew. And post-punk: Not punk, but beyond punk, putting the anti-prog revolution behind us and picking up the best of both worlds. Anyway, cases in point: Twelfth Night - angular, political prog of minimalist textures and a front-figure who was a socialist Anglican vicar with a Peter Hammil fetish. I can see Johnny Rotten almost approving of that - and I can see many post-punkers wanting to BE that. And then IQ, who in their early days had a hair-raisingly gender-bending image, somewhere between post-punk and new romantics, and played prog with a decidedly punkish attitude - but mind you, only in their early days. They soon became just another prog survivor.

Marillion and Pallas were more firmly in a safe prog mould, with the interesting twist being Pallas' NWoBHM influences, especially pre-"The Sentinel". OK, I'll stop being so obscure. Like, tomorrow.

Mr. Reynolds commented in an e-mail:

--i guess david sylvian's solo work is kinda the bridge between 80s new romantic and the more nick drake/scott walker/prog-folk-jazz-acoustic vibe--

Indeed. And without David Sylvian today's progressive scene would look very different. Two musicians whose immense influence on modern art rock I think they themselves are unaware of: David Sylvian and Mark Hollis.

Until we meet again.

2006-01-17T05:12:00.000-08:00

This is in response to a question from Simon Reynolds - and also for my own nostalgic pleasure.
Yes, there has been somewhat of a scene for progsters in Scandinavia since the early 90's. Each band followed its own trajectory. Mine started in the psychedelic folk end of the spectrum, with Nick Drake, Fairport, Joni Mitchell and The Incredible String Band as some references, early prog like K. Crimson's first, obscure stuff like Spring - and also, somewhat less obviously, the whole World Serpent axis of apocalyptic folk - Death in June and Current 93 especially. I was amazed to discover this particular world, since the fusion of folk and gnosticism was exactly what I was trying to achieve in my own way.

I had been into prog and folk-rock since my early teens. Prior to the prog conversion it was mostly new romantic/new pop that was current among my people - particularly Ultravox, Japan and also The Smiths and The Cure. So the transition to the whole pastoral/mystical world of folk/prog - mellotrons, 12-string guitars and Blake-references - was pretty smooth from the swooning romanticism of the 80's bands I listened to.

One strange thing that happened while we were preparing our first album (it was released in 1995, but the first recordings were done in 1993) was that I was exposed to the new wave of melodic death metal from the UK (My Dying Bride and Anathema in particular), in addition to having a long-standing fixation with Norwegian black metal - so those influences melted into the crucible of weirdness that became my band - White Willow. The whole prog-folk-metal-world serpent fusion reached its fullest form in Opeth, I guess, whereas White Willow developed into a more pure modern symphonic rock band - interests veered away from the folk side and more towards post rock and orchestral pop. Other bands that expressed the Scandinavian 90's prog fixation were Sweden's Änglagård and Landberk - both more puristic 70's retroists than White Willow or Opeth.

Simon talks about the gradual twist in pop-romanticism from blue-eyed nature loving optimism in the 70's to a somewhat embittered disillisionment - possibly a death-oriented romanticism in the current era. Yes, I can subscribe to that view. And when the optimism does rear its head, it's usually with the ever so slight ironic twist of the current crop of neo-psychedelic, neo-hippie acts. Jon Anderson it is not.

But hey, you have your own progressive revival in England - going on quite a few years now. Elbow, Muse, and in the margins of the mainstream, Porcupine Tree - with links back to Japan.

OK, time's up for now. Me and my wife are off to an ultrasound to figure out what's brewing inside of her - is it a boy or a girl? To be revealed shortly!

2006-01-16T10:32:00.000-08:00

jay

2006-01-16T04:20:00.000-08:00

So I used to blog. Then my life just got too busy to meta-analyze every day. Did it get too interesting to write about? Or did too much insignificant noise take up my time and energy so that in effect it got too boring to write about. Anyway. I used to blog. Then I stopped. But now I'm on the rebound. I'll write about music, mostly, since that is my life. Maybe I'll write about stuff that is my life that isn't music as well.

I've been reading a lot of Simon Reynold's stuff lately. Even though his interests gravitate towards post-punk as well as dance musics - and mine towards prog, folk-rock and west coast stuff - among other things - I find his observations so acute and liberating. For instance, he talks about the latecomer-syndrome in music criticism. This is something that concerns me too: How journalists are too lazy to be there when it happens, and instead catch up with phenomena (read artists) after the wider public has discovered them - and inevitably after the artist has burnt most of his/her significant creative juices and fresh ideas. Within a mainstram frame of reference, Reynolds mentions the hype piled upon Destiny's Child's "Survivor", which to anyone who had given "Writing's on the wall" even a cursory listen, was a pale shadow and rehash of its predecessor. I mean, how hard can it be for someone who gets paid to research and critique pop music to distinguish the relative freshness of "Writing" from the mediocrity of "Survivor". We're not talking about digging up innovative avant-rock from the recesses of the art-school underground - we're talking about paying attention to Top 40 radio...

It happens over and over again. Music journalists are becoming increasingly history-less and lazy - at least where I live. The only acts who get any attention are like 3rd and 4th generation copies of something vaguely interesting that happened years and years ago. Everything happens faster and faster in music, but the journos just seem to be getting slower and slower.

I've been listening to M83's latest lately. No, it's not innovative. In fact, it's sort of latecomer music in its own right - recycling the ethereal-melodies-struggling-against-tsunamis-of-guitar-noise philosophy of MBV's "Loveless" with the retro-synth ethos of Air and the Paris electronica meets stadium rock aestheticism of Daft Punk's "Discovery" - it's all old news, but it is done so convincingly, with such sonic prefection and obvious glee in the manipulation of emotional triggers that one can only sit back and enjoy and admire. It's almost cynically deft in its cinematic, widescreen neoromanticism - like a less naive Sigur Ros. I'd call it sublime muzak. It never comes to the foreground, never asserts itself too forcefully with anything too adventurous or jarring. But in it's paradoxically restrained pomp, it elevates any situation and environment to something slightly transcendent - try going about your life with "Before the Dawn Heals Us" on headphones and see if you agree.

I've got to pick up medicines for a son with a resistant cold.

Later.