WHAT A TEMPER!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

A YEAR TO THE DAY

The first half of Saturday was spent ripping old cedar siding off a small section on the front of the house. Before I can reside with new material, I've got to rebuild an entire deck. Ah, the summer renovation season has arrived! No messed up shoulder to save me from the agony. The second half of the day was spent printing up the latest linoleum block print, getting only half of the 9 colors done this evening, with the second half completed the following day. Since it is a large print and it is all done by hand, I did not finish until shortly before midnight. I debated whether or not to do a concert, but the music won out and I popped the CD into the portable player shortly after midnight. Clouded sky with a very light drizzle coming and going for the next 2 hours.

A year to the day. I picked the May 9, 2008 Van Halen show at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ. Great quality recording, the band and Diamond Dave's voice coming through loud and clear. One of the better shows from the 2007/2008 tour I've listened to so far. Eddie's playing was superb, getting the sense that he was really enjoying himself and not just going through the motions. I would have to agree with Dave when he said that it must be something in the water because he was very animated throughout the show, ad libbing during many of the songs and constantly running at the mouth during the quiet moments in between. Overall a very good show, classic Van Halen that had a feel like the old days. You can tell that on this night the boys were really into it.

Concert over and in bed by 2:30AM. The phone rang at 7AM the following morning and I decided to get up and begin the day, a dull headache persisting most of the day.

This is an excerpt from Jay Lustig/Star-Ledger Staff's May 12th review:

As David Lee Roth said at one point during Van Halen's Friday night concert at Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall, "Better late than never."

The show was originally scheduled for March 28, but was postponed when guitarist Eddie Van Halen had to undergo medical tests. Eddie's illness has not been disclosed. But he looked exceptionally fit on Friday, played with dazzling speed and fluidity, and generally seemed to be having the time of his life.

Not bad for a 53-year-old who not only had a serious medical issue in March, but who has also, in the past, had tongue and mouth cancer and hip-replacement surgery, and battled a drug-and-alcohol addiction.

Roth, also 53, seemed just as delighted as Eddie to be onstage, and in just as remarkable physical shape. The two seemed like something out of a health-club commercial, in fact, and, though their past feuds have been legendary, they came off like the best of friends, grinning widely at each other throughout the night, and exchanging high fives and hugs.

Roth's singing, though, was barely adequate -- characterless bellowing that contrasted sharply with Eddie's stunning riffs. While Eddie could reproduce his classic guitar parts live, and even add new enhancements, Roth sang with just a fraction of his old power.

Roth's goofy stage persona did, though, add a theatrical element to the show that was missing in the Hagar days. But with Alex Van Halen (Eddie's brother) drumming up a storm, and Eddie's 17-year-old son Wolfgang playing a solid bass and teaming up with Eddie on high backing vocals, Roth's singing was clearly the weak musical link.

Amped up lead guitar

Nothing subtle 'bout Eddie

Smacks you in the head

It's all about Dave

Narcissus tells the mirror

"Check it out baby!"

Speakers rip the air

Gets the crowd up on their feet

Feeling so damn good

Eddie don't say much

Fingers do all his talking

Just the way we want

Download it here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/127215512/Van_Halen_-_Atlantic_City__NJ_09.05.2008.part1.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/127218421/Van_Halen_-_Atlantic_City__NJ_09.05.2008.part2.rar

Saturday, May 9, 2009

THE KILLING MOON

I'm reading my way through the Chris Adams book Turquoise Days, The Weird World of Echo & The Bunnymen, the story behind the band. It just so happened that I reached that point in the book where the events of 1985 were discussed, specifically the June 21 show at the Glastonbury Festival. This was a year after they had released Ocean Rain, took an extended period of time off but then went on a tour through Scandinavia for the purpose of getting back into the mode of writing new songs.

I had a copy of the Glastonbury performance so it was natural that I would pull it out this evening to "experience" what I had been reading about. It was raining during their performance in 1985 and coincidentally it had just stopped raining during this chilly evening here at home, contributing to the experience of "being there" before the stage.

An excellent recording, both the quality of the recording and their onstage performance. That's what I was waiting for all week and I was in no way disappointed.

This is a review of the show clipped from Chris Adams book:

The Bunnymen are made for cold wind and rainy occasions. Moreover, this being their only major show of the year, they needed to be good. Instead they were magnificent, and transformed a major disaster into celebration. McCulloch shook the audience by the hip and bit the nose off any moaner with a vocal performance to match with classic Echo. The band ripped apart golden oldies like the Rolling Stones "Paint It Black", Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" (sung with a perfect Jagger drawl), The Cramp's "Garbage Man," James Brown's "Sex Machine," and The Doors "Soul Kitchen" and made them sound better than the originals. It was pitch black and pouring rain when they left the stage at 9p.m., but Noah could have been building his Ark for all the crowd cared. No one would have bothered to get on. -No. 1, 1985

Tie to the present
Catapult fires when cord's cut
Launched into the past

What's old is now new
Reality's edge is blurred
Steps into the past

Pages in a book
A story set to music
The decades erased

Cuts down to the bone
Music exposes the heart
Knife within their hand

A dreamy landscape
Closed eyes see in the darkness
Sound paints bright pictures

Locked in their embrace
Burning up the spotlit stage
There between his ears

Blocks out the whole world
Focused on the one moment
Hears only music

Volume turned to high
His headphone reality
Feels only the sound

Path to salvation
Snow to sand between his toes
He's found his lost way

Grasping trucks bumper
The tequila wearing off
Falling back to Earth

Landed back on Earth
Journey can't last forever
Alien comes home

Download it here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=661TIBR4

This past week I was searching around on the web when I came across other people's performance of EATB's The Killing Moon. What I did here was assemble a bunch of those renditions, starting off with the original, followed by the performance of others of varying quality. It is a beautiful song and one of my favorites.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

ZIGGY INSPIRES MAC

I've begun reading Turquoise Days:The Weird World of Echo & the Bunnymen by Chris Adams. Both this book and in interviews, Ian "Mac" McCulloch talks about the profound influence David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust LP had on him as a young boy.

"It just changed my life completely. I'd never really liked music up 'til then except for the odd thing like "The Wonder of You" by Elvis Presley. But now it became an obsession. I used to stare at pictures of Bowie and wonder how anyone could look so good. I used to listen to the Ziggy Stardust LP every night. "Five Years" was my favorite track, and I also liked "Lady Stardust" ... I never wanted to share it with anyone. I wanted to be the only Bowie fan in the world. When I was 13 I tried to be him, in spirit." -Ian McCulloch

"Bowie separated me from me parents, me brother and sister and me friends at school. I was in a different world. It was the most incredible feeling that I've ever felt in me life. I'd be walking down the street and I'd have these split-second things, almost like astral projection, like "seeing the light", where I'd want to hold the moment. I've been in love - and its not the same as that. I know I'll never feel like that again." -Ian McCulloch

I've always liked David Bowie myself, at least until about 2004 when I experienced a major shift in my taste in music, dropping all interest in "classic rock" (with the exception of Van Halen!). Now that I've embarked on this new interest in the Bunnymen, I was curious as to what it was that influenced Ian McCulloch to write such beautiful lyrics. It was time to investigate.

The first half of the night was spent listening to Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, released on June 6, 1972. This album reached number five in the UK and number seventy-five in the US. It is often cited as being one of the top ranked albums of all time. Some really good music and a joy to listen to this evening.

R. Stigwood of Phonograph Record Magazine writes (July 1972):

Goddamit, if I hear one more sucker, anywhere, come off with a line 'bout any record being "The Best Album of 1972"; I pity the fool. Cuz, whoever has the balls, the gumption to label any among the myriad of releases this world's been deluged with these past three years as "The Best of" should be thumbstrung and have his flesh scrapped off, ever so slowly, with Black and Decker abrasive paper. Indeed eyes will be popped, foreheads will be cropped and appendages will be stretched beyond the point where they normally stop while the body of the offender lies prone amid 23 gallons of Miller's Lye if any dare breathes, even unintentionally, that one specific recording is "The Best Of.."

As for this here David Bowie LP. "THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS": ITS THE BEST ALBUM OF 1972. (With that I await my punishment ambitiously, "long as I know I face it in God's company (we're not alone, are we David?).

Circus Magazine wrote (July 1972):

David's latest exclamation comes in the form of this portrait-in-song of the ultimate rock and roll star. Ziggy is an otherworldly figure who can really sing and "lick em by smiling". With the lyrical expertise he has demonstrated in Hunky Dory and earlier albums, Bowie dispassionately chronicles Ziggy's upward course, his reign at the top, and his inevitable decline. From start to finish this is an LP of dazzling intensity and mad design. Bowie is achieving with words the sort of effect which groups like Pink Floyd are attempting with instruments and volume. At times one is almost mesmerizes by the tumble of images and the sheer force of Bowie's performance. A stunning work of genius. Not your everyday sort of album, but an album for every day - at least until the End.

Hearing the same words

So many decades apart

Life lines intersect

Bowie set me up for listening to the second studio album of the night, Echo & The Bunnymen's Crocodiles, their dark and moody debut album released on July 18, 1980. The copy I had was the remastered UK version, reissued on CD in 2003 containing ten bonus tracks —the release were marketed as 25th anniversary edition. A solid album from start to end with no mediocre fillers.

From Wikipedia:

Writing for NME in 1980 Chis Salewicz described the album as "being probably the best album this year by a British band". Reviewing the album in 1981 for Rolling Stone magazine, David Fricke awarded it four out of five stars and said when describing McCulloch's vocals, "[He] specializes in a sort of apocalyptic brooding, combining Jim Morriosn-style psychosexual yells, a flair for David Bowie-like vocal inflections and the nihilistic bark of his punk peers into a disturbing portrait of the singer as a young neurotic." He went on to say, "Behind him, gripping music swells into Doors-style dirges ('Pictures on My Wall'), PiL-like guitar dynamics ('Monkeys'), spookily evocative pop ('Rescue') and Yardbirds-cum-Elevators ravers jacked up in the New Wave manner ('Do It Clean,' 'Crocodiles')". Reviewing the 2003 remastered version for American music magazine Blender's website, reviewer Andrew Harrison also gave the album four out of five stars and said, "[...] the Bunnymen were a pure nihilistic thrill, with Will Sergeant’s desperate, mantra-like guitar summoning up a primal night of blinking hallucinations.

Decades out of step
They all mourn their hero's death
My journey's just begun

Delayed inception
Late sonic transformation
Years gone down the drain

Eyes on the heavens
We are galaxies apart
Seeks the home planet

Note sent by the heart
Wishing that the world would stay
Just the way it is

Music's the rescue
Instrument of distraction
From reality

Out of the shadows
Fateful nights transformation
A rock'n roll star

Lured by their poems
Darkness reaches for the heart
Give it willingly

Our time is over
Musics just a memory
Ringing in his ears

Dawns new beginning

Dropped from his perch in the sky

Into glaring light

Sunday, April 26, 2009

ONE SPELL IS BROKEN, ANOTHER IS CAST

Surprisingly, no Van Halen this weekend. More proof that the year of Van Halen may be over.

Watched my son complete his testing and acquire his 1st degree black belt. At home I spent much of the day performing the mind numbing task of carving the last block of a print I'm working on. I was not planning on doing the music thing, but by 11PM boredom set in and I caved. I grabbed a glass of tequila and watched the DVD that comes along with The Very Best Of Echo & The Bunnymen, More Songs To Learn and Sing. I would have loved to smoke a cigar but doing so inside the house would result in my execution. Fortunately everyone was still awake and they did not mind my cranking the volume.

This CD and DVD expanded, remastered reworking of the classic 1985 hits retrospective features 20 career-spanning tracks that chart the band's evolution from 1980's Crocodile to 2005's Siberia. The DVD gathers eight videos from 1983-1999, many directed by acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbjin.