So we have this plan for next year... neil and his new shed - which i have just christened Pinc Mor - or it could be the more ancient sounding Ban-dhearg Mor - the great wife of the Red? - or studio as it will be :-)
kicking off for 8 weeks sabbatical from work and boring stuff and we can see the ocean all around us and the light is beautiful friends and children join this rolling thunder revue...
and we get our band together together up in Ness - Hugh on the drums and Danny from the Baby Grand on piano, and the harmonica player, and Steven Lindsay from the Big Dish... (Neil add your own - I want Jackie Sparrow as well)
and bring out our songs and our instruments and for a couple of weeks we just play, and sing, and eat and drink and talk and fuck around... getting the set together for the tour of the hebrides...
and then we head off in some kind of charabang with "A Bharrachd!" on the front. maybe i'm going too far with this gaelic stuff, but anyway around the islands we go - all over lewis - to uig and lochs, to Harris and Uists and Barra, and Skye - playing a series of legendary gigs night after night, roll in during the day hit them in the evening and move off...
after this we spend the last 2 weeks recording the best of the music in the shed.. studio..
and then we release a record which will stand with Exile on Main Street or Music from Big Pink
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
um yeah great blog malky!! Further would be nas aide I think, a bharrachd means more which is not quite the same i think. Inner and outer hebrides yes indeed and probably one gig in ullapool
the transcendent is not more except in very especial circumstances
i'd like a big film of diving gannets projecting behind us 50 foot wide
and finally ... safe as milk, exile on main street and basement tapes - they form 3/4 of the set and thenm our own songs one quarter no particular order ... and we can call the tour forrest leaves perhaps? and can we name it also music made in houses
so
Forrest Leaves
Music Made in Houses
Tour of the Hebrides 2004
... an homage to Don van Vliet, Bob Dylan and Jagger/Richards ...
Just a wee note on safe as milk
http://www.furious.com/perfect/beefheart/safeasmilk2.html
Safe As Milk has a mixed reputation among enthusiasts for Captain Beefheart’s music. Some would agree with Langdon Winner’s claim that it is an underrated masterpiece. For others - the majority I suspect - it is a slightly superfluous early LP well down the list of necessary buys. Why this difference of opinion? There are probably several reasons to do with shifting fashion. For one thing, Safe As Milk is recognizably a portfolio album of the type common in pop music until around 1967-68, rather than an LP which appears as a cohesive work in itself.
In Safe As Milk, there is some sense of difference from popular music, but not yet distance. The standard account of Beefheart’s break with A&M Records, who had released his early singles, has it that the song "Electricity" was the breaking point: A&M were not prepared to release an album which featured that song; Beefheart would not issue an album without it. To the impasse with A&M’s judgment of commercial limits had to be added a struggle within the band concerning limits. The Magic Band did not want to play Beefheart’s songs. Guitarist Doug Moon wanted to stay within the blues repertoire which can be heard on the early singles and the known concert recording from the Avalon Ballroom (much of which will appear on the forthcoming Revenant box set). Beefheart said that this had forced him into a strategem to legitimize his songs, by establishing a temporary writing partnership with a professional songwriter, Herb Bermann. At the same time, Beefheart was placing reciprocal pressure on Moon concerning the new possibilities in guitar playing which excited him when they first saw Ry Cooder playing in the Rising Sons. This was the sound which he wanted to bring into the Magic Band, and Safe As Milk represents the point at which Moon was ousted and Cooder was brought in for the LP sessions.
So Safe As Milk is the sedimentation of a process through which a distinctive sound was being born. Each instrument was beginning to operate in its own space. In the mono mix which I first heard as much as in the dubious stereo mix, there is a different musical space which is seldom found elsewhere. This is despite the sonic quality of the final recording, regretted by all those involved: when Richard Perry was drafted in as producer midway through work on the LP, his first action was to have the original 8 track session tapes transferred to the then more familiar 4 track tapes, degrading the sound quality. Over the next few years, this instrumental mix would be held together by the contributions of the other significant change to the band, the addition of John French on drums. French’s contribution was immediately important, especially the "African" drum part for "Abba Zabba", but would become more so over the next couple of years as he diligently adopted the role of musical director in bringing Beefheart’s most adventurous music to fruition. In Spring 1967, then, Safe As Milk was recorded with a Magic Band nucleus of Alx St. Claire (guitar), Jerry Handley (bass) and John French (drums), augmented by various musicians, notably Ry Cooder (guitar and bass) and Russ Titelman (guitar).
Post a Comment