On the Juke-Box Today

Splendid!

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Yes - that was a bit OTT. Mind you, wasn’t that the tour with full orchestra and choir? Not quite so excessive if you’re talking about 100+ players. Knowing first hand how commercial airlines can treat musicians and their instruments, I don’t blame them for making their own arrangements.

A big part of the problem in the 70s was primitive technology. Synths were not generally programmable, most could only produce one note at a time - hence the huge banks of keyboards that became the hallmark of prog excess, though it was actually born of necessity. In those pre-MIDI days, keeping them in tune and in sync was a nightmare, if it could be done at all. If parts became complicated, extra musicians had to be drafted in because one player simply couldn’t manage to play even the simplest chord if each note had to be played on a separate keyboard. A case in point, from 1979:

Shame about the shite vision mix - it was being filmed for TV, but the plans were shelved and the master tapes wiped for reuse. All that survived was a rough vision mix done on the fly on the night. Half the time it’s spotlighting the wrong player. Still, at least the sound is pretty good.

These days, of course, all that could be managed by a single player with one or two MIDI controller keyboards and a laptop. With so much being synced and sequenced automatically, though, you lose a lot of the live feel, IMO.

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Tangerine Dream live at Shepherd’s Bush were
 more live than I’d expected, actually. They did a fair bit of actual playing as well as just pressing the button and letting it go.

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Because I’m in that sort of mood, here’s the unofficial barbecue anthem. No goats were harmed in the making of this video.

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Love it!

If we’re in a party mood, anyone feel like hitting the dance floor?

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Is there a single word for nostalgic paranoia?

Can’t help brain subsituting ‘Glom of nit’ into the relevant line.

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Wow.

It’s been a long while since I heard that 
 & saw the video. It’s superbly crafted, but almost disturbing to watch. Certainly uncomfortable. But fascinating too.

I checked Google to confirm my memory that she was Mrs. Lou Reed and I was right but on checking saw just how much she had done and was far, far more than just “Mrs. Somebody”.

Thank you Gus.

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Youse lot are all snoring in yer scratchers, no doubt. Lightweights*.
Anyway, you can thank me later for this jukebox gem


*Which reminds me, something I need to discuss with that FIsh, but anyway, at some stage I must write The Lightweights’ Dirge. Don’t tell me someone already did but it is such an open goal they might have done. Bstarts.

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I like Tom Waits a bit, but I haven’t listened to him enough to like him a lot.

But the title immediately makes me think of

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Oh, let’s all cut our throats


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That track is sponsored by Sparrer’s Bruvver’s Sharp Fings inna Hurry, for when you don’t want to think things over.

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Well, close


The perfect TA soundtrack


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Leonard Cohen’s ‘Closing Time’ is rather cheery. This one is proper-job ‘slit yer throat’ Cohen, too gloomy even for this Leonard fan.

Leaving the Table

(How come my link doesn’t show the Youtube picture?)

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Maybe you’re only allowed one picture per post?

If you will go for things from the album You Want It Darker you can’t expect cheerful


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(I have gone away and started to binge on Françoise Hardy as a reaction.)

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Well, I wasn’t expecting cheery, that’s for sure! Mr Janie sent me a link to it and I thought: my goodness, even for Leonard 
 but then, under the circs, he was dying at the time 
 Leonard, that is, not Mr Janie I am thankful to say.

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Good, innit.

Ah, in the dim and distant eighties, a number of us were slumped round the kitchen table, drink having been taken in some quantity, listening to LC . ‘Uncle Charles’, who had been indulging in his usual Sunday night shirt-ironing frenzy as responsible young lawyers are wont to do, came down, surveyed the wreckage and in total silence, went to the knife block and handed each of us one before departing with his little spritzy bottle of water, no doubt to soak a rebellious collar into submission.
So we played it through again, turning it up when antipodean curses obtruded from upstairs.

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Excellent stuff.

On the “totally depressing” mode I would default to the songs of Dory Previn. My fave being “Beware of Young Girls” which she wrote to expose the betrayal of her by husband AndrĂ© and Mia Farrow.

I can’t find an available YouTube of it but found this rather odd delivery. It is far less pessimistic that la Preview’s version but tells the fuller story.

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Now, be warned, this is a Christmas carol.

But it’s male voice a cappella, for which I have a particular fondness.

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I have a soft spot for DP, Armers, although I can’t quite work out why.

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