Block Party

[peterbirks]

I wrote some Greatest Hits material yesterday (for those of you imagining that I was penning some brilliant songs for my next album that I knew, eventually, would form part of my Greatest Hits package, I fear that I must disillusion you. GH is just my paper-based zine, running for many decades, that was the precursor of blogs as we know them today -- just on a different timescale and using a different medium).

Anyway, I started an account of Eurocon 1977, "one hell of a holiday". And I thought that I had written a fair bit, and that I would go for a walk. And how much had I written? A page, that's how much. Pathetic. Back in the old days I could knock out five or six pages between coffees and whiskies. Eventually the whiskies slowed you down, ultimately to a dead stop, but when you were in the zone, say between the second and the 10th, you could type like a dervish.

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There are just too many good new albums around. No sooner have you dusted off one than three more come along. The new, as yet unplayed, Sparks album is this week's joy. Hard to believe that they have released 20 studio albums.

I kind of liked Sparks when it was unfashionable so to do - viz, in the summer of 1975, when they were seen as poppy, ethereal, gimmicky and, mainly, not Pink Floyd or Mike Oldfield. Popular music took itself far too seriously in those days.

Although I confess to a love for Sigur Ros and for Antony Hegarty, it worried me when I realized that their music has a clear lineage back to Yes. Now, Yes were, quite definitely, one of the worst bands in the history of the universe. Much though I consider "rock" bands like Megadeth 2 or GothSlice III to be irrelevancies that a bunch of harmless long-hairs can strum their air guitars to, I don't think that mega death-thrash heavy metal actually does any harm. Yes, by contrast, positively suffocated modern British pop music in the early 1970s, in the company of other overblown pomp rock wankers like Peter Gabriel, Jeff Wayne and Rick Wakeman. So it is clearly disturbing that I should like Sigur Ros, who seem to owe Yes some debt. Perhaps it's a matter of modern music being more eclectic these days (space for everyone, man) or perhaps it's that Sigur Ros are good while Yes were, well, crap.

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Seahawks gloriously busted in what I have been told was not that great a game. Which is why I never bet big on any games about which I know nothing.

Comments

So what colour are the specs?

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

I think you're bringing your punk sensibilities and tastes to your vision of the past. This really comes from your suppressed guilt at your former enthusiasm for Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Yes did many things, but suffocators of modern British pop music overdoes it. Modern British pop music in the first half of the 70's comprised Slade, T Rex, Sweet, Pilot and prototype teenybopper bands. Jeff Wayne's ELO were a bit turgid but they weren't stifling anything. Bands such as Queen and Pilot could make it.

Yes were up their own arses and no-one further up than Rick Wakeman, although it you listen to him now, he recognises it himself. But what they did, they actually did very well. I can play Fragile and Close to the Edge and enjoy them now. Steph can appreciate Starship Troopers for what it is without the pomposity.

Gabriel however is a whole different cup of fish. I'm guessing that you formed the image in 1974 of some prick who pretended to be a lawnmower and release bizarre concept albums and never listened to a thing he did again. The output of Genesis was erratic and shooting off in all directions. But from the moment Gabriel left the band, he started to produce stuff that has covered all sorts of territory from the exotic Third World Stuff of Passion and Womad to the strange and intimidating stuff on the more recent albums. Genesis were stripped of the inventiveness and although they limped on for an album or two on a good melodic direction, they ended up a bit crap because they had no inspirational spark. And they had Phil Collins, least said...

Prog rock has its place but the trouble is it got such a slagging from the punks of 76 that it's now seen as a source of ultimate evil. But it's not - it's just another musical genre with good and bad in it. That's what I find endearing about the attitude of today's youf. They grave rob the past and don't care. Steph's lot listen to bits of everything and a lot of the bands floating round are doing just the same. They don't have that closed mindset that typifies us wrinklies. If they can find virtues in Chicory Tip then good luck to them.

Re: So what colour are the specs?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm surprised to hear that Sparks are still going. I vaguely remember them as a group that popped up briefly sometime in the 1970s.

I also listen to Close to the Edge occasionally and quite like it still. Oddly, I never liked it enough to listen to any other Yes albums...

I have no punk sensibilities myself. When punk started I was in Berlin and heard nothing of it; it passed me by completely. My taste in music was formed around 1970.

-- Jonathan

Eurocons gone by

[(Anonymous)]

I remember Eurocon too, having attended three years running (1977-79). I still have the negatives and slides, carefully filed with the rest of my collection.

I must admit they're mostly just random snapshots, lacking in any photographic genius. A few of them are quite evocative.

-- Jonathan

Re: Eurocons gone by

[(Anonymous)]

P.S. If I can find the time, maybe I'll do a tie-in with Greatest Hits by putting some photos on my Web site...

-- Jonathan