Favourite Albums of 2011 #7: "1000 Years of Popular Music"

Richard Thompson
1000 Years of Popular Music [live] [2006]

This is the one where Richard Thompson plays a selection of popular tunes from the last thousand years (somewhat biased towards the music of the 20th century). To the extent that this project is famous outside the circles of obsessive Richard Thompson fans, it may be because it features the beret-wearing troubadour singing the Britney Spears classic 'Oops, I did it again'. With that song he foregrounds the creepy manipulation of the lyrics, making it sound like one of his own cynical and miserable love songs. And being sung by an old cynic you do get a sense of how disturbing these lines are when sung by a supposedly naïve teenage girl. The other standout track here is probably 'Bonnie St. Johnstone', a grim folk tune with lyrics about lonely childbirth and infanticide, or the jaunty 'So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo', which is in some kind of mediaeval French and so could be about anything.

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Richard Thompson live – a short review of a concert from last year

I went to see Richard Thompson playing solo in Vicar Street, along with a load of others who were mostly older than me. Result. The support act was a local singer songwriter who was not very good, for all that the audience generally seemed to like her. Fail. Mr Thompson played tunes from his own solo career and one Fairport Convention song written by his former bandmate, the late Sandy Denny. I am relatively unfamiliar with his solo output, but I recognised a few tracks from when I first saw the bearded and bereted sensation some years back, including the wonderful motorbike death tune '1952 Vincent Black Lightning', a track that had me thinking that he should really have thrown one of the similarly themed Shangri-Las songs onto his 1000 Years of Popular Music covers album.

I wrote another, far longer piece about this concert, but I don't think it contained any information not in the above, apart from the quip that I once thought that Fairport Convention had a song called 'Meat On The Ledge', which dealth with the importance of food hygiene.

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2011 Favourite Albums

I have been thinking about what were my favourite new to me records of 2011. And the following are the ones I came up with. A fuller write-up of these will appear soon in the pages of Frank's APA and ultimately on Inuit Panda. Where possible I have linked back to my original reviews of these records.

Jane Weaver
The Fallen By Watch Bird [2010]

My favourite record is this piece of somewhat psychey neo-folk from Jane Weaver, Bird Records supremo. If strange folky sounds are your thing then check this out.

Bo Hansson
Lord of the Rings [1970]

Mr Hansson wrote his own musical accompaniment to the Tolkien-classic back in the past. He seems a bit more interested in the dark and sinister aspects of the great book.

The Flaming Lips
Embryonic [2009]

Some say that the Flaming Lips have become dull and mainstream. They may not have listened to this.

Broadcast & The Focus Group
Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age [2009]

Spooky electronic music from this interesting collaboration, lent a certain poignancy by the recent death of Trish Keenan of Broadcast.

Dean & Britta
13 Most Beautiful: Songs For Andy Warhol's Screen Tests [2010]

A series of tunes recorded to accompany showings of Andy Warhol screen tests, some covers and some original. Sonic Boom has some production input and it does all end up sounding a bit neo-shoe gaze, but in a good way.

Tom Tom Club
[Untitled First Album] [1982]

Funky side project band from Talking Heads rhythm section, together with input from their friends and relations. Impossible not to like.

Richard Thompson
1000 Years of Popular Music [live] [2006]

Mr Thompson and his two lady friends perform tunes from the last thousand years, including quite a few pop tunes of the last 100 years. Given that this is Richard Thompson we are talking about, most of these songs are a bit sadface.

Black Mountain Transmitter
Black Goat of the Woods [2009]

This seems to be an Irish-made record, so I am for once doing my bit for Team Ireland. It is like a soundtrack to a low budget 1980s horror film, and all sounds vaguely Lovecraftian. Iä! Iä!

Magnet & Paul Giovanni
The Wicker Man OST [1973]

A collection of original neo folkie tunes and creepy instrumental pieces from the film that made people think twice about trips to isolated Scottish islands.

v/a nlgbbbblth CD 11.14: Níl sé anseo [CD-R]

Mr Nlgbbbblth's offering is a rare example of a CD-R that deserves a commercial release, painting as it does a picture of Ireland in the late 1970s and early 1980s from musical pieces, TV jingles, snippets of news programmes, and so on. Also features priests.

v/a Rajasthani Street Music [CD-R]

This is a version of something due to appear on Sublime Frequencies at some stage. It is a selection of pieces recorded by Mr Seb Bassleer on a trip to India and is delightful to the ear.

Ween
Thom's Ween TOAD [CD-R]

This CD-R from my old friend and quaffing partner Thom has been my introduction to the music of Ween – and I like it.


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Short Notes On Records I Really Should Review Properly Some Time But Probably Won't

Magnet The Wicker Man OST

Faux folk music from the film adaptation of The Golden Bough. 'Gently Johnny', 'Maypole', 'The Landlord's Daughter' – the gang's all here, together with some pieces of incidental music and some quite unnerving sections of dialogue from the film.

Richard Thompson 1000 Years of Popular Music

This is the live double CD version of Richard Thompson's trek through a millennium of music. The two standout tracks for me are 'Bonnie St. Johnstone' (a grim song about child infanticide and damnation that does not appear on the studio version) and the celebrated cover of 'Ooops!... I Did It Again' which manages to sound like so cynical a love song that it amazing to think that he did not write it himself.

The opening track on this is 'Summer is icumen in', which also features on the Wicker Man soundtrack. Richard Thompson seems not to have concluded his version with an onstage human sacrifice.

Franco et le TPOK JazzFrancophonic Vol.2

Franco: the late guitar-playing sensation from what was then Zaire. He comes from the jangly guitar school of Congolese guitar players and likes playing very long tunes. It is impossible not to feel like dancing with a big stupid smile on your face while listening to this music.

v/a Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga

What can I add to accounts of this already much reviewed album of funk music from Bollywood films? Maybe it would be best if I didn't bother.

v/a Indietracks Compilation 2011

I don't expect it to be very good and indeed have not even listened to it yet. I bought it to give money to the Midlands Railway Centre, your honour.

Vangelis Antarctica

Liking Mr Gelis' soundtrack to Missing I thought buying this would be a good idea. Big mistake. A cursory first listen suggests that it is cheesy rather than ominous.

v/a Freedom Rhythm and Sound: Revolutionary Jazz & The Civil Rights Movement 1963-82

A great many people already have this Soul Jazz compilation of jazz music relating to the struggle for Black Freedom in the United States of America.

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A Trip Through London – Part 1

Hello readers. It is your pal Ian again. I recently went to London for the weekend. Now I will tell you about some things I saw there.

On a Saturday afternoon we made our way to the Royal Festival Hall in the South Bank Centre to see Richard Thompson do his One Thousand Years of Popular Music show as part of the Meltdown Festival. This had been our consolation prize for not making it to the sold-out concert he was doing with Loudon Wainwright that evening. In retrospect, though, I think we must have won, as it is hard to think of anything that could have topped this. The format of the concert allows Thompson (and his two lady companions) to play a fascinating range of tunes from the European musical past, then with a couple of interesting interpretations of numbers from more recent decades.

There were two highlights for me. Firstly, what Thompson introduced as a "bad mother" tune, a Scottish ditty called 'Bonnie St. Johnston', about a woman giving birth in the woods and then killing her children. In structure, it was like grim Irish traditional tune 'The well below the valley', but it differs in offering no explanation whatsoever for why the woman is killing her progeny; the listeners draw their own conclusions. The other highlight was Thompson's folk-rock version of Britney Spears' Max Martin composed classic 'Ooops, I did it again'. It bops along amazingly, reminding me of how I could really do with a Britney best-of compilation in my life but cannot really face buying a record with Britney in her underwear on the cover.

Thompson asserts that 'Ooops' is musically similar to Italian renaissance dance music. To ram the point home, his version breaks in the middle and is then performed in just such a style. It was all very forsooth.

Later that afternoon we nipped out to Spitalfields where, in the market venue, there was a variety of funny musical stuff going on. We would have stayed for a free concert of music by that Greek musician (Zemackis? Zenakis? I am not great with names), but the pie shop was closed and we had to go elsewhere in search of sustenance.

EDIT: My glamourous assisant asserts that the Greek composer was none other than Iannis Xenakis.