The anger and poetry of Gil Scott-Heron

08:30am 09 Feb 2010 24 comments

The first I was really aware of Gil Scott-Heron - and I mean really aware - was hearing Paul Ubana Jones perform an a cappella take on Home Is Where the Hatred Is. (Here's the Gil Scott-Heron original.)

I had heard of Gil Scott-Heron; I knew this famous piece. But hearing Jones speak and sing the words...well, that really made me take notice.

The compilation album Evolution and Flashback: The Very Best of Gil Scott-Heron was one of the most important/influential/amazing albums to come into my collection. I picked it up at Fisheye Discs - the place you could always go to find something like that (pity not enough people had the same idea; maybe they would still be there).

And I followed up that purchase with a copy of the book, Now and Then: The Poems of Gil Scott-Heron - it's one of the very few books on my shelf that I have read and re-read; several slithers of paper bookmarking favourites...favourites such as:

Paint It Black:

Rock 'n' roll badges

09:10am 09 Feb 2010 31 comments

A badge is a device or accoutrement which is presented or displayed to indicate some feat of service, a special accomplishment, a symbol of authority granted by taking an oath (e.g. police and fire), a sign of legitimate employment or student status, or as a simple means of identification. They are also used in advertising, publicity, and for branding purposes.

Yes, that definition comes from The Online Oracle - so don't question it.

Badges...that's the topic for discussion today - specifically music badges.

So let's go back in time to start with...

It's 1987 - and my favourite band in the world (for a few months, anyway) is Def Leppard. I buy the cassette tape of Hysteria and I receive a free badge! It was metal, and triangular, in reference to the album cover. And I loved it - possibly as much as I loved the album. It had pride of place on my pencil case. I used a black felt pen to write band names all over the pencil case and then I had the Def Leppard Hysteria badge in the top left corner, just below the zip.

The new Massive Attack album...

08:45am 08 Feb 2010 29 comments

...is lame. It's the biggest disappointment this year so far - I know we haven't got too far; there haven't been a lot of huge releases yet in 2010. But a new album by Massive Attack should mean something. Something beyond the final curtain.

This album is remarkable only in the fact that it is the equivalent of Robert Del Naja somehow managing to hammer the final nail into his coffin while he's inside it.

That is the extent of his talent this time round.

Recently someone sent me a message about the upcoming Massive Attack show, asking if I was excited. I replied that I was, then I checked my calendar and realised it was not 1998. That is when I would have been interested to see Massive Attack.

The joys of Yo La Tengo

03:55pm 05 Feb 2010 22 comments

It's Spanish for "I've got it!" Apparently.

Yo La Tengo will play Auckland this Monday, February 8, and Wellington the following night, Tuesday, February 9. See here for details.

I can't say I've followed the band for their whole career - they started in 1984.

But I have been a fan since 1997 - the year the band released I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One. It's still one of my favourites - along with 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out.

The worst guitar solo in the world

09:00am 05 Feb 2010 102 comments

Late last year I asked you all to name ONE guitar solo that you placed above others. We got a pretty good list happening (even if most of you couldn't quite limit yourselves to just one selection).

I know Friday tends to be the easy-going, form-a-list sort of day. But after posting this yesterday (about Will Hodgkinson's book Guitar Man) I heard a snatch of the Tina Turner song Private Dancer. And that triggered a fairly recent memory...so, stick with me...

The song Private Dancer, as many of you will know, was written by Mark Knopfler - and when I interviewed him last year he told me the song was ruined due to "them drafting in Jeff Beck to play the world's second ugliest guitar solo".

I didn't include that bit in the finished piece but I liked the line. I assumed that there was probably some sour grapes from Knopfler there; he had missed out on playing on that track but most of Dire Straits worked on the Turner album.