Galactic Vinyl Memories # 8

 Just back from a jaunt to Sweden for the Gothenburg Book Fair, where I was looked after very well by both the fair and my friends from SF Bokhandlen, where I also stopped off in Stockholm to do a joint event with Peter Hamilton. Old pals Paul McAuley and Ken MacLeod also joined us in Gothenburg for many panels and discussion events, and a great time was had by all.

Here's Ken up on the impressive space-themed stage being interviewed by Glenn Petersen of the SF Bokhandeln. It was lovely to see Ken:

While in Stockholm I took an hour or so to visit to the ABBA museum:

Which I thoroughly enjoyed. I've got a few more pics but I'll save them for another post.

Back to my vinyl connections theme. I mentioned Weather Report last time, so now let's jump to Genesis and their 1977 double live album, Seconds Out:

I bought this in 1983. It was the second Genesis live album: there'd been one earlier one during the Peter Gabriel years, but this was the first double-live record. It's one of my favorites because it captures Genesis at an interesting point, between the departure of Gabriel and before the first of the mega hits. Unless you're a fan of the band, there won't be any hugely familiar tracks on this album except for the minor chart entry "I know what I like". Phil Collins had become the main singer by 1977 and so Chester Thompson (Weather Report, Frank Zappa) was brought in to play drums when the band were on the road. Chester Thompson was a great fit for the band and continued to play with them until at least the last time I saw Genesis, in 2007.

Despite already being considered obsolete prog-rock dinosaurs by this point, the core members of Genesis were no older than 27 when they made this record! Times have changed.

The opening song is Squonk, off their 1976 album "A Trick of the Tail".

I can only think of one other song that references the word "Squonk" and that is "Any Major Dude" by Steely Dan, which appeared on Pretzel Logic, already mentioned a few posts ago. 

How's that for circularity?

According to Wikipedia: "The squonk is a mythical creature that is reputed to live in the hemlock forests of northern Pennsylvania in the United States."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squonk

Both songs reference the tears of the Squonk.

Speaking of tears, it's now less than a week until my Cardiff Half-marathon run in aid of Alzheimer's UK. I've had many generous donations, but if you haven't donated yet and might want to, hop on over to my justgiving page. Every amount makes a difference, and will motivate me on the day come what may.

https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-reynolds-1713971449990

Ta,

Al

Galactic Vinyl Memories #7

 It's a short detour from Joni Mitchell to Weather Report, thanks to WR's Jaco Pastorius providing bass on Hejira! 

I bought this 1979 double live album (entitled 8:30) in 1985. Not sure why. I'd seen a TV documentary about Weather Report (the South Bank Show, 1984) and thought they might be up my street, but I was a bit confounded by the music when I actually listened to it properly. I'd obviously heard a bit of their music on the doco and knew it was "jazz/fusion" (whatever that is) but I think I was expecting something a bit more proggy/keyboardy than what I actually got. As weird as it sounds now, in those days it was normal to take a punt on a record even when you had no more than a vague idea of what it might sound like, or even just because you liked the artwork or the band name or song titles. There was no world-wide web and no reliable way of checking out records beforehand. (As an aside, when I moved to the Netherlands, I found out that many Dutch record shops still had listening booths where you could check out a CD prior to purchase but I don't remember this being an option in the UK, at least not with vinyl). I bought a ton of records this way and was rarely disappointed!

Despite my initial reservations, I did end up quite enjoying this record, and eventually acquired a few more Weather Report albums, although this remains my only vinyl purchase. It's in superb condition and still plays perfectly. I particularly like "A Remark You Made", which is a Zawinul composition, which is a really beautiful, slow, evocative jazz piece. The cover on this record is a gorgeous piece of artwork.

Hmm... where do we go from here? Well, a certain Chester Thompson played drums in Weather Report so perhaps there's a clue that we may be drifting back into the arena of prog.

Hope you're enjoying these posts, and please check out my fundraising page for the Cardiff Half-Marathon, in just over a week:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-reynolds-1713971449990

Galactic Vinyl Memories #6

 Keeping with the monochrome theme (why not), here's Joni Mitchell's magnificent 1976 album Hejira. This is a little different than the preceding records, in that my vinyl copy is a recent pressing. I only came to Joni Mitchell late in my listening, by way of budget box-set of her albums through the late 60s to the late 70s. Prior to that, I'd not given her a lot a of time, being only familiar with the big, early hits, which I could take or leave. Then, I heard a live recording of one of her tracks on the radio, and it blew me away. I can't even say what that song was now: it might have been "Help me", "Free Man in Paris" or possibly "Coyote", the opening track on Hejira. It doesn't matter, it was just the key that unlocked her music for me and turned me into an avid fan. I've now got a few of her records on vinyl, purely because, why not?

Mitchell had a run of amazing records from 1974 to 1976, beginning with Court and Spark, continuing with The Hissing of Summer Lawns, and ending with Hejira. Larry Carlton's jazzy playing is all over this trio, none more so than on Hejira which is PHENOMENAL. It's such a modern-sounding record that it's hard to grasp that it'll soon be 50 years old. I think my favorite song on it is probably the nearly 9-minute long "Song for Sharon" with its haunting, repeating bassline. Needless to say, the lyrics are the stuff of poetry and the playing and singing throughout the record is outstanding. How wonderful that Joni Mitchell is still performing now!

Here's a link to my Cardiff Half-marathon fundraiser for Alzheimer's UK:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-reynolds-1713971449990

Galactic Vinyl Memories #5

 With a certain inevitability we come to Steely Dan itself, via their 1974 third album, Pretzel Logic:

It's a monochrome album cover, so I went with a monochrome shot. There's nothing about this record I don't love. I bought it in Bridgend over Christmas 1985, along with The Royal Scam and The Nightfly. My journey down the Steely Dan rabbit hole had begun a few months earlier, when I bought a double cassette of their first album, Can't Buy a Thrill (1972), paired with their sixth, Aja (1977). It's a really weird pairing that ought not to work - the two records really don't sound that much alike - but perhaps it was that odd juxtaposition that worked for me. CBAT has a couple of familiar hits on it, but while the playing is great and the lyrics super-cynical, it's closer to a laid-back Eagles or Doobie Brothers kind of sound than the ice-cool jazz-rock of their late-70s records such as Aja. Pretzel Logic is somewhere in the middle, with the jazz stuff starting to peak through but not yet becoming the dominant sound. The title track is a monumental slow blues that might be about time travel (or something). Most SD albums had a nod to science fiction somewhere or other - Fagen & Becker were big SF-heads.

I love all their 70s records unreservedly. I think I skew a little bit toward liking the later albums - Royal Scam, Aja and Gaucho - very slightly more than their predecessors (it might have something to do with Larry Carlton's quicksilver guitar work figuring on those later records) but I would never want to be without any of the records. Through thick and thin, through deviations into prog, punk, post-punk, goth, grunge, metal and just about any sub-genre of rock you care to name, I've never stopped loving Steely Dan. You either got them or you didn't. The only problem was - as of the point I discovered them - their body of work was small, and you could burn through it in a morning. I was conscious of this as I worked through their back catalogue, and by the time I got to Gaucho (1980), which I delayed buying as long as possible, I knew there could be no more Steely Dan. Well, there was, eventually, but for me the two albums they did after 2000 stand apart from the great run of their first seven records.

https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-reynolds-1713971449990

Galactic Vinyl Memories #4

 We jaunt two years into the future and across the Atlantic now, to Glasgow. Love and Money's second album, Strange Kind of Love (1988) was another Gary Katz production, and in addition to the three band members, featured Steely Dan's Jeff Porcaro, Rick Derringer and an uncredited performance by Donald Fagen (although he does get an acknowledgement).

 

A lot of money was spent on this record, and it shows. It's got a really sumptuous production, and the gatefold sleeve gives off that "prestige" artist appeal. Big things were anticipated. The songs are really good, the playing is fabulous and the singer's got a fantastic voice. The title track, "Strange Kind of Love", got a lot of airplay toward the end of 1988 but it wasn't really a hit. "Halleluia Man" was also on the radio a lot but again only troubled the lower depths of the charts. The songs did a bit better elsewhere but there was no breakout hit, which must have been disappointing to Phonogram. The album's done decently enough over time, though, with 250,000 sales (according to Wikipedia). The follow-ups did less well, and I confess I haven't heard them.

The latter part of 1988 was when I moved to Scotland after completing my degree in Newcastle. I can't hear these tracks without thinking of dark nights, bitterly cold mornings, and the terrible events of Lockerbie at the end of that year. I don't think I managed to get hold of the album until early 1989. My copy still sounds great and the sleeve is in pretty good condition with just a bit of scuffing on the corners. Recommended for fans of Deacon Blue, the Blue Nile etc.

Galactic Vinyl Memories #3

Over on my justgiving page, thanks to many kind and generous people, we've just smashed the target of raising 1000 pounds for Alzheimer's UK. I'm really stoked by this and want to thank each and everyone who has chipped in, right from the start. In fact, in celebration of hitting the goal, I put in another practise half-marathon this afternoon. It was no easier than the last one in August, disappointingly, and I really struggled after 18km, but today was certainly warmer, which didn't help.

Anyway, back onto matters vinyl. From King Crimson, we slingshot in the vague direction of Steely Dan, by way of Rosie Vela's 1986 album Zazu. Look, it's me, it was always going to end up with Steely Dan, wasn't it?

OK, but what's the connection? Rosie Vela was a model, singer and songwriter and she wrote and played on all the tracks on this enjoyable slice of synth-driven West Coast jazz-rock. Backing her was, to all intents and purposes, the core of Steely Dan - Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, with Gary Katz producing. This was an INCREDIBLY big deal at the time, because, other than one solo album from Fagen (1982's The Nightfly, which is great) there had been no music from them since the Dan's final album of their first streak - Gaucho (1980). That was an eternity in music back then and the coming of the Rosie Vela album hinted at the possibilities of more recordings to come from SD - although it would another fourteen years before that actually happened. As for the record itself, it was the only recording Rosie Vela put out and perhaps that was enough for her. My copy was bought in 1986 and remains in near-pristine condition. It's an obscure record, but not rare in any way - you can easily score good vinyl copies right now for not much money.

Oh right, the connection - sorry. Tony Levin (King Crimson, etc) plays bass!

https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-reynolds-1713971449990

Galactic Vinyl Memories #2

 This might seem like something of an obvious choice, and indeed it is, but where do you go from Talking Heads? I could have gone with Brian Eno as a link into other artists, but I've misplaced my one Brian Eno vinyl album (indeed, I might have loaned it to someone). So it falls on Adrian Belew to link us into King Crimson, and I've plumped for my copy of their 1982 album Beat:

After disbanding in the mid-70s, KC reformed for a trilogy of three similar-sounding and similarly-packaged albums beginning with Discipline (1981), continuing with Beat, and concluding with Three of a Perfect Pair (1984). Their minimalist sleeves are respectively red, blue and yellow. Love these albums or loathe them (and they had plenty of detractors) they are what I'd call the nearest thing to a post-punk, New Wave, Talking Heads-ish kind of KC sound. All three records have some reasonably catchy and "normal" songs on them, but all three also have a more than ample share of experimental art-rock which at times only barely qualifies as music. Needless to say I am very fond of them. I bought them in reverse order, as it happens, and Beat was purchased from a Newcastle record shop in the Autumn of 1985. Adrian Belew's great weird squealing guitar sounds are all over this recording and his voice is very David Byrne-like. Bill Bruford plays drums. Tony Levin is on bass and Robert Fripp, of course, is also on guitar.

I didn't have a record player when I was away from home as a student, so my procedure after any vinyl purchase was to persuade someone else with a turntable to make me a tape which I could then listen to until I was back home. I remember that the usual candidate was a very big fan of both Madonna and Bauhaus and was not at all impressed by King Crimson, but he kindly put up with my requests. My vinyl copy is still in excellent nick and plays flawlessly.

KC went on a long hiatus after this trilogy of records and I must confess I've never quite connected in the same degree to the more recent stuff, although I did see the band perform in Cardiff a few years ago.

https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-reynolds-1713971449990

Galactic Vinyl Memories #1

 In order to drive some additional traffic to my Alzheimer's UK Justgiving page, in the build-up to the Cardiff Half-Marathon, I thought I'd try posting here a lot more frequently. The trouble is, in the day to day life of the jobbing SF writer, there isn't much to report. However, I can prattle on about music until the cows come home, so why not make that a feature, not a bug?

Hence Galactic Vinyl Memories #1, the first in a loose series where I dig through my vinyl connection, offer up a few recollections, and attempt to establish some tenuous connections between entries.

Our dear friend Carol (see previous post) liked Al Green, and we like Al Green too. In fact, one of my wife's dogs would be triggered into an ecstacy of howling by the sound of Al Green's voice. I don't have any Al Green lps, though, but I do have some Talking Heads, who covered Take Me To The River on their 1978 record More Songs About Buildings and Food.

I don't have that, either, but I do have Little Creatures, their 1985 album:

Which I bought pretty much the week, if not the day, it came out. I was a huge fan by then, but I'd come to them by a roundabout and belated route. After failing my "A" levels, I'd been put back a year in school. The drawback of this was seeing all my mates go off to more exciting things while I was stuck in Pencoed, but the surprising benefit was ending up with a whole year's worth of new friends, in the sixth form class I got bumped back down into. One of them was a nice chap who liked Talking Heads. Knowing I was "into" King Crimson, especially the early 80s stuff, he made me a couple of Talking Heads recordings to listen to, suggesting I'd find a lot of common ground. The albums were Remain in Light (1980) and Speaking in Tongues (1983), two scorchers that I'd consider absolutely essential parts of any TH collection. Remain in Light was the one with the hit on, Once in a Lifetime, and it's where they really started leaning into the afrobeat influences, with brilliant polyrhythms all over the place. I dug that stuff and the KC/TH crossover connection is easily made. Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew had already made contributions to TH, so there's 50% of the DNA there already.

Little Creatures is a very good album, but it represents the point where TH started to sound less interesting to me, because the sound is more traditionally pop-rock and the production is very emphatic, in that mid-80s way. I found their later records progressively less appealling, although I still liked them well enough. It's worth having, but I wouldn't put it above the Holy Trinity of Fear of Music (1979) and the aforementioned Remain in Light/Speaking in Tongues, which are ESSENTIAL.

My vinyl copy is 39 years old and still sounds fresh. The sleeve is mostly pristine except for some very light cockling on the rear. I bought it in Bridgend, either from WH Smith's or Our Price. The cover art is by Howard Finster, who also did REM's second album.

Here's a link to my Justgiving page, and many thanks for the donations to date:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-reynolds-1713971449990

Carol MacLeod

 We were devastated to hear that our wonderful friend Carol, lovely wife of Ken MacLeod, passed away shortly after attending the Glasgow Worldcon.

Carol was a delight and we considered ourselves very lucky to have Ken and Carol as friends, even as distance and circumstances meant that we hadn't seen as much of them in recent years. We had hit it off as friends since meeting properly for the first time at a convention in Sweden.

Carol's sparkle comes through beautifully in this photo of the four of us enjoying a well-earned beer, probably in Upsalla or maybe Stockholm. When our subsequent travels took us to Edinburgh, we always made sure to try and meet the MacLeods and our memories of Carol will remain with us. She loved music, especially Simpy Red and Oasis, although her tastes ran far and wide.

Carol's passing was unexpected, and our thoughts go out to Ken, Sharon, Michael and all of Carol's friends and family as this most difficult time. 

Thanks, Carol, for the light you brought, for your smile and your infectious love of life. 

Your friends, Al + J