Odd Music

I'm a big fan of guitar-based rock music. Jason Becker is one of the best of this genre. Actually he's more than one of the best. Check out this, rather humbling, video of a man plucked from his prime but still going.

He contracted(?) Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a body wasting disease just after he started working with David Lee Roth (as Steve Vai's replacement). I wouldn't wish ALS on anyone...

Haven't written one of these for a while, but thought is was time to describe one of my favorite guitarists, and my favorite of his albums. Jeff Beck is a true god of the guitar, his ability and styles are truly unique. A lot of Jeff Beck fans really slate this album, but they're wrong because it's ace!

The main issue with the album is probably its poppy-rock slant and its tinny production (we're talking 1980's tin!). But that's just being picky... Because what you get is an absolute monster of an album. Some of the guitar work (all of it?) is truly astonishing - just listen to the solos on "Ambitious" and the intro of "Gets Us All In The End". I'm sorry but these are true genious. There's even a camio from Rod Stuart ("People get Ready") - which tends to be the track that guitarie-people talk about. But the best is definitely last, if you want unbelievable atmosphere in an understated instrumental the track 09 "You Know, We Know".

I know people harp on about his early work with Jan Hammer but his later stuff is just tons better - for me anyway.

One of my very limited claims to fame is a chap called Darren Hurst. I had about 12 months of guitar lessons from him when I lived in Southport. Back then he was a professional musician/teacher type person. I stopped having lessons because the lure of a "proper" musical carrear was too strong for him... and he left to try and make his fortune.

I lost track of him then one day, bored at work, I googled his name and found that he'd moved to Las Vegas and was a propper jobbing musician - living the dream.

He has an album out called "Free Spirit" which I've not got, but I do have a demo tape that he gave me way back when. His guitar style is somewhere around an English Joe Satriani - lots of melodic guitar driven stuff.

Have a look at his myspace web site: http://www.myspace.com/darrenhurst, and to start with I'd recommend the four tracks rather than the YouTube stuff he's got in there as the sound quality is stacks better.

So that's my musical claim to fame!

Other blog told of me starting to rip my CD collection. Because I am waiting for the last couple of CDs (for tonight) to finish being ripped, here's a sad list (insight!) into my collection thus far:

Accept (German 80s metal)
Alcatrazz (US 80's metal)
Anthrax (US 80's metal)
Anti-Nowhere League (English 80's punk)
Badlands (US early 90's rock)
Jennifer Batten (US 80's girl widdley guitar)
Shaun Baxter (English 90's widdley guitar)
Pat Benatar (US 80's rock)
Black Sabbath (Brum's finest)
Tim Blake (Hawkwind 90's space rock)
Blue Oyster Cult (US 80's rock)
Suzy Bogguss (US 90's country(?!) rock)
Dave Brock (Hawkwind 90's space rock)
Jason Becker (US 80's widdley guitar)
Jeff Beck (English cool guitar god)
Deana Carter (US 90's country rock)
Johnny Cash (US country)

Day #2 of this ripping process (the wife's away and I've nothing better to do):

Albert Collins (US Blues)
Ry Cooder (US Blues)
Alice Cooper (US shock rock)
Creed (US(?) rock)
The Cult (UK Goth rock)
Deep Purple (UK classic rock)
Desperado (US/UK super (heavy) rock group that never was)
Diving For Pearls (English 90's "band wagon" rock)
Dio (UK 80's heavy metal)
Dirty White Boy (English 90's "band wagon" rock)
Dokken (US 80's metal)
Dragon Force (? pubescent widdley rock)
Eddie and the Hot Rods (English 80's punk)
ELP (UK 70's prog rock)
Fast Eddie Clark (UK 90's metal)
Micheal Lee Firkins (US 90's widdley instrumental rock)
Flotsam and Jetsam (US 90's heavy/speed metal)
Foo Fighters (US 00's rock)
Marty Friedman (US 90's widdley instrumental rock)
GMT (English 00's heavy rock)

[So far about 1000+ songs on about 100 CDs]

The year's a bit wrong here as it's the year of the compilation, as the Fairies only survived for a few years at the beginning of the 1970s. This compilation covers their three(?) albums.

I bought this a few years back because I saw them on a reunion in some dodgy warehouse in Leeds as part of the support for Hawkwind (back in, gosh let me see... 1987 I think). As far as music goes, well they're a bit of a mismash of styles really some really good 1970s heavy rock, some pretty good/obscure hippy stuff and some, well how would you describe a song entitle "Pigs of Uranus"?

I'd only recommend this kind of stuff to those people who like a bit of 1970's non-mainstream-hippy-oriented-rock! The highlights for me are "The Snake", "City Kids" (composed by Larry Wallis, which is why it appears on a couple of early Motorhead albums) and "Heavenly Man".

For me it's good to have this sort of stuff in my collection, because when I don't know what I want to listen to, something a touch odd-ball like this is sometimes just what the doctor ordered. And today whilst working away it was indeed!

I have a love hate relationship with "The Hottest Band in the World..." KISS. Most of their stuff is (IMO) dreadfull US rock, but once or twice they put out something of real quality. Notwithstanding a lot of their cheesie stuff, they do (did?) put on a pretty amazing live show. Anyhow I digress...

"The Elder" is one of those albums that is (I think) almost universally hated by all KISS fans. And from what I recall was one of those albums that the band just wishes they'd never started... But for me, it's by far my most favorite of their albums.

The album itself is a concept album (the first thing that doesn't sit well for a KISS album!) about a boy's right of passage into manhood, within a sword and sorcery world (the second thing that doesn't sit well - it's not about girls!).

And I think the album works really quite well, okay I've a soft spot for concept albums and the sword and sorcery (I grew up in a world of D&D playing during my formative years!). Most of the songs are pretty standard rock, crafted with a fair amount of KISS-polish.

The highlights are many but probably the best are "Odyssey", "Mr Blackwell" and "Escape from the Island". I really like "Escape..." which is an instrumental (a what?), but what really makes it is that it's really high energy and without any of the trademark cleches you'd expect from an instrumental - it's how KISS would do one.

Oh this is a good one. Some of my most favorite of CDs/music come from my "formative" period and this is one of those. A long time back (no not in 1977, more like 1984/5 I think) I had to resit my French O-level and my French teacher gave me and another lad (also resitting) some additional lessons at his house on Sunday afternoons. It must have worked because I passed it second time around! Anyhow, the relationship during these additional tutorials was more akin to college tutorials than school pupil/teacher stuff, and about half way through our stint Mr B brought this album out and lent it to me. I loved it and had it on a C-90 tape (with some MSG on the other side methinks) and played it to death. Since then the tapes obviously died, but I decided to get this on CD. And here it is.

It's a less would be more CD, because the original album is blindingly brief, so they've packed it with another 9 tracks that I could have done without. But the main course (tracks 1 - 9) are truly amazing.

Eddie... is a classic 1970's punk band with rock tendencies. They've got about three riffs and three different speeds. But some how manage to make each of the tracks refreshingly unique. The three tracks of real note are "Do Anything You Wanna Do" (a real fist raiser), "Life on the Line" (bit of an anthum about drugs) and "Beginning of the End" (sort of an angry young man at the world song). But the whole thing is just awesome. And if you compare it to some of todays "punk/rock" bands that should still be on the pub circuit - this one just blows them all away.

Oh, yes, it's very summery to! Put it in the car, crank up the sterio and let's rock...

Of my Calvert collection (just blogged today) this album "Test-tube Conceived" is the best by a million miles. And considering the quality of the others that makes this one pretty damn good. As with a lot of Calvert's work it deals with futurism and science from a very dark perspective. If you've got personal experience of the "test-tube" process then you might want to stay away from this as the lyrics are biting:

Thanks to the scientists
That such a thing as you exists
Thanks to the scientists
Who made you...

It's really powerful stuff, especially considering the musical format is so very very sparse - there's no hiding place from the quality of each songs lyrical content.

The other thing that strikes about this album is just how very good Calvert is/was at seeing the "future". There's a song about Internet hacking which is bang up to date, and this was during the time when to most people a home computer didn't exist, and if it did it was a ZX-Spectrum (remember them?) or a BBC-micro. For most people computer-connectivity didn't exist. Couple that with emotive songs about animal testing and the test-tube process, you get a real dose of heavy reality that at times is difficult to listen to - because of the quality of the songs.

For me albums like this really show just how powerful a vehicle song-writing can be for getting points and opinions across. This is a "grown up" album about "grown up" themes. It's sad the Ca;vert died young because he'd have had a dark/depressing field day with the world as it turned out.

Very good stuff this album, nothing like Hawkwind in the traditional sense.

Now this is a very good album, Robert Calvert's first solo offering and it hits right in the middle of the Hawkwind sound of the 70's. Whilst it's Calvert's solo album he's helped along by messers Lemmy, Brock, Turner, King, Dettma and Authur Brown. In fact you name them, if they were in/around Hawkwind back in the early 70's then they are one this album.

And it's because of the cast list that I guess it sounds so very Hawkwind-like. Probably the main thing missing to make it "stock" Hawkwind fare is the lack of spacie/whooshie sounds. Similar, in some ways, to Freq in that it follows the song/talkie-bit/song/talkie-bit format. Again it's a concept album, this time around the German/US(?) debacle of purchasing a collection of fighter planes for the new Germany: the "Star Fighter". Sadly for those involved the Star Fighter was a bit of a "pup" and had problems staying in the air (big problem if you're a pilot!).

So Captain Lockhead charts the German process of the purchase and crash-and-burn life of the Star Fighter project. It's a very clever album, where the songs have one or two Hawkwind staples: "The Right Stuff" and "Ejection" are just classics from the hard-rocking phase of Hawkwind. But you see the otherside of Calvert's genius in "The Song of the Gremin" and "Hero with a Wing".

The first time I heard this album, I'd been lent it by a grown up friend of mine back in the late eighies. Since then I finally bought it sometime back on CD and it is still right up there. When compared to the rest of my Calvert collection, it's got very little in common song structure wise, as this is as close-to-Hawkwind-without-being-Hawkind as you can get.

It's one hell of a debut album. How do you follow it? No wonder he suffered depression!

Oh now this is a right odd-ball. There's another chap at work who's a big Hawkwind(et al) fan and this album is a complete no-no for him. I on the other hand really quite like it, don't ask why because for the casual listener it's going to be dropped on the "never listen to it again pile".

However, Lucky Lief is again a concept album by Robert Calvert, and documents the arrival of the Vikings to the new world of America. The style of music is way out on the edge of anything I've heard before: there's a couple of Hawkwind-esque classics, some poetry driven stuff, blue grass/US country banjo, and even a parody in the style of the Beach Boys!? Probably one of the reasons I really like it, is that it is so very different, and as such is one of those things I reach for when I am in that mood, you know the "I've got nothing to listen to, don't know what to listen to moods".

Lucky wasn't as well received by the press when Calvert released it, as it was his second(?) solo album. The first "Captain Lockhied" was an absolute monster, and the two are poles appart in terms of musical styling. The standout tracks are: "Ship of Fools", "Magical Potion" and "Ragna Rock".

Would I recommend this to other people? Well that's a difficult one, on the whole no I wouldn't because it is so difficult to listen to and "enjoy" without saying "this is crap". But if you can approach it from the other side, and are a Hawkwind fan then, yes it's worth a listen.