It's around this time of the year that the DPRP runs a readers' poll about the previous year of music. I thought I would make a record of my answers so I can see how well my opinions match the final results when then come out in March (or so), and in the meantime perhaps some readers may find it interesting...

Top Albums of 2009

10. No Line On The Horizon (U2)
9. Focal Point (Paul Cusick)
8. Force Of Gravity (Sylvan)
7. Realm Of Shadows (Knight Area)
6. Anno Domini High Definition (Riverside)
5. Frequency (IQ)
4. The Whirlwind (Transatlantic)
3. Ostara (The Wishing Tree)
2. Amor Vincit Omnia (Pure Reason Revolution)
1. The Incident (Porcupine Tree)

Biggest Disappointment in 2009

The Uprising (Muse)

I was gutted when I first heard this album, and it hasn't grown on me since. Their previous album, Black Holes and Revelations, was in my opinion a masterpiece - but with this effort Muse have taken their art a long way backwards, carrying all the excess and silly elements without any of the musical flair. What's worse is that it's being lauded as "the future of prog" by journalists who haven't actually listened to any prog in the last thirty years, who wouldn't know a time signature without a "4" in it if it stood up to bite them, and who think that it is the height of musical innovation to shove a bit of incongruous Chopin in the middle of an otherwise incredibly lightweight album. This is like prog for the televised karaoke generation; this is like prog trying to impress Simon Cowell. Ugh.

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Uh oh.

SPV are the parent company of record labels InsideOut and SuperBall, who between them publish about 80% of the music I'm buying these days...

Here's an interesting meme via hmmm_tea,

Pick a musical artist whose discography you know fairly well. Using only their song titles, try to answer these questions. Try not to repeat a song title.

Pick your artist: Marillion

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A few weeks ago, somebody asked me why I enjoy listening to prog rock music. I found it slightly difficult to formulate an answer - how would you express reasons for liking or disliking particular genres of any artistic field? Oddly, it seems most of the aspects I can think of that I most appreciate about prog music, actually tend to be the same things which cause many other people to have an antipathy to it! It is variously described as "difficult", "showy", or "complex" and "time-consuming". Now if you'll allow me four minutes of your time, I'd like to use this song as an example for the discussion to follow:

Toys (on YouTube)

It's by Frost* (who I've mentioned before) and comes from their new album released late last year. It sounds very different from their first release Milliontown, for many reasons - not least that writer/producer Jem Godfrey consciously and deliberately wanted to do something different instead of repeating the style of his earlier record. I think of it less as a second album, than as the debut of a band who have reinvented themselves as a sort-of proggier version of Muse.

Anyway, the track. At first glance it appears too short to be prog - but prog's reputation for twenty minute epics is perhaps a little overstated! Many prog bands have indeed recorded some very long pieces but that is by no means the entire content of their repertoire.

Are the lyrics prog? Well I don't really understand what half of them are about, so that's probably a yes. Incidentally, the video - which is unofficial, made by a fan and publicised on the band's forum - contains a lot of in-jokes and references, some to the previous work of Frost or events on Jem's blog, but also some more directly to the lyrics of the song (which are a lot of fun, albeit embarrassingly literal on occasion... nonetheless I tip my hat to the sublime sequence around 2:10 of car, pet, hides, the gilt E, duster, weigh)

Did you notice the time signature of the song in the video? If you didn't pay attention it might have appeared very simple; in fact it shifts from 4/4 to 7/8, but does so so often and so easily that you hardly notice that it's happening - that is, until you try joining in or (heaven forbid) dancing to it. Some people think the best songs have three chords, and could be sung round a camp fire with an acoustic guitar. Maybe that is "good" on some scale but simplicity isn't something that I'm inspired by. We are complex creatures and I prefer complex music, with lots of unexpected chord changes, time signature changes, and all the rest. Most of my favourite bass lines are the ones that I can't play myself (though through practice they are becoming reduced in number) - I want to listen to musicians that I can aspire to, rather than the stuff hitting the top 40 singles charts which I could have recorded myself. **

So is that, at the end of the day, why I listen to noisy music with weird chords, incomprehensible lyrics with a beat you can hardly follow, let alone dance to? It comes down to a personal preference. I like the weird chords. I like being unable to predict where the music will flow (at least, until I've heard it a couple of times). That's not to say I don't appreciate different styles - certainly for example, the songs that I play in church need to be relatively pedestrian and predictable *** because we expect a musically-untrained congregation of 300 people to join in and sing along; if they can't follow the tune then the song is a failure. Occasionally I feel guilty for not listening to more Christian music, but most of it (whilst not being bad per se) just isn't in the style that I personally most enjoy listening to.

* The asterisk is part of their name, and is not a reference to this footnote...

** NB recorded, not written. I'd love to learn the skill to write, but at the moment I'm yet to come up with an original sequence that still seemed like a good idea after more than eight bars or so. Mind you, I'll bet that's probably true for most of the top 40 "artists" as well.

*** I shall never make a good preacher, since I was unable to find a third appropriate adjective beginning with the same letter.

I've just discovered that when I put REM's album "Accelerate" into my music library, for some reason iTunes has omitted the last three-ish seconds of the final track. It gets to the point where Stipe is screaming "You cannot resist, You cannot resis..." and the rest of the band chanting away "I'm gonna DJ, I'm gonna D..." and stops abruptly with the music at an absolute climax. I thought it was a very clever bookend to the album.

For one reason and another I had the CD out just now, and for the first time heard the actual ending, in which the guitar plays another chord and someone says "Yeah". I prefer the accidentally edited version, and I'm keeping it...

A couple of weeks ago, Radio 7 repeated the episode of Mitch Benn's "Crimes Against Music" in which Mitch described the way that bands change and evolve, through the medium of a song which was - I assume - meant to sound a lot like like R.E.M., and told the history of a finctional garage band in the early 1980s, who got a following on college radio, eventually got a big record deal, lost old fans and gained new ones as their sound evolved through the addition of strings and so on. The song also describes a "certain crisis of conscience" where that fictional band goes back to basics and records an album more similar to their older material - in the song the critics are unconvinced and the album is not a commercial success.

Now cut back to reality, and in the three years or so since that show was first recorded and broadcast, R.E.M. have released their album "Accelerate" which is more similar to their older material. It's been their best reviewed album in a decade...

Away from the press and the media, I wonder how R.E.M. really feel about the reaction. For a band that have spent their last several albums pushing their own boundaries and developing their sound in new directions, it must come as some disappointment that their only real critical success has been achieved through recording an album which stylistically sounds like they might have recorded it twenty years ago. It's one thing to return to one's roots, but this is so familiar they could have put "Life's Rich Pageant" in a blender and played the notes in the order they fell out.

Don't get me wrong - it's a good album. I just wonder if, perhaps, the band would have preferred to do something more experimental but felt pressured to do it in the old style, for the benefit of their sales?

It's made me think about how I react to changing styles from bands... I guess I'm as resistant to change as any other fan. I've written here before that "King of Fools" was the best album that Delirious had recorded and unfortunately, that opinion hasn't changed with the release of "Kingdom Of Comfort" this year. On the other hand, I suppose that opinion arises not necessarily as a direct measure of their quality, so much as it is an indication of whether the band is producing whatever it is I happen to be expecting of them - viz. Christan music which sounds like Radiohead.

Actually, on that point, at the moment I'd gratefully take *any* music which sounds like Radiohead, because even Radiohead don't record that any more. Best substitute I've found lately has been "Oceansize" but I'm still on the lookout.

I've recently been listening to, what might perhaps qualify as the most improbable neo-prog album ever. The story is that Jem Godfrey, whose day job is writing TV themes and advertising jingles, got bored and wanted to make some real art. So he started writing songs, with reasonable success getting them recorded by Atomic Kitten, Shane Ward and so on. And then apparently got bored again, decided to make some real music, thus formed a progressive rock band with some of the most famous, skilled, and busiest musicians in the field.

Shane Ward to prog! I mean, it's not exactly an obvious development, is it? One can only imagine how the first phone call went:

"Hi, I'm Jem Godfrey - producer for such artists as Gareth Gates, Blue, and Ronan Keating; and I'm looking for a guitarist. Are you interested?"
Click.
"Hello?"

Presumably not quite like that, because the band exists. But anyway, one way or another he got them on board, and the resulting album, Milliontown, is quite frankly, impossibly good. How can someone with no obvious experience in the genre, jump in from a standing start, and write an album which sounds like he's been recording this stuff for years?

Anyway, all this got me thinking about how so many prog musicians play in several different bands with each other (actually it's probably true of all musicians, but particularly noticeable in the case of prog bands). For example, John Mitchell plays in this band Frost*, and also Kino, The Urbane, It Bites, and Arena. The bass player in Kino is Pete Trewavas, who also plays with Marillion and Transatlantic. Transatlantic's drummer was Mike Portnoy, who plays in Dream Theater, OSI, Neal Morse, and Liquid Tension Experiment. Liquid Tension Experiment's bass player is Tony Levin, who has played with King Crimson and is Peter Gabriel's touring bass player among a wide variety of studio sessions; he also has released a number of solo albums, and on one of them had Simon Phillips in the drummers chair. Simon Phillips is a world-renowned session musician, he now drums regualrly for Toto but has worked with many artists such as Joe Satriani, Robert Palmer, Steve Harley, and Mike Oldfield. Oldfield has worked with many other musicians on his albums, including on one occasion Phil Collins, who is most famous for his work in Genesis and his solo career but also played with Brand X, other studio sessions and many live performances - several during Live Aid in 1985, notably including Led Zeppelin the first time they reformed. Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant later formed bands Strange Sensation and Priory of Brion. Priory of Brion's drummer was Andy Edwards who plays with IQ and Frost*, whose Keyboard player is Jem Godfrey and oh look we've gone round in a circle :)

So it occurred to me to wonder, what's the musical analogue for the Bacon Number in film?

Music is generally less well connected than film. Almost all films will have a cast of dozens, very few recordings would feature more than ten. So in general I would expect it to take more steps to connect two musicians than to connect two actors. However, in both cases the system works best because of a fairly small number of extremely well-connected people: in the music realm, that role is probably fulfilled by the career session musician.

Thus for the sake of argument, I'm going to base the following system around Simon Phillips, whom I have already mentioned has played an astonishing number of sessions for a wide range of artists in many genres. The Phillips Number is the smallest number of steps^[1] required to get to Simon Phillips.

So Simon Phillips has a Phillips Number of 0.

Anyone who has appeared on a recording with Simon Phillips has a Phillips Number of 1. So Steve Lukather, Roger Daltrey, Joe Satriani, Mike Rutherford, Mike Oldfield, Francis Monkman, Mick Jagger, Richard Marx, Robert Palmer, and many many more have a Phillips Number of 1.

Anyone who has appeared on a recording with any of those people has a Phillips Number of 2.

For example, Herbie Flowers, who played with Francis Monkman in Sky, who played with Simon Phillips in 801, has a Phillips Number of 2.

Steve Lukather, who we have mentioned has a Phillips Number of 1, is a prolific session guitarist who has played with many many artists. Michael Jackson had Steve Lukather play in much of the Thriller album, Lukather plays with Phillips in Toto, so Michael Jackson has a Phillips Number of 2. Others who've played with Lukather include Chet Atkins, Cher, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Richard Marx and more - they all have a Phillips number of 2.

And so on. Anyone who has appeared on a recording with any of those people has a Phillips Number of 3.

Anyone who has played with Herbie Flowers (another very prolific session player) has a Phillips number of 3. For example, Herbie Flowers played for Hank Marvin on his "Guitar Syndicate" album, so Hank Marvin has a Phillips number of 3. Others who've played with Herbie include David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jeff Wayne, Hank Marvin, Elton John, Marc Bolan, Cat Stevens, Chris Spedding, etc.

So in conclusion: what's Jem Godfrey's Phillips Number? Well, Simon Phillips (0) played with Jeff Beck (1) on several of his albums; Jeff Beck and Lulu (2) recorded Cry Me a River for the "Red, White and Blues" album, and Jem Godfrey is credited with "instrumentation" and production on Lulu's "Together" album. So it looks like Jem Godfrey's Phillips number is 3.

Already we've covered musicians ranging from the 1950s to the 21st century in only three steps. Small world, really. Just imagine the number of musicians who'd be included if we tracked all 6 links?

^[1] I'm defining a step as appearing on the same track of a commercially available CD. Usually this will mean they have played together, but in some cases it could have been mixed in later without them ever meeting. Live albums do count, but only for musicians on stage and not shouting in the audience. Anyone who goes into a recording studio, for the purpose of being recorded, is likely to be a perfectly good connection: I'm allowing all backing vocals, even in large groups or choirs - if only because that means I get to claim my own Phillips Number is 5 - I sang backing vocals for Delirious on the "GLO" album; Delirious's singer Martin Smith (4) has duetted with Matt Redman (3) who has had Paul Carrack (2) singing backing on some of his tracks - Carrack is in Mike & The Mechanics with Mike Rutherford (1) whose album Smallcreep's Day was drummed by Simon Phillips (0).

I've just come back from seeing Marillion play at the Junction (with a colleague from work who is not on livejournal - though I did spot simont in the queue for the car park on the way out). It's the first time I've seen them live, and they were nothing short of brilliant. Of course, they played several tracks from the new album (5, I think) but a pleasing variety of stuff from most of the last 10 albums (and I was very pleased they picked so much of their longer, more esoteric and experimental songs like Ocean Cloud and King (and boy, did they milk the ending of that one!)

There were a few mistakes but I don't think anybody minded - a couple of chords went astray in the middle of the first song, and then h forgot the words at the end of Garden Party: a Fish era song which I don't imagine they play often, but it's about (a mostly inaccurate stereotypical view of) Cambridge so they had to play it really. He said he'd been trying to learn it all day...

It still amazes me how good a bass player Pete Trewavas is.

The support act were pretty good as well - King Rat - reminded me a bit of "It Bites". I bought their CD on the way out, so I'll give that a listen tomorrow...

Are you in a choir, or do you run one? Would you like to attempt a really difficult version of Jingle Bells?

Yes?

Well have I got an arrangement for you! It's swing, and all in five part harmony (two Tenors).

Download a PDF today!

Where have all the memes gone? Nobody on my f'list has posted a meme in what seems like ages (well, except for one, but I might incriminate myself if I posted my result for that) so here's another of those "identify the song from the first lines" things from Party Shuffle on my iTunes library:

1. All I want to do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes phlebas
   
2. I wonder if my rope's still hanging from the tree bopeepsheep
   
3. Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream bopeepsheep ¹
   
4. Put down your remote control, throw out your TV guide bopeepsheep
   
5. Where do we go from here? The words are coming out all weird.
   
6. When all the boats had left the shore, A thousand people, maybe more bopeepsheep
   
7. Love is understanding, don't you know that this is true
   
8. Something is about to give, I can feel it coming, I think I know what it is. bopeepsheep
   
9. Twenty-thousand miles from an oasis, Twenty-thousand years will I burn bopeepsheep
   
10. Digging away the moments that make up a dull day bopeepsheep
    
11. I saw your face, elegant and tired
    
12. I ain't happy, feeling glad, I got sunshine in a bag bopeepsheep
    
13. You infiltrate my every hour, you bug me like a flea bopeepsheep
    
14. Can't you see I'm holding your flag, the one that you left on the ground
    
15. Just as I thought it was going alright, found out I'm wrong when i thought I was right scintilla72
    
16. I am the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar bopeepsheep
    
17. There'll be a change in the weather and a change in the scene
    
18. You can't stand still for a moment, you can't stand still for a night
    
19. She don't like to hear me sing, she don't want no diamond ring
    
20. You spurn my natural emotions, you make me feel I'm dirt and I'm hurt bopeepsheep
    

Hmm, iTunes seems to be in a fairly mainstream mood today. I think it's plausible you'll actually manage to get all of these...

¹ For bonus points, guess whose version I'm actually listening to