When you knock about with people who were born this century it kind of keeps you on your toes. For instance, when you play pool with them they all want to beat you. Pool Club is now a regular fixture in my calendar. A night when balls are potted, beers are sunk and where the art of sledging reaches dizzying heights. There's a couple of older heads too who keep proceedings in check. One of these wise old sages is also the keeper of records. Every month the latest league tables are published on the group WhatsApp and every month we have a post mortem as to what actually happened on the night. Those keeping score can often suffer major memory loss. Baby boomers, eh?
Probably wouldn't happen if it was left to our resident Generation Zers. Two of which, Sam and Laura, recently took part in a Glitter Ball finale - a Strictly Come Dancing charity do in aid of the Rosie May Foundation.
This was the dance that won them some major silverware. I'm proud to call them my friends. Except on Pool Night, obviously.
I find the older I get the more I crave music and sound that jumps around; where the time signature is not always known. And even if it is it's probably got more counterpoints than you can shake a shitty stick at. Atonal? Yep, I'm all over it. I can binge on Philip Glass and I can gorge on Steve Reich. I absolutely love John Adams (A Short Ride in a Fast Machine, anyone?) Listening to them makes me pay attention. Makes me lean in closer. We should all lean in closer.
LSO Percussion Ensemble - Quartet (Steve Reich)
"Great music can transport you to another world and make you feel things you've never felt before." Amen to that, Steve.
In the twelve months or so since I last saw the Hanging Stars they've elevated themselves to next level. Some might even say God tier. Last night they owned the stage in the Chapel (sitting as it does atop the Old Angel in Nottingham) - the perfect setting in which to see a band at the peak of their powers unveiling their shiny new long player - On a Golden Shore - an album filled to the brim with heart tugging harmonies and guitar licks that positively jangle.
This band should be huge. One day this band will be huge. In the meantime, I'm just so glad to have seen them play quirky little venues rather than soulless concert halls and arenas.This is the album (and set) opener and something of a mission statement heralding all that follows.
Oded Balilty is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Israeli photographer. Born and raised in Jerusalem, he began his career as a photographer for the Israeli army magazine Bamahane. In 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, he joined The Associated Press. In 2007, Oded won the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of a lone Jewish settler confronting Israeli security officers during the evacuation of a West Bank settlement outpost. He lives in Tel Aviv.
From Oded's website and his photojournalism piece Life of a Mannequin:
"Like in real life, most mannequins begin their lives in a similar way, but each one takes a different path. All begin in factories, like the Lucky Human Mannequin Factory in Shenzhen, China, or Goldsmith in New York, each of which produces tens of thousands of mannequins a year.
Some live their lives in glamour on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue; others end their lives in a Beijing junkyard.
Unlike real life, they are all shaped the same, according to what society believes are the ideal proportions of the human body."
In common with most, if not all1, artistes, Roxy Music had a (very) small window when they couldn't put a foot wrong. I mean when the press, their fans, friends and peers all blew smoke up their arse and praised them to the hilt. Purists will say this window remained open for about three years: between 1972 & 1975 (though in all honesty this mythical window had already started to close as early as 1973 after their third album, Stranded.)
Odd then that, somewhat belatedly, I have fallen headlong in love with an album they brought out when the window had long since been removed by the builders and subsequently bricked up. Manifesto, from 1979, came out when I was still knee deep in the new wave. However, even new wave was becoming a somewhat oxymoronic label three years after New Rose and Anarchy. If Bryan Ferry and Co. had been listening to anything by the Damned or the Pistols it certainly didn't show2 - not when you hear the singles they culled from the album - Angel Eyes and Dance Away. Which, if I'm perfectly honest, was all I'd heard from this particular period of post-Eno Roxy. Both of which I felt were insipid and left me rather cold3.
That is until a couple of album tracks started to appear on those pesky Spotify playlists that get shared around, and this entered my psyche. It's the album opener which for its first two minutes you think is a blistering instrumental, and then at 2:30 Ferry limbers up and announces his arrival. How had I missed this?
Roxy Music - Manifesto (1979)
Ferry has intermittently got the band back together over the years for live reunions (their 40th & 50th anniversaries in particular) but there's been no new product, no new songs since 1982's Avalon. Tho' they did come close in 2010 when the old gang, including Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay and Eno, collaborated with Bryan with a 'y' and recorded some new material. However BF bagged them for himself and put out another solo effort; Olympia - the last Roxy album that never was.
1The Beatles would have to be excluded from any such list. Wouldn't they?
2However, the intro to Manifesto reminds me of Squeeze's Take Me I'm Yours.
3Not any more - when heard in context, and in order, they make perfect sense. Does that make sense?
