Trollheart

Oh dear God I hate Adam Sandler! Yeah, you may be a fan of his but I fucking can't stand him. Every movie I've seen him in he's been the same smug bastard with zero acting talent, and along with Stiller he just angers me to the point where I hate even seeing his smirking face on the television. Which is all by way of introducing our next movie, in which Sandler gets his hands on a magic remote control that can let him fast forward through “the boring bits in life”, but he soon finds that when you rush past things and don't take the time to smell the roses you miss the most vital and important parts of yadda yadda yadda. Bor-ing and highly unoriginal. Which makes it a perfect Sandler movie --- he's never been linked with anything groundbreaking or cutting edge after all --- but odd that luminaries from Kate Beckinsale to Christopher Walken and even “The Fonz” himself, Henry Winkler, deigned to take part in this train wreck.

But look, if you like him and thought this was a great movie then good for you. This slot is not to necessarily trash the movie but to point out where such a, shall we say, below-par film has nevertheless a great soundtrack. And this one does. No, it really does. The cream of pop and rock are featured on it, and it's a long one too: twenty-five tracks. A case could I suppose be made for the soundtrack having to compensate for the dire movie, but then again, what do I know? Anyhoo, as I say we're not here to see the movie but to listen to the music, and it is absolutely legendary.

Click OST --- Various Artists --- 2006

And now I have a reason to hate him even more, as by looking for a picture of the soundtrack album I have the very unwelcome words “Adam Sandler” in my internet browsing history and on Google. Honestly! It was research, I swear! Gaahhh! There's a score for the movie too --- somehow they got Zimmer: must have driven a truck full of cash up to his door --- but that's not what we're concerned with here. The soundtrack consists of songs many of you will know, and certainly artistes that will be, mostly, familiar to you. It kicks off with The Cars' superb “Magic”, where the rising keyboard line and the driving, staccato guitars form a perfect backdrop to Ric Ocasek's unmistakable voice, and given that the film features a “magic” remote control, it's quite appropriate. Next up we have the Kinks, never a favourite band of mine and I only know the odd song, and “Do it again” is not one of them. It's a reasonably restrained song with touches of The Who's “Won't get fooled again”, though it rocks pretty hard for them. I know nothing by The Offspring, not even what sort of a band they are, so “Come out and play” comes as something of a surprise with its mixture of punk, new wave and quasi-indie feel. Not bad, singer reminds me of Paul Weller, but not really. Maybe. Nice sort of Arabic melody in the guitar. Oh, they're a punk band. Yeah, not bad really.

Gwen Stefani of course is known to me but not her music very much, so this is the first time I've heard “Cool”, and it has a nice dreamy opening with a rather long orchestral intro, then develops into a half-decent pop song, reminds me of something though, and I know I haven't heard it before. So is she ripping someone off? Quite probably. Oddly, while listening to this I got the line ”I took you to an intimate restaurant” in my head, though it's nothing to do with the melody, and I couldn't remember what song it was from. For those interested, I'll tell you at the end. Next up is the superb Carole King with one of her big hits, “I feel the Earth move”, and then an oldie in Irving Gordon's “Be anything (but be mine)”. Not my sort of thing I must admit, and I move swiftly on to a somewhat more contemporary tune.

Parliament's “Give up the funk” is also not the sort of music I'm into but it's enjoyable, good seventies soul vibe to it and one thing you can always say about soul is that it's generally uptempo and cheerful. Plenty of brass of course. It's Benny Hill time then (appropriate for a Sandler movie; one of the unfunniest and coarsest comedy sketch shows of the seventies) with “Yakety Sax” before we get to the first instrumental, and it's like something you'd hear in a lift, honestly. Not too enamoured of Walter Wanderley's “Summer samba”, must say. It's okay I guess but real wallpaper music. Two classics then in Frampton's “Show me the way” (love that talk box) and then Captain and Tennile's other big hit, “Love will keep us together”. Very fond of that. Toto's superb “Hold the line” is next, ramping up the pressure and kicking in a bit of much-needed rock, even if it is soft rock: “Hold the line” was one of their heavier hits, as the boys will no doubt confirm in their Toto journal, if they haven't already.

And the hits just keep coming! They've really pulled the stops out here, as I said probably to deflect attention from how much the movie sucks. T-Rex with “Twentieth century boy”, Tears For Fears' “Everybody wants to rule the world” and Nazareth's excellent cover of “Love hurts”, a great power ballad. “More more more” from the Andrea True Connection takes us back to 1975, but I'm always going to hear Mo singing “Mo Mo Mo! How do you like me! Mo Mo Mo! Why don't you like me?” on the Simpsons. Some more great American AOR then as Loverboy are “Working for the weekend”, a film song if ever there was one, great beat and super solo. An Irish flavour next with “Linger” by The Cranberries, followed by ol' Blue Eyes with “I'm gonna live till I die” then we're a little more up to date with The Strokes.

“Someday” has a nice jaunty indie feel about it, very feelgood, then there's a return to the Cars connection as Ric's solo album Quick change world gives us the tremendous “Feelings got to stay”, which is pretty close to the standout, and among all these classics that's really saying something. Just amazing. This guy is a genius. Another oldie then in the shape of “Call me irresponsible” by Jimmy Van Heusen, a further Irish link as U2 gives us “Ultraviolet (Light my way)”, a song I've not heard before but which is a pretty typical U2 song, not too much to write home about but not terrible (not “Bad” though! ) then Jim Steinman hooks up with Air Supply for their heartstring-tugging power ballad “Making love out of nothing at all” leaving us with The New Radicals to close proceedings with “You get what you give”, which I realise I know. Good closer to a fantastic soundtrack.

TRACKLISTING

1. Magic (The Cars)
2. Do it again (The Kinks)
3. Come out and play (The Offspring)
4. Cool (Gwen Stefani)
5. I feel the earth move (Carole King)
6. Be anything (but be mine) (Irving Gordon)
7. Give up the funk (Tear the roof off this sucker) Parliament
8. Yakety sax (Boots Randolph)
9. Summer samba (Walter Wanderley)
10. Show me the way (Peter Frampton)
11. Love will keep us together (Captain and Tennille)
12. Hold the line (Toto)
13. 20th century boy (T-Rex)
14. Everybody wants to rule the world (Tears For Fears)
15. Love hurts (Nazareth)
16. More, more, more (The Andrea True Collection)
17. Working for the weekend (Loverboy)
18. Linger (The Cranberries)
19. I'm gonna live till I die (Frank Sinatra)
20. Someday (The Strokes)
21. Feelings got to stay (Ric Ocasek)
22. Call me irresponsible (Jimmy Van Huysen)
23. Ultraviolet (Light my way) (U2)
24. Making love out of nothing at all (Air Supply)
25. You get what you give (The New Radicals)

There is the odd duff track here, or more accurately, one or two I don't particularly like, but considering the amount of tracks and the bad-to-good ratio, this is a phenomenal soundtrack, perhaps the best I've yet reviewed from a questionable film. True, most of us will have or will know the majority of these songs already, but if you want a cross-section of classic rock and pop from the seventies and eighties you would go far to find such a selection on any other album, never mind soundtrack.

So you don't have to see the movie. Never mind the terrible Click: just relax with the soundtrack and enjoy the great music it has to offer as an apology for the film. Oh, and if you really want to see a story about a man watching the consequences of how his life changed, settle down with the classic It's a wonderful life: it's uplifting, you can get the entire thing for free on Youtube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eS6eQjaRlQ, and best of all, there's no Adam Sandler. Everybody wins!

Oh, and that song I was trying to think of with the lyric? Olivia Newton-John, “Let's get physical.” Just in case you were wondering.

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Aux-In

The cat's the star here.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

Trollheart

You know how they often say “let the music do the talking”? Well, at the moment there's been a song in my head for about three days and, though I like it a lot, I feel it's trying to tell me something. So maybe I should write about it. Good idea. But where, in all the many many sections I cover music in my journal, should I put it? Under which heading? Or should I make a new one up? No: we had “The Daily Earworm” years ago, and I got fed up with that. Not going there again. So, an existing section then. But which one? Well, it's a slow, sentimental ballad, so where better than

A song that probably a lot of people will know, this one had its beginnings all the way back in the 1930s, when Harry Warren and Al Dubin got together to write it for a movie, and since then it's been covered by people such as Peggy Lee, The Flamingos, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Jolson, Mel C (what?), Better Midler and Cliff Richard, and about a hundred others. Right up to last year there was a cover version of it, and there'll be probably more as the years go on, because it's one of those timeless lovesongs that never grows old or goes out of fashion. It was also, perhaps most famously, covered by this guy.


“I only have eyes for you”
Art Garfunkel
1975
from the album “Breakaway”

After one of the most successful singer/songwriter partnerships ever in the history of music split up in 1970 following the release of their final album, Bridge over troubled water, each treated their new solo career in different ways. Paul Simon begun a deeper exploration of the African and World Music that had always intrigued him, hooking up later with Peter Gabriel and becoming one of the biggest ambassadors for World Music, bringing the likes of Yossou N'Dour and Ladysmith Black Mazamba to the attention of the world, while Art Garfunkel kept in more or less the same musical vein he had shared with Simon, also diversifying into the world of film with such efforts as Bad timing, Catch-22 and Carnal knowledge, but music was and is his first love and that was where he concentrated his energies.

His first solo album did well but had no hits. It was not until the release of his second that this cover version of the classic lovesong took him right to number one both in the UK and the USA. I have not heard the other versions but have always loved this one (originally thinking that it was he who wrote it: thank you Wiki for destroying yet another long-held misconception!) due to its overall gentleness and the slow, almost lazy pace of it. It opens with a slowly strummed and seeming phased guitar as Art sings the intro, which isn't really a verse or a chorus, but a sort of precursor to the song proper. The measured drumbeat kicks in about thirty seconds later and some organ joins the guitar and the verse gets going. Garfunkel sings it with the sort of swaying abandon of a man who is truly in love: when he sings ”The moon may be high/ But I can't see a thing in the sky” you can really get the idea of him just looking in his lover's eyes and everything else just fading away. And we've all been there, haven't we? Well, not me, of course, but you know what he's talking about.

When we get into the main --- what is it, bridge? It's not a verse really and it's not the chorus --- the song really gets going, with swelling orchestra and backing vocals filling out the sound and giving it a real sense of passion and emotion as he sings ”I don't know if we're in a garden/ Or on a crowded avenue” and after the chorus there's a lovely guitar passage to take the song out to its fade. It's a short one --- has to be, to be a single I guess --- but every second is used to its utmost and the song is a great ballad with power and smouldering passion, as well as almost literally blind love. No wonder they loved it on both sides of the pond.

”My love must be some kind of blind love:
I can't see nobody but you...

Are the stars out tonight?
I don't know if it's cloudy or bright:
I only have eyes for you, dear.

The moon may be high
But I can't see a thing in the sky:
I only have eyes for you.

I don't know if we're in a garden
Or on a crowded avenue.
You are here, so am I,
Maybe millions of people go by
But they all disappear from view.

And I'll only have eyes for you.”

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Pet_Sounds

When I saw Billy Joel last year, he told an anecdote about cancelling his last Toronto show because of the SARS outbreak. Then he performed a snippet of that tune, as "I Only Have SARS For You". You had to be there. Anyway, it's always nice to see Art making an appearance in your journal.

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Everybody's dying just to get the disease

Trollheart

Yeah I knew that would lure you in. Any Beatles, Beach Boys or S&G and you just follow the bait right into the trap till the box slams ....

Welcome!

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Trollheart

I've been ranting a lot in the Lounge recently, as some/most of you will be aware, but a lot of that has translated into bad feeling and I think I'd rather go on at length in here about the things that really bug me. Haven't tackled this in a while, so here are some of my current


“Search online for..?”
This really annoys me. If you want someone to buy your products, use your service or support your cause, the least you can do surely is to direct them to your website. How hard can it be? In the old days, like when I rode my dinosaur to hedge school, internet addresses were complicated. There was no such thing as .com really, or if there was you couldn't just set up a domain as one. At least here in Ireland and the UK, the procedure was you signed up with an ISP and they provided you with a spot on their domain, so you would usually get something like interneteireann.ie/hosts/users/members/~Trollheart/index.html. Now that's a lot harder to guess at than trollheart.com, so yeah, you can guess what the address for the RAF or Sight Savers or whatever is, but why should you? It still bugs me when huge global conglomerates like Sky or Coca-Cola end ads with “Search online for new Coke flavour!” or “Search online for Sky boxsets.” Why? Why the lantering FUCK should I, your potential customer, be left to search, blunder around with Google looking for the site YOU want ME to find and use? Why don't YOU give ME the address? This is surely similar to someone knocking on your door, and saying “You must visit my new restaurant. We're looking for new business.” And you say “Okay, maybe I will. Where is it?” only to be told “Sorry, can't tell you that. But here's a map and an A-Z. You can find it if you look.”

Fuck right off, right? That would be your reaction to such arrogance and such an unhelpful attitude. So why not the same for these cunts who exhort you to “search online”? Are you really telling me the British Navy, Sky, Skoda and all these huge corporate giants and national institutions can't give you the URL of their website? Is there something stopping them, some law, some legal technicality? Well not in the case of Sky, as I go there regularly and get directed there for most of their products. But not for box sets. Oh no. Why not just say “go to www.sky.com/boxsets”? Are they trying to increase their rankings with Google by having as many searches as possible? Unlikely: Sky TV (at least in Europe) would come first in any rankings you care to mention. They're already top of the tree; they don't need help. Is it a deal with the search engine giant, to drive traffic to their site? Let's face it: the days of Alta Vista, Lycos or any other search engine being used are gone: now, Google is so fully integrated into the human consciousness that it's become a verb. People don't say “search for it” anymore, they say “Google it”. So no matter what you're searching for, the chances are about 99.999999% that you will be using Google.

So why this “search online for...?” I take it personally, and as a great insult. My time is valuable. If I am interested in your products I expect to be able to go directly to your website, not faff about on Google looking for it, and if you want me there, then start putting up your address. Because now, as a point of principle, I refuse to obey any requests to “search online for” and will actively stay away from the site, even if I know how to get there.

Yeah, I'm that touchy!
But that is mild compared to how much I hate

“Payday Loans”

Jesus Christ in a fucking zeppelin going over Mount Etna at sunset! I fucking hate, loathe, despise and curse these bastards. You know them, yes? Little institutions that aren't banks and aren't building societies, but privately-owned and operated companies who loan smaller amounts but for much much much higher repayment rates. They're aimed at the desperate, the people who just need a short loan to tide them over. But what nobody seems to realise --- and I only saw this when I happened to catch the quickly spooled-off quote about one of their APRs and had to do a double-take, run it back and confirm that what I heard was true --- is that you will be paying this small loan back for the rest of your life, probably.

Examples range from 100% to ... wait for it ... almost 1,200%! That's right: one thousand, two hundred percent! And I put it in red, so that you could be sure I hadn't made a mistype! So if you borrow a small loan, say £500, on the lowest rate I've seen (100%) you can expect to pay back £1000, and on the highest, the abovementioned 1200%, a whopping £6000! And if you go for a larger loan, you're going to have an even bigger repayment! There's a reason of course why these scum don't loan any more than £5000, and that is probably because the crippling effect of paying back, say on a loan of £20,000, a total figure of almost a quarter of a million pounds is bound to get some press coverage and notice, and bring their extremely shady dealings into sharp focus. People like these don't like the light of publicity: they lurk in the shadows, waiting to snare the unwary, running their “We like to help!” (bastards) ads, pretending they can't WAIT to ease your financial suffering, when all they want to do is get their hooks into you and make you pay for the rest of your days.

Now you may say, so what? Banks essentially do the same thing: a mortage can take you the rest of your life to pay off, and that's true, but there are some very important differences. Firstly, a mortgage (or any bank loan) has a set APR that is usually more in the range of maybe 4-6% (been a long time since I got a bank loan, and I never will again, but I can't imagine it goes above 10%), and you're told this at the start. Also, you expect to be paying your mortgage for most of your life --- it's half of the word: mort being French for death. As well as that, you know that the bank, while they may not be happy if you miss payments and may send letters and make phone calls, are unlikely to send the heavies around, which some of these Payday fuckers are known to do. In the small print on one of them (not sure which) they warn something like “Serious difficulties can arise from failure to pay”. The threat is veiled just enough not to be explicit, but we know what they're saying.

So why does the government allow this? Basically, these arseholes are loan sharks condoned by, or even authorised and sanctioned by the government. How can they let them carry on such reprehensible business practice, and why do these loan companies need to do this anyway? Who ever dreams of making a thousand percent or more profit? Why should they be allowed to? Why is there no legislation governing these institutions, capping their APR at the very least? Why are they not required to make it very clear --- not in the small print that nobody but me reads or in a quick, happy announcement that most people will miss anyway --- that once you sign up with them and get the money from them you will be paying it back at least twice over? I thought the Mafia were the only ones who did that, you know, two points on the dollar per day, sort of thing. Jesus wept. Even Tony Soprano's rates seem reasonable and manageable compared to these moneygrabbing fuckheads.

I honestly could not believe it the first time I saw the rates being flashed on screen, and ever since then I've watched a growing gang of glorified loan sharks witter on about how great it is to have cash in your pocket, and how they can help you pay your bills or meet your commitments. Yeah, well be very careful, because you may meet your current bill but if you take money from any of these lowlife scum, the next ones are going to mount up and you'll end up in the dark when that heavy knock comes on the door and you realise time has run out for you to repay this unrepayable loan. Surely nobody could be that desperate? And yet, there are so many of these and they can afford to pay for primetime TV ads and have huge offices and websites, so I guess there are people that gullible, afraid, destitute or desperate.

They used to say money was the root of all evil, but if so, it's grown some very ugly and twisted branches recently, and these trees are threatening to block out all the sunlight. They're choking the forest and making what was once a place you really didn't want to pass through but could do so, into an area to be avoided and feared. A dark, dismal place where not even the strongest shafts of bright sunlight can get through to. What's needed now is a few good lumberjacks to cut back these hulks and let the forest breathe, before everything in it is choked and dies.

In simpler terms, get some fucking legislation in to regulate these fuckers, before it's too late.

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Josef K

Yeah, payday lending is terrible. Really doesn't get enough attention so thanks for talking about it. It's worth noting that (at least in the States) postal banking has been gaining some traction, and it's both independently good policy and something that would hurt payday lenders.

Trollheart

I've made no secret of my love of the music of Vangelis, and yet, though I have all of his albums I've only listened to a select few. The ones I have though, usually stay with me and tend to get played quite regularly. Though this is one of his earlier efforts (recorded while he was still a member of Aphrodite's Child with the late Demis Roussos), and one of his shortest with a total running time of thirty-five minutes, it's nevertheless among my favourites from him.

L'apocalypse des animaux --- Vangelis --- 1973 (Polydor)

Given that it's the soundtrack to the documentary of the same name, the actual film contains a lot more music so I kind of tend to treat it more as an album than a soundtrack. I assume it translates to “apocalypse of the animals” and all the titles are in French, since it was a French documentary. Some of them I can guess at the meanings of, others not so much. It's not really that important though, as it's the music that concerns us, not the titles. It's a mid-tempo percussive piece with marimbas and vibraphone that gets us underway, a short segment which is basically the title track, with some choral vocals added in before we get to the first real track (this one is less than two minutes long), with “La petite fille de la mer” (The small daughter of the ocean), as dreamy piano backed up by surf sounds and low, lush synth slows everything down to a crawl, the tempo much of this album will take. It's a great one for just closing your eyes and drifting off to. Some gentle acoustic guitar comes in now, but the piano (sounds digital; maybe Fender Rhodes?) holds court over the music, as soft swirling keys now flow in like the waves lapping at the shore, advancing, retreating, advancing, retreating, as timeless as the ocean itself, as unhurried as nature. Sounds like some strings now, but I know Vangelis creates all these instruments himself on his banks of synthesisers. Still, it's very effective.

“Le singe blue” (Blue something, obviously) keeps the soft echoing piano line but marries it to a bit of echo and also introduces sax, low and smoky, which gives the composition a slightly jazzy effect. There's a very late evening feel to it, and if possible it's slower than its predecessor. The sax fades out now and leaves rippling keys to take the tune alone before it slips back in like the ghost of a voice almost forgotten but carries on almost solo, its mournful tone carrying the piece towards its end, rising and falling, crests and troughs. A nice sprinkly effect from the piano falls in a cascade of notes as the sax pulls the melody along, then “Le mort du loup” (Death of the wolf) is driven on the soft piano with shimmering rivers of low synth behind it, while “L'ours musicien” has a deep, brassy synth with the first I've heard of any percussion, if low and muted, and at just over a minute long it doesn't have long to establish itself before it's gone and we're into the epic, a ten-minute “Creation du monde” (Creation of the world) with a low, rising, buzzing synth allied to shimmering, wavering organ and dark bassy keys too.

A high guitar comes through, synthesised of course, joining in the melody as the synth continues to growl and hum as a backdrop, the whole thing taking on quite a spacey, atmospheric air, and now high, rising synth climbs over the darker one, like a dolphin jumping out of the water. A deep bass note adds a sense of portent to the piece, then fades out as quickly as it came in. A sound not completely unlike whalesong drifts over the composition, then some piano notes are sprinkled like fairy dust or pattering rain over the music, bubbling synths adding to the melody. You can get the sense of wonder and awe as the Earth cools and forms from the gases expelled by its parent star, and begins to rotate, creating gravity and an atmosphere, and taking its place in the solar system.

Now the tone changes to very much darker, broodier as the low synth that has been the canvas against which this mutli-textured composition has been created comes more to the fore, booming out and then receding back, more little sprinkly synth noises echoing as they fly off in the distance like passing comets or asteroids. That dark bass piano line returns, staying this time as it brings with it more guitar and the tone rises as the piece nears completion, fading slowly down on that dark piano and the slowly receding synth line.

Which leaves us with just one track before we close, and it's called “La mer recommencee”, which I think means the sea comes back, or the sea is reborn, something like that anyway. It opens on a high synth line, almost like a siren or a factory horn, then a lower, brooding synth before soft piano comes in, the original synth fading away but then coming back with renewed strength. A rising, falling melody now takes the tune, then a roll of muted percussion before cymbals crash and if that doesn't represent the waves rolling on the ocean then my name's not Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. Which it isn't. Everything seems to be slowly winding down now as the album comes to a close and the sea takes over, rippling, sprinkling piano and little flashes of percussion dripping over the music like spring rain as it all slowly fades down and away, leaving you with a powerful sense of the infinite, the power of the ocean and the vastness of time.

TRACKLISTING

1. Apocalypse des animaux --- Generique
2. La petite fille de la mer
3. Le singe bleu
4. Mort de la loup
5. L'Ours musicien
6. Creation du monde
7. La mer recommencee

Yes it's a short album, very short, but it's also very effective. It's possibly an early example of what would go on to become known as ambient music: at times, it's almost abstract. Vangelis has a great way of creating landscapes, stories and vistas with only his synthesisers, and here, even though he had yet to embark on a proper solo career and win the many plaudits he would go on to garner for his work, especially in movies, he has produced an album that takes your breath away, both with its simplicity and its depth. As I said in the review of Oceanic, years ago, Vangelis has the power to take you on a journey with his music, and no matter where you go, or how far, you always feel safe, and know that he will return you to your home, usually richer, at least in a musical sense, for the journey.

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Trollheart

It's fair to say that really, there are few albums that really changed my life. You may be the same. Some albums speak to me more than others, and some got me into a certain band I ended up loving, or a genre perhaps, but I can probably count the ones that I could say actually changed my life on one hand: Maiden's The number of the Beast, Floyd's The Wall, Jeff Wayne's Musical version of the War of the Worlds and of course Script for a jester's tear by Marillion. Most of these I have already reviewed, and there may occur to me at some point others that fall into this category that I have not yet expounded upon, and if so I'll write about them. But although this did not change my life, per se, I can say without any fear of contradiction that it definitely changed my mind about a certain genre, and so in one sense could be said to be one of the

Up until I heard this, I had generally dismissed pretty much all Country music as generic, laughable trash. Cowboys sung about lost loves and getting drunk, railroads and tractors were in a lot of the lyrics, and every single Country song had to have a steel guitar and a harmonica in it. So thought I, naively. Then, one night while doing my usual stint on the local radio back in the late eighties I was lefing through what was laughably called our record library when I came across this album.

Lone Star State of Mind --- Nanci Griffith --- 1987 (MCA)

Nothing attracted me to it: it's just that it was about the best out of a bunch of really bad local Irish artists, old fifties songs and some albums by bands I had never heard of, so in total boredom I decided to give a track a spin. I was rather surprised, to say the least, by how much I liked it and whether my two listeners thought the same or not, I was impressed and decided to borrow it so I could listen to it through at home. Having done so, I had to admit that it was time to re-evaluate my view of Country Music, and I began collecting the rest of her albums. Most were as good, some even better, the odd one didn't chime but I can't really say that I bought a Nanci Griffith album that I did not like, or regretted buying. When she came to town I made sure to buy a ticket and it was a great gig, even if the announcer did tell us at the intermission (yeah we had intermissions back them; it was an indoor concert, very swish) that we should move back to our seats as “Nanci Griffin” was about to return to the stage. It's a mispronounciation of her name I've seen extended over the years to “Nanci Griffiths” and even “Nanci Griffins”. But I'm sure she doesn't care.

This is her fifth album, but the one to break her commercially. Oddly enough, though it contains what would become her best-known and most-often-played song, it was not a hit for her as it was only released as a promotional single, and therefore did not qualify for chart placement. But more of that later. The album opens with the title track, a bouncy, Country rock number that concerns reflections on times gone and loves lost. There's some great banjo and fiddle that really helps the song trip along, even a nice short guitar solo. I love the double meaning in the title too, and Nanci's voice really sounds quite young, although she was thirty-four at the time (fun fact: she was born on the same day as me, ten years earlier); you really would think you were listening to a teenager. The youthful exuberance, the excitement, the starry-eyed optimism that shines through her music even if the lyrics are downbeat and even defeatist at times, all speak to a much younger soul in perhaps a slightly older body.

There's a sort of false ending before it kicks off on a really cool guitar-and-banjo finish with her crooning the last lines, then “Cold hearts/closed minds” is certainly morose, slowing everything down as she prepares to leave her lover, bringing in cello and viola, and yes, there's pedal steel, but you would expect that and it fits in really nicely. It's not to be fair my favourite on the album and something of a comedown after the title, but it's an example of how she can write bitter ballads with the best of them as she sings ”Came by here just to tell you goodbye/ But I can see it in your face/ You don't wanna know why.”

That song of which I spoke, which should have been a massive worldwide hit for her but never made it into the charts via a technicality is the gorgeous “From a distance”. Written by Julie Gold, it's been covered plenty of times, and no wonder. Driven mostly on piano with cello accompaniment it's a superb little prayer to peace as she sings "From a distance you look like my friend/ Even though we are at war/ From a distance I can't comprehend/ What all this war is for.” Not an original sentiment, certainly, but a valid one, and the idea of everything looking different “from a distance” is telling. A beautiful piano solo, understated but firm, just makes this song better somehow. It's a mid-paced acoustic then for “Beacon Street”, with a sort of handclap beat driving the percussion, orchestral accompaniment provided by cello, violin and viola. It's a nice song but a little light, then “Nickel dreams” is a real standout with its Country waltz, swaying along with a lovely dreamy feel, some sweet pedal steel and violin, with a sad, bitter idea in the lyric: ”It's a dollar a wrinkle/ And less than a nickel a dream.”

The album is full of reflections on a life, real or imagined, semiautobiographical or not, and it is crammed with regrets of chances not taken, lives not lived, bridges not crossed. There is also time however for a good old-fashioned hoe-down, like when she tackles Robert Earl Keen Jr's “Sing one for sister”. It's a pretty much shit-on-your-boots Country song and a real generic one I guess but it's okay. Again, not my favourite. But then we hit a real rich vein of form, in fact paydirt as the rest of the album absolutely blows it out of the water. Kicking off on “Ford Econoline”, a fast-paced song of freedom and escape, driven on a pounding guitar rhythm, a life-affirming, female-empowering ode to the open road as Nanci sings ”She's salt of the earth/ Straight from the bosom of the Mormon churches/ A voice like wine” and archly observes of the woman's drinkin' gamblin' husband that ”His big mistake was in buyin' her/ That Ford Econline!” A great song that just gets your heart pumping, and cheering on the escaping wife, until we slow right down with one of her Dust Bowl tales, telling the story of the famine in midwestern America in the '30s in “Trouble in the fields”. With a slow violin and guitar line, it's a song of despair but also hope as she declares ”If we sell that new John Deere/ And we work these crops with sweat and tears/ You'll be the mule/ I'll be the plough/ Come harvest time we'll work it out.” Very moving, and a great steel guitar solo too.

The mood stays slow and bleak for “Love in a memory”, with one of my favourite instruments driving the song, a gorgeous turn on the mandolin from Mark O'Connor in a song that speaks of more cheating men as she sings ”The ring on his finger/ Grows cold to the bone/ His sons are young dreamers/ Who cheat on their own wives/ He still dreams of St. Paul/ When he's cheatin' alone.” Great piano line too, superb song. Another standout. And a fiddle solo to die for, taking us into a faster “Let it shine on me”, driving along at a fine lick. Sort of starts off a little like “Lone Star State of mind”, but it's slightly slower and then develops its own identity on the back of pedal steel and electric guitar. There's a suggestion of gospel in the lyric and the melody, and we end on the reflective “There's a light beyond these woods, Mary Margaret”, which I have to admit would not have been my choice for a closer, but it's a decent enough song and holds its end up enough not to ruin this good feeling I've been getting from the last few tracks. I guess in some ways it bookends the album by starting with a fast track and ending with a slow one, both featuring memories and a sense of innocence lost, this one actually encapsulating an entire life from childhood to full grown and older woman.

TRACKLISTING

1. Lone star state of mind
2. Cold hearts/closed minds
3. From a distance
4. Beacon Street
5. Nickel dreams
6. Sing one for sister
7. Ford Econoline
8. Trouble in the fields
9. Love in a memory
10. Let it shine on me
11. There's a light beyond these woods (Mary Margaret)

Sure, it's not an album that is going to shatter anyone's worldview or make them suddenly become a fan of Country music, and it has its flaws, but for me it was quite a revelation, and as I said I made a point of collecting all the albums of an artiste I had never to that point even heard of, much less dreamed of becoming a fan of. In recent times, Griffith's output stalled a little for me, and her last three albums did not impress me the way those she put out in the eighties and nineties did. But I still remain a fan, and it's all thanks to that one night when I had nothing to play on my radio show, took a chance and thought “what the hell”?

What, indeed?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

I was just heading off to bed one night last week when I happened to catch a recording of the Sonisphere 2014 festival, and while some of the acts were meh, there was one that stood out to me, the more because it surprised me how impressed I was. That was the single song performed by Gary Numan, darling of the eighties new-wave scene and best known of course for his number one hit with Tubeway Army, “Are friends electric?” It was in fact this song that he played, but it was the way he “rocked it up” that truly staggered me. Known as one of the best examples of what would be seen as emotionless pop music of the time, it's hard to imagine this rocking at all, but he did a great job on it.

Now of course I guess anything can be made tougher and harder and more rocky if you have the talent, but for me the awe was that this was not a cover by some rock band who would be used to such music, but the artiste himself, famous for his pasty-faced makeup, emotionless drone and unblinking stare, and to see him with long(ish) unkempt hair, smiling and dancing around, well it was quite a revelation.

The crowd certainly seemed to love it (most would have known or known of it I guess, even if they would pretend never to have heard it or enjoyed it) and Numan himself seemed to be having a blast. The keyboards were there, sure, but cut right back and the electric guitars drove the song, giving it much more of a bite, adding a real punch and injecting a lot of emotion into a song that originally would have made the likes of Kraftwerk proud. I of course don't know how Numan performs these days, and his last album seems to be mostly still rooted in the new-wave/industrial style of music, but it's good to know that almost thirty years later he's discovered how to kick back, let his hair down, smile and not take everything so deadly serious. Are friends electric? This song certainly was, in a live setting.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018