THE MARMITE FACTOR

For those who enjoy a bit of daft, I’ve started a new blog at rhubarbcrumbles.blogspot.com

It’s essentially a home for comic short stories, but be warned: while some make sense, others really are complete nonsense.  There is a bit of a tradition amongst some of the people I know, going back around 25 years, that we create stories which are wilfully nonsensical...

So, if that’s your sort of thing, please have a look and if it isn’t, don’t!  I’ve been trying to produce something each day throughout January.  Yesterday’s effort was one of the more baffling ones, but don't let that put you off!

If anybody fancies joining in, illustrating a story or even recording one or more for an audio podcast, you know where to find me.  Yes, in the back of a white van.

THE LADIES ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES

The music industry is dying! Record companies in crisis, sales of CDs falling...

If they're counting sales of mainstream artists and outlets, this is probably true. But is anybody taking into account the growing number of labels and artists producing music - and more - off their own backs? Because - look around kids - there are loads of 'em! Not to mention all the Soundclouders and Bandcampers and artists who used to be with labels but now manage their output themselves (Marillion, The Alarm... hello After The Fire!)

Take a look at online retailer Boomkat: they stock big name artists like Radiohead and Bjork, but the majority of what they sell must surely be independent stuff. I'm not convinced we're buying less music at all, but rather branching out, both in terms of what we listen to, where we get it from and what format it comes in. There is a wonderfully diverse musical world developing, consisting of labels, collectives, sub-genres... it can take a while to track down the stuff you like initially, but if you find something, get in there quick! Some of these labels are producing stuff in very limited quantities indeed.

Here are a few labels and artists worth checking out:

"Second Language is a record label sans frontiers, dedicated to bringing you genuinely exclusive and collectible new music by a wonderful international roster of hand-chosen artists...Once a Second Language record has sold out it’s really gone forever."

So, can you really not get hold of sold-out Second Language material? Not a chance mate, unless you want to monitor Mediafire for years in the hope that some kind soul takes pity on you. Good luck with that. In some ways, this exclusivity is good - the label sells what it makes and the customer gets something unique to treasure - but a part of me thinks it is a real shame that such wonderful music won't find a wider audience. I grabbed The Edge Blown Aerophone, by Littlebow, an excellent classical album of sorts, which really should get airplay. Alas, limited to 400 copies. I've listened to several podcasts on the Second Language website and, judging by some of the tracks included, we've missed some seriously good releases. A minute's silence for them, please.

With the mighty First Fold Records, at least when the limited run of 100 physical copies of an album are sold out, you can still buy the catalogue as downloads - direct from First Fold themselves, or from iTunes, emusic and all the usual suspects. And, trust me, that's a good thing. First Fold boss man and artist Papa November (real name Stuart!) describes First Fold as "a collective of artists whose focus is to maintain a self regulating and enthusiastic approach to the creation of music and visual media and aims to encourage a dialogue that constantly challenges the people involved to generate exciting and relevant work". The label's music has encompassed electronica, library, classical, folk and krautrock - without getting bogged down by genre. The label is also not constrained by media, as its journal of "words, images and sounds inspired by a theme" Premier Pli attests. Fans of Hauntology and library take note: Premier Pli volume 2 will have a particularly special contributor... you have been warned! Oh, and First Fold are branching out into books now too... I urge you to check out First Fold artists in the flesh at one of their 'Bring Out Your Dead' events, now held monthly (more or less) at the Bulls Head in Moseley, Blighty - more details at the First Fold news page. (That image up there at the top, by the way, is First Fold's Plague Doctor, doing a spooky dance at the first BOYD event and, er, handing out sweets. Photo courtesy of Craig Earp.)

Moon Wiring Club - here's something proper bloomin' special, and it's largely down to one fella. Just take a look at the gorgeous, charming, slightly spooky website Blank Workshop. Stunning artwork, a made up - or is it? - northern town with characters, shops, tea cakes and special nougat, and some really mad albums peppered with vocal samples from old telly programmes. Some of these albums come in unusual shapes and sizes - a mini CD, or a vinyl-only release - while others can be found on iTunes. If you want to find out more but are not yet ready to shell out your sponds, head over to YouTube where you'll find several Moon Wiring Club videos. But if you want some of the rarer, non-iTunes stuff, don't hang about...

Ghost Box. Now these guys really are the masters. Ghost Box is a label that specialises in music which takes its cues from stuff like the Radiophonic Workshop, old library music, Public Information Films, folk, scary kids telly from the 70s...and yet manages to surpass it all. I could wax lyrical about the label's artists, but I'm not going to, because a quick online search for Belbury Poly, The Advisory Circle, The Focus Group - and more - will show that others have already waxed lyrical, at length. But I will mention the album covers, beautifully designed by Julian House, inspired by old publications, the like of which we haven't seen for some years now. [Nostalgic sigh.] Don't let the length of this short paragraph fool you. Ghost Box are special with a capital Spesh. Check them out right this very now!! More info at the Belbury Parish Magazine.

Cafe Kaput. To some extent you could call this is an offshoot of Ghost Box, it being the brainchild of Jon Brooks, aka The Advisory Circle. But it is a whole lot more: Brooks is a gifted fella who turns his hand to different styles on his digital-only Cafe Kaput label. Check out 'Music For Dieter Rams' for example: every last sound on that record originated from a Braun AB-30 Alarm Clock. If you're expecting some weird experimental collection of badly recorded bleeps and ticks, you're wrong - this is a spectacularly atmospheric, rather relaxing electronic album - wholeheartedly recommended.

There are a lot more independents and special little fellows out there, I could go on all night, but I won't. Okay, maybe a bit.  I urge you to google the following: Pye Corner Audio (imagine an unreleased Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis, committed to tape, lost, rediscovered 25 years later in a slightly knackered state of repair, cleaned up and finally released - brilliant. And there's more to it than that too - visuals, atmosphere...new album coming in January!), Trunk (one of two labels curated by top chap Jonny Trunk, specialising in library, jazz, lost soundtracks, religious music and... rude stuff. His other label, OST, looks set to be just as good and so far has done what it says on the tin) and Finders Keepers (like Trunk to some extent, but while Trunk digs up Bagpuss, Bod and Ivor the Engine, Finders Keepers manage to unearth obscure European horror and Bollywood soundtracks, and more - they can describe themselves better than I).

Oh, just for once, to be able to walk into a music shop on a high street and to find the racks full of this stuff...

MUST TRY HARDER

With such a high percentage of fellas being averse to clothes shopping, why is it that high street retailers put menswear upstairs?
You'd think that, given that most women are supposed to love shopping and will go out of their way to do it, shop managers would use their noggins and put womenswear upstairs. Think, you twots! Women are going to make the effort!
I truly detest clothes shopping, and have lost count of the number of times I've walked into a shop, seen that menswear is on another floor, and walked straight out again. Put another way, I can count on one hand the number of times in the last 5 years that I've not walked out. Do they expect me to negotiate my way around women as they toss new fashions around with wild abandon and totter towards the changing room? No thanks. I just can not be bothered to fight my way through handbags, perfume counters and breastware to find an escalator. If they want my money, they're going to have to encourage me to come in. Putting mens clothes in the retail equivalent of Alaska is not going to work.
So, a shout out to Gap. Today I spotted menswear just inside one of their stores, did a double take and actually went in! For at least half a minute! Didn't spend any money, mind you.

FLY FROM HERE

A band who can sustain a career successfully for over 40 years hardly need the likes of me to bang on about their new album, but I'm going to because Fly From Here is a return to form.

One of my favourite Yes albums is Drama. Released in 1980, it was rhythm-based, solid, no filler, great songs. While it featured regular Yes members Steve Howe, Chris Squire and Alan White, it was the first album without Jon Anderson on vocals, and Rick Wakeman had just departed too. Again. Yes lore tells us that a lot of the old and, presumably by 1980, smelly fans didn't like the fact that Anderson and Wakeman were replaced by Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes - also known as Buggles, who had just dented the charts with their massive hit Video Killed The Radio Star.

For listeners who could get past preconceptions, Drama sat nicely alongside the best of Yes. Sadly, after just one album, the line-up went their separate ways, to be replaced by another fantastic, very different Yes who hit the big time with Owner Of A Lonely Heart. (You've heard of that one, right?)

While Yes continued to morph and produce some great music, a part of me was sad that the Drama line-up did not get a chance to follow up their unique take on Yes, and that this album was never played live. I met the band briefly over a decade ago, and asked Chris Squire and Alan White why this was so: they shrugged, pointed a thumb in the general direction of...someone else...and said, "it's not up to us."

By the time 2011 came round, Yes hadn't put out a studio album in 10 years. Then suddenly they announced a new one and - Holy Zarquon! - it was only the flippin' Drama line-up back from the grave, with fab new boy Benoit David on vocals!

"Ah, hang on a minute," say you. "It's not the Drama line-up without Trevor Horn, is it?"
"Well, not strictly, no," say I, "but did I mention that Horn produced the album, co-wrote 7 tracks and is credited with additional backing vocals and keyboards?"


So what's Fly From Here like? It has the slightly melancholy edge that typifies parts of Drama and some of the best Buggles stuff, but elsewhere soars like Yes at their most optimistic. It has noisy proggy bits that send the wife scurrying out of the room, and girl friendly acoustic bits too. It's better than any of the tripe the 'classic' Yes line-up put out in their mid-90's Keys To Ascension period (actually, Tripe would have been a better title than Keys To Ascension), and while Yes hit a high in 1994 with Talk and produced a few juicy moments on The Ladder in 1999, Fly From Here is easily their best album since the 80s. So there, hippies.  The production is perhaps not what you might expect from Trevor Horn, who is sometimes wrongly associated only with the Fairlight and sample-heavy stuff he put out in the 1980s (see Art of Noise, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, ABC and yes, Yes, amongst several others). On Fly From Here he rejected that approach and manages to get Yes to sound as natural as they did on their early 70s albums, but with a fresh coat of polish.

The title track Fly From Here dates back to the Drama sessions, but the band never recorded it until now. If you've heard the crappy live version on the (say it quietly) In A Word boxed set, or the demo hidden away on a Buggles reissue, forget 'em. The song has matured and even gets a proper stretchy Yes treatment, having been mangled into a 24 minute epic.

AND ANOTHER THING...

Something which frustrated me about the otherwise excellent 30th anniversary celebrations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a couple of years ago was the way the new editions of the books referred to "all the various and contradictory manifestations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: radio, novels, TV, computer game, stage adaptation, comic book and bath towel".   Apart from the fact that there was no mention of the movie, or the various audio books (Stephen Moore's long out of print versions were particularly marvellous), the biggest frustration for me was the fact that they made no mention of one of my favourite versions of all, that being the LP releases on Original Records.

Unlike today, when you can access virtually any version of the guide at the touch of a button, in the 1980s we had the books (as they came out), abridged audio readings of the same and those records.   Re-runs of the TV and radio series were few and far between, and video and CD releases of those were a long time coming.   So, for a fan like me, the default "go-to version" was the records.

For those unfamiliar with them, the LPs (and cassettes, which I recently found in a shop in North Wales, woohoo!) provide an alternative to the first six episodes of the radio series, and are more in line with the subsequent TV version in terms of both plot and delivery of lines (there was some tweaking by author Douglas Adams after the original radio series broadcasts - lines originally attributed to Arthur are given to Ford, for example). The records contain the utterly marvellous Disaster Area element of the story, some great background music and really rather good sound effects.  Not to mention an excellent rendering of the ancient Betelgusian Death Anthem, a great new (at the time) version of the theme music and what is, to my mind, the best reading of Vogon poetry ever, which, if you've never heard, you really must seek out RIGHT NOW!!!

Over the years we've had a number of CD releases of the radio series (mastered, remastered, boxed sets with extras, a 'dynamic remastering') but a re-release of the records has never appeared and is long, long overdue.   Forget about waiting for Deep Thought to reveal the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, we've been waiting a lot longer for these records to reappear!   If you haven't heard them, they can presently be found at the splendid Ripping Yarns blog courtesy of the links below, as is the equally important single version of the theme which includes Disaster Area performing "It's only the end of the world again" and which, legend has it, featured Douglas Adams on rhythm guitar.  They'd make great extras if the records ever came out on CD...!

The original double album version of Hitchhikers is HERE
The second album (Restaurant) is HERE
The single version is HERE

By the way, there's an app version of Hitchhiker's on the way, featuring new recordings of the original Arthur Dent, Simon Jones!  Holy Zarquon!

JUST DON'T USE THAT 'HAUNTOLOGY' WORD

Second post in a day, but just a quick one - a link to track 1 on the new Aggressive Rhubarb EP, 'A Darker Path'.  I made a conscious effort to create some spooky music and I think I achieved what I set out to do.  It certainly puts the wind up the kids!

My missus reckons this type of music should be called Uneasy Listening...and she's probably right.

Track: CREEPING DARKNESS by 'Aggressive Rhubarb'

BUILD YOUR OWN STONE CIRCLE

Did you know that Tim built his own stone circle?

Tim and another fella - who, curiously, previously lived in the house in which I now reside - used to cycle down to Avebury, Stonehenge and the like as a sort of annual summer pilgrimage. Well, they're getting on a bit now, being in their 40s and all, and were beginning to find the trek a bit of a slog, so one day Tim thought to himself "Why don't we build our own stone circle?"

As you do.
I wonder if they remembered to stick it on a Ley Line?

Here, for your delight, is a glimpse of said henge. It's official name is The Grove, but personally I think TIMHENGE rocks harder. (Rocks. Geddit?)

They aligned the stones with the sun and all that stuff.  Cool, eh?  One thing I don't get, though. Why build their own stone circle when they could have popped along to The Rollright Stones, 5 miles down the road?

BLOGGER ME

It seems fitting that the first thing I write on this blog is the first thing I write in my new gaff.  After two and a half years in a village in Worcestershire, Blighty, we've moved again.  I say again, because I've lived in 14 houses to date, 9 of those since the late 1990s.  For my eldest daughter, age 5, this is her fifth home.  Moving is not something I particularly like doing, but when you rent you're at the mercy of the landlord, and if they decide they want to sell your home (been there), or turn it into a chemist (and there), or not pay their mortgage until the bank repossesses the house from under you (yep, that too), then you move when you're told to.  And so, reluctantly, we've moved again, although I have to say, it's rather nice: a town house this time, in a town we've lived in before, which is only just big enough not to be a village - 4500 inhabitants, so I'm told (I haven't counted 'em).  And I suppose if we'd not rented and moved so much, I wouldn't have experienced so many different types of home: a converted barn, new houses, old houses and a damp 1st floor flat accessible only by an exterior staircase.

So.  New house, new blog.  Going to ramble on about stuff and maybe post a link or two to music I've been working on, also under the moniker Aggressive Rhubarb.  That'll follow shortly....