Rant | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Abu Dhabi

December 10, 2014
bradspurgeon

bait al oud

My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Abu Dhabi since I first started.

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Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Brazil

December 8, 2014
bradspurgeon

Sao Paulo skyline

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Sao Paulo since I first started.

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Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Belgium

September 6, 2014
bradspurgeon

liege

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Belgium since I first started. At each subsequent Formula One race that I visit this year, I will add a new such page. Keep posted….

Yes, yes, for those who are very alert, you might realize that I am writing these words from Monza, Italy, that Belgium was the race I attended two weeks ago. I admit, I am behind schedule on this one by one race – but the Italy section will be done pronto!!!

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Budapest to Paris Transition, From Szimpla to Sous Marin: But a Common Problem Linking Both Venues

August 4, 2014
bradspurgeon

Szimpla Facade Budapest

PARIS – I wrote nothing since my days in Budapest, which I left a week ago and spent two days driving back to Paris, via Vienna. But that does not mean I have dropped the open mic adventure. My final night in Budapest I dropped off at the fabulous Szimpla kert to see if one of my all-time-favorite open jam sessions still exists.

I had discovered the Szimpla open mic, open jam in 2011. It was also the year I discovered this now hugely popular phenomenon of the kert, which is a kind of beer garden, but very hippie, very ramshackle, temporary looking multi-space bar area part outdoors, part-indoors that looks a little like a futuristic, post nuclear holocaust meeting place. They are all over Budapest, often in ruined buildings, as is the Szimpla kert.

(This video above shows me playing a horrendously out-of-tune guitar and discovering that I would not be able to sing to my guitar playing at Szimpla, as the mic was turned off for the night due to noise problems.)

The problem, though, is that the jam session has never been what it was in 2009 since I have returned each year. At least it WAS happening this year, because I don’t think it was happening last year. The problem is, Szimpla has now put the emphasis on live bands doing gigs on the stage where the jam takes place, they play early, and when they finish the stage and its instruments is open to anyone who wants to get up and jam – until 11 p.m. Not much time. Worse, it is not possible to use a microphone for vocals once the band is off stage, as they do not want to bother the neighbors.

Szimpla is Not the Only Venue in the World With Neighborly Noise Problems – See Sous Marin in Paris

Bothering the neighbors is a leitmotif in open mics and jams around the world, in fact, in any bar live music venue just about anywhere around the world. So it was that I found once I had returned to Paris and on Friday attended the relatively new Sous Marin bar open mic on the Rue Mouffetard, that they had moved the “stage” from near the front door to the bar end of the room since the last time I attended.

The last time I attended – which was also the first time – I was a little pissed off when I got up behind the mic to find the manager turning down both my guitar and mic volume to the point that not only could the chattering spectators not hear me, but neither could I! A friend asked me to turn up the volume, but I felt I had to obey the manager. (Finally, the MC came and turned it up and things went really well after that, especially when the crowd was reduced.)

Friday, no such luck. The manager pushed me out of his path from the bar to the tables while I was in the middle of a song, and then he returned to turn down the volume of the guitar and the vocals. Given that the three musicians who preceded me were quite audible right to the back of the room, and given that I had been standing in precisely the same spot as one of them, I felt a little bit like my presence was not particularly welcome. So I stopped singing in the middle of the song and left, telling the audience that the great thing about not being a professional musician was that you did not have to be professional about what you do. (There are those who would argue with that – notably a quote I have in mind from a Hollywood mogul of the early part of last century who said something like, “Show me the star who does not give 100 percent all the time, and I’ll show you the next bit-part actor. Show me the bit-part actor who gives 100 percent in every role, and I will show you the next star….”

Anyway…. The bar manager told me that he constantly had problems with the police coming and relaying complaints about the volume of the music. So that was the reason behind putting a muzzle on me. Fair enough. But what good is an open mic where a musician cannot feel wanted, and especially, cannot be heard…? This same manager, by the way, clearly treats musicians well in other respects: It’s one of the rare open mics where performers all get a free beer! And despite my offer to pay my beer even though I had sung only half a song, he insisted it was on the house…. So check it out yourselves, and let me know if I’ve bad-mouthed a great place….

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From a New Pub to an Old, Amazing Times in Historic Heidelberg

July 20, 2014
bradspurgeon

Heidelberg castle

HEIDELBERG, Germany – Just when I started feeling depressed about the idea of ever finding – or rather not finding – an open mic or jam session in Heidelberg, I stumbled upon an historic, amazing, astounding student pub and restaurant called Zum Seppl, in the old town. It may not have been a classic open mic or open jam joint of the kind I try to find to play in, and I may not have played there myself last night, but not only was there music all evening long by a piano player, there was a sudden eruption later on of restaurant patrons launching into what seemed like traditional German songs, with a freedom and fun attitude and feeling equal only to the best open mics.

I discovered that the extraordinary look and atmosphere in this restaurant, and the amazing cragged wooden tables, were so astounding because this place has been a restaurant since at least 1703! Check out the link above to find out more about it, but for the moment I just want to say that if you ever get a chance to visit Heidelberg, drop in to this student pub. Heidelberg is a university town, and it and its already ruined castle were an inspiration to the German Romantics – including Goethe himself – already a hundred years after this student restaurant was a student restaurant.

It also has a tradition as a brewery, and the beer was great. But the food was fabulous too. I cannot quite describe the atmosphere and look of this place, so take in my iPhone’s look at it all – and the singing.

And Before that, It Was Off to a Karaoke at O’Reilly’s pub in Heidelberg

The night before I had settled for O’Reilly’s pub on the other side of the river, a classic Irish pub of the kind I find all over the world. O’Reilly’s has a karaoke on both Friday and Saturday nights, in the back room. It’s a fabulous little stage, a wonderful amphitheater-like room, and a great MC. The only problem with the place is that with such a great setup, they really should invest in better mics or other sound system materials to make sure that the voices in the karaoke can be heard in all their glory.

I feel as if I have succeeded in singing in karaokes only maybe once before – i.e., whenever I sing covers with my guitar I do them differently than the original, so I usually fail utterly in karaokes. But on Friday night, I found myself deciding to risk singing a song I barely know on my guitar, and have never tried in a karaoke: Born to Run. Somehow, the key was perfect and I was able to sing along in a way that felt wonderfully powerful. It was a real joy, and I fear I might try more karaokes….

Still, I’m overwhelmingly upset that aside from a jazz jam club at Cave 54 that has a jam on Tuesdays, I have still not found any of the kind of open mics that I seek out, and this looks set to be the first time in years that I have failed to find one in a new city I have visited. I chose Heidelberg because I thought it was the most culturally strong city in the area near the Hockenheim racetrack, and I think that remains true. So why is there not more live music in this student center of the region?!?

http://www.heidelberger-kulturbrauerei.de/en/

Brad’s Morning Exercise Music Rundown, 8th Installment: Aaron Bowen, Marjorie Martinez, Karim Kanal, Zucco San, Joe Psalmist and the usual compilations from Uncut and Mojo

June 28, 2014
bradspurgeon

Sit Ups

For my eighth “Morning Exercise Rundown,” – the seventh of which ran on 21 Jan. – I have a whopping collection of something like 10 CDs from various sources, but unique so far in this column, all but the compilations from Mojo and Uncut are from musicians I have met and heard since that last instalment at open mics and through other person connections. None, that is to say, is really well-known.

The Morning Exercise Music Philosophy

As a reminder to readers, therefore, the idea behind this regular column is that for most of my life I avoided classic daily physical exercise because I felt I was able to avoid it and it bored me to death. In recent years, I had a kind of flash of aged inspiration and realized that I might bore myself to death if I DON’T do exercises. (No time in life for exercise? No! No time in life to NOT exercise!) That did not, however, alleviate the boredom of doing them. So it is that when not doing my nighttime exercise of riding my unicycle around the neighborhood – which does NOT bore me – I do my exercises in the morning (sit ups, push ups, etc.) while listening to new (and old) CDs that I acquire from compilations of magazines, that I also occasionally buy or receive from budding musicians at open mics, or any other source.

I do not pretend to be a music critic, but simply to talk about and describe, and give my impressions of the music I listen to during my morning exercises. Keep in mind that my impressions and opinions, therefore, will have been formed while straining to reach a record number of push ups, sit ups, couch ups, stretch downs and simply catching my breath. So maybe my opinion will be warped.

Aaron Bowen and His Paul Simon-like Vocals and Virtuoso Guitar Playing

Aaron Bowen Karaoke Fallback Plan

I first heard Aaron Bowen playing at an open mic in Paris a few months ago, and heard enough in the din of chatter, television and pub noise to think that this guy had some kind of real and individual talent, both vocal and on guitar. So it was with no hesitation at all that when I saw he was doing a short concert at another venue that I decided to go and give a listen. When he announced at the end of that show that he had some CDs for sale, I immediately went on my attack and took both. Hailing from San Diego, and just on one of his many visits to Paris, Aaron Bowen has an ethereal sound and fairly involved lyrics, but ultimately an often fast-moving, classic pop-sound to his melodies and rhythms. And his vocals so often sound like Paul Simon, it’s astounding. From intricate fingerpicking to rambunctious strumming, Bowen puts his own being into the performance, and on the CDs you’re still left with a strong, melodious, imaginary world. The first album is “The Karaoke Fallback Plan,” which in no way resembles karaoke, and the other is his latest album, “The Quarryman’s Footbath.” They can be listened to many times, too, these CDs, as you delve into the lyrics and add dimensions to your understanding, slowly, as the full sound is not evident on first listen – i.e., this is not bubblegum pop music lyrics, but more comparable to the kind of involved Paul Simon stuff of that writer’s maturity.

Marjorie Martinez, the Bluesy, Jazzy, Pop Lady of Nice

Marjorie Martinez

I first heard and met Marjorie Martinez in Nice when I showed up for the open mic jam session of Wednesday night at the Shapko bar and discovered that it had changed days and I had stepped into a gig by Marjorie. She invited me to play if I wanted to, though, and then a sax player joined her, and the night took on the aspect of a jam…before she returned to playing her gig. I saw her a few nights later playing out front of a restaurant with a bass player and keyboard player. By then, I had already listened to her two CDs that I had grabbed that first night, having been enthralled by her guitar playing, vocals, her musicality in general. Think Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Bonnie Raitt. In fact, Marjorie Martinez is a little bit of all them – with a very strong talent for jazz singing as well. She is, it turns out, a major attraction in the Nice music scene, playing all over the place, and recording with some fabulous musicians when not entertaining live. The two CDs that she was selling were both different, with her quartet, being much more jazz-oriented, and the other, called “Travelin’ Alone,” being more pop – middle-of-the-road U.S. country rock style pop, and all in English, her own compositions included. But it’s not easy to pigeon-hole this funky, rocking’ guitar player singer, and even on the album with the quartet her cover songs are by Jimi Hendrix, Lennon and McCartney and Janis Joplin….

The Constrasting Sounds of Joe Psalmist, Zucco San and Karim Kanal

Joe Psalmist

It has taken me three years or so to hear Joe Psalmist in his full band and CD-mode. His new CD, “If I don’t praise you Lord,” is just what it sounds like: One long praise to the Lord in the form of dance and gospel and bluesy melody music from this Spanish expat from Nigeria. I first hear Joe playing his keyboards and singing along at an Irish pub open mic in Barcelona a few years ago and we kept in touch. But we did not meet up again until he invited me to his open mic in April, and I found his vast cross-section of musical vocal talents ranging from classic rock to blues to gospel. This CD is just one long pure praise the Lord hymn of 12 songs that really move you….

Zucco San‘s single “Undefinite Time,” by comparison was a real discovery for me from a musician I have heard in more open mics around Paris than just about any others. I’m used to hearing Zucco’s airy, Jeff Buckley interpretations and other interpretations of classic pop and rock. He almost always wows his audiences with his application and raw emotion; so it was really interesting to hear his voice in a recording like this and see what dimensions it can take in a recording studio. I never had the occasion to hear Zucco San outside of the open mic situation until he invited a friend and I to a showing of some videos and short films he worked on in his other role as actor and musician, and he had some of the CDs there. The music video for Undefinite Time” and the music he wrote for the short film, Toi Femmes, were superb as well.

Karim Kanal

Karim Kanal is the only musician here that I have not met. He is my girlfriend’s sometime guitar teacher and a musical mentor at the fabulous Centre Musical Barbara, Fleury Goutte d’Or in Paris, which exists to help nurture young musicians. His CD, “Espace(s),” of his guitar compositions, part lead, part fingerpicking, struck me as a kind of world music fusion jazz kind of thing, that even though it is nowhere near the kind of orchestration of a Weather Report, has a lot of the feel and melody style of such compositions. There’s a little bit of a Pat Metheny feel to this too….

Uncut, Mojo Compilations Give Me a Revelation – at Least to Me

Maybe this is not new as an idea for anyone else, and I never claimed to be a music critic or expert, so what seems new to me is no doubt old hat to those in the know, but when I was listening to the recent batches of compilations from Uncut and Mojo of the latest best music around – according to them – I suddenly had a revelation. I was listening, in particular, I think, to the CD from Mojo for the month of May called “Death Disco” and including such artists from the past and present as Felt, Orange Juice, Bush Tetras, Sonic Youth, The Fall, Young Marble Giants, Cabaret Voltaire, Pere Ubu, The Nightingales and others, and then I was listening to the Uncut compilation “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!” followed by the Uncut compilation called “One For the Road,” with lots more recent bands, and suddenly, I said to myself that a lot of the new music around today that has a folk feel to it, using acoustic or only quietly used electronic instruments sounds like the spitting image of the electro music of the 1980s, but yes, with acoustic, “traditional” stringed and keyboard instruments. It is the heart and soul of electro, with similar melodic approaches and vocal styles, but not with electronic instruments. So, is this an original thought, or am I showing my ignorance and there’s already a name for it…?

I may well have been simply over-intoxicated by my morning exercises and the endorphins that coursed through my system, augmented by the same sent via the music….

Well, that rounds that up. Another, rather large, morning exercise crop of CDs, my eighth edition since I started doing this in April of last year….

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Great Australian Experience at the Great Britain Hotel Pub or Whatever….

March 13, 2014
bradspurgeon

great britain open mic joint in Melbourne

MELBOURNE, Australia – So here I am at the nighttime of the second day of my time in Melbourne, on a clock time of I don’t know what, since there is a 10-hour difference to my homeland of Paris. But I do know that I have now actually taken part in TWO open mics. And I do know that both experiences were astounding. OK, that’s hyperbole. Wait until I write a bit about tonight’s experience tomorrow. For the moment, I’m writing about yesterday’s experience today. If you find that confusing, imagine how I feel going through all the time differences….

Anyway… last night it was another visit to the mainstay Melbourne open mic of the Great Britain Hotel and/or pub. I say and/or because as far as I can see this place is not a hotel but only a pub. Still, there may well be a hotel upstairs – but if there is, I wouldn’t want to go there. Having said that, the open mic is well worth it.

It’s a well organized one with a great little stage, a nice sound system, excellent lighting, and an all together cool experience. And it has been going for years. I think this was my third or fourth year playing here, and each time I have actually had different experience. So anything I say about it today, will probably be out of date tomorrow….

But after last year I thought it had taken a little turn for the less crowded and interesting, this year suddenly there was a nice sized audience and a number of very cool and interesting musicians. There were also about four or five comics, which I don’t think I had ever seen even one of before.

So expect anything at the Great Britain open mic in Great Melbourne!

And stay tuned for tomorrow at the open mic I attended tonight, because it was a real winner…. (As you can probably guess by the inebriated state of my prose….)

Brad’s Morning Exercise Music Rundown, 7th Installment: Basement Productions French Fries Music and the Rock&Folk Compilation (with The Burnin’ Jacks)

January 21, 2014
bradspurgeon

Sit Ups

For my seventh “Morning Exercise Rundown,” – the sixth of which ran on 24 Dec. – I have a collection of five CDs from the same music company, and one compilation CD from the January 2014 issue of the Rock&Folk magazine, in France.

I did not really expect to do another morning exercise music rundown so early in the year and so soon after my last one, a month ago. I have not been travelling to the Formula One races and so I have not had my usual stash of CDs offered by the Lotus Formula One team, which had a contract with Columbia records and gave away CDs all last season. But then I made a visit to a friend’s recording studio and music publishing company in Paris, and then I found a CD worth talking about wrapped in with the January edition of Rock&Folk….

The Morning Exercise Music Philosophy

As a reminder to readers in this first of the year’s exercise music rundowns, the idea behind this regular post/column is that for most of my life I avoided classic daily physical exercise because I felt I was able to avoid it and it bored me to death. In recent years, I had a kind of flash of aged inspiration and realized that I might bore myself to death if I DON’T do exercises. That did not, however, alleviate the boredom of doing them. So it is that when not doing my nightly exercise of riding my unicycle around the neighborhood – which does NOT bore me – I do my exercises in the morning (sit ups, push ups, etc.) while listening to new (and old) CDs that I acquire from compilations of magazines like Rock & Folk, Mojo and Uncut, and that I also occasionally buy or receive from budding musicians at open mics. Then came the Formula One connection from the Lotus team, and I decided that I should occasionally share my morning exercise listening experiences with readers of this blog when I have no open mic news or videos to exploit.

I do not pretend to be a music critic, but simply to give my impressions of the music I listen to during my morning exercises. Keep in mind that my impressions and opinions, therefore, will have been formed while straining to reach a record number of push ups, sit ups, couch ups, stretch downs and simply catching my breath. So maybe my opinion will be warped.

The Basement Productions, French Fries Publishing Connection and Collection

Basement Productions Logo

I met Nick Buxton, an Englishman, in Normandy while vacationing with my family in the late 1990s, at least a decade before I returned to playing music in public and travelling the world attending open mics. I learned then that he had a business owning and running a recording studio in Paris, and as I was a music lover, we kept in touch and I eventually visited the studio. What I found was a massive underground wonderland of multiple studios, recording rooms, equipment, rehearsal and even performance spaces. There can hardly be a cooler recording studio set up in Paris, and as it’s all beneath the foundations of a building or two with arched brick ceilings and passageways from one room to another, I cannot imagine – although I’ve never asked – that there can be complaints about the noise from neighbors.

In any case, a few years after our initial meeting and after my first visits to his Basement Productions studio, I learned that Nick was starting up a music publishing company that he decided to call French Fries Publishing. That has been going on for a few years now, and as I often do during my break from my world travels, I dropped in a few weeks ago to say hello, discuss his business – and mine – and see what was going on in his life. The first thing Nick did as I entered, was to introduce me to a guy whom he called “Louis Alphonso,” as he said what he had been doing lately was to record a new album with this guy. It turned out, he said, that Alphonso used to play in the 1980s British band, Bad Manners, and it was his first solo album, in fact. Nick offered me the CD, and then I started speaking to him about what I was up to, and I mentioned this blog and my morning exercise music. One thing led to another, and I ended leaving the Basement Studios with five albums from the French Fries Publishing venture, including “A Noir,” by this Mr. Alphonso.

I’ve been doing fruitful morning exercises ever since! Basement and French Fries, it turns out, is a hive of activity, a bastion of British-cum-French pop rock music in the middle of Paris, near the Anvers Metro, not far from Pigalle, and there is very much of a family feel to all of the five CDs that Nick gave to me. That means that French Fries very definitely has a point of view, a “sound” if you will. That feel has something to do with the British ska music movement in the 1980s, which the band Bad Manners was part of; but along with some other influences including garage rock and basic singer songwriter stuff. Most of the CDs were produced and/or engineered and/or recorded and/or mixed and mastered by Nick, and his partner Olivier Furter, so that’s another reason there’s a family feel to it all.

Louis Alphonso

The five CDs Nick gave me were the aforementioned Alphonso, plus a band called Simili Skaï, another called Jack’s de L’or, Neon Campfire and GlebBones. The ones that stood out the most for me as I did my morning exercises were the Simili Skaï, which is quite melodic, and the Louis Alphonso – which also, incidentally, DOES have a family connection as Nick’s young child bangs a piano and vocalises on it at one point, and it also contains voices of several other people including Jarvis Cocker (- of Pulp – who uses the studios sometimes), and it gives special thanks for musical influences to, among others, Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson. And yes, there are some weird things on this CD where I can see the influences come in! (Notably, the other liner note: “Produced by Nick Buxton despite Louis Alphonso.) Also, by the way, despite me saying this is a bastion of English music in the middle of Paris, a rough estimate would put French musicians at well over 50 percent of the personnel on these CDs. So this is a mixture of French and English wine, if you will….

Rock&Folk Monster CD 45 and the Burnin’ Jacks

Burnin’ Jacks

Just when I thought that I would turn this edition of my morning exercise music into the first one that focuses entirely on the production of CDs from one single recording studio and music publisher, I bought a copy of the January issue of the French music magazine, Rock&Folk, because it had Bob Dylan on the cover and because I had not bought any for a few months – behind way, way behind in my reading! (IE, magazines and books piling up in an not-yet-finished-reading mountain.) Then, of course, I realized that I had the latest “Monster CD” of a selection of the latest music by the editors of Rock&Folk, and I had another day of exercise music to contend with. And THEN! Suddenly I saw that amongst the tracks on the Monster CD was a track by a band called The Burnin’ Jacks, the young French band whom I have written about for many years on this blog, and the guitarist of which I have recorded with, whose name is Félix Beguin. I had been watching and playing with the band since my musical adventure began in the fall of 2008, and here they were now included on a compilation CD of the top French rock magazine. So I just had to listen to this and write about it here.

As it turned out, the song that the magazine chose to use on the compilation is one I know very well, and it is one of at least two of The Burnin’ Jack’s repertoire that I had always assumed was some kind of Rock ‘n’ Roll standard. It is called, “Bad Reputation,” and when I heard it again on this CD, I thought, if the Rolling Stones covered this song, everyone would think it was one of their hits from the 1960s. In fact, I’d love to hear them cover it – but I’m pretty sure they could not do as good a job as The Burnin’ Jacks at the moment – who, by the way, had their faces plastered up on a poster all over Paris in recent weeks announcing their concert at the Maroquinerie, which I understand was a massive success last weekend….

And they may be a bunch of guys with bad reputations, but they were in good company on the Rock&Folk Monster CD, with Motörhead, Anna Calvi, the Jacuzzi Boys and Dave Stewart, among others. The most interesting personal discovery for me on this CD was Samantha Crain, who looks like she has to be about 12 years old, but I found her referred to on the Internet as “still only in her 20s…” and I cared little about her looks or her age, because she clearly has a unique voice and interesting songs. The opening track of the CD, by Kendra Morris, was also great listening. But few matched the energy that the Burnin’ Jacks injected into my sit-ups….

Well, that rounds that up. A small morning exercise crop of CDs, my seventh edition since I started doing this in April….

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Brad’s Morning Exercise Music Rundown, 6th Installment: Foster the People, The Vaccines, Die Krupps, Manic Street Preachers, Jeff Buckley/Gary Lucas

December 24, 2013
bradspurgeon

Sit Ups

For my sixth “Morning Exercise Rundown,” – the fifth of which ran on 26 Oct. – I have a nice healthy five CDs to talk about.

Three of the CDs came from my regular source: As mentioned in my first post, the Lotus Formula One team was giving out CDs at every race this past season to journalists and any other takers and interested people in the paddock, as they had some kind of a sponsorship deal with Columbia Records. So at the last few races of the season, including in Austin, Texas and I don’t know where else, I picked up the new crop. One of the CDs I bought myself, and the fifth I heard while staying at a friend’s place in Austin, and I also met the man who made the CD….

The Morning Exercise Music Philosophy

As a reminder to readers in this last of the year’s exercise music rundowns, the idea behind this regular post/column is that for most of my life I avoided classic daily physical exercise because I felt I was able to avoid it and it bored me to death. In recent years, I had a kind of flash of aged inspiration and realized that I might bore myself to death if I DON’T do exercises. That did not, however, alleviate the boredom. So it is that when not doing my nightly exercise of riding my unicycle around the neighborhood – which does NOT bore me – I do my exercises in the morning (sit ups, push ups, etc.) while listening to new and old CDs that I acquire from compilations of magazines like Rock & Folk, Mojo and Uncut, and that also occasionally buy or get handed from budding musicians at open mics. Then came the Formula One connection from the Lotus team, and I decided that I should occasionally share my morning exercise listening experiences with readers of this blog when I have no open mic news or videos to exploit.

The Foster the People Commercial Conundrum

I was enjoying this Foster the People CD from a couple of years ago while doing my exercises, taking in the new folky sound when suddenly I thought I was watching a television commercial for underwear with David Beckham. But even then I got confused and thought that I was watching the Canal Plus pay TV channel as it led into the daily weather or something. It was that, suddenly, I was hearing the music that had become associated in my mind with those two things. The song ‘Don’t Stop (Color on the Walls)’ has been used by Guy Ritchie in his directing of the commercial for Beckham’s underwear as well as by Canal Plus for its rubric. Now, this, of course, is the way that musicians make money today. Selling their songs for publicity campaigns and video games and soundtracks and whatever else where in the past a top selling LP would do. The problem, for me, is that I cannot hear this music now without associating it with Beckham’s underwear and Canal Plus’s TV shows. Is it really worth it destroying a good piece of music for that? I guess I’d probably do it if someone offered me enough for one of my songs…. It brings to mind a Frank Sinatra song that I have heard upon landing in Emirates flights dozens of times in the last year or so, which destroyed even the Sinatra song for me.

The Freshness of Manic Street Preachers

Manic Street Preachers – Rewind the Film

If this, their latest album, were the first album someone ever heard by the Manic Street Preachers, then they would easily be fooled into thinking that it is a new young band of 2013, with fresh, interesting, inventive songs and pure, strong young vocals. In fact, it is the 11th studio album of this band, the lead singer, James Dean Bradfield, is 44 years old and their first album came out in 1992, more than 20 years ago. That’s like a new album of The Beatles coming out in 1984 or so. Having said that, if someone who had never heard any other Manic Street Preachers’ albums listened to this one and then liked it so much and found it so fresh then went and listened to the band’s third album, The Holy Bible, of 1994, they would then say, “oops.” The idea being that this latest album, out in September 2013, is really great – it’s got nothing of the astounding inventiveness of the early ones, by direct comparison. The acoustic folky stuff is brilliant, and new, and worth the album, in any case. But these Welshmen are obviously still on top of it, just not as edgy or desperate as they were in their 20s.

A Belated Discovery of a Jeff Buckley Beginning

Jeff Buckley Gary Lucas

I bought the album Songs to No One 1991–1992, by Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas, during my visit to Shakespeare and Company bookstore to see and hear Gary Lucas play his guitar and read from his book about recording with Buckley. He said enough for me to want to hear this thing, which is made of studio sessions, home tapes, and club performances and which was recorded during the collaboration between Buckley and Lucas, between Oct. 1991 and Apr. 1992. It features the early recordings of “Grace” and “Mojo Pin” and the way Lucas described the sessions, I really wanted to hear what I thought would be a pure, unadulterated album of Buckley sounds before the singer made his album, at a stage where he was still in the early stages of defining himself as a musician. I listened to this on my morning exercises, but also during drives around Texas on the car CD player. That was actually the better environment to listen to it, as it is so ethereal and otherworldly that it allows for the mind to float, relax and be occupied with something else at the same time. This is not exactly “easy listening,” either. Lucas described how he basically went and played some chords and Buckley went and sang and he had no real idea at the moment it was being done exactly what was being done or coming out, and it was in listening just afterwards that he realized it was brilliant – something along those lines, anyway. The quality of the recordings is not always exceptional, but Buckley’s vocal delivery certainly is. This is the kind of album that I will actually listen to again and again over the years, despite, once again, it being a hodgepodge collection of material never meant to be an album….

The Vaccine’s Basic Sound

the vaccines

I had heard some stuff by The Vaccines, but never a complete album. So I was delighted to receive this, their second album, Come of Age, released in 2012, from the Lotus F1 team. Still, when you look at their career – founded in 2010, opening for bands like the Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Muse and the Stone Roses, and having their first album become the best selling first album of 2011 and this album being the No. 1 UK seller – you kind of expect a lot more than what you hear. At least I do. It’s a fine album, fine music, great classic-style rock, but I don’t hear any songs that leap out and sound like future classic songs. In fact, maybe they’re the perfect opening act after all….

Die Krupps and the German Machine Sound

Die Krupps

This album by the German band Die Krupps takes me the closest I’ve ever been in my life to understanding, appreciating and liking post-1970s machine music. This is “a German industrial rock/EBM band, formed in 1980 by Jürgen Engler and Bernward Malaka in Düsseldorf,” to cite Wikipedia. It really took only something that amounted to being just like good old fashioned PR (even though it was not done on purpose) for me to cotton on to this. While in Austin for the U.S. Grand Prix was staying at the home of a friend of mine from Paris who now lives in Austin, and who is friends with Engler. In fact, my friend, Eric Débris, is also one of the founders of machines in punk music, as one of the members of the French punk band Métal Urbain. I had seen the Die Krupps album around Eric’s place, since Eric, who is also a fabulous photographer, had done the album cover photo work. Then Eric invited me out to a meal with Engler and his wife, and we had a nice evening together. That led me to saying to Eric, “I wanted to do my morning exercises while listening to that Die Krupps album before I go.” So Eric put it on. So it was that through the introduction to the musician – Engler is a vital 50ish guy who is still very much in the midst of creative thrall to his band, which will be doing around Europe in February and March – and through me being in the environment of the founder of machines in punk, I suddenly “got” this music with its rough grunting vocals and, above all, hammering, relentless rhythm. It is remarkable that the band has been around since 1980 and is still producing great finished products like this album. Another pull from the Die Krupps entry Wikipedia to fill in from my own ignorance: “The initial Die Krupps sound throughout the 1980s combined synthesizers with metallic percussion. Die Krupps were key in the Europe wide progression of Electronic Body Music culminating with the collaboration in 1989 with British band Nitzer Ebb. In 1992, they began to utilize guitars and more sounds derived from heavy metal music, with the release of their album I and the EP Tribute To Metallica, which consisted of covers of Metallica songs.” And boy is it great for sit-ups and push ups, to say the least!

Well, that rounds that up. A small morning exercise crop of CDs, my sixth and final one of the year since I started doing this in April, or whenever it was…. I’ve done a lot of exercising since then, and hope I can continue to feed the musical habit in 2014 that keeps the exercising alive…

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Don’t Think Twice, Music Ain’t Alright in Sao Paulo Hotels at 9:30 at Night

November 22, 2013
bradspurgeon

musical brazil?

SAO PAULO – For the last five years I have carried my guitar around to all the races of the Formula One series and found places to play in open mics and open jam sessions. I am now in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on the last leg of my journey this year. This marks five full years of playing on every continent except Africa and Antarctica. (I used to live in Africa, so I have played there before; and Antarctica is too cold anyway.) But tonight, just five minutes ago, I have encountered for the first time ever – in a hotel where I have stayed for four of the last five years – a complaint from the front desk for the music I have played in my room with my acoustic guitar and vocals.

I arrived this morning in Brazil and I’m dead tired, and intended to go to bed very soon. But I just went out for a meal in an Italian restaurant, and returning to my hotel room, I decided to pick up my guitar and play a couple of songs just to keep in shape, and for my pleasure. It was only 21:40 at night, and we are in swinging, moving, great rockin’, bossa nova’in Brazil. And I’m in a hotel I know well in central Sao Paulo. So I picked up my guitar and sang two Bob Dylan songs: “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” and “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.”

Halfway through Baby Blue the phone rang and it was the front desk. The poor guy could not speak English very well and had to break up his words with use of the computer keyboard to find a translating web page so he could find his words. But here is what the message was in the end: “A neighbor of yours on your floor is complaining about the noise in your room. Can you please keep it quiet.” I told him that he had just won the prize of being the first hotel in five years where I have had a complaint about playing some songs in my room. He then responded, “I’m very sorry, but in Brazil, you cannot make noise after 10 PM at night.” Of course, the fact that it was 21:55 went beyond him….

In any case, I’d love to know who this cowardly and nasty and thin skinned neighbor is, and I’m very disappointed in Brazil! But now I know why my favorite open jam open mic here has been thrown from one venue to another over the five years that I have come here, each time because of complaints from neighbors over the music.

Jeez. So much for musical Brazil. Of course, perhaps had I been playing some much quieter bossa nova, it would have been tolerated???

Still, the first time ever in five years that I receive a complaint from a neighbour in a hotel and the hotel acts on it, and it had to be in Sao Paulo?!?!

We’ll see how well the weekend progresses after this.

PS, I suspect this is some silly European or American who intends to get up at 4:30 AM to sight-see…. (or go to the racetrack?!?!)