Chris James's Blog, page 19

100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #2: Genesis, Duke’s Travels/Duke’s End

Beginning with an intro that sounds like waves crashing on a beach, these ten minutes are the best work the three-man line-up of Genesis produced.  The piece transforms into a rolling, thumping, battling, swirling urgency which continues to increase until Collins repeats the lyric from Guide Vocal.  On side one of Duke, Guide Vocal was delivered in plaintive voice; now, however, Collins sings with the urgency the words demand, and halfway through his staggering, passionate rendition, the whole piece collapses into shattering relief that opens a door to musical ecstasy.  After a brief return to the waves, Duke’s End delivers two minutes of orgasmically climactic power-rock not bettered by anyone else, anywhere, ever.  Genesis at its best.

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.

100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #3: War of the Worlds, Forever Autumn

I’m not entirely sure Jeff Wayne realised the significance of what he was doing when he took one of the greatest works of English literature, chopped the plot about a bit, and wrote such wonderful music to go with it.  In addition, he employed some of the best talent of the day, his masterstroke being to have the brilliant actor Richard Burton read the narration.  Forever Autumn is the stand-out part of this magisterial album.

In Wells’ novel, the narrator’s brother relates the destruction of London, as the narrator was by then buried under a cylinder in Sheen.  Here we have the narrator fighting his way through the city to get to the love of his life, Carrie.  This is a neat plot device, as it makes us care more about the narrator, and raises the stakes nicely in the subsequent battle between the Martians and the Thunderchild.  But it is here, in Forever Autumn, that Hayward’s vocal, Burton’s narration (quoting passages from Wells’ book verbatim) and the orchestration combine to deliver wholly unmatched musical storytelling.

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.

100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #4: Genesis, Mad Man Moon

If the beauty of the most perfect sculpture ever made by human hand could be represented in music, it would sound like this.  Mad Man Moon is certainly Tony Banks’ most accomplished piece of composition whether in or out of Genesis.  If the opening bars of this piano intro do not speak at once to your soul, then I strongly recommend you visit your doctor to establish whether you are, in fact, alive.  The lyrics do not contain much by way of a story (they’re just too metaphysical for me, man), although later in the song there is a smart comparison of why each of us seems to think everyone else has got it better than us: “The grass will be greener, till the stems turn to brown/And thoughts will fly higher, till the Earth brings them down”.

To me, it is an easy thing indeed to imagine a future society, perhaps democracy or possibly dystopia, some of whose members strive to keep alive the memory of centuries-old music.  But whether 500 or 5,000 years from now, there will come a warm, well-attended summer’s Saturday evening of aural culture held in some exotic amphitheatre, and alongside the Bach and Haydn and Chopin and Grieg and Rachmaninoff, Banks too will have his deserved immortality.

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.

100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #5: Vangelis, Alpha

If you were around at the time, in the early 1980s you may have seen a science series called Cosmos, fronted by Carl Sagan.  He sped around the universe in a little dandelion-seed spaceship explaining the mysteries of science in affable yet erudite terms.  One of the featured pieces of music was this gem from Vangelis.  Its structure is relatively simple, starting quietly and building up to an agreeably powerful crescendo, but the magic within it is altogether overwhelming.  And today, at 74 years old, Vangelis lives on, his mystique and private life very much intact.

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.

100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #6: Harry Chapin, Taxi

This is Harry Chapin’s glorious story of the ultimate futility of life.  Harry is a taxi driver; Sue is his high-school crush who got away.  They lost touch for years until one evening, when she gets into his cab, and throughout the song, we hear about their dreams which crashed and burned.  She was going to be an actress; he was going to learn to fly.  In this song, there is anger, frustration, regret, sadness and, finally, fatalism which can make a grown man cry.  *Sniff*

As with so many of the storytellers on this list who have left us, we can but wonder what they would’ve had to say about the depthless hubris of, and the appalling mistakes made by, Western leaders this century.  Harry Chapin worked himself to death in 1981 at the atrociously young age of 38.  Thanks for what you left behind, Mr Chapin.  There are lots of us still “keeping the change”.

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.

100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #7: Renaissance, Can You Understand

Using a quote from Maurice Jarre’s theme for Doctor Zhivago, Michal Dunford constructed a gentle, heart-felt ballad bracketed by four minutes of blistering orchestral progressive rock.  The ballad in the middle is a little on the syrupy side, but, frankly speaking, Annie Haslam could sing her grocery shopping list and it would still sound divine.  Altogether the whole song, which opens 1973’s superlative Ashes Are Burning, represents Renaissance at their very best.

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.

100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #8: Rush, Losing It

A brutally honest song and a gorgeous piece of Prog.  The literary allusion in the final lyric identifies the writer in the second verse as Ernest Hemmingway.  The narrator’s conclusion, “Sadder still to watch it die than never to have known it” always gives me pause for thought, and the final lyric, “For you the blind who once could see/The bell tolls for thee” is one of the few fatalistic lines in any song which actually makes me feel pretty glad about things.  Because that bell is going to toll for all of us, eventually, isn’t it?

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.

Being Dad

Youngest Daughter recently sought Eldest Daughter’s advice.  The conversation went like this:

YD: I want Dad to redecorate my bedroom.
ED: Why?  There’s nothing wrong with it.
YD: Because I’ll be a grown-up soon, and Disney princesses and Hanna Montana are for little girls.
ED: But you’re 11 years old!
YD: Exactly – I’ll be a grown-up soon and my room, like it is now, is for little girls.
ED: Okay, so here’s what you do: wait until he’s just published a book, and ask him before he gets really involved in writing the next one.  Don’t forget to give him a big hug and ask him with pleading, doe-like eyes, ‘cos that never fails.  It’s what I did last year, and it worked for me!
YD: Thanks, Sis!

And yes, Youngest Daughter picked the colours.

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100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #9: Supertramp, Hide in your Shell

1974’s Crime of the Century is one of the great progressive rock albums, from which I could’ve easily included every track on this list.  Although Hodgson and Davies would enjoy much greater commercial success once they cut their songs down to a more radio-friendly length, it is on Crime that the band reached its artistic peak.  And no wonder; after the commercial failure of their previous two albums, Supertramp demoed 42 songs, from which eight made it onto the album.

Hide in your Shell is in my opinion Hodgson’s most personal song, written when he was 23 years old, and these lyrics represent the epitome of youthful angst (and just listen to Hodgson’s dedication at the beginning of this performance – what a guy!).

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.

100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #10: Genesis, Domino

No album divides Genesis fans more than 1986’s Invisible Touch, which sold millions of copies and produced a slew of hit singles, some of which sound suspiciously similar to Phil Collins’ solo material from his hugely successful No Jacket Required album the previous year.  But if we take a step back from the teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing among the fans, there are a couple of salient points to note.

Firstly, around half of the music on this album falls into the category of Prog rather than pop.  Collins responded to attacks from older Genesis fans, who accused him of dominating the band, with the cutting observation: “I’d like to see anyone try to tell Tony Banks what to do in a recording studio,” and indeed all of the material on Invisible Touch was written by the group jointly.

Secondly, it is worth considering what Genesis would be today had Collins quit the band in the early 1980s, say, after Abacab, when his vast solo success took off.  Without 1983’s self-untitled album, this album, and 1991’s We Can’t Dance, Genesis would have remained a footnote in the history of popular music; like Renaissance, for example.  Instead, these three albums were the key to propelling Genesis into the top 30 most successful bands of all time, and drove tens of thousands to delve into the back catalogue to discover and fall in love with the more adventurous earlier work.

In the final analysis, we are left with what the band chose to release; all else is conjecture.  But the best-by-a-nose track from Invisible Touch, written from the point of view someone in an early-1980s Beirut hotel room just as the bombs start falling, takes fatalism to its logical conclusion.  You can trust Tony Banks on this, folks: we’re all the next in line, and there’s nothin’ you can do.

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.