Pink Floyd - Meddle

The quintessence of music..and Floyd!

So, having thus far targeted oddball and somewhat obscure bands/artists and albums, this time I pick a certified classic from an alltime great with fans all over the world. But again, not without an element of underrating. For, Pink Floyd means Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall to most rock fans, especially the last one. To the acid rock crowd, Floyd means Piper At The Gates of Dawn. But I can say confidently that a devoted Pink Floyd will have a special place in his/her heart for Meddle. Ok, admitted, we Floydians like almost everything they touched and Dark Side..is my favourite too. But all great things start somewhere and for Pink Floyd's classic era, that starting point is Meddle.

Meddle in itself though has a starting point: the even more underrated Atom Heart Mother. AHM is where Pink Floyd began to move to a different style and leave the Barrett legacy behind, though never completely. The sound became lush, mellow and atmospheric and some ambition became evident on the Atom Heart Mother Suite. But at this point, they were still confused about whither they wanted to go and this results in the album being somewhat unfocused (nevertheless one for which I have a lot of consideration and certainly more than both Gilmour and Waters profess at this point). On Meddle, they begin to perfect the formula, they begin to make the best of their great ideas. The perfection of Dark Side...eludes them yet, but they're close, the submarine is marching swiftly to its destination, ha ha! One of These Days has menace, A Pillow of Winds oozes beauty, Seamus has shock value and amusement and San Tropez has the cool quotient. In particular, Gilmour's vocals and guitarwork on A Pillow of Winds are beautiful and delicate to the point of defying description through words. On One of These Days, Waters shows he has realized he can never be an ace bassist (and at this point, Chris Squire and Greg Lake must have begun playing circles around him, I reckon!) and instead channels his efforts into coming up with memorable basslines. And just THAT bassline drives the song on its own steam.

The thing that has changed now about Pink Floyd's music is they are seemingly calculating the psychological impact of every little whisker they produce on the listener. They didn't have the chops of the prog rock bands emerging around them, especially in comparison to the talented musicians populating the Canterbury scene, and they didn't have the songwriting genius of Beatles before them or The Who from contemporaries. But what they had that no band before or after has ever possessed to the same measure is a window into your brain. Yes, better beware, Pink Floyd know what you go through when you listen to what sounds. And, after all, isn't music all about producing some response from your mind? We like to call it heart, it's really the right side of the brain we are talking about and though Pink Floyd themselves weren't probably extraordinarily gifted in the right side, they seem to have studied its workings in some amount of depth and applied it to their music in spades.

And nowhere is this more evident than on Echoes. Worth the price of the album solely for its existence, worth exchanging all other music in the world for it (fanboy alert!!!!) and indeed the key motivation to write about the album. I feel privileged to have listened to it and to now write about it. This, my dear friends, is what music is all about. A motley gathering of sounds ranging from the delicate to the bizarre arranged in a way that evokes an emotional response from you. And because it is a pure gathering of sounds as opposed to conventional music put into unorthodox formats, which is what prog rock was all about, each time you listen afresh, you discover something new. The sheer density and depth of this over-20 minute monster once again defies description. The musical ideas when you take them apart are limited and not spectacular or profound. To add insult to injury, Gilmour's guitar lines sound uncomfortably like Procol Harum's Repent Walpurgis. But, let me reiterate again, it's not about the originality, the chops, the talent, it's simply about the reaction the music generates from you and whatever else you won't react to, you'll react, either in disgust or in wonderment, to THAT noise after the 10 minute mark. Floydians have speculated about what it's supposed to resemble. Some think it's a submarine, some think it's a dark cave, I think it's a whale whistling. That it's something to do with the sea is obvious enough from listening to the song. The sea's infinite vastness has never been captured on sound better and more imaginatively than this. You can lose yourself in those sounds for an eternity..and the song too goes on for an eternity, leisurely, unhurried and elaborate, strengthening the impression of the vast endless expanse of infinity that the sea is. You could long for chops and get bored of it or just bask in those sounds. Considering the contamination level of Mumbai's beaches, it's a good alternative to actually soaking yourself in seawater...it even tastes salty, I promise! And unlike some Floydians, I am a strict teetotaller...sorry, it's a myth that you have to be stoned or drunk to enjoy their music. If you say that, you are just admitting to how deficient your imagination is! Just my opinion, hippies, kindly don't take offence as none is intended.

As you can see from the above, I have actually described very little about the music. That's the point, duh! Everybody has their own version of Echoes, it means different things to different people, takes them to different places. It's a fluid, vast, fertile breeding ground for your imagination. And that's why I humbly submit that Echoes and Pink Floyd capture the quintessence of music better than most rock bands in the world. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's the greatest piece of music ever (though it's my personal favourite and might be forever) but there's precious little else in music that's so abstract and yet so lively, so elaborate and vast and yet always over too soon for you, so weird and bizarre and yet so compellingly beautiful, so easy to fall in love with and yet so hard to fully comprehend (make that, impossible to comprehend!). If Pink Floyd had never made anything else worthy of recording on tape, much less of listening to, they would have still earned their greatness for Echoes alone. Things don't really work that way in the real world and Meddle kickstarted a hot streak for them which eventually sealed their place as one of the enduring classic rock bands and the only prog rock band to have true crossover appeal (Genesis and Yes changed their sound 360 degrees to appeal to pop audiences, Pink Floyd always were...just Pink Floyd!). Further, Echoes is part of an overall enjoyable, eclectic album called Meddle that's worthy of belonging in any self respecting rock music collection.

- By Madan

Renaissance's Live At Carnegie Hall

At the outset, let me confess I am not a huge fan of live albums. Live DVDs are another story, I get to watch the band in action, there's interviews appended as add-ons, so it's a fun package. But what's special about listening to live renditions of a band's studio songs has eluded me and being that most rock fans seem to dig live albums, I am in a lonely minority here. Essentially, my grouse is that unless there's something substantially different about the band's live experience as opposed to the studio experience, there's nothing to be gained for me. Additionally, live albums rarely, if ever, sound as good as studio albums, so you are buying a live album only to hear the crowd noise, to put it bluntly. So, yeah, I am telling you now that I don't dig Exit Stage Left all that much and if it weren't for the novelty value of Dio singing Ozzy's songs, I wouldn't particularly care for Live Evil either. Blasphemy...yeah, right!

So what makes me dig this particular live album so much? Nothing that would distinguish it from the above description, for sure. Renaissance made vocal-centric music, so though there are changes on the instrumental front - I will come to this later - it's not striking and immediately evident. The only thing that could have changed in the band's live experience was Annie Haslam's vocals, but there's no way she could have possibly sounded MUCH better live and thankfully she doesn't sound any worse either. Two songs were debuted here but both made their way to Scheherazade and Other Stories, the songs being ‘Ocean Gypsy’ and ‘Songs of Scheherazade’. So no material exclusive to the live album either. The sound quality is pretty good for a live album, has to be said and it fares much better than the King Biscuit Flower Hour albums of the same band's performances at Royal Albert Hall two years later. But not an incentive by itself to go for it, no!

The reasons are two-fold: there can be no better introduction to Renaissance because the setlist is well chosen. It so happened that the band peaked with Scheherazade and other Stories, so though a few songs from the later songs are more than worthy, not much is missed here. From the albums released at that point, I miss Sounds of the Sea, Black Flame and Things I Don't Understand, but I cannot deny that whatever has been chosen is the most essential material of the band, the Haslam incarnation, anyway. It's as if Iron Maiden made a live album right after Seventh Son... or..wait...there's two actual examples, Unleashed In ‘The East’ and ‘Strangers In The Night’. Yeah, you heard me, Unleashed In The East doesn't miss much as far as Judas Priest goes, but that's a different band, different review.

The second reason is that it's, simply, Renaissance. They were rather unlike most of the prog rock bands of their time. I said earlier they were vocal-based. Well, make that singing-based. Gabriel, Ian Anderson and Fish had formidable vocal presence too, but that's because they adopted a rock theater approach and brought their personality to the fore in their vocal parts. Annie Haslam, on the other hand, is a singer, pure and simple. I know of no other prog rock band which relied so heavily on a pure singer, even King Crimson with Greg Lake doesn't come close. While the band's instrumentalists were no pushovers, they all chose to be the support cast to Haslam's vocals and my word, what vocals she lent! Exquisite, charming and heartfelt, backed by a large range, a powerful yet sweet voice, incredibly clear diction and immaculate delivery. It's a treat to behold by itself but it's also rather unique in prog, because prog rock hasn't particularly favoured plain, old school, accomplished singing - there has to be something quirky about the vocals, is the general rule. When I am feeling particularly irritated with the severe persecution complex some prog fans go around with, I like to quip that Annie only became a part of Renaissance because she was too naive to know in '71 that she would have become a star in expert pop hands. But it's only in jest that I say so, I revel in the unique style of prog her singing helps present.

Ah, you see, I said "helps". The other aspect worth noting of Renaissance is their use of orchestral instruments in their songs. In this live album, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra was employed to ensure that none of the Renaissance songs would lose any of their splendour merely for want of orchestral backing. The classical meets rock thing - ok, calling a band without electric guitars rock is a bit much but what else do I call them then? - is rare in the rock world and doesn't come off too well at the best of times. Yeah, you are saying S&M. Funnily enough, it was while thinking of S&M that I felt like writing this review. You see, I have always felt that S&M would have worked better had Metallica written more new songs meant to be played with an orchestra instead of fitting the orchestra into their existing songs. And here's my proof! The reason Live At Carnegie Hall never sound awkward for a moment is the songs were already written around orchestral embellishments and the band had employed them at performances prior to this one, as far as I know. So, there's nothing daunting or experimental about it, it's a smooth, refined finished product.

I said I would allude to the changes in the instrumental department. Well, there's a long-ish Tout(keyboard)/Camp(bass) jam in ‘Ashes Are Burning’ which, together with vocal improvisations at the close from Haslam, stretch the 9 minute song to a whopping 24 minutes. That apart, while the band don't jam all over the place and play completely different interludes, they do play a lot of things differently. Maybe minor changes, but they are there all the same and I have listened to live albums where songs were reproduced without one different note. So to suggest it's a rank copy of the studio cuts is far fetched. It sounds too similar to be a wholly different experience. But as I have said above, why do something to alter the Renaissance experience, it was just fine and deserved replicating in the live setting simply because it was so unique.

There's one problem to address: it's a double album, so is it worth the time? It depends....on the effect Annie's booming voice has on you but chances are it will ensure you don't regret it for a minute. As for the rest, you know not what you're missing!

Author – Madan

UFO's Lights out

"When punk met prog"

Back in 1977, when the winds of change began to sweep - and decisively in the case of progressive rock, there has never been a true second coming, the scene's consigned to quasi-underground status - the music industry and the supposed pretense and pomp of progressive rock was swiftly losing favour and the raw aggression of punk rock was gaining ascendancy, this British hard rock band called UFO pulled off a marriage of sorts between the two. Yes, a bit of punk and a bit of prog whilst really being neither, just out-of-the-ordinary hard rock.

You won't get the quintessence of punk here but the proto-NWOBHM title track captures the aggression of the punk side of rock in spades. You won't get prog here but Love To Love and Try Me capture its elaborate grandeur. The upshot of the punk revolution has been that for some reason, aggressive music cannot be beautiful nor vice versa. At least, it is reasonable to presume that the same band cannot portray aggression and beauty, that's what the critics tell you at any rate. And yet, at the very point in time that this unhealthy divergence and resultant one dimensionality was taking root in the rock scene, good ol' UFO proved everyone who cared to hear wrong. And a lot of people must have heard it for it reached the 23rd spot at the American Billboards. So how did they pull off this Jekyll and Hyde act?

The answer is deceptively simple: the breadth of its two key members at the time, frontman Phil Mogg and guitarist Michael Schenker. Mogg has a voice not unlike Procol Harum's Gary Brooker or Supertramp's Rick Davies...polite, mild and unmistakably British. Not too compatible with hard rock, you say. Surprise, surprise, he manages to pull off the hard rockers efficiently. He may be at his best when he's able to bring forth his sincerity but he's able to step out of his comfort zone and thrive at that. If anything, his sincerity gets transferred to some extent even to the hard rockers so that he doesn't degenerate into annoying tough guy vocals. It's a different matter of course if you can't get enough of tough guy vocals, me, I am fine with Mogg. This is what drives along songs as starkly different from each other as “Try Me” and “Too Hot To Handle”, with “Just Another Suicide” and the cover of American band “Love's” song “Alone Again Or” (heard of Love before? Me neither!) falling in a grey area. If the experience doesn't feel schizophrenic, it's down to Mogg. However, when all said and done, Mogg just needs that little bit of flair. He's efficient, competent and convincing but there's something extra I look for for a good hard rock album to become great.

And that's where Mad Michael enters the frame. The prodigiously talented guitarist who has since become the perennial underachiever of rock comes along playing in the most natural fashion and with supreme confidence a style entirely his own. I can hear a little bit of Iommi, a little bit of Gilmour and maybe Brian May but Schenker doesn't sound like he's trying to play like either of them, he only sounds like Schenker from the get-go. Whether his association with Scorpions has to do with it I cannot tell but he developed early on a distinct proto metal edge so when it came to playing fast and heavy, he was consistently ahead of the rest in the game. Take a look at that riff on the Lights Out chorus. Monster riffs? You got it. Lightning fast solos? You got it (be mindful though that I didn't have Alan Holdsworth in mind when I said lightning fast, let's not lose perspective!). And then come the ballads and you think the young fella will be out of his element and he has a pleasant surprise in store for you, wonderfully understated and yet intense and passionate and using shredding in small bursts where necessary for emotional effect (Love to Love). This means that even in the rather chamber rock-like trappings of said song or Try Me (Out In The Street from their 1975 album Force It is another example), Schenker's guitarwork is not only effective but captivating and enthralling. As Wild, Willing and Innocent proves, without Schenker, UFO were still competent and more than capable of getting the job done, but he gave them the vital edge that made Lights Out such a standout record.

And what of the individual tracks? The good news is there is not a weak moment in here, all tracks are eminently likable at the very least. Maybe “Electric Phase” and “Getting Ready” don't live up to the high standards of “Too Hot To Handle” or the title track, but there's nothing the tracks lack of their own. My favourite is probably “Love To Love”. It may seem odd to pick a somewhat long, grandly decked up ballad as the favourite from an album that rocks really hard when it rocks hard, but it's masterfully done, Mogg always pushing the right buttons and eschewing the temptation to overemote with Michael first bringing forth a gentle, caressing impression and then closing with a fiery climax...a conclusion befitting of the grand build up the song gets. From the rockers, it's got to be the title track. “Too Hot To Handle” is very catchy and infectious but I have to bow to that invincible riff! The production is perfect for the music too, clear and even a little lush but never lacking punch. Add the artwork with the grimy steam locomotive in the background and you have a winner!

After this, UFO would never be the same. They should have moved onto bigger things but infighting crippled them and after the relatively limp Obsession, they split (or rather, Michael parted ways with them). Before doing so, they gave us one of the best live rock albums from the 70s, “Strangers In The Night”. That's as good a place as this to start with UFO and hopefully it will not be the finish either and this killer album will make the prospect of checking out the rest of their albums - at least the ones with Schenker –

too tempting to resist!!!!!

Author – Madan

Steve Hackett's Spectral Mornings

“Not your typical solo guitar album"

Don't know who Steve Hackett is? One time Genesis guitarist, that's who. I am afraid even that introduction would not be very illuminating if you are not a prog rock fan and haven't heard about Genesis before reading this. But that's the best I can manage.So...why Spectral Mornings? Because as the title says, it's not the

typical solo guitar album. Steve Hackett is, contrary to what some might tell you, an accomplished and inventive guitarist and displays considerable proficiency on both electric and acoustic guitar. Sure, he may not give Guthrie Govan sleepless nights but where else in progressive rock from the 70s do you hear such eveloped electric guitar as on the Genesis song "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight"? And yet, this album is - like all the Hackett albums I have listened to - more songwriting oriented rather than demonstrating the limits of his abilities. Now, isn't that unusual?



Not if you know the story behind Hackett's departure from Genesis. He left because he was brimming with ideas and could not put them - not all of them at any rate - on the Genesis albums. As Tony Banks and Phil Collins took most of the credits in the wake of Peter Gabriel's departure after 1974's Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Hackett felt restricted and decided to go solo so that he could be free to express his own musical vision. And it is evident that it's a vision that's

surprisingly divergent from that of Genesis.



For instance, "Every Day" is a breezy, driving rocker that will put a smile on your face, completely unlike anything Hackett did with Genesis. "Clocks" and Tigermoth" on the other hand point to the influence of King Crimson on Hackett (and Robert Fripp does seem to have been an influence on Hackett's playing as such too), bringing forth dark and foreboding sounds.The title track harks back to "Firth of the fifth" - still justly his most famous and cherished contribution - in its drawn out, pensive, yet inspiring contemplation and "Virgin and The Gypsy" can somewhat be traced back to "Blood On The Rooftops" or "Entangled". In a nutshell, if you want a Genesis-clone album from Hackett, "Voyage Of The Acolyte" is what you're looking for; "Spectral Mornings" is Hackett all the way.



Now, what goes in the album's favor? Hackett's playing for starters.Always tasteful yet never lacking flair - he has probably the best guitar tone in the prog rock world too, by the way - varied and yet able to repeat himself for impact, switching seamlessly between acoustic and electric and never sounding contrived or forced on either. In fact, nothing in his playing ever sounds contrived,it flows as naturally as can be and cannot fail to create a pleasing impression.



But that's not the only thing that seals the issue. I still have to tell you why this is different from typical solo guitar albums. The answer is: clear, tight songwriting. It's clear than on Spectral Mornings more than any of his other solo albums - truthfully though, I am not familiar with his 80s output and am going with the general consensus that Spectral Mornings is better than those - Hackett knew exactly what he was doing. Not something that can be said, for instance, of his more recent albums like Darktown or Wild Orchids.His playing is more accomplished now than it was in the late 70s (Spectral Mornings came out in 1979) and he is able to traverse a range of styles so wide nobody could have imagined possible for him when he had left Genesis. But the songs don't make the kind of impact they do on Spectral Mornings. Spectral Mornings is not about what Hackett can do on guitar and therefore every song is purposeful and is enriched of mood and thrust from inception. They are also short – not long at any rate - and don't overstay their welcome, just sufficiently expanded however to not sound rushed. And short, by the way, does not imply generic and lacking in boldness. “Clocks” has probably one of the most effective drum solos in rock; so apt is the placement of the solo that you wouldn't even notice it's a drum solo, it makes for the perfect conclusion of the song.



Notice also the effectiveness of the placement of the songs. "The Red Flower of Tai Chi Blooms Everywhere" - redundant on its own – softens you up for the monstrous "Clocks" and "Lost Time In Cordoba" does likewise in the run up to "Tigermoth". All bookended by the two best tracks, the breezy opener "Every Day" and the majestic conclusion of the title track. This means that even though at least three tracks - Red Flower, Cordoba and Ballad of the Decomposing Man - are borderline filler, it doesn't hinder your listening experience.



I have reservations on the selection and usage of vocalists here.Hackett has generally made rather quirky choices of vocalists, so much so that fans like me would much prefer his own flat and expressionless delivery - at least it's not distracting! About the only choice I can completely approve of is Steve Walsh for "Narnia" off "Please Don't Touch" and maybe band mate Collins on "Stars of Sirius". Here too, the vocals on “Tigermoth” rather spoil the effect created thus far by the track and I only get by with the vocals on “Every Day” and “Virgin” and “The Gypsy” because they are just about adequate and harmless. Thankfully, at least half the album is instrumental so the vocals don't pull down the album by much.



To conclude, this won't ever be among the most spectacular demonstrations of proficiency on guitar you will hear but it is an emphatic statement of masterful songwriting from a very talented guitarist. Definitely worth checking out.

Author – Madan