The Beano Album

The Beano album, aka Bluesbreakers by John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers featuring Eric Clapton and so called because of the cover photograph, in which Clapton is reading the children's comic the Beano. This was the album that launched the era of the guitar hero, in the UK at least. The album is on one level a basic blues band album, Mayall throughout his career has been a champion of the blues. A competant but limited multi - instrumentalist himself, Mayall's claim to fame has been his ability to talent spot up and coming stars. He hit pay dirt with Clapton who arguably has rarely played since with the fire and originality that he does on this album. The actual sound and tone of the amplified guitar is simply more "electric" than anything heard before, adding youthful aggression to the sound of his inspirations, the various Kings of the blues ( BB, Freddie and Albert ). Mayall himself plays creditably with a Mose Allison impersonation on Parchman Farm, there's a tedious drum solo but the disk is really all about Clapton. Listen to Double Crossing Man, All Your Love and especially Have You Heard as well as the pure instrumentals.

How Many Do You Want To Take ?

Many in the jazz world are a bit sniffy about the album Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. The main reason being of course that it committed the cardinal sin of selling a lot of copies, mainly because of the inclusion of the track Take Five which seemed to catch the public imagination way back when. It does what it sets out to do in an exemplary fashion however. Accurately described as chamber jazz, it certainly relies a lot on composition and arrangement and there's not much wild blowing or improvisation. A lot of early swing was heavily arranged though and Brubeck just updated that concept into what at that time in 1959 was called "modern jazz". There's much to admire in the musicanship, Paul Desmond's sax tone and control, Joe Morello's rim shot drumming and a solid bass from Eugene Wright. Brubeck's not a virtuoso fireworks kind of pianist but he fits the overall cool concept and it is his project.

One Track Album

Shall I put this one up on eBay ? To be honest, it isn't the greatest. The title of the cd is Before The Dream Faded by the Misunderstood. It was never a "proper" album, this is just a cobbled together selection of what the record label calls rarities, obscurities and never before released tracks. I bought it because of one track that had been engrained in my memory since my youth, I Can Take You To The Sun. This track was championed by the disc jockey John Peel in his early days and he tried at that time to help the band get their career off the ground. It never happened for whatever reasons, shambolic organisation, shambolic personal lives. But that track was emblematic of the late sixties hippy dream and I was hoping the rest of the album might have a couple more like it. Sadly, all we get on the rest of it is a fairly blatant Yardbirds rip off. Steel guitarist Glenn Ross Campbell went on to some kind of success in the British based band Juicy Lucy but really this is a tale of what might have been.

Spanish Tinge

The album Caravanserai marked a change of direction for Santana from "blues/rock band with bongoes" towards a more jazzy and spiritual direction. Even over such a long career as they have had, I think it remains a peak. The band has weaknesses, they never seem to have thought it worth trying to recruit a decent singer for instance. But it can be quite a joyful experience when they are on song. Carlos has his cliches that keep recurring in his playing but there is always a pleasing melodic undertone provided by the Spanish tinge that characterises the band. What was side one of the original vinyl version of Caravanserai is a more or less continual segue representing some kind of daybreak or sunrise. There's an effective cover of the Antonio Carlos Jobim song Stone Flower too but it is the two closing tracks, La Fuente Del Ritmo and Every Step Of The Way, where the jazz influence really takes off and which give the album its' status. They are two impressive pieces of music by any standards.

Eurovision And Beyond

This is a lovely disk of the music of Charpentier. The performers are the Choeur de Chambre de Namur, Les Agremens and La Fenice under the direction of Jean Tubery. There are two works featured on the disk, the famous Te Deum and a Messe pour plusieurs instruments au lieu des orgues. As you can see it is all very French. Theya re two quite contrasting pieces from 17th century France. The Te Deum is famous these days because of the appropriation of the opening thems as the signature tune for Eurovision and the rest of the piece tends to continue in that ceremonial very public guise with a lot of pomp and circumstance. The Messe however is a much more sober liturgical piece with almost gregorian style chanting of the sacred texts interspersed with instrumental interludes of a reflective nature. All recorded in a wonderfully resonant and atmospheric church acoustic. The perfomances are beautifully played and sung. An intriguing mix of the archaic and modern.

Not The Supersonic Jet

Back in the days when Warner Classics still made new recordings ( 2004 in this case ! ) it was possible to come up with cd's such as this, combining the talents of two of the artists on their roster. The cd is of music by Charles Ives and features the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. The main work is the mammoth Concord Sonata but the cd also features Aimard accompanying the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham on 17 of Ives's songs. Like much of Ives's output, these songs deal with the area of New England where he grew up. Some are serious settings of literary works, others playful childlike ditties and Graham throws herself whole heartedly into the characterisations. The Concord Sonata also aims to portray the spirit of New England, the four parts being named after and inspired by notables from the town of Concord Mass, namely Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott and Henry Thoreau. Such inspiration was obviously there for Ives but the music isn't noticeably programmatic. Much of it is dissonant and abstract with occasional typical Ives touches of marching bands and ragtime. The final section has optional small parts for flute and viola and that option is taken here with the playing of Emmanuel Pahud and Tabea Zimmermann. Aimard is something of a specialist in this intense kind of repertoire and succeeds here in doing justice to an arduous piece.

Big Tunes

A bit of a heavyweight blockbuster of a cd this one. Martha Argerich playing Rachmaninoff Piano Concert No 3 and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1. Both live recordings, the Rach with RSO Berlin and Riccardo Chailly and the Tchaik with Kirill Kondrashin and the Symphonie Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.These are the big two romantic piano concertos and are ideally suited for Argerich's tempestuous style. The pieces are perenially popular, not much to be said about them in the context of a blog like this really. Except that even after listening so many times to so many performances, I still keep expecting the glorious opening theme from the Tchaikovsky to make a comeback in the first movement which it never does. Rachmaninoff isn't so profligate with his opening movement "big tune".