A Lark Ascending

Here's an experiment to try on Monday. Go to your bank and try and negotiate a loan to open a record shop! In the long run I can only see 3. as the way forward - and the second part at that. With bands (or people associated wit them) creating CD-Rs for gig sales. It won't happen immediately because I'd imagine that most record sales are to casual buyers and casual buyers won't go to the trouble of downloading. But it will be the specialist sectors - classical, folk, jazz etc - that abandon the physical CD first. It's going to be fascinating looking out in 2009 for the first label to do this. I have a feeling the classical labels will be out in front. The challenge for the industry is to ensure the quality is up there equal to CD. This is happening in some places but not all - you do get blips on downloads (like you got plops on LPs). In their rush to get thing online they are letting errors through. A little more care, a bit of time listening to the transfer will lead to customers coming to trust the medium and ignore the disinformation still coming out about 'crappy mp3s'. But this was exactly what happened with CD - 5 to 10 years of careless transfers creating a belief amongst audiophiles that CD could not match vinyl, followed by another ten years remastering! The beauty of the new model is that you don't have to rebuy your existing collection. If you choose to store it on a computer or squeezebox then you can just rip your existing collection.

I suspect Spillers is quite unusual. Nottingham has the long established Selectadisc which used to operate on a broad front but has cut back on the specialist front in the last ten years. If HMV goes (two stores) then they will be more or less all that is left. I stopped bothering to visit Nottingham a good year back because there was so little in the shops. So Selectadisc lost my custom too. I can't think of an independent in central Sheffield any more - I think Record Collector is still going but that is a fair way out in the suburbs. But for the millions of us who live in small towns or villages the options are really just the online CD stores like Amazon or downloading. Interesting that Amazon.co.uk has started offering downloads. People over 25 are still suspicious of downloads (for good reason). I think that will change.

And that may be one practical reason for their survival for a time yet. Good to hear you're doing well operating independently.

The Nice featured quite strongly in both the doc and the BBC extracts programme just before (doing 'America'). The Moody Blues were my first favourite band c.1970. They are forever associated with Newquay where I bought their albums with the money I earnt washing dishes in 'The Fort' restaurant overlooking the harbour. As Dennis Potter often maintained, even the most inauspicious music can retain a power by association, throwing you back to an earlier time in your life.

Sgt. Pepper was given pride of place as the LP that made the 'album' as it became possible. Procul Harum's 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' also got special mention as a single that came from somewhere else. The Moody Blues 'Days of Future Passed' (which had Nights in White Satin as its closing number) was a curiosity - I can't recall the full details but I believe it started as a Decca light orchestral record to demonstrate audio equipment. Someone came up with the idea of have a rock group between the orchestral bits and a real 'concept album' took shape. Edit: I'm not quite right there. Wikipaedia tells us:

She did go to Ronnie's sometimes so maybe she just had curiosity! There was a great programme about the mellotron a year or so back on Radio 4. They are making them again, apparently. Some lunatic has catalogued every record to use a mellotron here: http://www.planetmellotron.com/index.htm

Yes, I take your general point, although I'm not sure that it is totally true - there are some very bizarre sites out there where people with minority obsessions set up sites to talk about what enthuses them, regardless of whether anyone is reading. You are, of course, right to say that if there is no market then you're not going to find much (and I have to say that you are the only person I've ever come across who actively seeks out sermons!). But all it takes is one person with your passion for a minority music who is also PC savvy and prepared to devote a bit of time and a portal develops. When I'm talking about the immense opportunities the net offers for accessing music I am, of course, talking from a Western (or developed world) perspective, merely expressing a view of optimism in contrast to the frequently expressed pessimism surrounding the collapse of the old model. Of course this is pretty meaningless to the developing world where a host of issues from poverty to civil war to government corruption to AIDS make distributing music via electronic means quite irrelevant. Whether we buy our music in the West in CD format or as Mosaic boxes or as downloads all looks equally scandalous when you look at the realities there.

Ian MacDonald. I think he ended up in Foreigner!!!!!!!!! I hated the Wakeman solo albums even at the time - in fact I was never that keen on Wakeman. The arrival of synths in these bands in force around 1973 also took away some of their lustre for me. I was always happier with pianos, electric pianos, organs and the glorious mellotron. Synths (which were monophonic at that time) encouraged keyboard players to squiggle a great deal. It's worth remembering that 'prog' was but a part of a very varied music scene and was far from an exclusive genre. At the same time there was lots of soul and Tamla type music in the charts, bubblegum pop and then glam-rock. The 1969-76 years of prog also saw folk rock (Fairport, Steeleye, John Martyn etc), lots of ongoing blues-rock bands. Where do Led Zeppelin and their ilk fit in? - heavy metal hadn't yet been codified and those of us buying Yes albums were also buying their records. Then there were all the American bands - Chicago, Grateful Dead, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young etc. And it's often forgotten that one of the biggest successes of the 71-3 period was 'soft-rock' - Carole King, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young ('Harvest' was huge in 1972) etc (that's what the girls were listening to if they didn't care for the charts!). There was also a subterranean scene of country influenced bands in the UK, drawing off the likes of the Byrds and the Burritos - I recall Bob Harris having a particular thing for bands like Home and Help Yourself. And all manner of outright weird experimentalism from people like the Third Ear Band and Henry Cow. And psychedelic/spiritual kooks like Quintessence and Gong. And much, much more. Most people I knew were listening to the lot and picking our own favourites rather than adhering to a single genre. One of the points that it was easy to lose in the programme was when they were talking about the festivals and how you'd get a complete mix of performers and the audience would listen curiously to the lot. I recall going to an all day event where I sat through the short lived Carla Bley/Jack Bruce Band, Steeleye Span and the then chart topping Steve Harley! Maybe the same holds true today - I don't know. I do know that in the punk aftermath what really turned me away from rock/pop music was how mono-dimensional and doctrinaire it seemed to become (more 'you can't do that because it's pretentious' then 'why don't we try this'). The official history of rock writes off the early 70s through the prism of the punk perspective of '76 - and its easy to dismiss it as 'bloated prog'. For those of us who listened through that era and didn't re-educate ourselves when the fashions changed it still holds a memory of a time where anything was possible in music. In retrospect I can see that most of the musicians lacked the musical knowledge to take things much further...or perhaps, more truthfully, were unable to follow their instincts without losing what audience they had and, consequently, the record company support. But what I really value about that era is that it introduced me to so many musical possibilities. When rock dried up for me c.1976 I had a number of seeds that I could follow up - jazz, folk, classical.

Then 'Discipline' is the album you want: I didn't much care for that version of KC at the time (not enough of Fripp's wonderful snakey guitar); but have come to enjoy them since. Should be obtainable very cheaply.

That was one of the funniest bits - when he admitted that their concept album ('Trick of the Tail'? - I'm not into Tull) was a p-take with its 40-odd minute single track and intended as a sort of 'Spinal Tap'. I think he was reinterpreting the past to suit himself there (The album was 'Thick as a Brick'). I was never much of a Tull listener, but I did have 'Thick as a Brick'. They followed it with something called 'A Passion Play' (I think) which got absolutely slaughtered by the critics. I think it was where the reaction against that sort of music really started...Summer '73 if I recall correctly (a good three years before punk exploded). A few months later they went for Yes' 'Tales of Topographic Oceans' in the same way, an album which is still wafted as the prime evidence to condemn prog-rock (it's actually a very good record, probably the last decent one they made!). So I find his arguments a bit disingenuous - Jethro Tull were huge c.1972-3 and just as prone to giganticism as many of the others. Tred carefully with King Crimson - they are most definitely a rock group. And their records are so diverse (expect near heavy metal chording, whimsical pastoralism and abstract improv...but not always on the same record!) - the first one would probably sound hopelessly bombastic to a listener today; the 80s band has more in common with Talking Heads. They are probably the band of that era I return to most frequently - there's a long thread about them elsewhere. Edit: Re: Jethro Tull, this is interesting: NME item from 1973 As for Jethro Tull being above pretension: NME Concert Review

I recall watching a rebroadcast of that in the late 70s at a time when when I was just starting to teach the First World War (and take trips out to Ypres and the Somme). Very moving and influential. But... You might find this book interesting: It discusses the huge influence the series had along with things like 'Oh, What a Lovely War' (and in the context of Vietnam), drawing much of its interpretation from the perspective of the war poets. Sheffield puts together a very strong argument that it misrepresents the reality of the Great War based on the values of the 60s and bears little resemblence as to how it was seen in the 1920s and 1930s. I found it a really challenging read because it upset so many of my preconceptions drawn from learning about WWI in the 60s/70s. But he convinced me!

We may not be tuned into that, but I think younger people are much more comfortable with sifting the enormity that is out there. They accept a TV that has a zillion channels (most of it of little interest) as the norm - yet still some things emerge as very popular; and some things become central for particular 'tribes'. In much the same way as we have gravitated to a place like Organissimo as a 'portal' for jazz information so their are 'portals' for hundreds of other areas of interest. I suspect the 'local' thing will still matter because live music will inevitably be mainly local - most UK jazz musicians, for example, don't get much opportunity to play abroad until they reach a certain level of visibility. So having a download of your music available after a local gig is going to be important. I'm always amazed by the rush at the end of concerts to buy the CD...and even more amazed by the musicians who don't have any or have left them in the last hotel. Unless you are a big name your performance will figure in an audience's brain for at best a few days before other interests crowd in. If you want to make a sale you have to be ready then. If the listener can go home, log on, download some recent recordings of the songs they just heard to get to know them better, then you are going to get your music more widely known. Though that does pose another question...is the current practice of recording the new compositions and then gigging them artistically the best way of doing it? The uncertainty of the industry can be seen in a label like ECM. Their music is now up on the commercial download sites, most of the back catalogue is on e-music (in some regions) where it can be acquired for a fraction of its former cost (and this from a label who until very recently did not do budget priced reissues)...yet they also launch the physical CD Touchstone series. But the recognition is there that the electronic route cannot be ignored. I'm going to be very interested to see how Blue Note play it. There are a lot of Blue Note albums on iTunes and elsewhere. With a major batch of deletions of CDs due I wonder if they will leave them there (i.e. move towards permanent availability) or withdraw them from there too (keeping to the traditional model of withdrawing material to allow a new demand to build up). Finally, an interesting development with Naxos. Their initial downloads were at the much derided 128 kpbs. They are now/have converted to 320 kpbs. But instead of inviting everyone to buy their downloads again in higher resolution (the 'remastered edition' approach of the 90s in CD) they are allowing customers to upgrade free of charge. It's going to be a very different world and I don't think any of us can know how it will eventually pan out. But I'm pretty sure it's all going to happen much more quickly than we imagine.

Nice, balanced programme. Instead of repeating the usual received wisdom (pretentious, bombastic etc) it recognised the excitement, range and aspiration of the music that was retrospectively plonked under the 'prog' label. At the same time it pointed out one of its central flaws...girls didn't like it! And how the energy that had once gone on making music outside the norm had, by the mid-Seventies been squandered on stage sets and the sort of megalomania ELP seemed to indulge in. Having lived through that era, cut my musical teeth there, I always find it sad that lazy journalism focuses in on the bloated '75 era and the emerging stadium type shows. Most of us heard this on record without visuals (beyond the record covers) or in bare student union halls where the 'show' part was minimal. The appeal of a a band like Genesis might escape listeners today who just see the daft costumes and the synth-drenched mega-group they became; but around 72-3 they were a breath of fresh air in a musical world where music beyond the charts was generally leaden blues-rock. Instead you got rippling 12-string guitars, flutes and oboes and a slightly twisted Englishness. I can still recall being horrified when I bought my NME in late '72 to see a picture of Peter Gabriel dressed as a flower. Surely it was all about the music, man! The hour of BBC clips before made me chuckle. Two things stood out: a) How the marionette dancers of Top of the Pops (did they ever smile?) carried on regardless, even though the Jethro Tull and Atomic Rooster records were quite undanceable! b) The leering antics of Ian Anderson....then cut forward to the end of the documentary to Johnny Rotten doing somethng very similar.

Brits of a certain vintage should tune into BBC4 over the next week for a number of programmes on 'prog'. Some are things I'm sure I've seen before but at 10.00 pm tonight there's a new 'Prog-rock Britannia' programme with repeats next week. Get the cheese cloth shirts and loons out!

I'm not surprised!

Clearly this all means bad news for lots of people whose jobs depend on the traditional way of circulating music; and to those who like to buy a physical product and/or feel that download quality can never equal the quality of a physical CD (in much the way some feel a CD can never equal the quality of a vinyl LP). But there is so much opportunity lying here, once we've got past our loyalty to the old model. Two examples: a) I stumbled upon an argument somewhere on a rock site arguing that the new model might inaugerate a return of the single song. Now that a band does not need to pad out an entire album they can spend more effort getting a limited number of things right and then put it out. Might not have much meaning for jazz where we think in longer stretches (be it LP, CD sides or live sets) but could help other areas. b) Once people have really got their head around these changes it should allow a much swifter access to new music. On the old model a new piece of classical might get a premiere and then disappear from sight. With orchestras now recording much of their own work and releasing it through their own websites it shouldn't be too hard to sort out the liscensing and when a new composer gets his/her work performed it can also get out there for the people at the concert and a wider listening public to hear it again very soon after creation. And without the burden of some coupling they might not require. I downloaded Thomas Ades Violin Concerto off iTunes last week - just that. No need to hang about waiting for him to write a clarinet concerto. In that case there seems to have been a 2 year gap between premiere and release as a download. I'm sure that margin can be significantly cut, greatly helping newer music find an audience. I think we have to be careful about mixing up the current economic downturn with the transfer from CD to electronic distribution. To my mind the new technology offers fantastic possibilities - although the big players seem too obsessed with protecting their existing assets rather than looking to the potential in the changes. We could be entering one of those phases in the endless cycle where the initiative passes to the little chaps. Edit: The idea the downloading will lead to everything being reduced to single tracks also seems mistaken to me. Long before music was even recorded (let alone collected on long playing records) composers were organising music in longer sequences - suites, song cycles, symphonies etc. They did not need an artificially imposed time limit to decide that it was a nice way of structuring music. I'm sure musicians will carry on putting out 'albums' of music as an expression of their creativity.

Happy New Year, y'all.

Here's another lucky winner from the fringes of British music: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/7805305.stm

Agree. Not my style of music but he's always promoted jazz in an open and unaffected way.

With Sweden left littered with corpses I thought I move somewhere else Nordic. If anything this one, set in Iceland, is even more gloomy!

A whoppin' £50 for 131 pages? At that price I'd expect Monk-inscripted gold leaf on vellum. But then it would be in Latin and you wouldn't be able to read it. Well, I wouldn't!

Despite not being Olympic athletes both chaps were picked out of the hat for one of Britain's strangest rituals: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7804822.stm Though, thinking about it, Plant has a sort of Olympics connection. Maybe Her Majesty was rather taken by the double decker/hedge performance in August. Bet Jimmy's miffed. Courtney joins the likes of Stan Tracey and Johnny Dankworth as jazzers sprinkled with establishment fairy dust.

I'm very attracted to this idea of local community as the driving force of real experience. Except... I'm a classic example of a late 20th/early 21st person quite divorced from any community. I grew up on RAF camps all over the world, have a strong draw towards the south-west (through living there quite a bit and my father's Cornish origins) yet have lived in the Midlands for 30 years and still feel no emotional bond here. The reality of the last 100 years....maybe much longer...is that those of us in the 'developed' world have little option to live our lives from a local community. Culture will/has been reshaping accordingly. I have a feeling that more and more we will choose our cultural contexts from a global drop-down menu. Will this be 'real'? Well, when I listen to Aussie jazz it's much more affecting than anything I've heard of Nottinghamshire jazz.

Really enjoyed a Steve Lacy/Roswell Rudd/Misha Mengelberg version of Blue Chopsticks on Jazz Record requests this evening. I don't own any Nichols - just one of the Herbie Nichols Project discs (which I'm playing now). The Blue Note box always scared me off, being both pricey and full of a/ts. Just out of interst I looked on iTunes UK and there it was for a very reasonable £10.99 (30 masters, 18 a/ts) making it both affordable and easy to split up into two main discs and two with the a/ts (they don't quite fit on one). Brits who are happy with downloads might be interested. All the session details can be got from here: http://www.jazzdisco.org/blue-note-records.../session-index/ The Lacy/Rudd/Mengelberg (Regeneration on Soul Note) is lined up when e-music refreshes tomorrow.

Well, I'm very much of the new audience (I too got interest in classical music via ELP (well, The Nice actually!) and other prog-rockers) and I'm glad its there. There are always a dozen copies for sale in the main news outlet in my little market town (there's not a single jazz of folk magazine) so there must be others who want it. The traditional audience is clearly still buying it - you'll find them grumbling about this or that or squabbling about which is the best Brahms' Fourth in the letters pages.