Awaken

And so, dear reader, our journey through my top 8 songs (as per the Desert Island Disc format) comes to a close, with 15 minutes and 31 seconds of prog rock joy courtesy of Yes. You can listen to the song here.


I've blogged previously about my thoughts on both the soap opera that is the regular changes in the Yes line-up here and what I think of their last album here.

In the same way that much of my affection for 1970's music was acquired, by listening to albums over and over again at a friends house, I first remember listening to Yes following my friend Nigel having a Damascus Road type conversion to their music. This was after "The Old Grey Whistle Test" (a British rock show) broadcast a 1975 concert. The gig was live at QPR's football stadium and Nigel went straight out and bought "Yessongs" the band's triple live album from a previous tour and played it to us at every opportunity. As it was six sides of music, there was always a side to listen to, that we hadn't heard for a couple of days!

Awaken comes from the band's 1977 album "Going for the one" (GFTO), which was the band's first new release since I became a "fan" and it was issued on 7/7/77 which was just before I started work! This meant that I had money and could actually buy the album some weeks later rather tape someone else's. In fact I could also go and buy the two 12" singles released at the same time, which still have pride of place in my vinyl collection.

GTFO was very much a re-launch for Yes, as it marked the return to the line-up of keyboard player, Rick Wakeman, who had found the excesses of Tales of Topographic Oceans, too much. but when he heard the working demo's for this album, returned reinvigorated! It was also the first album for five plus years not produced by Eddie Offord (the band produced it themselves) and the album cover was by design company Hipnosis (best known for their work with Pink Floyd), not long time album artist, Roger Dean. It was also recorded in Montreux, at Mountain Studios, which Queen would later use to record among other songs, Under Pressure, with local resident David Bowie!

GFTO is a fairly short (39 minutes) five track album, but in my view, it is the high point in the Yes canon.  I will never tire of listening to it and Awaken as the last track brings the album to a stunning climax.

If someone asked me to play them a song that for me defined "prog rock", I would be hard pressed to play them a better example than Awaken. For a start is effectively two pieces of music, moulded together with an introductory and end section that bookend the piece superbly. The song starts with Wakeman on the piano showing off and then leads into Anderson singing about "high vibrations" over ethereal keyboards and guitar. This then leads to a guitar track that starts the the first half of the song which is a rock workout with Steve Howe's guitar work showing what a great player he is. Over the top Jon Anderson sings about "the workings of man" and bass and drums thunder around with a church organ in the mix as well!

It's the second half of the song, however, that takes it to epic proportions. In the mix, Yes add, timbrels and harp, with the church organ now quietly over the top. This church organ part builds as Rick Wakeman puts the organ at Eglise des Planches, Montreux through it's paces. Added to this then comes Howe with some beautifully fluid guitar soloing. The rest of band join in, with again some great soloing from Howe and Anderson's voice adds his falsetto/angelic magic (including the lyric from which this blog gets its name!) and then the church choir (yes really) put a choral harmony over the top to which Wakeman now playing thunderous organ takes the whole experience to a truly spiritual level. Howe then solos for his country and the songs just builds and builds until THE chord change at 12' 48" just makes you punch the air. The track finishes with the choir and Anderson reprising the beginning of the song in a gentle angelic way that finishes the track and album off perfectly.

Music like this just makes the world a wonderful place.

The Prophet's song

There's a theory regularly expressed on the excellent Word podcast that you develop your taste in music by the time that you're in your late teens. These last two entries in my Desert Island Disc series confirm that that was indeed the case for me.

The penultimate entry comes from Queen's 1975 magnum opus, "A Night at the Opera". On the back of a career defining single, Bohemian Rhapsody, ANATO (as it is known by Queen fans) lifted the band several levels in rocks hierarchy and for me this was the stand out track on it.

Before, however, I talk about this song, I feel that I should explain exactly how important Queen were to me as I navigated my way through my mid-teens.

I first really became aware of them, when they performed Seven Seas of Rhye on Top of the Pops. I think my mate Gray bought that single and then Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack were bought by school mates, sorry I can't remember who had what and as one did, we hung out and played them to death. Very soon Queen were my favourite band and any edition of Sounds, Melody Maker or NME (1970's music papers that had any article or interview was purchased and read and re-read. Similarly any appearance on Top of the Pops was to be watched and the sheer joy of the bands live performance, even in the TOTP studio, kept me going for weeks. My best mate Gray and I would discuss them for hours, what songs meant, what they were wearing and why Freddie wearing black nail polish didn't mean that he was gay!

Then one Sunday afternoon while writing an essay for my homework and listening to Annie Nightingale (I think), she played the new Queen single. Didn't catch the title and wasn't listening properly so actually thought that she had messed up and played two album tracks! That was of course "Bo Rhap" and when the album came out, my friend Ian bought it and we listened to it over and over while playing Risk and Colditz.

I distinctly remember their 1975 Christmas concert being broadcast live on BBC2 and a bank of cassette players being set up in front of Gray's parents TV while we tried to record it for prosperity. Even now any clip of that great concert brings that night in his lounge back to me like it was yesterday!

The Prophet's Song opens side 2 of the album and you can listen to it here if you have Spotify. At 8 minutes 21 seconds it is the longest studio song that the band recorded and to me it sums up why I love Queen. Firstly it has a great guitar work, it has great lyrics (biblical references always a good thing), Freddie sings his heart out, the choral bit is exactly right for the song and the end is a stunning climax, including a stereo effect that bounced across the speakers. Very lame in these days of 5.1 surround sound, but at the time, to my teenage ears, it was the very cutting edge of audio technology. It is probably the closest to prog rock that the band came, which also explains my love for this song!

The first 5 Queen albums are faultless in my view and I will never tire of hearing any of them, but this track is, to me, the high water mark.

Ára bátur

My sixth track for Desert Island Discs comes from what may prove to be the last album by Sigur Rós, the fabulously named "Meõ suõ í eyrum viõ spilum endalaust"! In English it means, "With a buzz in our ears we play Endlessly" I say last as the band are on a "hiatus" so who knows if they'll record together again?

The title to the song means "Row boat" and you can listen to it here. It is as glorious a 9 minutes of music to which you can hope to listen.

The album came out in June 2008 and I bought it and listened to it first in around November that year. This co-incided with my Dad being in hospital and one night I hit play on my iPod in the car after I had dropped my Mum off home. She lives about 10 minutes from my house with quiet roads. I was a bit emotional as Dad was fairly poorly and slowly as the song built on the journey home so did my spirits. At the final crescendo when Orchestra and Choir go into overdrive, I was driving down the slip road to the motorway with the most wonderful sunset view across Hampshire in front of me and the meeting of sound and vision was just heart stopping.

The song now always reminds me of my Dad, who died the following February, but as a result of that journey home, in a good, uplifting way.

Miserere mei, Deus

This is D I D track 5 and you can listen to it here.

I don't listen to enough classical music, but this is a piece that always gives me goosebumps listening to it.

It's for that reason alone that it's included.

Enjoy.

The same old scene

So the Npower Championship starts next Saturday and the excellent news is that this season it includes the Saints!

So how do I feel about this season? Will we be this seasons Norwich (who achieved back to back promotions so start this season in the Premier League) or will we be Scunthorpe (who went up then back to League 1)? Or more likely, will this be a season of acclimatisation?

Well we have a squad with depth in it, so much so, that (as I write this) we have only made two pre-season signings, Jack Cork and Steve de Ridder. Cork was on loan from  Chelsea the last time that we were in the Championship and looked good. Last season he played at Burnley and fans were sad to see him go. We've now bought him so let's hope the good signs seen in pre-season games continue. De Ridder is a right winger, looks good and seems to have genuine pace. That seems a great piece of business as, if as expected, Alex Chamberlain does go on a big money move. then we've avoided being asked for silly money when we have to go and buy a replacement.

I don't see any obvious weaknesses in the team, in fact we appear to have a series good problems in that we have 4 quality central midfielders vying for 2 places. We also have 5 strikers in competition for 2 places and again 4 central defenders fighting over 2 more spaces. As long as Adkins can keep everybody happy then we start from a good settled place.

So where do I think that we will finish? If we have a good start then promotion could be achievable, but I expect mid-table to be where we end up.

Let's hope I'm wrong!

The Chain

On Friday morning, at silly o'clock (5.50am) I caught the last 10 minutes of  BBC Radio Five Live's "Wake up to money". This included a discussion on the profits that BSkyB were expected to announce later that morning. They correctly summised that this would be in the order of c£1 billion and that following the withdrawal of the News International takeover bid (Hackgate etc...) they didn't actually have anything on which to spend the profits. In fact the profit announcement included a share buy back of c£750 million which seems to underline the point!

Then at 7 am (at the same time as the profits were announced) Sky Sports revealed that from the 2012 season, they would be taking over the exclusive broadcasting of Formula One motor racing, in partnership with the BBC. The BBC will continue to show selected live races (including the British GP) and highlights of the ones of which they don't carry live coverage.

I have two areas of thought on this. Firstly the addition of F1 to the long list of sports that have moved from "free to air" broadcasting to "subscription" broadcasting brought about the usual "it's the end of the world" comments in the media (including Twitter). Comments along the lines of "I'm not paying to watch something that should be free" abounded. Well firstly you do pay, it's called the license fee. Furthermore, frankly the time for that argument was years ago, around the time that Test cricket was lost to the skies. Sky have an additional c£1 billion per annum of profit, over and above what they already spend on sports rights, that they could spend on sport so they can pick and choose what else they buy up and we have to accept that. If you're a Sports fan you have to have Sky Sports, it's as simple as that. Even if ESPN decided to extend their portfolio, I suspect that the platform used to watch it would still be Sky!

Secondly, then, how do the BBC come out of this deal? Quite well I think! BBC budgets are being cut (slashed?) across the Corporation. In the Sports department I guess that a long hard look at continuing with the F1 coverage had already been undertaken. Having worked so hard to win the coverage back from ITV and
to have done such a good job with the resultant production, losing it would have been a  potentially huge body blow. This deal is perfect for the BBC of the future. It keeps the "best bits" (i.e. the races that we would want to see) probably at 1 pm on a Sunday, to minimise the impact on scheduling. It enables the terrific investment in the "red button" and online proposition, which F1 has really benefited from, to continue as the end users remain. It accepts however that the days of a British "terrestrial" broadcaster being able to afford exclusive Sports rights is finally behind us. I don't therefore expect Six nations rugby to remain solely on the BBC beyond this contract.

After all the BBC did a similar deal earlier in the year on the Masters golf, when the whole tournament was on Sky, with the BBC just covering the last two rounds on it's multi-platforms. The golf fans that I work with seemed happy enough!

Changes

I have just, for the first time. been back to a recent blog and updated it.

I read a couple of articles yesterday about the new Yes album and discovered that actually three of the tracks were written back 1980, not just one, so my blog was incorrect. It is not now!