






Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week
Transcripts from the everyday world of music by Martin Colyer
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When this old world starts getting you down, and people are just too much for you to face, Sister Rosetta is there to put words to your feelings…
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I recently found this isolated vocal track of “Going, Going, Gone” from Planet Waves. It doesn’t seem to be the released take, but it’s fascinating to hear Bob’s unadorned singing [apart from some interesting chords and riffs on his acoustic guitar]. It’s impassioned and dramatic, and the timing is fantastic — listen to the delays on the title phrase.
“For Once in My Life” is a song I first associated with Bennett and for the definitive ballad reading he nails it.
Lovely pic of Don Weller who played just as he looked no nonsense big toned tenor, speaking of which the best gig I ever saw at the Seven Dials was by the archetypical Texan sax giant Buddy Tate
Sorry, Mick, I’m just not a Bennett fan…
Harry Miller on bass in that great pic of Mongezi.
I need you to help me caption all these, Richard! My annotating skills were sub-par…
Looks like Keith Tippett on piano
Good to be reminded of that Aimee Mann track.
You can look up a couple of very decent Serpent themed soundtrack playlists on Spotify which soothe the nerves after biting your fingernails to the bone while watching the show.
Thanks a lot for reminding me of that ‘Osmond Bros destroy Stevie Wonder’ clip; I’d only just stopped having nightmares. Those BBC4 compilation programmes have no quality control at all, so you get absolute gems mixed up with audio torture.
I’m impressed that Perfume Genius is on your radar. Not being especially ‘down with the kids’ myself, I only know him because my nephew plays in his touring band. I wasn’t sure PG would amount to anything but it’s impressive how he has developed as an artist.
And how has your nephew coped with the touring gap, Kevin?
I have no doubt that he’s missed all the fun of being with his band buddies but he seems to have made the most of it, actually. Cooped up alone, with no other distractions, he’s just finished his second film soundtrack.
Yes, they seem to throw them together with a few odd facts as subtitles… Stevie did worse than most with their choices, I can’t forget Johnny Mathis and “Sir Duke…”
And I listen to anything that Blake Mills works on. I like the fact that he’s not satisfied being an astonishingly inventive and interesting guitar player — he has an artist’s sensibility and seems to draw special things out of those he produces. I love Laura Marling’s Semper Femina (although she found his committed methods challenging…) and I think the PG record is a leap in his production techniques.
I feel a Blake Mills playlist coming on. By the way, I’ve been listening again to the playlist compiled from your book – still sounds very good, very few that I skip.
That’s nice to hear… I will do a BM playlist and send you – there are some great odd tracks where he’s the featured soloist…