Elizabeth and the Catapult, “Golden Ink”: a mellow track from a very
good NY area band. This really isn’t one of my favorites of their songs. It’s rather on the dull side.
Miles Davis, “Ray’s Idea”: Miles is one of the great geniuses of the 20th century. What more need be said?
Do Make Say Think, “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”: DMSY is one of the very
best post-rock ensembles you’ll find. They’re another group that overlaps with
Godspeed You Black Emperor, and they approach the brilliance that is Godspeed.
This is a nice mellow track, with some lovely steel guitar playing.
The Tangent, “Photosynthesis”: great neo-progressive stuff. This band started off as a collaboration between Roine Stolte of the Flower Kings and
Andy Tillson. This is off the first Tangent album after Stolte and Tillson had a falling out. The band still features some members of tFK, but the writing is now
pretty much all Tillson. They’re an excellent band, but I did prefer their sound with Stolte.
Marillion, “Splintering Heart”: the best track off of a frankly lousy
Marillion album.
Gogol Bordello, “Not a Crime”: Gypsy punk rock, with brilliant fiddle
playing. What could be cooler than that?
Mel Brooks, “Springtime for Hitler”: A song from one of the most brilliantly offensive shows of all time. The original movie remains one of my very favorite movies. Come on, how can you not love the blue blankie? Or Mel Brooks stepping out of a dance line to sing “Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the nazi party?”
Marillion, “Throw Me Out”: something off of Marillion’s new double album. I love this album. It’s the best thing from Marillion in ages. I can’t stop listening to it. This is why I love Marillion. Brilliant songwriting, amazing technical performances, music loaded with feeling, and those astonishingly wonderful Marillion transitions. Even a short little song like this manages to be just
brilliant, with so many little treasures hidden in it.
Pink Floyd, “The Dogs of War”: It’s a damn shame that David Gilmour got control of the Pink Floyd name, and chose te release so much crap under it. He’s a wonderful guitarist, but frankly, he’s a pretty rotten songwriter. All of his compositions have this dull droning quality to them. This is typical. There’s some nice guitar work in the live version, but the song itself is just dreck.
Happy the Man, “Maui Sunset”: I was delighted when I heard Happy the Man was getting back together. I wasn’t so delighted once I heard what they did. It’s got all of the technical qualities of good progressive rock: complex melodies and harmonies, interesting chord progressions, complex and irregular rythyms. But it’s cold. It sounds like music performed by a computer. There’s not a trace of humanity to it. Technically brilliant, but ultimately remarkably dull.
Although I agree Dogs of War is not a great tune, I totally disagree with your thoughts on Gilmour taking over Pink Floyd. Infact the recent Gilmour solo work is better then some of the older Floyd catalog IMO. The guy is amazing
Dogs of War is really just “One of These Days” slowed down with lyrics and a sax solo. And yes, live it worked a lot better than the studio. The best thing on that album is the instrumental on side 2, Terminal Frost.
For the next (and last) Floyd, I liked Keep Talking, High Hopes, and the Rick Wright song, but all the rest is just him prattling away about his divorce (with the irony being that the lyrics were all by his new girlfriend at the time). I didn’t bother to see that tour ’cause I saw a stadium Floyd show in ’88 and realized that Waters was right the entire time: stadium shows suck.
Over the past few years, I’ve had the privelege of attending both the solo tours of David Gilmour debuting is new album and Roger Waters. Both were very good but Gilmour was more than good – he was awesome. His strength has more to do with the inspired musicality that he injects into the classic Floyd songs. A good example is his signature piece -Comfortably Numb. If you contrast the original arrangement in the Wall album with his much later beefed up version in the post-Waters “Pulse” Album, the improvement is startling. Also, the fact that Gilmour has continued to team up with the quiet brilliance of Richard Wright has added a lot of legitimacy to their recent Floyd music. They’ve tried a lot of new material such as Dogs of War and not all of it has worked well. But a lot of it has been brilliant such as Sorrow, High Hopes, Keep Talking. Even their weeker material is still better than most groups and their stronger material is simply great!
‘Springtime for Hitler’ is clearly on my must-have list. The movie was just awesome.
Although I agree Dogs of War is not a great tune, I totally disagree with your thoughts on Gilmour taking over Pink Floyd. Infact the recent Gilmour solo work is better then some of the older Floyd catalog IMO. The guy is amazing
Dogs of War is really just “One of These Days” slowed down with lyrics and a sax solo. And yes, live it worked a lot better than the studio. The best thing on that album is the instrumental on side 2, Terminal Frost.
For the next (and last) Floyd, I liked Keep Talking, High Hopes, and the Rick Wright song, but all the rest is just him prattling away about his divorce (with the irony being that the lyrics were all by his new girlfriend at the time). I didn’t bother to see that tour ’cause I saw a stadium Floyd show in ’88 and realized that Waters was right the entire time: stadium shows suck.
Over the past few years, I’ve had the privelege of attending both the solo tours of David Gilmour debuting is new album and Roger Waters. Both were very good but Gilmour was more than good – he was awesome. His strength has more to do with the inspired musicality that he injects into the classic Floyd songs. A good example is his signature piece -Comfortably Numb. If you contrast the original arrangement in the Wall album with his much later beefed up version in the post-Waters “Pulse” Album, the improvement is startling. Also, the fact that Gilmour has continued to team up with the quiet brilliance of Richard Wright has added a lot of legitimacy to their recent Floyd music. They’ve tried a lot of new material such as Dogs of War and not all of it has worked well. But a lot of it has been brilliant such as Sorrow, High Hopes, Keep Talking. Even their weeker material is still better than most groups and their stronger material is simply great!