Musician John Miles has died. He was best-known for his anthemic hit single Music and a few other UK hits. Many people don't know his work beyond these, including me but a few people I know are more familiar with him and say his albums are worth checking out. He often gets categorised as progressive rock. He was highly respected by other musicians and made a number of guest appearances on other artists' albums and tours including Jimmy Page, Pur and the Alan Parsons Project.
Posts by Backdrifter
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I'm up to episode 3 of I May Destroy You, after hearing consistently good things about it. Quite compelling so far, and a bit creepy in parts. A woman in London has had a night out then the next day notices odd things - an unexplained cut on her head, an ATM withdrawal at a location far from where she went, images of a man standing over her, a vague sense of someone being attacked. She starts to try piecing it together but the people she was with are evasive and unhelpful.
In the 3rd episode which I just watched, it flashed back to 3 months previously when she was in Italy so there's another thread developing there. On to ep4 tomorrow.
...only I never did proceed to ep4. No reason... I should try to resume it.
I'm so often late to things. It's long finished but I always heard good things about Peaky Blinders. I noticed it's all on the BBC iplayer so have started watching. OK so far, good enough to go on to the 2nd ep anyway. It's a bit too carefully stylised at times but I'm assured that settles down.
It features a number of people I like a lot - Cillian Murphy, Sam Neill, Sophie Rundle and the much-missed wonderful Helen McRory.
I'm also doing a complete dvd run-through of The Wire, my favourite ever TV show. Nearing the end of the 3rd season now.
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At least they're doing the beginning of "Fading Lights", which does have a semi-callback to ATrick Of The Tail's "Ripples".
Does it?
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Having just posted in the RIP thread, it made me think it's a shame we won't immediately see new non-Genesis posts flagged in the same way. I understand the impatience some have with the games and 'songs with' etc threads crowding the dashboard - I long ago muted a few forums myself to avoid just that and subsequently enjoyed a good mix of new Genesis/non-Genesis posts on the dashboard as I come here for exactly that spread of topics. But I sense that we're going to end up with a Genesis-only dashboard and wondered if it's possible to have a split dashboard, a Genesis and an Off Topic one.
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Two huge losses to the world of theatre just recently, Stephen Sondheim and Antony Sher.
Theatre-lover as I am, I'm not a huge fan of musical theatre but have enjoyed a few productions of Sondheim's elegant, thoughtful shows.
I loved the story from a few years back of Tooting Arts Club staging Sweeney Todd appropriately in a pie & mash shop in Tooting, cramming in about 30 audience and performing on the cafe tables (Tooting is a district of SW London that's buffed itself up a bit but is still shabby around the edges). At one performance, there in the audience was the octagenarian Sondheim thoroughly enjoying the show, which later had a New York transfer. Tooting to NY transfers don't often happen.
Antony Sher was an actor I admired very much for his stage and screen work. I first saw him in the TV adaptation (about 1980) of The History Man, the Malcolm Bradbury novel. I can't read that book without thinking of Sher as arrogant womanising sociologist Howard Kirk. The TV series really captured the feel of the early 70s, well at least as far as I recall as I haven't seen it for decades and the dvd seems to be no longer available. I saw quite a bit of his stage work, he was well-known for his Shakespeare roles but I mainly remember him performing the monologue Primo which he adapted from Primo Levi's book If This Is A Man, about his experiences of being arrested as a Resistance member in Italy and incarcerated at Auschwitz.
Two great losses there.
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^ ^ Interesting breakdown.
Duke - 4 songs: Duchess, Misunderstanding (once), Turn It On Again, Duke's End
Strictly speaking Duke should be 5 as Behind the Lines is a distinct segment paired with Duke’s End.
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A recent guest on the long-running BBC radio show Desert Island Discs was author Joanne Harris. For those unfamiliar with the format, guests choose 8 songs they'd want to have with them on a desert island. Harris chose Here Comes The Flood as one of her 8.
I can recall a few Genesis choices over the years including In The Cage and Mad Man Moon. The show's page on the BBC website used to enable searching the entire 70+ year history by song/artist choices and guests, but as is often way with these things "improvements" meant this useful facility was removed.
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Personally I think it's unfortunate to make this change based on one person's comments. Unless of course others have requested it too. I like seeing the mix of Genesis and non-Genesis threads on the dashboard and as was said in the discussion referred to, there is the option to mute forums of no interest. Anyway, as you said let's see how it goes.
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Surely they must have multi tracked Knebworth 78 with it being the only UK show that year.
Unfortunately "surely" doesn't necessarily mean "did".
There was at least a BBC radio broadcast of it in edited form.
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Vancouver. I love that one.
I have a real soft spot for this song.
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Keep It Dark -
At first it sounds just ok and maybe even a little monotonous. But then I realized what happens with the timing in this song (It's either in 6/4 or 3/2, still not even really sure). It utilizes a little trick that I recently noticed Genesis employs quite frequently: I call it a false start, when you hear the beginning of the song and start counting the beat and then - Bam! The beat totally changes when the drums come in. The guitar riff that repeats throughout starts off, it seems, on the downbeat or first beat. But when the drums and synth suddenly come in, it can catch you by surprise and the guitar riff ends up starting syncopated, in between two beats! And that's just the first few seconds. I could go on for a while on this one, but probably shouldn't.
Yes it's 6/4, deceptively so. I love this song, always have. I agree about how the main backing track entry wrong-foots the listener. It changes the whole shape of the riff - it's kind of like realising the vase is two faces in profile, or vice-versa. It's similar on Man On The Corner - even Banks and Rutherford joked about that one, saying they couldn't figure out "where 1 was" (ie where to start counting it out). Which other ones do this?
Also in KID I always think there are rhythmic background voices in the second percussive breakdown but I think it's an aural illusion.
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And just out of curiosity, does anyone know what this song is about? It sounds like it's about heroin or something (I'm comin down like a monkey???)
Yes it's about dependency, the person in the song is at the point of desperation to satisfy their addiction - most likely heroin.
A favourite lyric of theirs for me, and I'm a big fan of the song generally. I think it's a pity they were apparently so down on the mid-section (hence quickly abandoning it after the IT tour), I think it has a really nice dark, slightly turbulent dream-like quality.
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Lloyd Grossman . This ex through the keyhole , MasterChef presenter is now a punk rocker!!
Not 'now', he's returned to it. He was in a punk band way before he was a TV presenter. His band had a (very) minor hit in around 77 and have appeared at Glastonbury a few times. I gather he does this gig with Anderson on a regular basis.
Get with the programme, as I believe da kidz say, mr farmer!
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Steve is indeed a genius, though he's made some turkeys too. LA Story is great and makes excellent use of Enya's first album. Man with 2 brains, Dead men don't wear plaid, Dirty rotten Scoundrels and All of me are highlights for me.
Dead Men and All Of Me I liked very much at the time but haven't seen them for decades. I enjoyed his performance in a straight role in the David Mamet film The Spanish Prisoner, as a suave and somewhat self-satisfied wealthy businessman. It's a plot with typically Mametesque twists, turns and misdirections and needs some suspension of disbelief but is worth a look if you're in the mood for a bit of a thinker. I'd have liked to see him in more straight roles.
Re Bilko, I loved the Phil Silvers Show and watched it a lot as a teen. But I didn't hear a single good thing about the film and consequently had no interest in it.
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I always wondered if Silent Sorrow was a product of the "Enosiffication" mentioned in the liner notes until Tony Banks shot down that notion in an interview several years ago. I may be in the minority in that I find sides 3 and 4 of the Lamb to be just about as interesting and enjoyable as sides 1 and 2 (except for The Waiting Room, which I admit I only really "got" way back in the day when I occasionally ingested certain substances that caused the walls to shift and change colors). Lily White Lilith, Anyway, The Lamia, The Colony, The Light, Riding the Scree and In the Rapids are all favorites of mine.
My understanding is that the vocals on Grand Parade were Enossified but that's no doubt what you're referring to.
I'm with you on sides 3 and 4 apart from your reversal on TWR, a track I've always loved and without any kind of chemical assistance. It, and especially its various live renditions, are the sort of thing that even as a nutjob fan I yearned for them to do more of, taking things off-piste in the most un-Genesis-y way. I absolutely love this band but have always felt frustrated that while they showed on the Lamb tour, with that track, they could (by their standards) break free and run a little wild, they didn't do it more often. I'm not saying I wanted them to do Jazz Odyssey every night but at least cut loose more than that track on that tour. But I love the album version.
I'm sure he won't mind me tagging him in - I know foxfeeder shares my love of side 3 and in fact for me, it's the most perfect side of sequencing they ever did apart from side 1 of SEBTP. It's like every kind of Genesis texture and dynamic is all there in those 6 tracks. I always think it's a shame people, more so the band themselves, are quite down on those 2 sides as I think it's some of their very best work by some distance
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...and a John Illsley one for Dire Straits aficionados.
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For Yes fans, a Rick Wakeman episode of Rockonteurs
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West Ham 1-2 Chelsea
Southampton 1-1 Brighton
Watford 1-3 Man City
Leeds 3-2 Brentford
Tottenham 2-0 Norwich
Aston Villa 2-2 Leicester
Cardiff 0-2 Sheff Utd
Reading 2-1 Hull
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The sounds are actually horn noises from the EWF guys, sped up.
Never knew that. I always thought it had a slight touch of weird animal noises but never gave any further thought to what they might be.
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Apologies if these have been posted already: stumbled upon these "unfiltered" interviews which I think were from the sessions eventually cut into Sum Of The Parts. They've popped up on youtube on the account of John Edginton who directed the film. TB, PC and SH either side of 2 hours, MR about 1 hour, the others 25mins or so. The ones I've dipped into so far start rather suddenly, I get the impression stuff has been chopped off the front but there's still about near enough 8 hours to dive into.
I watched the TB one last night but did it stupidly late and was tired, inevitably I fell asleep but got through roughly the first half of it while fully conscious. While it doesn't exactly tell us anything staggeringly new - I doubt by this stage they'd have any startling revelations for forensically devoted fans like us - it's still always quite pleasing seeing them interviewed even when they're re-hashing stuff they've said (and been asked about) a thousand times before. And there's the occasional small nugget here and there - I liked TB's offhand reference to Lou Reed.
The questioner isn't particularly good and at times I wanted him to get on with it. Watching this, I properly registered for the first time a particular TB habit that I've seen before but never latched on to - when he comes to the end of an expansive answer he blinks rapidly a few times. I suppose it's quite a useful indicator for an interviewer - "Oh right, he's finished, I can ask something else now".
I'll try to watch the rest of it then move on to MR later.
