The Beatles album that might have been in 1970

Here's a fun game I found here. Use the initial 1970 solo output of all four Beatles to compile what might have been their next album if they had stayed together. Check out the link for the rules and some samples.

News Round-Up

I'm sure you already know by now that Paul McCartney has said that The Beatles catalog should be coming to online digital music stores next year.

Weezer is working on a new album to be released next spring. Coming up sooner is a very interesting sounding solo release from Weezer's Rivers Cuomo (December 18th). Be sure to watch for that.

Candlemass will be touring North America next year (so far only a May date in New York City is announced). If you've been a fan for any length of time over here in the Americas, you know this is a big deal.

The latest David Lee Roth version of Van Halen has announced more tour dates to come next year, extending what they originally planned. Good to hear they're getting along so far.

Some bummer news: The Hellacopters have broken up.

Some really, really exciting news (for me at least): Puffy AmiYumi (a J-pop girl group created by Andy Sturmer of Jellyfish) has a new album called "Honeycreeper" that is... get this... produced by Butch Walker. Can't wait to get a hold of this.

Finally, let's talk about the confusing world of Genesis box sets. Back in 1998, Genesis released Archives, Vol.1 which was to be the first of three box sets with each set focusing on a certain phase of their career. This announcement was made before everybody realized that 1997's "Calling All Stations" (and it's concert tickets) were not selling worth beans and no one cares about anything Genesis did after 1992. So, only a second box set was released in 2000 to capture the rest of the career up through 1992.

But this year, Genesis has put out a very different kind of box set in April (covering 1975 - 1982) and on Nov. 20, they'll release the follow up box set covering 1983 - 1998. The sets include the original albums and then, taking a cue from Porcupine Tree, each album is accompanied by a DVD with extras like 5.1 mixes, videos and such. Plus there's a disc of B-sides and rarities in each set.

I really like the idea of the DVDs with all the extras... this seems to be something unique to the Genesis catalog and I'd like to see/hear them. However, I'd be very weary of the versions of the original albums on these. No doubt these are "remastered". This is a marketing term that means "We've compressed the crap out of the music, totally destroying the dynamic range it once had, so that it will sound fresher and more contemporary". This is a problem that plagues Led Zeppelin's new hits package called "Mothership". Stay far away from that! I lost my source for this quote... can't remember if it was Jimmy Page or Tony Banks that said this, but when asked why this compression was being done now to classic songs, the response was "that's the fashion these days". Sad.

Anyway, to sum up, you've got one box set covering Genesis from 1967-1975 released in 1998. Then two sets released this year that cover 1975 - 1998. And then there's that 3-disc archive set from 2000 that also covers 1976 - 1992. Not sure how much material is repeated there. Still confused? Me too.

Rossini, meet Ozzy

EAR FARM's 8+ is a weekly feature that showcases songs longer than 8 minutes. I loved this excerpt from this post in which he is visiting the final resting place of Rossini (turns out it wasn't as the remains had been moved):

There I was, sitting in semi-frightening near-darkness with the bones (again, NOT) of a true musical hero of mine. The skull that once contained the brain that birthed perfect crescendo after perfect crescendo lay in front of me in a crypt (NOT) and I could feel music creeping into my head. Not Rossini, but something else. It went: "Whatchoo gonna do..." duh duh - DUH DUH DUH DUH - Sabbath! It hit me like iron, man. There in front of me lie the bones (yawn, NOT) of the man who invented heavy metal. What? It's not too much of a stretch really. If Beethoven was the Led Zeppelin of the long long ago, then I'd put Rossini as yesteryear's Black Sabbath (and Wagner as Iron Madien and Rachmaninoff as Metallica - I could go on and on) without pause. Perhaps that's why people who like classical music don't care for heavy metal - they've heard it all before. Rossini was the "Spiral Architect" of a formula of quiet-loud-quiet heavy orchestral/operatic music that presaged Paranoid by a good 150 years and set the course for all of the thunderous overtures that would follow in the century after his demise. Surely at least a good half of everything "heavy" that's come since he wrote his overture to the opera William Tell could be directly attributed to Gioachino Rossini. Bazookas, jet airplanes, the Third Reich, Atlas Shrugged, John Goodman - I was on to something in front of that tomb and I knew it.

A Box of Peggs

Dave Pegg turns 60 this month and celebrates with a career-spanning 4-disc box set called "A Box of Peggs" (limited to 2,000 editions). Quoting from here:

More than 80 tracks from Peggy's 38 years with Fairport Convention are included alongside tracks with Jethro Tull, Nick Drake, John Martyn, Steve Ashley, Dan Ar Braz, Richard Thompson, Ralph McTell and Steve Tilston to name a few.

A Box of Peggs – the boxed set cunningly masquerading as a cribbage box – is accompanied by a 100-page book which puts every track into its historical context and shows Peggy from the long-haired days of the 70s to his more conventional 2007 visage.

The boxed set includes all tracks from Peggy's one brilliant solo album – sadly now unavailable – The Cocktail Cowboy Goes It Alone.

Jethro Tull - Beethoven's 9th (2nd Mvmt)

This video is interesting for two reasons. First, it's Jethro Tull doing some of the 2nd movement from Beethoven's 9th symphony... something that's never been released on any of Tull's live albums. Second, it's a video of a Jethro Tull performance without Ian Anderson in it (at least I didn't see him). This was July 31, 1976 in Tampa, Florida. Jethro Tull is in my top 3 favorite bands ever and the 2nd mvmt from Beethoven's 9th is in my top 10 or 20 of most favorite pieces of music ever. So this was a treat for me.

The Beach Boys, Opeth, The Carpenters and Morbid Angel

From an old interview with Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree:

I love the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson is one of my great influences. I don't want to lose that element of Porcupine Tree.

I listen to everything from the Carpenters to Andy Williams to Morbid Angel to Opeth, and everything in-between. For me, musically, when I sit down to write music, very naturally, organically all these influences and ingredients mix up together. If you describe that mix on paper you'd think it's never going to work.

If you don't have any Porcupine Tree in your collection, you are really missing some fantastic music.

Led Zeppelin concert postponed

Led Zeppelin have postponed a one-off comeback concert in London because guitarist Jimmy Page has broken his finger, the promoters said on Thursday.
The concert will now take place on December 10 and all tickets for the original concert on November 26 will be valid, a statement said.

The injury happened last weekend and Page will not be able to play guitar for three weeks, a statement quoted a specialist as saying. "I am disappointed that we are forced to postpone the concert by two weeks," said Page, 63.

"We feel that this postponement will enable my injury to properly heal and permit us to perform at the level that both the band and our fans have always been accustomed to."

The concert venue takes up to 20,000 fans and many die-hard Zeppelin fans had organized trips from around the world to attend the concert this month. Tickets were allocated by ballot and more than 1 million fans registered for a chance to see the legendary rock group.

Page will be joined by singer Robert Plant and bassist John Paul Jones, and Bonham's son Jason will be the drummer. The show will be a tribute to the late founder of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun, who signed the group in 1968.