Category Archives: Music

Music

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor (1824)

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Beethoven’s Ninth (Sym­pho­ny No. 9 in D minor) was his last com­plete sym­pho­ny but it also hap­pens to be regard­ed by many musi­col­o­gists as his great­est work and one of the supreme achieve­ments in the his­to­ry of music. Not bad for a last major work, con­sid­er­ing how many artists gen­er­al­ly peak at some point ear­li­er in their careers and tail off some­what towards the end. It was com­posed between 1822 and 1824 and was the first exam­ple of a major com­pos­er using voic­es in a sym­pho­ny. The final move­ment fea­tures four vocal soloists and a cho­rus, with words adapt­ed from the poem by Friedrich Schiller, Ode to Joy (lend­ing the tune its famous com­mon name).

There are a num­ber of anec­dotes about the pre­miere of the Ninth, at the The­ater am Kärnt­ner­tor in Vien­na on the 7th May 1824, based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of some of the par­tic­i­pants. There are sug­ges­tions that it was under-rehearsed and a bit scrap­py, but regard­less it was an enor­mous suc­cess. In any case, Beethoven was not to blame, since he was by now deaf and although he was osten­si­bly con­duct­ing so as to be present for the audi­ence, it was actu­al­ly co-con­duc­tor Louis Duport whose baton was fol­lowed by the musi­cians. Vio­lin­ist Joseph Böhm recalled:

“[Beethoven] stood in front of a con­duc­tor’s stand and threw him­self back and forth like a mad­man. At one moment he stretched to his full height, at the next he crouched down to the floor, he flailed about with his hands and feet as though he want­ed to play all the instru­ments and sing all the cho­rus parts.”

When the audi­ence applaud­ed Beethoven was sev­er­al bars off and still con­duct­ing, so con­tral­to Car­o­line Unger walked over and turned Beethoven around to accept the audi­ence’s applause. Accord­ing to the crit­ic for the The­ater-Zeitung, “the pub­lic received the musi­cal hero with the utmost respect and sym­pa­thy, lis­tened to his won­der­ful, gigan­tic cre­ations with the most absorbed atten­tion and broke out in jubi­lant applause.” The audi­ence gave him five stand­ing ova­tions; there were hand­ker­chiefs and hats in the air, and raised hands, so that Beethoven, who they knew could not hear the applause, could at least see the ova­tions.

Here’s an excerpt from the Ode to Joy played by the Chica­go Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

Lud­wig van Beethoven
Music

Eric Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 (1888)

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Pret­ty much all of the clas­si­cal com­posers I have writ­ten about in this blog so far (let’s see: Brahms, Mozart, Chopin, Mendelssohn, to name but a few) were pro­lif­ic and com­plex and not­ed for being child prodi­gies for whom an upward musi­cal tra­jec­to­ry was clear­ly in the off­ing. Not so this week’s enig­mat­ic com­pos­er, Eric Satie (1866–1925). The son of a French father and a Scot­tish moth­er, Satie stud­ied at the Paris Con­ser­va­toire, but was an undis­tin­guished stu­dent and left with­out even obtain­ing a diplo­ma (one tutor described his piano tech­nique as “insignif­i­cant and worth­less”; they did­n’t hold back in those days), work­ing through­out the 1880s as a pianist in café-cabaret in Mont­martre, Paris. At this time, how­ev­er, he would begin com­pos­ing works, most­ly for solo piano such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossi­ennes, that would pro­pel him to an unan­tic­i­pat­ed renown.

Satie famous­ly employed a min­i­mal­ist, pared back style of music in con­trast to the grand and epic com­po­si­tions of a Wag­n­er, for exam­ple.  In fact, he would influ­ence a whole new gen­er­a­tion of French com­posers away from post-Wag­ner­ian impres­sion­ism and towards a spar­er, ters­er style. Among those influ­enced by him dur­ing his life­time were Mau­rice Rav­el (see his Boléro, for exam­ple) and he is seen as an influ­ence on more recent, min­i­mal­ist com­posers such as John Cage and Arvo Pärt.

Satie was an enig­ma, for sure, and some­thing of a quirky char­ac­ter. He gave some of his lat­er works absurd titles, such as Ver­i­ta­bles Pre­ludes flasques (pour un chien) (“True Flab­by Pre­ludes (for a Dog)”, 1912), and Cro­quis et agac­eries d’un gros bon­homme en bois (“Sketch­es and Exas­per­a­tions of a Big Wood­en Man”, 1913). He nev­er mar­ried, and his home for most of his adult life was a sin­gle small room, first in Mont­martre and lat­er in Arcueil. He adopt­ed var­i­ous images over the years, includ­ing a peri­od in qua­si-priest­ly garb, anoth­er in which he always wore iden­ti­cal­ly coloured vel­vet suits, and anoth­er, per­haps his most endur­ing per­sona, in which he wore a neat bour­geois cos­tume, with bowler hat, wing col­lar, and umbrel­la. He was a life­long heavy drinker, and died of cir­rho­sis of the liv­er at the age of 59.

If you think you don’t know Eric Satie’s music, think again, as you’re sure to recog­nise his Gymnopédie No. 1 that you can hear here against some footage of old Paris (I love these old videos, don’t you, dur­ing the advent of mov­ing pic­tures when passers-by would stare or glance at this strange new-fan­gled giz­mo point­ing at them, and seem­ing to con­nect, albeit briefly, with we the view­er well over a cen­tu­ry lat­er).

Eric Satie

 

 

Music

Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman (1970)

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One of the advan­tages of hav­ing old­er sis­ters in the ear­ly sev­en­ties when I was just start­ing to dis­cov­er music was the inher­i­tance from them of cer­tain clas­sic albums. In ret­ro­spect, I admire their gen­eros­i­ty, because it’s not every­one who relin­quish­es large parts of their music col­lec­tion to younger sib­lings (I’m not sure I would have, had I had any). Nonethe­less, I came to own and appre­ci­ate at a young age such sem­i­nal records as David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders of Mars, the Moody Blues’ In Search of the Lost Chord, and Led Zeppelin’s Led Zep­pelin II. Oh, and also three clas­sic albums by the sub­ject of today’s blog, Cat Stevens, name­ly Mona Bone Jakon, Tea for the Tiller­man, and Teas­er and the Fire­cat.

These three albums sprung out of what was an impres­sive­ly rich peri­od of out­put from Cat: in order, they had been released in April 1970, Novem­ber 1970 and Octo­ber 1971. Not that I knew the order of release back then – I wasn’t yet a geek – they were sim­ply records, but records chock-full of warm, catchy folk-pop, occa­sion­al­ly with a Greek tinge in homage to his part-Hel­lenic her­itage (his father was Cypri­ot, his moth­er Swedish, and Cat him­self – Steven Geor­giou — was born in Maryle­bone, Lon­don).

Songs that res­onat­ed: Kat­man­du from Mona Bone Jakon, a lilt­ing, mys­ti­cal acoustic song awash with flute from a 19-year-old Peter Gabriel, and a paean to all things sim­ple and peace­ful, a metaphor­ic Eden away from West­ern civil­i­sa­tion. Years lat­er I would be rid­ing a bus into the real Kath­man­du in Nepal with this track play­ing mean­ing­ful­ly on my Sony Walk­man.

From Teas­er and the Fire­cat: Peace Train, and its hope­ful, anti-war lyrics (Out on the edge of dark­ness, There rides a peace train, Oh peace train take this coun­try, Come take me home again). Ide­al­is­tic, sure, but it cer­tain­ly struck a chord with me at the time, and if you can’t be ide­al­is­tic as a young teenag­er, when can you be (the gim­let eye of expe­ri­ence hadn’t yet been acquired)?

And from Tea for the Tiller­man, the beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed Father and Son, a poignant exchange between a father fail­ing to under­stand his son’s desire to break away, and the son strug­gling to artic­u­late the dri­ve he feels to seek his own des­tiny. I always had trav­el in my soul, and dreamt of tak­ing off into the wider world, so this spoke to me in vol­umes, even though I didn’t actu­al­ly have to deal with any such cul­tur­al mis­align­ments with my own dad.

After famous­ly con­vert­ing to Islam and chang­ing his name to Yusuf Islam in 1978, and drop­ping out of the spot­light for many years, Cat returned to pop music in 2006 and released an album of new pop songs (for the first time in 28 years), under the name Yusuf. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, and now under the com­bi­na­to­r­i­al name Yusuf/Cat Stevens, he released Tea for the Tiller­man 2, a reboot of the orig­i­nal to cel­e­brate its 50th anniver­sary.

Anoth­er great song from that album was Where Do The Chil­dren Play? and here is Cat play­ing a sim­ple acoustic ver­sion of it and prov­ing that he’s still got a voice like warm molasses. A shout out to my mate Gra­ham for send­ing me this and inspir­ing this week’s blog!

Cat Stevens
Music

Richard Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries (1870)

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There’s noth­ing quite as Ger­man­ic as a Wag­n­er opera, and noth­ing quite as epic as his mag­num opus, Der Ring des Nibelun­gen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The full cycle of the four parts of The Ring lasts fif­teen hours and although prag­ma­tism these days gen­er­al­ly means that just one of the parts is per­formed, I do like the idea of watch­ing it in its entire­ty. A bit like read­ing Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time in its 1.2 mil­lion word entire­ty (see my blog on that here). Nei­ther chal­lenge have I yet under­tak­en, I should say, but back in 1876, it must have been some spec­ta­cle to have attend­ed the famous Bayreuth Fes­ti­val, when the full cycle was per­formed for the first time, over four days: Das Rhein­gold (The Rhine­gold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried, and Göt­ter­däm­merung (Twi­light of the Gods)

The opera is loose­ly based on char­ac­ters from Ger­man­ic and Norse hero­ic leg­end and cen­tres around the epony­mous mag­ic ring that grants domin­ion over the world and how it is fought over by gen­er­a­tions of gods, heroes and myth­i­cal crea­tures, until the final cat­a­clysm at the end of the Göt­ter­däm­merung. The com­plex­i­ty of the epic tale is matched by the increas­ing com­plex­i­ty of the music as it pro­gress­es, and Wag­n­er wrote for such a gar­gan­tu­an orches­tra that a spe­cial pur­pose-built the­atre was built at Bayreuth.

The piece that we all know is the Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre, con­tain­ing that rous­ing leit­mo­tif as the Valkyrie sis­ters of Norse mythol­o­gy (“choosers of the slain”) trans­port the fall­en heroes to Val­hal­la. The music was used in Apoc­a­lypse Now (1979) where it was played on heli­copter-mount­ed loud­speak­ers dur­ing the Amer­i­can assault on Viet­cong-con­trolled vil­lages. And just recent­ly, in the excel­lent and grit­ti­ly hon­est TV doc­u­men­tary film, Our Falk­lands War: A Front­line Sto­ry, it was revealed that it was sim­i­lar­ly played loud­ly over the tan­noy as 2 Para were get­ting into the land­ing craft in prepa­ra­tion for their first assault on the Falk­land Islands.

Here’s a ver­sion from the BBC Proms, best enjoyed from a sofa rather than a land­ing craft.

Cesare Viazzi, Ride of the Valkyries (1906)

 

Music

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)

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Read­ers of my gen­er­a­tion may recog­nise the fol­low­ing com­mon social trope from teenage gath­er­ings and house par­ties. As music plays, ring-pulls are released from cans of lager, and friend­ly ban­ter fills the room, in a dim-lit cor­ner, a long-haired layabout is skin­ning up a joint on the near­est album cov­er, which always seems to be Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. It per­haps wasn’t always The Dark Side of the Moon, but as a meme it fits pret­ty well into this snap­shot of the­mat­ic mem­o­ry. Mind you, in the era I was attend­ing teenage gath­er­ings, at the start of the eight­ies, the album was already get­ting quite old (it had been released in 1973) but it had turned into an endur­ing and per­pet­u­al­ly high-sell­ing album that every­one (the lads any­way) seemed to relate to.

It was the Floyd’s eighth stu­dio album, con­ceived and devel­oped over years as a con­cept album explor­ing var­ied themes such as con­flict, greed, time, death and men­tal ill­ness, and large­ly inspired by the band’s ardu­ous lifestyle and the grow­ing men­tal health prob­lems suf­fered by for­mer band mem­ber Syd Bar­rett (who left the group in 1968). Pri­mar­i­ly devel­oped dur­ing live per­for­mances, the band added new mate­r­i­al dur­ing two ses­sions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road Stu­dios in Lon­don.

It’s high­ly exper­i­men­tal: the group incor­po­rat­ed mul­ti­track record­ing, tape loops, ana­logue syn­the­sis­ers, and snip­pets from inter­views with the band’s road crew and var­i­ous philo­soph­i­cal quo­ta­tions. The engi­neer was Alan Par­sons, and he was respon­si­ble for much of the son­ic feel to the album (not least by recruit­ing the singer Clare Tor­ry, who appears on The Great Gig in the Sky). It works extra­or­di­nar­i­ly well, as a whole as much as its indi­vid­ual parts. This actu­al­ly takes me back to anoth­er teenage meme, that of bod­ies lying around a dark­ened room, in a pleas­ant fug, and lis­ten­ing to the album in its entire­ty.

Here’s the intro to the album put effec­tive­ly to video by a fan (cred­it: Marc-André Ranger)…enjoy! Now, where are those Rizlas?

Pink Floyd
The icon­ic album cov­er, by Storm Thorg­er­son
Music

Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman (1968)

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Glen Camp­bell start­ed his career as a gui­tarist with the Wreck­ing Crew, that loose col­lec­tive of ses­sion musi­cians that con­tributed to thou­sands of stu­dio record­ings in the 1960s and 1970s (and who were also Phil Spector’s de fac­to house band). The list of artists whose record­ings he played on is a who’s who of the Amer­i­can six­ties music scene (he was best mates with Elvis, too), and all this was before he became a suc­cess­ful solo artist in his own right. His first real hit, in 1965, was a ver­sion of Buffy Saint-Marie’s Uni­ver­sal Sol­dier, and in 1967 he scored hits with Gen­tle On My Mind and By The Time I Get To Phoenix.

That last song was writ­ten by Jim­my Webb and, buoyed by its suc­cess, Glen Camp­bell had phoned Webb and asked him if he had any oth­er “geo­graph­i­cal” songs to fol­low it up. He hadn’t, but he wrote one any­way: Wichi­ta Line­man. Web­b’s inspi­ra­tion for the lyrics came while dri­ving west­ward on a straight road through Washita Coun­ty in rur­al south-west­ern Okla­homa. Dri­ving past a seem­ing­ly end­less line of tele­phone poles, he noticed in the dis­tance the sil­hou­ette of a soli­tary line­man atop a pole. In Webb’s own words:

It was a splen­did­ly vivid, cin­e­mat­ic image that I lift­ed out of my deep mem­o­ry while I was writ­ing this song. I thought, I won­der if I can write some­thing about that? A blue col­lar, every­man guy we all see every­where – work­ing on the rail­road or work­ing on the tele­phone wires or dig­ging holes in the street. I just tried to take an ordi­nary guy and open him up and say, ‘Look there’s this great soul, and there’s this great aching, and this great lone­li­ness inside this per­son and we’re all like that. We all have this capac­i­ty for these huge feel­ings’.

Webb deliv­ered what he regard­ed and labelled as an incom­plete ver­sion of the song, warn­ing that he had not com­plet­ed a third verse or a mid­dle eight. Camp­bell soon nailed the lack of a mid­dle eight sec­tion with some of his Wreck­ing Crew pals (adding a bari­tone gui­tar inter­lude as well as the orches­tral­ly arranged out­ro known to British Radio 2 lis­ten­ers as DJ Steve Wright’s theme music!). Webb was sur­prised to hear that Camp­bell had record­ed the song when he ran into him:

‘I guess you guys did­n’t like the song.’

‘Oh, we cut that’

‘But it was­n’t done! I was just hum­ming the last bit!’

‘Well, it’s done now!’ ”

And what a love­ly song it was, too!

Glen Camp­bell
Music

Aaron Copland’s Fanfare For The Common Man (1942)

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In May 1942, soon after the Unit­ed States had entered World War II after Pearl Har­bor, F D Roosevelt’s Vice Pres­i­dent James A Wal­lace deliv­ered the speech of his life, in which he cast a future world peace as mean­ing “a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing for the com­mon man, not mere­ly in the Unit­ed States and Eng­land, but also in India, Rus­sia, Chi­na, and Latin America–not mere­ly in the Unit­ed Nations, but also in Ger­many and Italy and Japan”

“Some have spo­ken of the “Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry”. I say that the cen­tu­ry on which we are entering—the cen­tu­ry which will come into being after this war—can be and must be the cen­tu­ry of the com­mon man.”

As well as being trans­lat­ed into 20 lan­guages and mil­lions of copies being dis­trib­uted around the world, the speech also inspired the leader of the Cincin­nati Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, Eugene Goossens, to com­mis­sion a fan­fare. He asked Amer­i­can com­posers to sub­mit patri­ot­ic pieces to sup­port the war effort, repris­ing a sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive dur­ing World War I and each one to pre­cede the CSO’s orches­tral con­certs. A total of eigh­teen fan­fares were sub­mit­ted, includ­ing Fan­fare for Para­troop­ers, Fan­fare for the Med­ical Corp, Fan­fare for Air­men, and one that became very famous, Aaron Copland’s Fan­fare for the Com­mon Man.

The fan­fare is writ­ten for four horns, three trum­pets, three trom­bones, tuba, tim­pani, bass drum, and tam-tam, and is as stir­ring a piece of brass sound­scape as one can imag­ine. It cap­tures won­der­ful­ly the spir­it of Wallace’s opti­mistic theme of ush­er­ing in a just future world. Below, let’s watch this dra­mat­ic ren­der­ing by the Dutch Radio Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra, and then lis­ten to the bril­liant prog rock ver­sion released in 1977 by Emer­son Lake and Palmer (and which was my first expo­sure to Copland’s music).

Aaron Cop­land
Music

Paul Robeson’s I’m Goin’ To Tell God All O’ My Troubles (1927)

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The injus­tices endured by enslaved African Amer­i­cans in the Unit­ed States between the 17th cen­tu­ry right up until the Thir­teenth Amend­ment abol­ish­ing slav­ery in 1865, but then also the resid­ual racism and seg­re­ga­tion that sim­mered after its abo­li­tion well into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, makes for dif­fi­cult read­ing. A pod­cast I have been lis­ten­ing to about the his­to­ry of slav­ery in the US opens with a slave song, I’m Goin’ To Tell God All O’ My Trou­bles, sung by Paul Robe­son in that famous bari­tone of his, and it’s worth look­ing at the life of the man Paul Robe­son, whose sto­ry is real­ly about how you can’t keep a good man down, against all the odds.

Robe­son was both an aca­d­e­m­ic and an ath­lete, and won a schol­ar­ship to Rut­gers Col­lege in 1915, the only black man there at the time. He excelled for the Rut­gers foot­ball team, the Scar­let Knights, although at one point he was benched because a South­ern foot­ball team refused to take the field because the Scar­let Knights were field­ing a negro. But he kept going and flour­ished both ath­let­i­cal­ly and aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, end­ing up fin­ish­ing uni­ver­si­ty with fly­ing colours and accept­ed into the pres­ti­gious hon­our soci­eties Phi Beta Kap­pa and Cap and Skull.

He went on to study law at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly play­ing pro­fes­sion­al Amer­i­can foot­ball for the Mil­wau­kee Bad­gers and pro­mot­ing his fine singing by act­ing in off-cam­pus pro­duc­tions. After grad­u­at­ing, he became a fig­ure in the Harlem Renais­sance with per­for­mances in the Eugene O’Neill plays The Emper­or Jones and All God’s Chillun Got Wings, and gave up both his foot­ball and his fledg­ling law career. He was lat­er to find world­wide fame from per­for­mances such as his “Joe” in Show Boat at London’s Drury Lane The­atre, fea­tur­ing the bench­mark song Ol’ Man Riv­er, and as Oth­el­lo in three sep­a­rate pro­duc­tions of that play.

Robe­son soon found him­self wel­comed and court­ed by elite social cir­cles, but this did not turn his head, and he was to become a pro­lif­ic polit­i­cal activist for civ­il rights and oth­er social jus­tice cam­paigns through­out his life, as well as sup­port­ing the Repub­li­can cause in the Span­ish Civ­il War. His sym­pa­thies for the Sovi­et Union and com­mu­nism caused him to be black­list­ed dur­ing the McCarthy era, but his rep­u­ta­tion as a strong and respect­ed voice for jus­tice had already been sealed, and he nev­er gave up.

Between 1925 and 1961, Robe­son record­ed and released some 276 dis­tinct songs, span­ning many styles, includ­ing spir­i­tu­als, pop­u­lar stan­dards, Euro­pean folk songs, polit­i­cal songs and poet­ry. I’m Goin’ To Tell God All O’ My Trou­bles was released as the B‑side to Deep Riv­er in 1927, and is a deeply felt expres­sion of life under the yoke.

Paul Robe­son
Music

Gabriel Fauré’s Berceuse (1893)

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Gabriel Fau­ré (1845 – 1924) was one of the fore­most French com­posers of his gen­er­a­tion, and his name sits com­fort­ably amongst those of his near-con­tem­po­raries Berlioz, Debussy and Saint-Saens. It is said that his career strad­dles the gap between Roman­ti­cism and mod­ernism: when he was born Chopin was still com­pos­ing and by the time of his death jazz had arrived. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicili­enne, and his noc­turnes for the piano but I’m going to look at an inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of pieces for piano duet that Fau­re com­posed called the Dol­ly Suite, Op. 56.

The Dol­ly Suite con­sists of six short pieces writ­ten between 1893 and 1896, to mark the birth­days and oth­er events in the life of the daugh­ter of the com­poser’s mis­tress, French singer Emma Bar­dac (who went on to become Claude Debussy’s mis­tress, too; she clear­ly had a thing for com­posers!). Each piece has its own title: Berceuse, Mi-a-ou, Le Jardin de Dol­ly, Kit­ty-valse, Ten­dresse, and Le Pas Espag­nole, and the com­plete suite takes about fif­teen min­utes to per­form.

The best-known piece is Berceuse (French for “lul­la­by”), which in the UK became famous as the play-out tune to the BBC radio pro­gramme for very young chil­dren, Lis­ten with Moth­er, which broad­cast from 1950 onwards, and which will like­ly be recog­nised by many a baby boomer. The Berceuse has been arranged for sev­er­al com­bi­na­tions of instru­ments over the years but below we’ll lis­ten to it in its orig­i­nal piano duet form, played by Dutch broth­ers Lucas and Arthur Jussen. Are you sit­ting com­fort­ably?

Gabriel Fau­ré
Music

Be-Bop Deluxe’s Modern Music (1976)

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I don’t recall now how I actu­al­ly dis­cov­ered Be-Bop Deluxe and came to be the own­er of their 1976 album Mod­ern Music. Pos­si­bly I heard the album’s sin­gle Kiss of Light on the radio, since it is that song that slots into my mem­o­ry as “the first”. Equal­ly, I may have been intro­duced by school­mates Rocky Col­lier or Chris Hobbs, since they too were big fans and indeed the lat­ter was there with me at my first ever gig: Be-Bop Deluxe at Leeds Grand The­atre, Feb­ru­ary 1978. How­ev­er, own the album I did, and my over­rid­ing mem­o­ry is the feel­ing of rev­er­ence I had for it. The themes and con­cepts con­jured up by band leader and gui­tar genius Bill Nel­son were thrilling and oth­er­world­ly; I recall at the foot of the back cov­er a line that summed it up sim­ply but effec­tive­ly: “Music and lyrics writ­ten by Bill Nel­son to enchant”.

Mod­ern Music was the band’s fourth album, so I had dis­cov­ered them late (to be fair, I was only thir­teen) and only ret­ro­spec­tive­ly edu­cat­ed myself in the band’s evo­lu­tion from glam rock pre­tenders to sophis­ti­cat­ed art rock­ers. The band had formed in Wake­field in 1972 and had start­ed out play­ing the West York­shire pub scene, one reg­u­lar venue being the Stag­ing Post in Whin­moor, Leeds. Sev­er­al per­son­nel changes had ensued by the time I had got into them, with my defin­i­tive line-up being Simon Fox on drums, Char­lie Tuma­hai on bass and Andy Clark on key­boards, an ensem­ble that under­stood Nelson’s vision and was emi­nent­ly capa­ble of help­ing him man­i­fest it.

The track list­ing itself gives hints of the fan­tas­ti­cal nature of that vision: Orphans of Baby­lon, The Bird Charmer’s Des­tiny, Hon­ey­moon on Mars, The Dance of the Uncle Sam Humanoids. To the unini­ti­at­ed, such titles might smack of prog-rock con­cept-album pre­ten­sion but the melodies, the tex­tures, the hooks, and the over­all musi­cal splen­dour argue against such a sim­plis­tic appraisal. It is cer­tain­ly con­cep­tu­al, and indeed Nel­son can get away with mak­ing the whole of side B a suite of short tracks merg­ing into one anoth­er, but pre­ten­tious it ain’t. Too much qual­i­ty.

The album cov­er shows the band besuit­ed and un-rock star like, with Bill pre­scient­ly sport­ing a “TV-watch” (or smart­watch, as we’d call it today, albeit with­out the anten­nas!). This was noth­ing like their glam rock ori­gins, nor any­thing like the punk nihilism that was burst­ing onto the scene at around the same time (in the same month as the album’s release, Sep­tem­ber 1976, the 100 Club was host­ing a two-day punk fes­ti­val fea­tur­ing the Sex Pis­tols, the Clash and the Damned). Mod­ern Music rep­re­sent­ed a unique sound and vision, and although the band would only release one more album and dis­band before they could achieve last­ing fame, it stands as a mon­u­ment to Bill Nelson’s con­sid­er­able musi­cal abil­i­ties.

Here is the title track, which gives but a flavour of the music though I would rec­om­mend immers­ing one­self in the whole album to get the prop­er Be-Bop expe­ri­ence.

Be Bop Deluxe