Already Dark

My talented girlfriend Stacie Lee Bennett has started finishing off some of her songs and recording them for the world to enjoy, and so I'm going to embed the first one below. Enjoy!

The sound of perfection

I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel this morning - as I often do, it's excellent morning music - and Bookends came on - as it always does, it's on the album - and, for about the millionth time I thought, this really is just a perfect piece of music. The guitar, the lyrics, the pauses, the timings, the phrasings, the everything basically:


If you don't agree, well, you're wrong.

A single piano run and Dire Straits coolness

Are Dire Straits cool? I can never decide what the general world census is on this, so many people’s opinions to take into account. There’s some sort of pervading sense that they’re not, due to headbands, some clunky lyrics, something vague ennui about them that I’ve never quite got.

Is discussing the coolness of Dire Straits relevant in 2012? Probably not. Anyway, I only mention it as lately I’ve been listening to Tunnelof Love quite a lot, mainly due to the lovely guitar solo outro which builds for about two minutes before being topped by a fantastic piano run in the final few seconds of the song, which my brother revealed to me is played by one Roy Bittan, the pianist of from the E Street Band, who regular readers will know I have already professed my appreciation of in a previous blog.

What is it about those fleeting moments in music where everything just swells together into a sheer moment of, well, what, elation? Joy? Genius? I don’t know, it doesn’t happen very often, but there are some songs – all within the ear of the listener on a personal, subjective basis – where you just feel enlivened, invigorated, perhaps even moved. 

It’s below, I think it’s worth the listen.

Singing out for Christmas

So, that was Christmas 2011. It always goes so fast, after such a long build-up. Still, it was a nice one this year, with mild weather, plenty of cocktails and nice dog walks with the family. My brother and I spent some time noodling around on the guitars and piano too, and even got around to bashing out a Christmas song, after discussing whether or not it was that hard to actually write one. You can take a listen to our efforts in the embedded video below. Enjoy, and roll on the New Year!

Bob Dylan, Buenos Aires and Rhyming Dictionaries

Bob Dylan has so many songs it's ridiculous to try and pick a favourite. But it's still fun to highlight moments from his canon from some of the lesser known songs.

For me, Brownsville Girl and The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar are two songs that will never feature in a Best Of, but would make my top 20 without question, maybe top 10.

Groom's Still Waiting...has a brilliant edge to it, the entire band sounds like they're only playing the second or third complete run through of the song having been introduced to it by Dylan during a late night session. Every guitar line sounds partly improvised, a guitarist jamming rather than recording The Take. Furthermore, it contains one of my favourite Dylan verses and indeed rhymes of all time:

Cities on fire, phones out of order,
They're killing nuns and soldiers, there's fighting on the border.
What can I say about Claudette?
Ain't seen her since January,
She could be respectably married 
Or running a whorehouse in Buenos Aires.

That rhyme, January / Buenos Aires is just sublime, especially with Dylan's delivery. It's so well constructed too, the entire verse leading to that rhyme - it's not a rhyming dictionary job that's for sure.

You can listen below.

What a life

One of my favourite musicians is Bruce Springsteen, ably enabled by his epic E Street Band, including the excellently-faced Steve Van Zandt. I saw him in London twice and both times and Bruce and Steve (sounds so simple like that) were having a whale of a time, alongside the now sadly departed Clarence Clemens.

I've been watching The Sopranos since about February, ploughing my way through the entire box set and have reached the final season now, and it still freaks me out to know that Silvio Dante, Tony's consigliere is the same man.

I mean, is it not enough to be a guitarist in one of the greatest and most enduring live bands of all time, that you then need to act in one of the greatest TV show's of all time? Ridiculous.

Raging against machines

Just got back from seeing Rage Against the Machine in Finsbury Park. I've been running around Finsbury Park for about three years but never thought I would see one of my favourite bands - from my teenager years at least - play there for free. But then it's funny how life works out. 

The set list was full of  well known songs, to any Rage fan at least, and was preceded by a very funny animated version of Simon Cowell bemoaning "the horrible Rage Against the Machine" for denying him the chance to make more money with X Factor. Later on, before the final song, Killing in the Name was played (which was why everyone had ended up in the middle of my local running park) a little montage of the race to Christmas Number one was played, which drew load cheers. This was played over the top of Joe McElderry's The Climb, which was a nice touch.

During the middle of the set, including the songs, Bombtrack, Bullet in the Head, Testify, Bulls on Parade and Freedom, Jon and Tracy Morter, the two people who set up the Facebook group and caused the whole shindig (and who I follow on Twitter), were brought on stage so that a cheque of a significant amount could be handed to the UK homeless organisation Shelter, combined of the sales of the signal donated in full by Rage, and the money donated by all the fans buying the single too. A great mix of music and politics, done without any of the crass showmanship of, say, a Bono or Sting.

Speaking of which, frontman Zach de la Rocha was impassioned as ever, issuing several rallying cries, specifically regarding the recent Gaza blockade issues, and other similar things, and he remains one of the few singers in the world with genuine stage presence and an ability to mix sincerity with a righteous anger. Lines such as "Your anger is a gift", and "All hell, can't stop us now" would never sound as convincing if the man delivering them didn't have a personality to carry of such heavy handed sentiments. 

Throughout, it as funny to think I was watching a band who I used to listen to on shared headphone on the school bus home. Back then Rage were no more, having split up, and my friends and I often lamented what a shame it was we would never see them. Eventually though, with a bit of patience, it turns out they would come to me anyway. Fantastic.

Walking out to the sight, feeling a bit peckish, I thought I'd buy some chips. The wagon promised "chunky, tasty chips" and the pictures looked good. I paid up my cash, a slightly high £2.50, and bit into what were some nasty, dry, tastless, cold chips. "Believing all the lies that they're selling ya..." never seemed so apt.

Word up!

In 2004 I was standing in Cardiff Central Railway Station's branch of WH Smiths. I was hungover and readying myself for a four-and-a-half hour train journey home. I had my sarnie, my water and I needed some reading material. The men's magazines looked as terrible as usual but, just I was about to give up the hunt, I spied the headline "Jeff Buckley lives!".

Now, during my first year at university I had become somewhat obsessed with the drowned-warbler that was Mr Jeff Buckley, after the recommendation of the album Grace from a friend, and so to see this headline, staring out at me among the sea of other "look at me" cover lines, felt somewhat serendipitous.

It was a magazine called "Word", something I was vaguely aware of but not really. Anyway, I bought it, I read the article, I very much enjoyed it. The rest of the magazine was equally compelling with intelligent, interesting, well-written, articles, reviews, interviews and so forth. Ever since I have enjoyed Word - mentioning it in my interview for the Cardiff Magazine course - texting Radio 2 when Mark Ellen was on the show asking for advice for aspiring journalists when I was in my university days, reading the blog of David Hepworth, having a subscription in the boom times (on the Christmas list for this year too) and so on.

Then, in October, I won a competition hosted by Word (by submitting this video), to play with the JD session group the New Silver Cornet Band - made of up musicians who have played with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and so on. The day itself passed in a blur of nerves, missed notes, and a flurry of a guitar solo. Afterwards though, during the little interview I did with The Word's Andrew Harrison I offered (because you have to take advantage of the weird ways life can work out and play into your hands) to write something about the gig that was taking place two nights later, featuring Brett Anderson, Jon McClure and Carl Barat, and - perhaps because I had oh-so-subtly mentioned some of my other freelance work including The Guardian, and plenty of music reviewing - he said, "Okay, sure."

Much agonising over words later I emailed the copy off and sat back, waiting to see what would happen. Fast forward to today...after much peering at shelves in various corner shops in Pimlico (if they're not on a corner, what are they?) I found the December issue and there on page 49 is my review in full, complete with a small picture of me and the band from the rehearsal day, complete with a little, in-bold byline. Pretty cool.

Okay, so I got to write it via a competition entry I saw on Twitter (yet another tick in the pro-Twitter column) but hey, I can now say I've written for Word Magazine.

Gordon Lightfoot The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

via youtube.com

I have been listening to this for about three days now and bloody love it. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, it's written in the Dorian mode, which is rare. So, there you go.

Posted via web from danworth's posterous

Run Run Run...

If you like running you can read two race reports by me in this month's - November's - Runner's World UK. Another little freelance job.

Also, just when I was thinking about writing a post about how much I love The Only Living Boy in New York by Simon and Garfunkel I spotted David Hepworth has written something similar on the Word website about The Boxer.

What I like about The Boxer (on top of what it says on the Word site) is how it starts from such a simple, descending guitar pattern but by the end has turned into this loud, booming affair with big drums and duck whistles - inspired - and the repeating la la laaaas become almost hypnotic, a mantra, a chant. Meaningless but somehow sounding meaningful.

I'll do my post soon. Watch this space. Well not this space, nothing more will appear here. The space where that post will appear. Look, I'll let you know.

Sunburst

Sad news that Les Paul died yesterday, at a fair old innings of 94. The man invented the best guitar ever seen. Look at it. It's the coolest, most rock and roll guitar ever. I have an epiphone and bloody love it. It's a bit heavy, and finger picking on it is basically pointless, but who cares. If you want to do that you can get an acoustic. You can see me in action on mine here (sound not amazing as on my brother's puny amp and recorded on a digital camera - but otherwise pretty good I think).

Music men

Here is a little piece my brother and I recorded while at home for a few days. I quite like it. Enjoy!