The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 24/09/23
Fresh Catches
I mentioned a couple of years ago that from time to time I collect together some interesting musical tracks and burn them to CD-R under the general title Caught On The Net.
This has become a little bit more difficult for me of late due to YouTube screwing about with their platform (as described in the sixth paragraph here), but Volume 25 of COTN 'dropped' (as I'm afraid they say nowadays) last week, and I thought I'd share four or five of my discoveries with you.
In fact, I've already pointed you towards one of them, namely the Flo & Eddie track referred to here, but here are the others.
First off is a track I first heard on John Peel's show about thirty years ago. It's by an outfit calling itself Medusa Cyclone. This is/was largely the work of the Detroit multi-instrumentalist Keir McDonald, and the band's music is described by Discogs as 'space-rock-avant-folk-drone', a definition which is as unhelpful as it is comprehensive.
What might be helpful would be listening to one of their tracks. From their eponymous 1995 album, this is Burner, which seems to me to have a distinctly rural western US vibe to it:
Next up is one of many fine tracks which have been played by DJ Todd at Real Synthetic Audio over the last couple of years. It's by the Swedish synthpop band Colony 5, and comes from their 2005 set Fixed. We live in a Plastic World:
The next track is from one of the genuine titans of rock music, namely James Paul McCartney. Now, the smart set always cite John Lennon as being the more iconic of the two, but it was Paul who first introduced the Beatles to more avant-garde music, and was also by far the better musician.
After the end of the Fab Four, Lennon gained more of the succès d'estime from the 'serious' critics despite (or because of) his headline-grabbing posturing and his willingness to shoot his mouth off. But - even allowing for the fact that Mr. Ono was cut off in his prime over forty years ago - it is McCartney who will leave the greater legacy.
"You jest!", I hear you cry. The man who brought us the unavoidable Mull Of Kintyre and the atrocity which was We All Stand Together? Are you serious?
Well, yes I am, actually. You see, when you have been as productive as he has over so long a period of time, the occasional mis-step is inevitable. That does not take away from the fact the no-one in the last fifty-odd years has provided so many perfect pop songs. And he's still doing it.
This track is a case in point. It comes from his 2018 album Egypt Station, and demonstrates his ability to give a song an absolutely killer hook while maintaining a cheeky outlook. And if you don't agree, then Fuh You:
Finally, here's another grizzled veteran of rock who is still more than capable of arresting our attention.
On his first completely new set of material for thirty years, i/o, here's the Bright-Side mix of Panopticom, which was released as a download single last January (the rest of the album has been released one track at a time at each full moon, prior to the whole work coming out before the year's end).
The style has changed little (not really needing to), the lyrical ideas are still as interesting, and his voice sounds little different from forty years ago (Peter Gabriel is 73):
