Moonchild!
Hear the
Silence
Moonchild!
Open the
Blurp blip - static - silence
Moonchild
Me: Goddammit!
A few months ago the headphone jack on my phone started to act wonky. The merest twist of the cord or slightest shift of the device would cause my headphones to fall silent. Since I could still call my mother, text people, and MFA for work, I decided to just buy a cheap MP3 player instead of replacing my phone which hopefully has a couple to a few more years of life left in it.
Sadly SanDisk doesn't make them anymore which is a shame because I'd bought their MP3 players in the past and they were solid, if no frills, devices. So I get my new one and load it up with music, audio dramas, and podcasts. It was nice to be able to listen to something and not be tempted to look at texts or check my email or just find something online to distract me from giving my ears a good time. I know too many people who stare at screens for way too long, who can sometimes barely concentrate on what is before them without looking at their phone.
For these people, the briefest downtime must be spent looking at social media, conversations must come to a grinding halt so that the status of an Amazon order can be checked, the people next to them must be briefly ignored so that the texts of someone not there can be addressed, and so on.
I soon relearned the eternal verity "You get what you pay for." First I noticed that the thing doesn't read the Title metadata and instead uses the file name which meant I had a lot of "Track #"'s.
Then one day I put on Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. "Moonchild" played and I rocked out as one does to Iron Maiden. Expecting the wash of synth, melodic guitar, and gentle rim shots of "Infinite Dreams" next I instead got "Capital Letters (In Surgical Spirit Land)" by IQ. I had discovered that it only parses the first three characters of the album title. And so the songs from Seventh Son of a Seventh Son were intermingled with those of Seven Stories Into Eight. Trying to find songs from albums that begin with "The" was nigh impossible.
Navigating by artist proved to be a bit better but that list was clogged as I had the Intrigue compilation on there which meant 4 CDs worth of artist names who had but one song apiece on the album.
Despite the poorly designed menu navigation system, I got my fix of tunes and whatnot. Then it occurred to me one day that I have all these albums on there along with multiple audio dramas and I usually couldn't listen to an entire album nor finish an audio drama because I was always finding something else to listen to with such a large array of choices.
I was reminded of the days of yore when I had access to Netflix and a couple other streaming services. I'd become trapped in the indecision of all those menus consisting of seemingly endless lists of movies and programs. It was almost like being paralyzed by the enormous number of choices laid before me. Most of the time I'd scroll and scroll and just turn the TV off after a while because I didn't want to spend anymore time parsing potential viewing options. A waste of the time I have left on this planet.
It makes me sad that I have such difficulty listening to an entire album from start to finish since I used to do so effortlessly and frequently; that I am usually seeking something else even before whatever it is that has my what I thought was rapt attention is complete. I'd jump to another album even though I'd only gotten 2 songs in on the one I was listening to. Days would go by between listening sessions of an audio drama and, when I'd return to it, I'd find that I couldn't quite recall everything that had transpired up until that point.
As Thoreau implored, "Simplify! Simplify!" and so I have put a stop to it.
I deleted 18+ GB from my MP3 player just a day or 2 ago. I have but one audio drama on it that I shall listen to until completion before starting another. There are several podcasts on there and just a few albums of music. I thought that it would be fun to write about the Jon Davison era of Yes and so the 4 albums the band has made with him are on there and just another song or 2.
So far I can say that I definitely look at my phone less and often leave it in another room when unneeded. This means more time playing with Willow and giving my attention to more important things such as the people sitting right next to me. We'll see how the MP3 player saga pans out. Hopefully with a lengthy, erudite look at latter day Yes. Ha!
*******
Some new music of note. Some old stuff too.
Rhiannon Giddens has a new album out in September called Hope Is the Thing with Feathers and the first single, "Carolina Rain" is out now. A lovely tune. Sadly her tour plans don't call for her to get any closer than Minneapolis at this point.
The Hu also have a new album out soon - in July - called Hun. "Grey Hun" is on the Youtubes. Unfortunately their tour plans are on mega bills with a few other artists. Hopefully they'll come this way for a solo show soon.
The Two Steves, Hackett and Rothery - the progressive rock dream team - have done an album together called The Roaring Waves which comes out in August. Our first taste is "The Black Sea".
Deep Purple are not only still around, but they're still creating new music instead of resting on their laurels and simply playing "Smoke On the Water" over and over for aging boomers. The new album, Splat!, comes out next week. It's their second with guitarist Simon McBride who joined a couple years or so back. He seems to have given the venerable band an injection of energy as the singles that have been released thus far are just plain good hard rock. The songs are kinetic and don't betray that most of the band are in their 70s or 80s.
Another band of old codgers that won't put their instruments down are The Rolling Stones. Their latest, Foreign Tongues, is to be released in a couple weeks. I chatted with a pal of mine about newer Stones just a week or so ago when he and I went to see the Gregg Allman documentary. His experience with them ends with Steel Wheels and so I talked up Voodoo Lounge. It's a great album and the b-sides are wonderful and it's just a really fun rock album with catchy riffs and Mick Jagger being Mick Jagger.
They put out Hackney Diamonds in 2023 and I enjoyed the singles from that album and the ones from the new LP are a blast too. While these guys may not be breaking any new ground, they keep doing their thing and it sounds great still.
Jethro Tull release J-Tull Dot Com: Another Cast Of The Net in August. The box set features a remixed version of the 1999 album along with some outtakes and live tracks. "Spiral" has been remixed and it sounds very nice. I think the drums are up a bit in the mix and that there's more stereo separation - it sounds "wider".
Speaking of Tull, I've been listening to the alternate mixes of RökFlöte lately and really enjoying them. Everything is more up front in the mix it seems and there is more room between the instruments. The guitar and keyboards are no longer this mushy, soft rock amalgamate; the electric guitar is grittier, ballsier and the keyboards are allowed to step up and lead the charge too. I mean, these are songs about gods like Thor who brings down the thunder with his hammer, not Ratatosk, the messenger squirrel.
Thick as a Brick 2 and Homo Erraticus both deserve this treatment. Their restrained mixing aesthetic works fine for The Secret Language of Birds where the whole affair is turned down and acoustic instruments need to be at the fore. However, these later IA efforts deserve to be let loose.
I heard this fine stoner-doom-sludge-Sabbathy tune just today on All Songs Considered. Great riffing with some fine complementary synth work. Old school analogue Moog? Sure sounds like it.
Although released 20 years ago, I just heard music from this album yesterday. Accordion rulez!
Originally destined for Smile, "Cabinessence" eventually emerged on 20/20 with some overdubs, apparently. What a fantastic song. Late 60s/early 70s Beach Boys is great stuff. This was another subject of conversation with my music movie pal on the drive to see that Gregg Allman doc.
Son Volt has a new song out called "If I Could". It's Jay Farrar in Woody Guthrie mode.
A friend who is also a big SV fan poked at it by saying that the lyrics are too on the nose instead of having a more oblique critique of our times. The young man of the 90s in me has some sympathy for that position but I don't feel Woody Guthrie should lose points because his lyrics directly reference the Great Depression. Being open and direct has its virtues.
I wonder if there's something odd about my generation in that we enjoy direct, unopaque lyrics of the past but not of our own time. Does "Ohio" suffer today from directly referencing the Kent State Shootings? Did it in 1970?
Steve Hackett gets two mentions here because A) he's Steve Hackett and B) Mike and Tom from Tabletop Genesis just did a show about his third solo album, Spectral Mornings, which makes me want to listen to it.
This tune was apparently left off Dominion. Will it be on the next IQ album? Will they play new material when I see them later this summer?
