Tom Waits

A great interview with Tom Waits (by Tom Waits himself) that includes this bit of gold:

Q: What's heaven for you?

A: Me and my wife on Route 66 with a pot of coffee, 
a cheap guitar, pawnshop tape recorder in a Motel 6, 
and a car that runs good parked right by the door.

Also, make sure you watch his performance of Chocolate Jesus on Letterman.

Radiohead via Old Electronic Equipment

A couple of months ago, Radiohead held a contest to remix “Nude”, a track from their “In Rainbows” album. It was a particularly difficult song to remix, due to the fact that it is in 6/8 time. James Houston decided to take a completely different approach from everyone else, and rigged up an old ZX Spectrum, a scanner, a dot matrix printer and an array of hard drives to play the song. The result is just mind blowing.

Bear with the first minute or so of the video. It’s the sound of it loading on the Sinclair … which is a sound a lot of the cough older cough programmers amongst us will be very familiar with.

Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

Second Chance

I’ve noticed that as I grow older, it has, for whatever reason, become harder to become “inspired” (for want of a better phrase) by music. Sure, I love it, listen to it constantly and couldn’t imagine life without it, but that real touchstone moment where my soul is moved by a performance or a song has become harder to find.

The first time I can remember being transfixed by a song I was jumping on a trampoline and “Message In A Bottle” came on the radio. I must have been 7 or 8, but I can remember the sensation to this day. Music had been around before that, but it had never been an important part of my life. That moment changed that. I realised what could be gained from listening to records, the radio, or whatever. Incidentally it started a lifelong semi-obsession with The Police, but that’s a whole different post.

There was an undending stream of moments/songs/performances throughout the next 20 years or so: the performance of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” in the Rattle and Hum film, the guitar solo in “Soma” by The Smashing Pumpkins, Open All Night by Bruce Springsteen, “Where Do I Begin” by The Chemical Brothers, “Lithium” by Nirvana are just a few that leap to my mind. Moments where I can clearly remember hearing the song for the first time, and knowing that this is the reason I love music so much, and enjoy being surprised by it.

Of course, one of the other great things about music is that it is completely personal, and as a result, you might look at this list and say “Bruce Springsteen? WTF?” But that’s why it’s so good.

As time has gone on, and perhaps it’s got something to do with having kids and having a bit less of my brain available to devote to stuff like this, but that moment has become rarified.

And to today. I clicked on a link to a performance by Liam Finn on The Late Show this morning and boom, that moment was back.

The Police - February 1, 2008

I’ve been waiting about 24 years to see The Police. I’m going to write a longer post about the whole event later, but I just wanted to get a song by song, blow by blow account down.

Message in a Bottle

Ahh. Even though it’s the first time I’ve seen them live, it feels like I’m putting on my favourite coat on the first cold day of winter. Feels like home.

Synchronicity II

Even though I knew what the set list was going to be, this took me a second to work out what song it was. It was good, without being great. Certainly at the right point in the show. Allows everything to get stretched out and ready for the long haul.

Walking on the Moon

One of a number of highlights of the night. The musicianship on display during this song was just astonishing. Stewart Copeland is a man possessed. Paul (one of my friends at the show) said that there just couldn’t be another band who could pull off a song like this. Just awesome.

Voices Inside My Head / When the World is Running Down

Done as a medley. Stings bass playing in this song was beyond compare: he was finger picking the bass with all five fingers. The highlight of the show for me.

Don’t Stand So Close To Me

A duet with Fergie. I had heard that she came out in Adelaide, which filled me with a bit of dread, but it actually worked kind of well. She didn’t try to hog the limelight, and her vocals were a bit low in the mix, so her tendency to shout didn’t overpower the song.

Driven To Tears

Another highlight for me. One of my favourite police songs for years. Brilliant.

Hole In My Life

It’s funny how you can listen to something for 20+ years, and never quite listen to it. Here is a guy, he’s 27, he’s married with one kid, and he write lyrics like

“There’s something missing from my life,
Cuts me open like a knife,
It leaves me vulnerable
I hate this disease,
I shake like an incurable
God help me please
There’s a hole, in my life.”

I wonder if he was trying to tell Frances (his first wife) something at this stage.

Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

A cool start on the guitar, and a great singalong song. And it sounds happy, even if it isn’t. A great buildup at the end of the song.

Wrapped Around Your Finger

Another drumming master class. A full percussion set appears on stage and Stewart goes to town. And another song that, if written by my partner, would make me sit them down with a cup of tea and say “Are you happy? Do we need to talk?”

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da

Slightly low key … not in a bad way, just gentle.

Invisible Sun

A song about the “troubles” in Northern Ireland gets transformed into a song about troubles of a much more global scale through the use of photos of children in war torn countries, stricken with disease, misfortune and poverty.

Walking In Your Footsteps

This song threatened to blowout into a funk explosion at one point. I felt kind of disappointed that it didn’t, but it was still great.

Can’t Stand Losing You

You can tell that they’ve been playing this song for a while. It just rocked. As they broke into Regatta De Blanc in the middle bit, Sting used the floor pedal synth (that he used quite a bit throughout the night to add some extra power to the songs) and unleashed the deepest note I’ve ever heard. It just rattled through my soul. I defy anyone to remain seated during this song.

Roxanne

An ambling (in a good way) excursion through the song, wandering down many avenues, exploring and enhancing. I’ve seen it performed about 8 times by sting as a solo artist, but this was truly great.

King of Pain

Never my favourite Police song, this was good, but not a standout by a long stretch. And the normally subtle backing vocals on tape were a bit obvious at times.

So Lonely

Bliss.

Every Breath You Take

A song that just haven’t ever done it for me live (I think the original recorded version is unadulterated magic), but this performance transcended all of those and became something special. Fantastic.

Next To You

A good song to finish on, even though the previous one might have been a better place to call it quits. A good rock song. The first song on their first album, and the last on the concert.

Quality Control

The Police have just announced a worldwide cynical money grab tour, and have launched a website to fill you in on all of the details. Unfortunately, whichever company they have tapped to produce the site seems to have just reskinned an old site, and haven’t even managed to do a find/replace particularly well.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd'><html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MariahcareycomWhatsNew" title="ThePoliceTour.com RSS 2.0 News Feed" hreflang="en">
<title>ThePoliceTour.com home</title>

Hmmm, I don’t remember Mariah Carey being in The Police. Strange.

Also, I’m still a big fan of The Police, and despite misgivings about the purpose of the reunion, I’ll probably go and see them if they come to Australia, but check this out:

Do they really need to charge $100 for “Premium Membership”, just so that people can get their tickets early and watch a few videos? And if you choose the free membership, why do you need to give your credit card details? And why does it include a balance check, when they’re not going to charge you any money?

Why do you need my credit card for a free subscription?
As part of thepolicetour.com’s attempt to confirm the legal age and identity of all new members, your credit card information will be verified before registering this offer. Verification involves our system interfacing with the bank’s system to confirm that the provided card details are valid. In some instances, your available balance or credit limit may reflect the authorization. No charges will be made against the provided credit card unless you do not cancel prior to the end of your offer’s term. You may cancel your offer at any time from within the My Account section of thepolicetour.com. The cancellation will take effect on the date of your offer’s expiration.

https://signup.thepolicetour.com/index.php?module=Signup&page=SignupPage5

Now, I’m assuming that the band actually had very little to do with this, but why do you need to jump through hoops, just to join a messageboard to talk about your favourite band? Really?

About Time!

It’s finally here. After what seems like an eternity of waiting, the Apple iTunes Music Store is available to Australian residents.

With various holdups and delays, attributed by many to a record company holding out for extra cash from the deal, the store launched today.

While I think that the $1.69 per single is overpriced (compare that to AU$1.31 in the USA), I would have to say that I am extremely happy at the album price. Most albums seem to be $16.99, which is a dramatic improvement on the $30 – $32 you pay on an album in the store.

So, like others are saying my credit card had better get ready for some action!