Piecespeak #8 - 25-05-09

This week, Pieces spent too many hours playing annoying computer games. Shame on us for getting hooked on something so unproductive, when we could have been outside in the sun, doing cartwheels and picking daisies. Or something.

Speaking of picking small flowers, watching one too many old movies this week got me thinking about little things that fill childhoods. Sliding down slides, falling off climbing frames into piles of bark chips, digging around in sandpits filled with greying sand – all pretty typical kiddy things. Except that hardly any children growing up today will do any of these things, because something about childhood is gently changing under our noses…

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a big rant about how kids grow up too fast nowadays, and ooh isn’t it awful how we dress our children in little versions of adult sexy clothes and my-goodness-gracious-why-not-just-let-them-be-kids. That’s all been done. I’m talking about the little things that seem to get ignored by the typical rants, because it’s assumed that they have stayed the same in the face of some all-encompassing shift. We may well force young people to wear mini-Topshop monsters, but they still have playgrounds where they can swing on swings, right? And they still eat ice-cream and accidentally dribble it down their shirts in that awww-it’s-so-cute way. And cmon, they might be exposed to sex and money and swearing much earlier than in my day, but they still. Right??

Well, yes and no. this train of thought began as I was walking past an old childhood haunt, a playground that used to be filled with half-rotting wooden ladders to climb and a massive sandpit filled with anonymous brown lumps that mothers always seemed to be nervous of (can’t think why). All of these wonders have been ripped out and replaced by a state-of-the-art twenty-first century grey-and-black streamlined…thing. And it looks amazing. Best thing to play on, ever. No slide, but still – climbing studs, really soft-looking crash mats to land on, poles to navigate and climb up. Perfect. But charm? Sadly lacking. I’m not exactly a stickler for old-fashioned anything, but there’s definitely something a little…sterile about it all. There’s definitely something very unnatural about it all, it’s all plastic and flashy bits of metal. Not a single bark chip ANYWHERE. Scandal. Maybe this means our children are going to grow up not knowing what a tree looks like, or where bark comes from, or what wood can be made into apart from Primark bags and bog roll. But hey, at least the kids still have somewhere to run around and play, right?

So yes, lots of children do still technically have a lot of the things that supposedly ‘make’ a childhood. But I can’t help thinking that the tokens that are left are being changed in ways that influence the ways they’re growing up in ways that are just as profound as the whole Daily-Mail-shock-horror-twelve-year-old-dad bag.

And finally, just in case there were any suspicions, none of this has anything to do with the Pieces song Playgrounds. Definitely not a subliminal plug. As if we’d Children ever do Of something Fire like that.

And so to Piecesounds, which this week is remarkably bouncy. Apart from the slower songs. And the jazz. And the frankly astonishing fragments that make up Tzigane. Remarkable.

As always, click on the link below to hear all of this in your very own ears.

1. Animal Collective – Peacebone
2. Dr. Octagon – A Gorilla Driving A Pickup Truck
3. Sonic Youth – Tunic (Song for Karen)
4. The Flaming Lips – It Overtakes Me
5. The Neon Philharmonic – Brilliant Colours
6. Talking Heads – Love = Building On Fire
7. Jane Birkin/Feist – The Simple Story
8. Jett Brando – The Centre Of Gravity (Sit Right Down)
9. Yo La Tengo – Damage
10. Joni Mitchell – Car On A Hill
11. Maurice Ravel – Tzigane
12. Django Reinhardt – Night And Day

http://open.spotify.com/user/blownawish/playlist/24l8bl8dDcqpv840IJFd4H

Stay here. And there. Until next week.

Pieces x

Piecespeak #7 - 18-05-09

Another week, another set of scandalous people doing scandalous things in the name of simple, primal greed. But we won’t mention that…

This week, Pieces has been thinking. Again. We’re getting closer to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and it’s at these kinds of avenues that sad people like me start thinking about what identifies the times we live in. In previous posts I’ve talked about certain musicians and artists who some might say have passed their creative peak (mostly in jest, sometimes with crushing sincerity). One of the things that troubles me about the century so far is that there are very few creative people who have managed to carve an identity as strong as even the worst offenders in my previous posts. And then the next step beyond that depressing thought is to look back and see how effortlessly people can construct names for movements or collectives that cropped up in every previous century. It’s pointless to be too optimistic about this – it’s very unlikely, for example, that a new century would have thrown up anything equivalent to the birth of Rock n Roll or the impressionists. But looking back on the last 9 years doesn’t exactly fill you with hope for the future: where are the seeds of the next big ‘happening’? have we just become a species content to be fed what comes up without hoping for something new? For whom art is no longer a force for change but a tool that follows outside events?

Obviously, every event and/or movement that ever changes things is usually only noticed in hindsight, unless it’s really explosive – people still disagree about which was the first real Rock n Roll record, but it’s pretty undeniable that the October Revolution (confusingly) took place on 7th November 1917. But even five years after Rock Around The Clock (definitely not the first Rock n Roll record, but certainly one of the first to sell squillions of copies) people were aware that something had happened that had changed the world, that had caused nearly every business on the planet to realise that there was a new billion-strong marketplace for them to pitch to, and pitch they did.

Now, nearly every major album review refers to the musician’s comments on the world of today, as if it’s assumed that artists have become commentators and journalists rather than visionaries. No reviewer really wants to hear imagination any more, just a ‘creative’ way of rephrasing things that have already happened. If this doesn’t happen, the record gets slaughtered for not being ‘relevant’. If it does, the record runs the risk of dating incredibly badly, or at best just not meaning anything anymore (even the greatest are not immune – just listen to Taxman by the Beatles. Only those who have more than a passing acquaintance with British politics of the 1960s will get anything out of those cute ‘ah ah, Mr Wilson’ backing vocals, even though they’re a crucial part of the song’s ‘meaning’).

Reaction is traditionally the spur for action in art, not its content. The best way to illustrate the difference is this: listen to Masters of War (Bob Dylan, not Pearl Jam), and sit in awe at the way the reaction to atrocities is used to create something vicious and powerful in its own right, that would eat at the soul of any perpetrator who heard it. Then listen to the new Green Day record – ‘silence is the enemy so gimme gimme revolution’. The reaction to…well, whatever it was, was obviously along the lines of ‘hey, this is really bad, let’s write a song about how it’s really bad’. So they did. And it’s a song about something really bad. Great.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe our music has always just reflected the way we all feel, and that’s what people have always loved about it. But I can’t help but feel that something has been missed somewhere. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor lets you know on no uncertain terms you’re listening to the story of one man’s (very contemporary version of a) crush on a girl. Listening to Diana Ross sing You Can’t Hurry Love makes you feel like you’re falling in love for the first time, even though it was sung 40 years ago. That doesn’t mean it’s better, but there’s definitely a difference. And don’t let Phil Collins tell you otherwise.

Thanks, kudos, love and magic to everyone who came along to Pieces’ gig on Saturday. It was a really great night and we raised tons of money for the church, so give yourselves a little round of applause before clicking below to load this week’s Piecesounds…

1. The Sugarhill Gang/West Street Mob – Sing A Simple Song
2. Gnarls Barkley – Who’s Gonna Save My Soul?
3. The Pop Group – We Are Time
4. Wildlife – Let’s Talk It Over
5. Kate Bush – Delius (Song Of Summer)
6. Brian Eno – Here Come The Warm Jets
7. The Monkees – Zilch
8. Pulp – This Is Hardcore
9. Isaac Hayes – When I Fall In Love
10. Chick Corea/Bobby McFerrin – Song For Amadeus (Mozart Sonata No. 2 in F Major)
11. Young Marble Giants – N.I.T.A.
12. Tower Of Power – Down To The Nightclub
13. LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver
14. Joy Division – These Days

http://open.spotify.com/user/blownawish/playlist/0HM1YHI6QVFA1x1x0uOLmS

(if you haven’t got a Spotify account, then do something about it. Either get someone you know to invite you, or if none of your friends have an account you can email contactpieces@gmail.com and we’ll sort you out. We can’t have people going without music – that’d be like asking people to live without air. Or the colour green. It just wouldn’t be right.)

See you next week for further developments.

Pieces x

Piecespeak #6 - 11-05-09

This week, Pieces has been mostly pondering…

In most walks of life, and most businesses or areas of interest, there is an interplay between different kinds of people that makes things happen and creates the little moments of inspiration and the small differences that make life worthwhile. A lot of these relationships are very difficult to summarise, and really it’s pointless to try and reduce the oddities of human behaviour to a cute analogy. But I’m going to anyway, because for years I’ve had swirling around my head the idea that actually the music industry, and probably a lot of other industries, creative and otherwise, operate in a very similar way to the national grid.

I’m not necessarily talking here about the actual production of music itself, like the manufacture of CDs or the marketing of new MP3s and everything else that goes into pushing product to make people money. I mean the process of creating ideas, because that’s really what keeps the music industry, and so many others, going, and actually allows people to make a living. Without a supply of inspiration of some kind, whether that’s an album by a band that plays in a completely new way or a ‘loving tribute’ to music that was fashionable 20 years ago but played by someone who wears a slightly shinier hat (thanks, Lady GaGa), there’s no reason for people to get excited and no reason for them to think of music as something that can make a contribution to their lives.

So, to the point – it seems to me that there are three main channels for this inspiration, and they can be roughly attributed to sections of the system that gets electricity to us. At the very beginning, we have the individuals or groups that produce ideas that have never been thought of before – they are the Power Stations. The substance that they produce is often raw and unrefined, and can’t really be used until it has been channelled through a mechanism to make it more easily consumable.

This is where the next group come in – the Transformers. In your home, these are the little boxes that change the high voltage current coming from the plug in the wall to something your toaster can use. In music, these are the people who make popular music that draws on the innovations of others but turn them into something accessible and memorable.

Once the current is transformed into something easily digestible, it gets plugged into the last group – Appliances. These are the toasters, the TVs, the hair straighteners, that everyone uses almost without thinking. They use the power created by the Power Stations and channelled through the Transformers, and give it a shiny face.

The next step is to think about which musicians fit into which categories. When you start to think about it, most of the most famous artists of the last 50 years are Transformers – they are people who have taken on the best ideas from what has come before and assimilated them into very successful songs and albums. Take a look at the ‘List of best-selling music artists’ on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists). Elvis Presley, the guy who gave a white face to Rock ‘n’ Roll and got away with stealing the best black music for 20 years. Madonna, who changes her face and her sound every 3 years to fit in with whatever’s playing at whatever clubs will still let her in. Even The Beatles, who no-one would ever claim didn’t experiment and influence countless other musicians, ripped off more than their fair share of Chuck Berry riffs and Buddy Holly whoops (Little Richard still claims today that he taught Paul McCartney everything he knows). AC/DC? Well, that’s the very definition of a Transformer…

It’s actually pretty difficult to think of artists who fit the Power Station category, because so many come up with their inspiration by taking the best bits of what’s come before and chanelling them in a new way. But there would be no music without the innovators, like the Throbbing Gristles, the Jelly Roll Mortons. Once again, we have band whose name fits its category perfectly: Kraftwerk.

As for Appliances, well, they should be pretty easy to identify for anyone who’s grown up in the western world in the last 50 years. From Alvin and the Chipmunks to The Monkees to Leona Lewis, they’re the people (or characters, a lot of the time) who play music either designed to sell or to tap into whatever trend is hottest.

This is all very tenuous, but at the very least it’s a fun little game to play for 5 minutes – who fits where? And really, isn’t that what music’s all about? Fun little games? No.

This week’s Piecesounds includes more lovingly selected gems from the vaults of Spotify, which if you haven’t signed up for yet you really should. Honestly, it’s the best thing you can do with your computer. Better than Excel. As ever, click the link below to listen to the whole delicious lot.

1. The Dixie Cups – Iko Iko
2. Jurassic 5 – Quality Control
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Man
4. Bootsy Collins – Psychoticbumpschool
5. Cliff Richard – Wired For Sound
6. Yo La Tengo – Sugarcube
7. Fairuz – Ana Indi Haneen
8. Love – Seven & Seven Is
9. Panteón Rococó – La carencia
10. Billie Holiday – God Bless The Child
11. Dead Can Dance – In The Kingdom Of Blind The One-Eyed Are Kings
12. Fats Domino – Walking To New Orleans
13. The Notwist – One Step Inside Doesn’t Mean You Understand
14. TV On The Radio – A Method
15. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – Breathless
16. Sheb Wooley – The Purple People Eater

http://open.spotify.com/user/blownawish/playlist/5LwGKNmVpgRpPhKGT0GXbS

Enjoy. More next week.

Pieces x

Piecespeak #5 - 04-05-09

This week, Pieces was consumed with the all-important question: which decade from the twentieth century would win in a battle royale? Obviously the 1970s, because of the sideboards and flagrant sexism, but the contemplation of hoards of flower-wielding hippies charging against lines of politely coutured Edwardian gin-swillers was a lot of fun.

On a more serious note…

Not long ago, in a review of the rather-good Radiohead reissues, Scott Plagenhoef from Pitchfork speculated that the manner of the release of the remastered Beatles albums in September (cue massively exaggerated squeak of anticipation from nerdish fab-o-philes like me who can finally hear ever-so-slightly-beefed-up versions of songs they can already sing backwards – how sad) is a sign that the era of the physical record is coming to an end. People have been saying similar things for years; basically ever since the first legal mp3 stores appeared online. Check out some earlier examples here and here. This time, though, there’s some more substantial weight behind the claim. The argument is this: the fact all of the Beatles records are being released at the same time (September 9th, Fab-o-philes!), instead of ‘being slowly and ceremoniously rolled out as they were 20-odd years ago’, indicates that record companies are now scared to release physical product because of recent shrinkage in the worldwide music market, and that ‘they best sell non-vinyl physical products now, immediately, before the prospect of doing so is gone’.

It’s a scary thought, for those of us who were brought up on the thrill of sticking a pencil in the holes in cassette tapes to make them work again, and the heightened anticipation built up by the difficulty of removing shrink-wrap from CD cases. But only the bravest music journalist snob would argue with the truth: music lost its attachment to physical embodiments a long time ago. It’s becoming more and more clear that the question to ask is not whether there will ever be a time when we don’t think of music in terms of its medium, but what form a new age of universal access to all music will take.

Even someone like me, who has a comprehensive collection of every piece of plastic produced by The Stone Roses from 1988-91 (oh yes, those were some worthwhile teenage years), can’t see any downside to a future ruled by services like Spotify. What’s not to like? It allows anyone in the world to listen to virtually any music ever released on a major record label for free. All of a sudden, hierarchies built up around record collection disappear, and everyone who loves music can listen to exactly what they want, regardless of whether they can ‘afford’ it. At best, this means that everyone in the world has the chance to become an enlightened listener, freed from the Cowells of the world and able to find the music that they like best without having to be guided by people who basically just want their money. And at the very least, it means a world where music is as free as the air, and those who have to think very carefully about what to spend their money on for whatever reason can have one more way to enrich and beautify their lives however they want, at no cost. Lovely.

And, of course, it allows me to continue to provide an hour’s-worth of lovely music every week for our lovely Pieces fans. Again, what’s not to like? Which leads us very nicely into this week's Piecesounds…

1. Danger Mouse/Jemini – Born-A-MC
2. Walker Brothers – The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore
3. P.P. Arnold – The First Cut Is The Deepest
4. The Bobby Fuller Four – I Fought The Law
5. ESG – Dance
6. Bessie Smith – Alexander’s Ragtime Band
7. Talking Heads – Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
8. Nina Simone – Sinnerman
9. Van Morrison – Sweet Ting
10. Björk – Wanderlust
11. Lykke Li – Little Bit
12. Mr Hudson & The Library – Bread + Roses
13. Soul Angels – It’s All In Your Mind
14. Johnny Cash – Dinosaur Song

http://open.spotify.com/user/blownawish/playlist/6nDeyBQ8QQ7BLnu5M8uDzA

What happens to music when there’s nothing to touch? Is my view too rose-tinted and sickeningly idealistic? Let me know.

More next week.

Pieces x