marramgrass

Blame an exchange on Twitter last night. Richard Burton, with extra menace:

No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.

No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes and slowly, surely, they drew their plans against us.

When I was a kid, one of the records I found among my dad’s small collection of vinyl was the comprehensively named Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of “The War of the Worlds”. I listened to it enough that the eery cry of “Ulla!” gave me some pretty vivid nightmares.

The War of the Worlds has had some very high-profile adaptations: Orson Welles’s famous 1938 radio play, the brilliant 1952 film, the not-so-brilliant 2005 Spielberg/Cruise blockbuster. Jeff Wayne’s is my favourite (maybe because it was my first).

“Thunder Child” is the tiny moment of hope — maybe we can beat the Martians — that’s quickly dashed. Tom Cruise isn’t around to thrust explosives into the belly of the machine, unfortunately.

Stirring.

“Thunder Child” [YouTube]

“Thunder Child” [Spotify]

Still with the country-ish music, I’m afraid.

My wife and my parents got together and bought me a mandolin for my birthday some years ago. It’s a fantastic wee instrument, and there’s nothing that sounds quite like it. The thing about the mandolin is that you expect the music to be either something Mediterranean-sounding, or bluegrass. (If you don’t know bluegrass, think country with more energy but even less credibility. I’m pretty sure we’ll come back to it on a future Tuesday.)

When I first picked up the mandolin, one of the names I came across was a young guy (of an age with me, roughly, which at the time made him much younger than the average well-known mandolin player) called Chris Thile. He’s kind of like a guitar hero of the mandolin world, but with as much melody as shredding — more Satriani than Vai, if that means anything to you.

Where Thile isn’t quite your typical mandolin player, the band he played with at the time weren’t your typical bluegrass/folk/country band. Nickel Creek did things a little differently, showing off their bluegrass roots but combining them with much more indie, rock influences.

It sounds good, doesn’t it? It does to me.

The title track of their 2002 album is “This Side”, which I first noticed for the great mandolin solo in the middle (once a guitar nut, always a guitar nut — even with eight strings instead of six), but it drew me in to a great track on a really excellent album.

There are songs, many of them, that make me stop whatever I’m doing and listen. Then there are the ones that I can feel, that do something in me. Sometimes it’s in the lyric, sometimes something in the music. “This Side” is a tune that makes me stop, close my eyes, and aspire to making music that sounds like that.

“This Side” [YouTube]

It’s coming up on three years since we moved from Edinburgh back to Northern Ireland. Part of me still misses what is a fantastic place to live, although we are, by now, very happily settled back home. One of the things I miss (and I have mentioned this before) is BBC Radio Scotland, which has some brilliant programming. Two of the DJs who were on Radio Scotland while we were there — Iain Anderson and Tom Morton — became some of my main sources of new music.

Both shows, at the time, tended to occupy the space between easily accessible rock, folk and country, which explains much of the music I picked up during the six years I was in Scotland. One of the artists I enjoyed was Josh Ritter, and my first conscious encounter with his music was with this song.

“Girl In The War” is the first track on Ritter’s Spring 2006 album, The Animal Years. It sets the tone for the album: it sounds pretty sweet, and pretty gentle, but the whole thing has bite. There’s politics in there, and protest and bitterness. “Girl In The War”, so far as I can figure, is about the seduction, and the frequent foolishness and hypocrisy, of war — aimed squarely at the war in Iraq and the ‘War on Terror’. It’s also proof that a politically charged song can be beautiful, too, and can have a seductive quality of its own.

The rest of the album is worth listening to, also. The other key track, I think, is “Thin Blue Flame”, which picks up some of the imagery from “Girl In The War”. It’s the penultimate track on the album, but is the climax and the companion to the opener.

Ritter’s music has appeared on a few soundtracks. (If I remember correctly, another song off this album featured in an episode of House a while back.) He deserves a listen, especially if you like American, slightly country, slightly folky rock.

“Girl In The War” [YouTube]

“Girl In The War” [Spotify]

And a freebie:

“Thin Blue Flame” [Spotify]

Once again, I’ve picked a song from what was Belfast’s stonking “Christian music” scene in the late 1990s. (Excuse the scare quotes — I was very cautious of using that phrase, since it comes with so much baggage that doesn’t really fit any of the names who were gigging in and around it at that time and the years preceding: Iain Archer, Peter Wilson/Booley/now Duke Special, Juliet Turner, Brian Houston. Also, I couldn’t find a better word than ‘scene’. Forgive me.)

The Maroons only released one album, the short but near-perfect 3 miles. A consequence of the small, local band and the pre-MySpace (and everything else prominently internet-y) era is no streaming for you to listen to. In fact, a quarter of an hour’s searching suggests that the internet is barely aware that they existed. A shame.

“Come What May” forms the spine of the album. It’s track four of eight, it’s noticeably longer than the rest, it opens with the slightly sombre strings that mark it out as different to the other songs. It’s lyric of hope, come what may, provides the context for everything else that is sung.

It’s also a song that I never really got until the band was no more. I was at their farewell gig, a stormer at Strandtown CFC, and when they played “Come What May” it seemed to go on all night. It felt like everyone there wanted it to go on even longer, but like the band that was only around for a short time and one brief disc, it finished.

3 miles is still one of the most loved records I have. I come back to it regularly and get immersed in it all over again. It really is a shame I can’t find any to stream for you.

Today’s tune is an easy one, since tomorrow is the first of July.

Some songs are perfect for evoking certain feelings, or firing off memories. It’s something to do with the way music slips its way inside you.

I guess “July”, by Mundy, is plain and obvious about its summertime intentions, but it delivers everything it promises. This is a song that was written to be played in the car, with the sun shining and the windows down.

“July” [YouTube]

“July” [Spotify]

One of the bands that was on the edge of my awareness when I was a teenager was Toad the Wet Sprocket. I had a few albums on cassette and MiniDisc, and most of those got lost in one of the house moves over the last ten years.

My favourite was their fifth, Coil, which had a lot going for it. I don’t even have a copy of it any more. That’s a real shame, as I remember loving it. (I think my yearbook quote on leaving school was taken from a track on it, too. It was very earnest.)

“Crazy Life” is a nice slice of cheerful guitar, and its opening riff has ended up being one of my flat-picking warmups. It’s very satisfying in its simplicity, and I’ve been known to play it over and over again, letting my fingers do their thing while my brain does something else. There’s something about the rhythm and the simple melody that emerges that I find very relaxing.

I think the song also featured on the soundtrack to Empire Records. I really should find a copy of that film, too.

“Crazy Life” [YouTube]

“Crazy Life” [Spotify]

Last week, in a roundabout way, Jonny reminded me of a little EP called Bathroom Floor.

Before he made his name as Duke Special, Ulster lad Pete Wilson performed under a few different names, one of which was Booley. This record is of that era, a bit of rocky pop between his earlier electronic- and synth-heavy tunes and the present music hall style.

“Alright” is the anthem, the track that stands out for me. With a teenager’s yet-innocent (but not altogether naive) ranting against all the Northern Ireland rhetoric of the late 90s, I find there’s something stirring about it.

Even ten years ago, Wilson could write a song. The other really stand out tune on Bathroom Floor is “God On Your Side”, which is even more topical now than then. It’s chilling.

The EP had its track list rejigged and added to, and was re-released as a full album. Unfortunately, I can’t find either to stream anywhere online.

(While I’m here, anyone remember DBA?)

It’s time for a little guitar heroism.

Extreme are a hair-rock band best known for that acoustic ballad often murdered by teenaged boys (I did my part. Did you?), “More Than Words”. Five years later, their fourth album, Waiting For The Punchline included this brilliant little acoustic instrumental.

As in instrumental.

Nuno Bettencourt has fast, fast fingers of the kind that aren’t often matched to such a melodic style. On “Midnight Express” he gets the speed out of an acoustic guitar by — if I remember correctly — tuning down a step to slacken the strings off a bit. That also adds to the nice percussive tone of the track.

This one I didn’t even try to learn how to play, although a guy I was at school with did make a credible stab at it.

On the album recording, after music ends, you can hear a very self-satisfied laugh. Fair enough :D

“Midnight Express” [YouTube]

William Shatner: Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane. Like the Hoff he’s spent a lot of time lately sending himself up.

Also like the Hoff, Shatner’s made a couple of stabs at a musical career. His 2004 album Has Been gets most of its play for an astonishing cover of Pulp’s “Common People”, but the whole thing is pretty credible. (That’s probably helped by the impressive list of collaborators on the record: Ben Folds, Aimee Mann, Brad Paisley, others.)

Ben Folds co-wrote most of the record, and “That’s Me Trying” shows it. Shatner’s spoken word is a father’s letter trying to make contact with his estranged daughter, full of self-conscious missteps and sad pauses, and the gentle piano and softly-sung choruses (Folds and Mann) make this the strongest track on the album.

Has Been is a strange record. It flicks back and forth between humour and seriousness and sadness (“What Have You Done” is about how Shatner found his third wife drowned in their swimming pool) and never quite finds its tone. It’s probably not for everyone, but I like it.

“That’s Me Trying” [YouTube]

“That’s Me Trying” [Spotify]

The collision of music and humour often leaves a mess. At the extremes you have the musical comedians (Mitch Benn and Bill Bailey being fine examples) and the serious artistes (oh, pretty much everyone who’s a little too earnest for their own good). In the middle it can be tough to find anyone to properly recommend.

Enter Barenaked Ladies, the Canadian alt-rockers contending for Most Misleading Band Name Ever. Somehow they manage to take stonking, if occasionally obscure, musicianship and meet it with brilliant, surreal, Canadian funniness.

Which is not to say they’re a comedy act; they’re not. Instead, the lyrics and the manner have a slyness to them that can be light-hearted or poignant, but always funny — if smirking or eyebrow-raising rather than always belly-laughing.

My introduction to Barenaked Ladies came with the tune “Shoe Box” when it was picked up for the Friends soundtrack album, although I quickly sought it out in its proper home, 1996′s Born On A Pirate Ship. Energetic, it manages their usual trick of being playful and thoughtful at the same time.

From my first little fib when I still wore a bib,
To my latest attempt at pretending I’m someone
Who’s not seventeen, or doesn’t know what you mean
When talk turns to single malts or stilton.

(I couldn’t find streaming links for this one, which is a shame. You can hear a snippet through iTunes if you have it installed.)