The Victoria & Albert Museum, Sunday 21st May 2017…If you’re a Floyd fan, this is a ‘must’! ‘Heaven’ has indeed ‘sent the promised land’….The exhibition is a sensory journey from the band’s beginnings to the present day, featuring sound, light, videos, projections and animations, complementing the 2-D and 3-D artefacts. On entering you are a handed a small box to wear around your neck and a pair of headphones, a super-clever gadget which picks up your location within the exhibition spaces and switches to the appropriate commentary/sound effects for that area. “Are you a fan?, asks the lady handing out the headphones…Yes…Welcome to the dark side” she says…The time travel begins back in the 1960s, accompanied by full-on psychedelia. The madcap genius of Syd Barrett is well represented, balanced by contributions from Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Richard Wright and David Gilmour. Nick Mason understated his input in a recent interview: “There was never any sense of curating my own stuff, it was just the things that were hanging around at the right moment, to spirit them away…” All the albums are given special attention, both in terms of conception and recording as well as fine detail on the artwork, a big part of the Pink Floyd image. The use of phone boxes to illustrate the cultural backdrop for the music throughout the history is inspired. Digital technology is maximised in the presentation, achieving high contrast with the myriad displays of original analogue equipment, authentic memorabilia, photographs and hand-written artefacts. Roger Waters remarked positively in a recent interview: “Earlier today, I played the ‘Wot’s…Uh The Deal’ thing – It’s nice to stand there and listen to the whole song and see all those picture of us…erm…when we were younger and, I thought it was beautiful…” The ‘Wish You Were Here’ room is particularly stunning, showing off the considerable talents of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell in the creation of the iconic artwork for the album.
Reflecting the band’s rise and rise following the mega-success of ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ (which, as we are informed in the exhibition, continues to sell seven thousand copies a week), the exhibits get larger and more elaborate as the Floyd stage show develops to suit the huge venues they were then playing. A large room tracks ‘Animals’ through to ‘The Final Cut’ and the demise of that era of Pink Floyd, showcasing Waters very political vision and songwriting at that time. The late 1980s and 1990s incarnation of the band are also covered well, with stunning visuals and props. ‘The Endless River’, 2014’s posthumous tribute to the late Rick Wright, completes the picture then we end in an empty room with projections on all four walls and surround-sound – We are asked to remove our headphones and are treated to a variety of music and videos from the Floyd back catalogue. The curation of the exhibition is phenomenal, the only flaw in the presentation being the bleeding of the sound from the final room into the other spaces, sometimes audible even with the headphones on and distracting from the other audio content. In terms of the collection, there was very little representation of the solo releases by all members of the band, but this would have likely added too much material. All in all, there is no ‘dark side’ of this exhibition – As a “matter of fact, it’s all dark”, and “all that you touch and all that you see” shines much light on the ‘endless river’ that is Pink Floyd…’Their Mortal Remains’ opened on 13th May and runs until Sunday 1st October 2017 so, don’t be “harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away”, “ticking away the moments that make up a dull day”, get into ‘interstellar overdrive’, “breathe in the air” and set the controls for the heart of…London!
the sheer volume and grandeur of The Royal Albert Hall…photo courtesy of Roger Hodgson’s Facebook page
The Sage, Gateshead, Wednesday 17th May 2017…The band appear from stage right and soon burst into the poppy upbeat ‘Every Day’ from the 1979 album ‘Spectral Mornings’. Mysterious instrumental ‘El Niño’ and the mystical eastern-sounding ‘In The Skeleton Gallery’ showcase the new album ‘The Night Siren’, sandwiching ‘The Steppes’ from 1980’s ‘Defector’, which starts with flute and drifts into more magical instrumentation – all very atmospheric. The band appear to be quite a motley crew, all with their own individual style – Steve in black with blue and red scarves, Gary O’Toole (drummer) in a suit and tie (only possible with LED stage lighting? – much less heat), Nick Beggs in a kilt (Yes, he of Kajagoogoo fame! on bass, bass pedals and twelve-string), Roger King (keyboards) in black ‘fck brxt’ t-shirt, shades and blue jacket, Rob Townsend in skull t-shirt, pirate style jacket and cap (according to the credits for ‘The Night Siren’ plays baritone saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute, flageolet, quena, duduk and bass clarinet!) – no band uniform for these guys…‘Behind The Smoke’, the opening track from ‘The Night Siren’, has an epic, Middle-Eastern feel, enhanced by the cones of light and constant flow of dry ice…Steve introduced it as a song about refugees, saying that people might think refugees are topical, “but they’ve been around for thousands of years…Where there’s war, there are refugees…” Steve told us that his mother’s family were refugees, escaping religious persecution in Poland – “women being dragged by their hair” – and were allowed to settle in Britain in, as he described it, “perhaps in more enlightened times…”
It was a guy called Danny Sereda who introduced me to Aerosmith – He was from Canada and that seemed exotic to a school kid living in Aberdeen! I used to go round to his house and listen to records (That’s what we did in those days). Danny kindly gave me a copy of their first eponymous LP (He’d ended up with two for some reason…) I still love that first album, with it’s sleeve of clouds overlaid by a photo of the band sporting long flowing locks and wearing patterned/floral bohemian gear – The music sounded raunchy, bluesy and soulful. Aerosmith started work on the recording in Boston in 1972 – Singer Steve Tyler, from Yonkers, New York State, said “I wanted to sound a little bit black” and he succeeded in that! Associated with New York City and in awe of their heroes, The Rolling Stones, the band were divided – Although the fantastic ‘Dream On’ graces the first album, lead guitarist Joe Perry opined that “I never thought Aerosmith should do any ballads at all. My philosophy was the only thing a hard rock band should play slow was a slow blues…” For better or worse, the band went on to record many ballads, some monster hits following their later comeback, but that’s another story…1974 brought ‘Get Your Wings’ and 1975 ‘Toys In The Attic’ then, in early 1976, Aerosmith went into the Record Plant studios in NY, NY to record what I consider to be their masterpiece, the perfectly titled ‘Rocks’! On 3rd May 1976, the album was unleashed with its distinctive black cover (some later issues were light blue), red band logo and photograph of five ‘rocks’ – diamonds (in the rough) representing the five band members? Starting with a slow build-up which lulls the listener into a false sense of security, it bursts into life with Tyler’s screaming, rasping vocal announcing the band “I’m baaaack!! I’m baack in the saddle again…” The funky ‘Last Child’ was brought to the sessions by guitar player Brad Whitford and features some give-it-all-you’ve-got vocals from Tyler – “I was the laaast child, I’m just a punk in the street”…‘Originally titled ‘Tit For Tat’ and based on ‘Searching For Madge’, speedy rocker ‘Rats In The Cellar’ is the crowning glory of the record – I remember hearing it featured by DJ Tommy Vance on ‘The Friday Rock Show’ and, even through a pocket transistor radio it still sounded fantastic. Joe Perry says about ‘Rocks’: “There’s no doubt that we were doing a lot of drugs by then, but you can hear that, whatever were doing, it was still working for us.” As it turns out, a drug dealer was killed close to where the band were recording, inspiring the line ‘losing my connection’ in ‘Rats’. Side One closes with ‘Combination’ with Perry taking lead vocals – He sings “Walking on Gucci, wearing St. Laurent, barely stay on because I’m so fucking gaunt”, except Joe admits that “Most of my shoes came from the Chelsea Cobbler in Manhattan”! The second side opens with ‘Sick As A Dog’, a tune originally written by bassist Tom Hamilton with the working title ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. The fiery stomping Brad Whitford-penned ‘Nobody’s Fault’ follows. The riffs keep flowing through the boogie of ‘Get The Lead Out’ and the autobiographical ‘Lick And A Promise’ – “He gets his lovin’ every night for free, He’s out there rockin’ like you wouldn’t believe” – then the album is brought to a close by Tyler’s rocked-up piano ballad ‘Home Tonight’: “Now it’s time to say good night to you, Now its time to bid you sweet adieu…Baby, drink a cheers to yesterday, and maybe you’ll drink your tears away…” As drummer Joey Kramer says about ‘Toys In The Attic’ and ‘Rocks’, “They reek of the time and the fun we put into them.” The band sound hungry, bluesy, sexy, out for blood, playing like their lives depended on it, out in the street. It has that mid-70s Stones touch – guitar parts intertwining, druggy feel, edgy…but it has more of a drive, more desperate…There are no radio-friendly hits and the music is better for that – It’s all integrity and class, with absolutely no nod to commercialism, and there’s no ‘filler’, beginning to end it’s all great!
Eddie's Rock Music A-Z 