By Fergal Murphy, Nessa Jennings & Grace Charley
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This album is pretty good though, in the same vein as the rest with the same sensitive singer-songwriter style shining through and Paddy’s soulful, lovelorn voice still as good as ever. This album is definitely more soulful with gospel like back up singers ‘Addicted To Company’, tells of the plight of the displaced ‘Refugee’ and the funky start-off chords on the best song on the album ‘Not Out To Get You’ which takes off Bill Withers’s ‘Grandma’s Hands’. There’s no ‘Sweet Suburban Sky’ on this but a good album none the less.
This album is a masterpiece and the thought-provoking lyrics tackling everything from poverty, ‘Save Us’, realising your own potential, ‘The World Is Yours’, to organised religion, ‘Some Folks Are Hollow’, over hip hop, soul-influenced beats and orchestral-like strings make this album a must!!
CAN MUSIC IMPROVE LITERACY SKILLS Musical tuition could help children develop literacy and combat reading disorders, according to a study published by a US university. It may be as important for enhancing verbal communication skills as phonics, which requires children to learn the sounds of words rather than their shape, says a team at Northwestern University, Illinois. The value of musical tuition rests on how musicians use all of their senses to practise and perform a musical piece. They watch other musicians, read lips, and feel, hear and perform music. As it turns out, this multi-sensory feature of musical training also enhances the same communication skills needed for speaking and reading, concludes the study. The 30 people who took part in the study, who had varying amounts of musical training or none at all, wore scalp electrodes that measured their brain responses to audio and video of a cellist playing and a person speaking. “Audiovisual processing was much enhanced in musicians’ brains compared to non-musician counterparts, and musicians also were more sensitive to subtle changes in both speech and music,” said Prof Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory. Reading, like speech and music, requires multi-sensory combination: children need to associate what they hear with a visual image, and they engage their motor skills as they write, said Prof Kraus. The study suggests that musical training could help children develop literacy skills and combat literacy disorders.
O Brother Where Art Thou – One of my favourites (pictured above) and I wouldn’t normally listen to this sort of music. An angelic mix of blues, bluegrass, folk and gospel music. Purple Rain – Prince’s masterpiece, containing ‘When Doves Cry’ and the powerful title track. Jackie Brown – All Tarantino’s soundtracks are top-notch. This opened me up to The Delphonics and made Bobby Womack’s ‘Across 110th Street’ one of my all-time favourites. Dirty Dancing – To get in touch with your feminine side, I’ve had the time of my life! Shrek 2 – With brilliant songs from the Counting Crows and Joseph Arthur. Trainspotting – A perfect example, right, of a top class soundtrack, with excellent use of songs from New Order, Lou Reed and who can forget that opening scene with Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’!!
New York saxophonist Dave Liebman, above left, has been coming to Ireland for twenty years, which he says is one of the best places for music at this time. Liebman is arguably the reigning king of the soprano, as well as one of the most complete improvisers in modern music. He played with the Guilfoyle/Nielsen trio recently, with whom he recorded an album ‘After Dark’ in 1998. They were joined by Michael Buckley on stage in J.J. Smyths and in a packed Meeting House Square by a group of young Irish musicians to play the music of his mentor John Coltrane, pictured right. With only one three-hour practice that morning, these Irish musicians proved their mettle. Liebman performed on tenor, joined by Kelan Walsh (alto), Paul Williamson (trumpet), Francesco Turrisi (piano), Dave Redmond (bass) and David Lyttle (drums). Dave Liebman did the arrangements, and recalled seeing the Trane live from the peanut gallery at Birdland for the first time in 1961 when he was only fifteen. He went back over 30 times (the Half Note, the Village Vanguard also). Dave Liebman is a teacher and mentor himself. He led these young Irish musicians through ‘Dahomey Dance’, ‘Alabama’ and ‘Olé’. The first was joyful; the second is a haunting theme, written about the burning of a church in Alabama in 1963 when three young girls were burned; and ‘Olé’ had three horns skidding over a baseline that would frighten children! Later, the very moving ‘Dear Lord’ was played simply (Coltrane’s Love Poem to God); ‘Compassion’ was played with an unbeatable groove overlaid with three horns climbing and throwing shapes, and interplaying to create the sound of a New York traffic jam. ‘India’ opened with a tin whistle like the cry of the heartland, with bowed bass behind serving as a drone, and a two note riff to blow you away. I cannot say enough to compliment these fine young musicians, who have the repertoire and the chops to perform these arrangements. Coltrane came on the scene in 1955, appearing with Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk (his early period), culminating in the ‘Giant Steps’ recording, and ‘Kind of Blue’ in 1959; then formed the classic quartet, McCoy Tyner (piano), Elvin Jones (drums), Jimmy Garrison (bass), John Coltrane (tenor saxophone) which burned for five years until 1965, culminating in the mythic ‘A Love Supreme’ recording (middle period); and then entered his highly spiritual late period with a change of personnel (Alice Coltrane, Archie Schepp, Pharoah Sanders, Rashid Ali, Eric Dolphy), with the recordings ‘Interstellar Space’ and ‘Meditations’, lasting two years until his death in July 1967, from liver disease. In a lecture by Dave Liebman about John Coltrane, probably the most talked about jazz musician of all time he said that when he saw the quartet live in New York he was overwhelmed by the unbelievable power, intensity and vibe. “You’d sit, and you’d be in a trance, it was volcanic.” Dave said that he wouldn’t be the same person if it hadn’t been for seeing John. Dave dispels the idea that Coltrane might have been a prodigy. He wasn’t. He was a slow developer, came through the ranks, paid his dues. Born in North Carolina, he became part of the Philadelphia scene. He owed a lot to Lester Young for his sound. In the lecture, we heard some early Coltrane playing the blues. In those days, if you couldn’t play the blues, you couldn’t take the stand. At the beginning, no-one had any idea that Coltrane would become a legend. He did not stand out, and he was very self-effacing. He was renowned for practising between sets. Coltrane saw that there was a lot to be explored: exotic scales; whole-tone scales; Phrygian; half-tone scales. Coltrane sweated it out to put the theory into the fingers. He came in with an agenda, something to work out. Dave Liebman asked Elvin Jones how many times they might have played ‘My Favourite Things’? His answer: “I don’t know how many goddamn times we played it. But every time we played it, we played it like there was no tomorrow.” In the lecture we heard a piece from ‘Crescent’, which was sublime, and ended with a DVD of ‘Impressions’ which was truly inspiring. John Coltrane was really the first to talk about his music being a vessel, that he was a vessel, a conduit to a higher power. His music today continues to hold rewards for musicians.
I travelled with my friend Sarah to the French city of Carcassonne. Carcassonne is most often described as a walled medieval town in the Languedoc region of southwest France. There are, in fact, two Carcassonnes: the famous walled City (cité) and the adjacent town of about 45,000 people. The mediaeval walled town lies on the right bank of the River Aude and is featured on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. It has 52 towers and 2 rings of town walls making a total of 3 km of battlements. The main reason for our trip was to see the former singer from Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, pictured, and his band the Strange Sensation at the end of a European tour that ended in Monte Carlo. Plant, the legendary voice of one of the most influential bands in the history of rock, first discovered blues music near Birmingham where he spent his childhood. A vocalist and harmonica player, he joined The Band of Joy in 1967; the group’s drummer was none other than John Bonham. In 1968, Jimmy Page, the Yardbirds’ amazing guitarist was looking for a new singer for his band and fell under Plant’s charm at a concert. Robert and John joined the New Yardbirds, whose name was changed quickly to Led Zeppelin. The rest is history: ‘Stairway to heaven’, ‘Whole lotta love’, ‘Heartbreaker’… Seeking inspiration in blues and folk music, the group was the precursor of a new generation of musical trends: hard rock and heavy metal. After the unfortunate death of the drummer John Bonham in 1980 Led Zeppelin disbanded and Robert Plant embarked on a solo career and released five records between 1982 and 1993. From 1995 to 1998, he joined forces again with his old accomplice Jimmy Page for two albums and two tours. He started the new millennium by exploring musical styles he found particularly interesting: Moroccan music from the Atlas region and psychedelic indo-rock from the West Coast of the USA. For this original fusion, he founded a new band: Strange Sensation and recorded ‘Dreamland’ and, more recently, ‘Mighty Rearranger’ which was nominated twice at the Grammy Awards. In May 2006, he received the ‘Polar Music Prize’ for Led Zeppelin from the hands of His Majesty The King of Sweden. The Band led by Robert Plant on vocals also featured Billy Fuller on bass, Clive Deamer on drums, John Baggott on keyboards and synths, Justin Adams and Skin Tyson on guitars. The sound of Plant’s music has shifted from the classic metal sounds to a newer feel with the introductions of mandolins and Far Eastern cadences as well as a re-arrangement of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ which kept the riff and yet saw a gypsy-punk tinge added it. The song ‘Freedom Fries’ allowed Plant to make his feelings on the war in Iraq known as he played the words of George Bush to the audience to point to the shame of the war. The audience insisted on standing and cheered the Zeppelin numbers everyone knew. |
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Paddy Casey– ‘Addicted To Company’
Ian Brown– ‘The World Is Yours’
They say the best soundtracks are like movies for the ears. Did you ever notice the way a good soundtrack can transform a very average film into a classic? The right song at the right moment can either get the heart rate soaring or have you reaching for the tissues. The right soundtrack can turn film watching into an emotional experience. With this in mind, here is a list of ten of my favourite film soundtracks:
DAVE LIEBMAN IN DUBLIN
GONE TO CARCASSONNE