Tag: Wild River

David Longdon’s “Wild River” to be Reissued

On By Bryan MoreyIn progressive rockLeave a comment

Hot on the heels of the release of Big Big Train’s Igenious Devices, the band has announced the upcoming remaster and reissue of the late David Longdon’s first solo album, “Wild River,” complete with new artwork.

More from the band:

‘Wild River’, the first solo album from David Longdon has been re-mixed, re-mastered and expanded and will be released on 20th  October.  It is preceded by a single ‘Always’, which is available now.

‘Wild River’ was originally self-released in 2004 and at that time only a minimal quantity of CDs were produced.  Whilst it was briefly available via the Big Big Train website, it has long been out of print. David had always intended to remix and repackage it.  However, his sudden death in November 2021 meant that his plan never came to fruition.  In a final act of remembrance by his long-time colleague Rob Aubrey, Big Big Train’s engineer since 1994, David’s wishes have now been fulfilled.  The album packaging has also been re-designed by Longdon’s friend and collaborator Steve Vantsis.

Sarah Ewing, David’s partner,  recalls why he was so keen to revisit ‘Wild River’. “David was really proud of those songs,” she says. “He produced and engineered the album himself, but always felt that the recording, the production and the mix never quite met his expectations. Over the years he became much more skilled at his craft, and had he been alive now, he would have been able to deliver the album the way he always wanted it to be. He’d also always wanted to improve the cover art, but at the time he’d spent all his money on the recording and mixing.”

Wild River’ represented a transitional period for David, both artistically and emotionally. His father, Eric, had passed away in 1994, he had been through a divorce, and he’d auditioned to be the lead singer of Genesis following the departure of Phil Collins. However, after a protracted audition-cum-rehearsal process, he was immensely disappointed to lose out on the role. Which, with hindsight, was a blessing in disguise.

Around this time, XTC guitarist Dave Gregory was playing a session where he first met David. Between XTC projects, Gregory had been recording a version of the Genesis epic ‘Supper’s Ready’ and David, a big XTC fan, offered to sing on it, adding, “I really need to do this.” Gregory was astonished at how quickly David recorded the vocal parts: “Soup to nuts in an afternoon and an evening.” Rather than accepting payment for the session, David invited Gregory to play guitar and Mellotron on the work-in-progress ‘Wild River’. Gregory recalls, “The Genesis experience galvanised him. He was saying, ‘Look, this is what I can do. And I’m gonna f*cking show you’. That was a huge motivation for him. He felt rejected, so had to work a lot harder.”

Big Big Train’s sound engineer and David’s friend Rob Aubrey was asked to remix the album earlier this year. “It still fills me with sadness that he’s gone, but ‘Wild River’ needed to be made available again as it is such a strong album.” The last word on ‘Wild River’ goes to Sarah: “I don’t think it sounds like an album that’s 20 years old; it sounds very immediate and contemporary and that speaks of David’s talent,” says Ewing. “It’s hard for me to be objective, but I hear the younger David and in that regard it’s a beautiful time capsule.”

Preorder (UK/Europe): https://burningshed.com/store/english-electric-recordings
Preorder (North America): https://thebandwagonusa.com/collections/david-longdon

But Is It Good? The Dreaded Year’s End List

On By Craig BreadenIn Uncategorized7 Comments

Years ago, I had something of an obsession with the movie Jimi Hendrix, which was made shortly after his death, and which along with Bob Dylan’s Don’t Look Back got heavy rotation in the VCR (I had ‘em back to back on a fuzzed out VHS cassette).  Once, after watching it and glowing about it and Hendrix to my girlfriend at the time, she asked me, with a sly smile, “But was he good?”

It was a bizarre and funny question, a great question.  Because of course my first reaction, most people’s first reaction, to that question regarding Hendrix, would be, “Of course he was !#$*&^!! good!  You can’t get more good.  None.  None more good.”

But, she was testing me in a good way.  What she was asking, really, was did all that talent create something worthwhile? Shouldn’t received wisdom about art be less immutable than it often is? And suggesting, too, that even established (and dead) rock gods need new evaluation, continued consideration. This is why I think year’s best lists are something of a conceit and are really part of the pop world.  In reflecting on my favorite records of the year, I realize: there are no “new” artists in my brief list; only two of the albums were released this year; and, one of the albums is actually over 30 years old.  But ah well, nobody ever accused me of being at the cutting edge of pop.  I’m always just catching up.  These are the records that were new to me in 2012, would be of some relevance to the prog listener, and which answered in the affirmative the question, “But is it good?”

GaborSzaboIn Stockholm by Gabor Szabo (1978) – A jazz guitar master whose work with Chico Hamilton in the early 1960s landed him a solo career on the venerable Impulse! label, Szabo was at once an emblem of swingin’ 60s lounge pop and serious jazz improviser.  His Eastern European gypsy roots are all over his records, which typically capture Szabo working out a handful of originals against a backdrop of covers (these can veer towards the cheesy, but his cover of Donovan’s “Three Kingfishers” is stunning, and his interpretation of Sonny and Cher’s “Bang Bang” (with vocal!) absolutely without peer.  His 60s work is topped by “Gypsy Queen,” which a lot of us already know as the tail end/outro of Santana’s cover of “Black Magic Woman.”  Carlos loved his Gabor.  But instrumental jazz pop had a short shelf life, and the 70s saw the hits wane.  Szabo went back to Europe to record, and the album In Stockholm compiles two sessions, one recorded in 1972 and one in 1978, with Janne Schaffer (best known as Abba’s guitarist!) joining Szabo on guitar.  This is pure jam music, with rock and jazz getting equal voicings.  Bass and drums create droning, searching backgrounds on extended versions of Szabo classics like “Mizrab” and “24 Carat.”  The only distraction on the set is a nod to Szabo’s lounge-pop leanings, with the overripe chestnut “People” probably getting the best treatment it’s ever gotten but, come on, it’s “People who need people” and I personally don’t need it.  The rest of the double album more than makes up for this pale first track though.  This is first-rate stuff — really mindblowing.

BenAllisonThink Free by Ben Allison (2009) – I love Ben Allison’s work.  He’s one of the few modern jazz composers I keep up with, and his records always have something to say.  Think Free is kind of an amalgam of older and new compositions, with “Green Al” and “Peace Pipe” getting fresh makeovers with the addition of guitar by Steve Cardenas, who’s been working with Allison the last few years.  This is melody-driven jazz that never strays into smooth territory; if anything, it verges on rock (although not as much Allison’s wonderful Cowboy Justice from 2006).  The recording is organic, earthy, with Jenny Scheinman’s violin contributing an almost rustic feel to some of the tracks.  I caught up with Think Free late and since then Allison’s released Action Refraction as well, which is also great, but the nice thing about Think Free is that I think it stands as a great introduction to his work in general.

LOVE FC LThe Forever Changes Concert by Arthur Lee & Love (2003) – I may be preaching to the choir, I know, but if there is one rock album from the psychedelic era that has stood the test of time it is Love’s Forever Changes (1967).  A sonically bright, lyrically dark masterpiece, Forever Changes combined rock with smooth jazz, Spanish classical music, and garage punk, forging what is in my opinion the first American progressive rock record.  Arthur Lee, the cracked master behind Love, refused to tour outside of California, and never capitalized on the potential of Forever Changes or its two predecessors (both wonderful in their own way, and classics as well).  Jack Holzman, head of Elektra Records, has called Lee one of the few musical geniuses he ever met and signed (these are big, big words), but Arthur Lee could never translate that genius into success.  Drug problems, jail time, on-again off-again performances through the 70s, 80s, and 90s did nothing to help his legacy.  Then came word that he was gigging regularly with Baby Lemonade, a West Coast psych revival band who took their name from a song by another 60s casualty, Syd Barrett.  And in 2003, this band, with Lee fronting, performed the entirety of Forever Changes in London, a performance not only beautifully executed but also wonderfully recorded.  In fine vocal shape, Lee delivers on the promise of what Forever Changes could have been for him had he pursued it with such ferocity 35 years earlier.  That he got this down before he died is a gift to us all.  I’m embarrassed to say that although I’ve long been a fan of Forever Changes (easily in my top 5 of all time), I hadn’t heard this concert until this year.  So do yourself a favor….

CelebrationDayCelebration Day by Led Zeppelin (2012) – Like the Forever Changes Concert, Celebration Day captures Led Zeppelin performing one show, the Ahmet Ertegun tribute in 2007.  Of course, this Zep isn’t the Zep of yore, as John Bonham’s son Jason is behind the drums, but Jason Bonham has long been the replacement of choice for his legendary father.  The wonderful thing about live Led Zeppelin is that they are like they are on their records but more so.  Make sense? Jimmy Page and Robert Plant always tend, intentionally, towards the unpredictable, even messy — and make no mistake, this is an Art — and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  It works here.  Celebration Day finds Plant, Page, and John Paul Jones in fine trim.  Robert Plant, working the lower register, has really never sounded better, and Page is, well, Page.  He is a master of infusing the big hard rock riff with soul, wit, and the hammer of the gods.  John Paul Jones, an absolute anchor, is in a way the real puppet master of this band.  He and Bonham tie down the dirigible that is Page/Plant.  This was one show, one take, with songs that speak to fans who wore out the deep cuts:  “In My Time of Dying” (really??? Yippee!!), “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” “For Your Life”….  Although the band has been well-documented now regarding its live performances during its heyday, this is the best live Zeppelin I’ve heard.

david_sylvian_robert_fripp_damage_reissueDamage by David Sylivian & Robert Fripp (2002) – A fellow Progarchist turned me onto this record and I was immediately blown away.  Somewhat familiar with Sylvian’s work, and holding Fripp in high esteem for his adventurousness, my first reaction to hearing song’s like “God’s Monkey” and “Brightness Falls” was an affirmation that artists like Fripp and Sylvian do better working in pairs than strictly solo.  This live set, recorded during their 1993 tour, draws songs primarily from an LP they made together, The First Day.  Fripps poetics on guitar and “Frippertronics” are matched by Sylvian’s words and voice, and backed by Trey Gunn on stick (a sort of bass with a cazillion strings), drummer Pat Mastelatto, and guitarist Michael Brook, there is a confidence in delivery that comes from two artists well into the second, third, fourth phases of their careers.  The sound is hard, funky, emotive, the sound of Fripp and Sylvian unmistakable.  The set misses “Jean the Birdman,” which they did perform on the tour but is not included here.  Otherwise this is a gem, and I’m probably going to spend 2013 tracking down more on Sylvian.

StormCorrosionStorm Corrosion by Storm Corrosion (2012) – I reviewed Storm Corrosion on Progarchy this fall so won’t go into it in great detail, but I find it a marvelous collaboration.  Like Fripp and Sylvian, Mikael Akerfeldt and Steven Wilson seem to do better working in collaboration rather than as heading groups or as strictly solo.  Perhaps it’s the balance.  In any case, this is a rich and wonderful album I look forward to getting even more out of in the next year.

ReturningJesusReturning Jesus by No-Man (2001) – In preparing for my Storm Corrosion review, I came across No-Man, which I had never heard before.  A collaboration of Steven Wilson (instruments) and Tim Bowness (vocal), No-Man has made a lot more records than I’m comfortable thinking about because I’ve had my head in the sand this entire time.  On the other hand, there appears to be much to discover.  Returning Jesus is a great starting point.  This is slow, crooning stuff, and is much more in the vein of David Sylvian/Bryan Ferry British vocal music.  Wilson is restrained, and there is service to the song lyric here that isn’t present in all his music.  Romantic, rainy-day music, this could also be comfortable next to Johnny Hartman’s early 60s recordings.  Really, really prime.

Wild riverWild River by David Longdon (2004) – I reviewed David Longdon’s Wild River on Progarchy and really would like to give it another thumbs up.  Wonderful acoustic instrumentation and production accompany David’s supple vocal, on a recording that goes fairly effortlessly from British soul ala Seal to more rustic excursions reminiscent of Ronnie Lane.  I’ll be listening to this record a lot in 2013.

That about wraps it up.  I could say that in 2013 I’ll make more of an effort to listen to new releases, but that would be a cheap promise I wouldn’t have much interest in keeping.  I’d much rather pick and choose records I haven’t heard yet, and listen because they’re good.

Happy new year!

Craig Breaden, December 29, 2013

David Longdon’s Wild River

On By Craig BreadenIn Uncategorized4 Comments

David Longdon, Wild River (2004)

Those of us who grew up in the era of 70s rock remember a time when American FM stations played everything under the sun, and didn’t bother too much with categories, straight-ahead, punk, progressive, or otherwise.  There wasn’t really a point, because whether it was Buddy Holly one moment or Yes the next, it just all kind of got lumped together as rock — a young art, then, with lots of potential.  I think this achieved a certain illumination in those of us tuned in, to the potential of finding complex worlds even in the simplest of songs, and fresh air in a 12-minute time-changing epic.  There’s a lot of discussion on Progarchy, veiled and explicit, about what prog is.  This is as it should be, because there are so many reasons for why music achieves progressiveness.  It can be a splatter-art dionysian revelry or a heavily-mannered architecture, but it is the intention that is perhaps similar in the various executions of the art, and why, as I mentioned in another review, prog is riskier, more failure-prone, than, say, old time music or country blues or punk.  It is duty-bound to ‘prog’-ress.

I believe one of the ironies of the story of progressive rock is its oft-pointed-to golden period, roughly the early- and mid-70s, when the storied and hairy pioneers of the genre rolled in semi-trucks over the land, painting broad swaths of sidelong vinyl canvas with twiddly squonks and noodly solos, periodically emerging with a real gem that actually sold respectable numbers of triple gatefolds.  Genesis, King Crimson, Yes, Supertramp, Rush, Barclay James Harvest, those semi-truckers ELP, and the hosts of second stringers who got enough traction with either the freakout crowd (Hawkwind, Gong) or the Middle Earthers (Uriah Heep, Gentle Giant) to keep working bands out on the road for decades longer than anyone would imagine.  Then, chapter two, punk raises its head, and the proggers flee their patch bays for the comfort of (often very good, and often quite proggishly weird) new wave pop, digestible without having to get up for a pee mid-song.  Yup.  For every Foxtrot there are thousands of copies of Abacab, for every Close to the Edge there are bins-full of 90125.  Shall I enumerate the ratios for Rush and Supertramp, too, to this crowd? I think not.  You hear me.  This eventuality was not a bad thing — the proggers were striving to keep their muse alive in an era of undeniably important cultural change — and I think it by and large says a lot about the survival instincts and musicianship of the first-stringers.  Yes, I will always wish Rush had another “Xanadu” in them, but am also glad they figured out how to edit.  Now to the irony:  the prog “revival” tends to focus on the lengthy suites favored by the hairy period of prog, rather than the pop songcraft that came with short back and sides.

David Longdon’s record Wild River fits into the song-driven, streamlined version of progressive rock circa 1980.  Not to say it’s retrograde, but rather that it is essentially a pop record with a prog pedigree.  Longdon, who joined Big Big Train as vocalist in 2009, has a vocal timbre very close to Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel, and in fact worked with Genesis as a possible replacement for Collins in the early aughts.  He did better finding Big Big Train, I think, and Genesis probably did worse in not choosing him.  In the interim, Longdon produced 2004’s Wild River, a lovely collection of succinct tunes that I find expressive and joyful, light (as in luminous), and full of the twists and turns that should keep close listeners tuned in.

“Always” opens the record with a briskly fingerpicked guitar, bass, and drums, and a nice Hammond organ.  Longdon’s vocal is fluid, jazzier than his closest comparisons Gabriel/Collins, and the song has “hit” written all over it.  It is like Seal’s best work, and is also reminiscent of that period in the early 90s when the pendulum was swinging from both grunge and synth pop to a more organic sound championed by producers like T. Bone Burnett.  The balance of the record lives up to these set expectations, with an earthy, upbeat acoustic approach brightening the songs.  The sex romp of “Honey Trap” is fun, nice and hooky, darkened by the mixed emotions of the narrator.  “Mandy” is where the mandolin kicks in (Mandy/mandolin?), but there is no forced quaint-ization because of it; flanked by organ, drums, and electric guitar, with a ska section in the chorus, it actually works. That said, a mandolin and an English singer always makes me think of the venerable and much-missed Ronnie Lane, who knew himself how to work these elements, and who I could see singing the hell out of this song.  Thankfully, Longdon does this himself, doing justice to a tune about, as far as I can tell, the politics of relationships (nothing new, but effectively and hazily wrought).  Here’s the thing: I’m one of those listeners who discerns the lyrics last — I’m just much more interested in how a song’s layers and textures fit together.  I listened to this song about five times and until I wrote this review I didn’t care what the lyrics were about, it’s just a great tune, where the vocal is another instrument.  Which is why I knew I was going to like this record.  It works as a musical piece first, and the lyrics work as lyrics should, a combination of poetry, narrative, and tune.  It’s a master working who can take a line like “You decide, my feet are on the ground,” and shape it to a melodic hook.  “About Time” adds strings and a creeping dissonance, again with a short ska section in the chorus (and again effectively done — this is not a worn device).  While comparisons fall short, I see a certain Nick Drake angle working here, with Bryan Ferry looking on.  The Englishness, in other words, is more than apparent, but that’s what this music is, and it works.  “Vertigo” boasts the line, “Vertigo, look out below, all my surroundings are spinning around, must be the masochist in me that wants another chance.”  I find this compelling rather than precious, and the arrangement is so variegated that I’m shaking my head:  this is a pop tune.  Broadway should be knocking at Longdon’s door, but he’s better than that, I think.  His are not vocal gymnastics for the sake of impressive technique.  He serves his songs.  And that’s perhaps what makes this album transcend.  To reference Bryan Ferry again, Longdon has the similar ability to create a soundscape that centers on his vocal but doesn’t depend on it solely.  The mid-paced title track sets the tone for the record and is its literal centrepiece.  “Life is a wild river, not a low cut stream, and I need to believe, I need to hang on, to hold on to someone,” Longdon sings, his British R&B working a ground often neglected since the death of Dusty Springfield.  It works as the album’s middle piece, and the followup track, “Loving and Giving,” is reflective, slowing the pace further.  But with “In Essence” the valley is crossed, the ground rises and the pace picks back up.  This is album crafting, and “This House” rocks out, harmonica hitting a soul note with a bullet mic vocal treatment and dirty guitar giving the lie to wallowing in one’s self-pity.  “This house doesn’t feel like a home anymore” might read like a pop-psych platitude, but Longdon sings it like the universal sentiment it can be, tapping into a commonality we can all relate to.  “Joely” goes to guitar and string quartet, with a hoedown fiddle, profiling what I imagine is a young woman whose life has gotten away from her:  “Joely, the world’s your oyster, Take a knife, open the shell, and sever the creature.” How can this sound so good? But it does. Progress. And then the spoken poem at the end….  Poetry. Narrative. Tune.  “Falling Down” follows, with a rubbery bass and a Gabriel-esque delivery, balances holding on to the past with working towards the future.  This may be the mate to “Wild River,” urging onward in the face of history — “I can’t say I’m not dissapointed,” Longdon sings, and I don’t know about you, but I can relate to this some of the time — dashed expectations happen, they don’t have to define our lives, but they’re there.  The final track, “On to the Headland,” is an optimistic last salvo, solo guitar and voice.  Lighters up, please.  We’re moving forward, damn the torpedoes.

I really like this record and I’ll be presumptuous and say you should too.  But be prepared to only find it on Big Big Train’s site.  Not on iTunes, not at Amazon, not at Emusic.  What the ?#@>????  There is no reason on earth this shouldn’t be out there.  N.B. David Longdon and BBT:  give it up, proggers. Great records deserve a listen.

[David’s album, Wild River, can be ordered here.]