Something unusual — unprecedented, in fact — just happened with the database of my music collection: the random number generator selected my vinyl gatefold copy of Duke by Genesis. I owned that album in 1980, but I'm pretty sure I got rid of it not long after (probably to finance the purchase of some Rainbow album, also disposed of within 18 months). I didn't compile the database until 2001 or 2002, so maybe the original had in fact survived, or I'd bought a bargain second-hand copy? If so, I can't find it now, so the database entry remains unexplained. I listened to the album anyway on We7: aside from the drumming on a couple of tracks, it was a pretty grim experience.
Normal service continues with an album from someone of the same generation — but beware of labelling him "prog".
An extract from the DGM Live news page:
At The End Of Time Giveaway
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Sun., Jul 15, 2007
We have a copy of the aforementioned album to giveaway to a lucky DGMLive visitor. All you have to do is to send an email to [email protected] with Churchscapes in the subject header and your name and postal address in the message. The winner will be picked at random and announced on Saturday 21st July.
I was that lucky winner! And very happy I was too, a compensation for the annoyance I felt with myself for having missed Robert Fripp's performance at St Paul's Cathedral in 2006, when I lived only 15 minutes walk away.
I put this CD on in the car when driving back from my parents on Tuesday. As I set off, there were what Fripp would call skies of wonder to the west over Oxfordshire. I was driving very gently, a steady 65 mph the whole way until London, as for the first time it was just me and The Boy in the car. He fell asleep within the first couple of minutes.
There's a very wide dynamic range on the tracks. I'm sure this worked well in the churches where they were recorded. It's not so good when competing with the noise of an engine on the M40, and large parts of the Evensong codas (especially Viljandi) were rendered more or less inaudible. Yet it seemed wrong to mess with the volume control to compensate for this, so I left it.
It's devotional music. "Music is silence, singing. Music is the architecture of silence. Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence", writes Fripp. Combined with the steady movement of landscape around me, there were a couple of times when I had to catch myself from slipping out of my body. Out-of-body experiences were not what I had in mind at 65 mph with a child in the back.
While Van could never stick with one spiritual teacher for more than a year or two, Fripp is the opposite, channelling J.G. Bennett (and, through him, Gurdjieff) for three and a half decades. Whoops, just found myself using the CD jewel case to squash an insect suspected of having bloodsucking intentions — how inappropriate.
Anyway, better listened to in the peace and quiet of home. I remember Lucy remarking how she liked it when I first received this kind gift.
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Dismal, yeah, but Duke's Travels/Duke's End - man! What great energy that was/is!
Posted by: P. Collins | 05 September 2009 at 09:36 AM