Where Worlds Collide

I’ve finally got to listen to the long-awaited album by Odin Dragonfly, the acoustic side project of Mostly Autumn’s lead vocalist Heather Findlay and flautist/keyboard player Angela Gordon.

Back in February, I saw Odin Dragonfly live at Fibbers in York. I went knowing Heather and Angie from Mostly Autumn, but without having heard a note of their music as Odin Dragonfly, and not knowing quite what to expect. They won me over within the space of a couple of songs. I saw them again at the Mostly Autumn convention in March, after which I had several of their songs stuck in my head for weeks, notably “Magpie” and “Given Time”. There was something magical about their live performances.

Now they’ve successfully captured that magical sound in the recording studio.

This isn’t the sort of music I normally listen to. Definitely not ‘prog’, and not even rock, there’s not a Fender Stratocaster or Mellotron in sight. It’s 100% acoustic, with just guitar, piano, flute, penny whistle and two voices. But the result is something of stunning beauty. The signature sound is one of sublime vocal harmonies, with plenty of Angela Gordon’s flute, something which has been thin on the ground on recent Mostly Autumn releases. The piano and guitar accompaniment is understated but effective.

Eight of the twelve songs are originals, with the album rounded out with a couple of reworked Mostly Autumn tunes, and a pair of well-chosen covers, including their version of Jethro Tull’s “Witches Promise” with which they normally end their live shows.

Early favourites of mine are Angela Gordon’s piano-led “Given Time”, and Heather’s “Magpie” and “How I feel today”, both featuring wonderful interplay between Heather’s voice and Angela’s flute. Then there’s “Magnolia Half Moon”, a achingly sad breakup song that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on “Heart Full of Sky”, since it has quite a bit in common with “Half a World” both musically and lyrically. But this is one of those rare albums without any real filler, consistant from beginning to end.

You can order the album online from Odindragonfly.com

I’m listening to Odin Dragonfly’s album Offerings, which arrived in the post this morning. Yes, the music is as stunningly beautiful on record as it is live; I’ll post a full review when I’ve had the chance to give it a few more spins.

When it reached the final song, a cover of Stevie Nicks’ Forsaken Love, this email arrives in my inbox.

I suppose He Who Shall Not Be Named would call this a ‘Fellini Moment’.

A post in Harry’s Place suggests that concert ticket prices are being bumped up to recoup the money being lost because of falling CD sales due to downloading and filesharing.

It seems hard to imagine now that when the Rolling Stones demanded £25 a ticket for a Wembley concert in 1990, it caused eyebrows to be raised. If they did that now it could be considered practically a giveaway. Today with the Stones on stage you can expect to pay £150 for a seat at the back – and if you want to get right up close, you’ll need £350. £90 buys a ticket to see the Police, the best seats in Wembley went for £160 when Madonna performed, and £180 would get you into Robbie Williams’ Hong Kong concert. Elton John broke records in Las Vegas by charging $690 (£345).

I’m not convinced by this argument. I don’t think it’s meaningful for those of us that grew up going to gigs in the 70s and 80s to compare the prices we paid two or three decades ago with the prices we pay for the same acts now. What we’re seeing is 70s and 80s bands that now appeal to affluent fortysomethings rather than skint teenagers; the prices they’re charging reflect the target audience’s ability to pay. And these affluent fortysomethings with 2.4 kids probably don’t to more than a couple of gigs a year.

Newer acts or people in the cottage industry side of the business outside the commercial mainstream aren’t charging anything like those sorts of prices. I want to see more evidence that internet filesharing is responsible for high ticket prices; until I do I’ll be sceptical.

I’ve been to an awful lot of gigs this year; a few have been major established acts, like Deep Purple in June, and Journey back in March, and (cough) Bryan Adams last month, who did charge 30-40 quid for a ticket. But the majority have been lesser known bands, the likes of Porcupine Tree, Mostly Autumn, The Reasoning and Karnataka, charging far less, in some cases less than a tenner.

What I think is happening is there’s too much media hype directed at a relatively small number of bands; as a result everyone that takes their cues from the mainstream media all want to see the same overexposed bands, and the laws of supply and demand force the prices up.

I’ve been running a playtest discussion for the Kalyr RPG running for a while. While I’ve had some useful feedback from a few people, I could really do with opinions from a few more people

So I’ve posted the playtest drafts of the first four chapters online. These chapters focus on the Fudge-based game mechanics rather than the details of the setting. Much of this is going to end up as Open Content, so there’s not really that much to lose by making it public now. Format is HTML as exported from Open Office. I think this is a lot cleaner than the bloated mess you get if you do the same thing in MSWord.

• Chapter 1 - Introduction
• Chapter 2 - Character Generation
• Chapter 3 - Playing the Game
• Chapter 4 - Psionics

We’ll probably be shifting the playtest discussion from the existing YahooGroup to a forum on The Phoenyx in the the near future. In the meantime, give them a read, and let me know what you think.

Back when I was a lad, the blond German axeman Michael Schenker was one of my heroes. His fantastic playing on albums like UFO’s “Strangers in the Night” and MSG’s “Live at the Budokan” made him one of the greats. I only got to see him live once, as the headline act of the 1982 Reading Festival, but that was a pretty amazing show.

Sadly his career has suffered an awful lot of ups and downs. When on form, he can still show flashes of brilliance. But all too often his personal demons and well-documented drink problems get the better of him.

Now he appears to have hit rock bottom. This short clip from Rock and Blues Festival shows him totally out of it, a parody of his former self.

This was apparently posted to the official Scorpions forum by the mother of Michael’s children. I don’t have a direct link, but saw the post on another forum.

Michael is under a battle, wish more fans would pray . He gets like that when he can not cope. things on that tour are messed up and no proper management. Very sad.

More need to wish well and think positive GOD has a plan for Michael and will deliver him.

He will be back!, His gifts given to him are too great for GOD to let him go to waste. Michael’s testimony will be beyond what you and I will be able to give as we have not suffered in the ways Michael is suffering.

I am learning things are not what they seem to be.
Trust in GOD we Must.
0x
Mother of Essenz & Chinua Schenker .

Bad news for The Reasoning. They were booked as support tonight on their home turf in Cardiff, a major gig for them. But it was not to be. As posted by Matt Cohen on The Reasoning’s Forum, the tour came to a sorry end two nights before.

Hi everyone. Well…it seems like this really is the week for it!. We have just been informed that whilst playing at Stourbridge last night, Michael Schenker managed to fall off the stage and injure himself. As a result, he has apparently been flown back to Germany - and the rest of the tour has been cancelled. Obviously we have tried to retrieve this gig with the help of the promoter, but unfortunately with such little time to get things into place, we are sorry to say that the gig at The Point in Cardiff has now been pulled.

Let’s hope and pray that Michael gets the help he needs, and manages to bounce back yet again. His performance at the Rock and Blues festival has been compared with that of Tommy Bolin at Liverpool in 1976. Within a year of that, Bolin was dead. We don’t want that to happen to Schenker.

It says something about the priorities in my life this year in that I waited until Odin Dragonfly announced their tour dates before booking my holiday. In the end, with OD playing in London on the bank holiday weekend, and The Reasoning playing at The Borderline two weeks later, it’s worked out rather well, with one gig on the way out, and the other on the way back.

I’m going to Switzerland again, for the third year running, but this time I’m going the whole way by train rather than flying, breaking the journey in each direction (Luxembourg on the way out, Köln on the way back, with the return journey over old main line down the Rhine gorge). In Switzerland I’m splitting the 8 nights between Brig and Luzern, both places I’ve visited but never stayed. Should see plenty of action on the Gotthard and what’s left on the Lötchberg, and quite a bit of metre-gauge this time round on the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn out of Brig, and probably the Centovalli as well.

Hopefully I’ll get the chance to ride the steam railway over the Furka pass this time. This is the section of the old Furka Oberalp line bypassed by a new base tunnel built a few years back, restored and reopened as a steam railway, one of the very few preserved lines in the country. This line passes within sight of the Rhone glacier, and gave the famous “Glacier Express” it’s name.