Our most recent poll asked which album you are most looking forward to, from a list of forthcoming releases expected soon. I left the poll up for a while and it's amassed the most votes of any of the polls to date (239 votes).
After about 70 votes, Steve Hackett's new album (on which Squire guests) was ahead, followed by Wakeman's Henry VIII - Live (which has now actually been released) and Yoso. The Steve Howe vote was split three ways, but the votes added up to be comparable to these other releases. However, by the time of the final tally, there had been a substantial surge for these Howe albums.
Final results:
1. Steve Howe Trio live album: 59 (25%)
2. Steve Hackett: Out of the Tunnel's Mouth (w/ Squire): 46 (19%)
3. Steve Howe: Motif, Vol. 2: 42 (18%)
4. Steve Howe: Homebrew 4: 38 (16%)
5. Yoso: Yoso (w/ Kaye, Sherwood): 23 (10%)
6. Rick Wakeman: The Six Wives Of Henry VIII - Live At Hampton Court Palace [Eagle Rock release]: 19 (8%)
7. iCon: Urban Psalm (w/ Downes): 5 (2%)
8. Robbie Williams: Reality Killed the Video Star (w/ Horn): 3 (1%)
9. Billy Sherwood: Xmas songs tribute album (w/ Downes): 2 (1%)
10. Other answer: 2 (1%)
11. Kid Harpoon: Once (w/ Horn): 0 (0%)
So, that's a whopping 59% for Howe!
Note that this was the second release for Henry VIII - Live after the Concert Live edition earlier this year, which itself won the best release of the first half of 2009 poll. That prior release may have suppressed its performance here.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Guest appearance poll
Interest on the Where Are They Now website and discussion online is, unsurprisingly, on the band mostly, and then on solo albums. But I also cover guest appearances by band members and I wondered how much interest you, my readers, had in them. So the previous poll asked, "Think about your favourite Yes member. Were he to be making a guest appearance on an album, would you...?" There were 72 votes.
Definitely buy it: 13 votes
Probably buy it: 12 votes
Be interested, but it would depend on how much of an appearance he made: 17 votes
Be interested, but it would depend on other factors, like what I thought of the act, what reviews said etc.: 21 votes
Would take a look at a news item, but probably wouldn't make any difference: 4 votes
Not interested at all: 2 votes
Other: 3 votes
So, that's 92% who would at least consider getting such an album. OK then, coverage will continue.
Definitely buy it: 13 votes
Probably buy it: 12 votes
Be interested, but it would depend on how much of an appearance he made: 17 votes
Be interested, but it would depend on other factors, like what I thought of the act, what reviews said etc.: 21 votes
Would take a look at a news item, but probably wouldn't make any difference: 4 votes
Not interested at all: 2 votes
Other: 3 votes
So, that's 92% who would at least consider getting such an album. OK then, coverage will continue.
Friday, 25 September 2009
Money
I'm back from an enjoyable holiday in Italy, doing romantic things like sitting in a boat going around Venice... trying to read a newspaper over someone's shoulder after my partner has pointed out an article about Yes's upcoming Italian shows... (Not knowing Italian, I couldn't decipher much, but they got Benoît David's name the wrong way around!)
Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was the latest Rick Wakeman Communication Centre newsletter. It makes for interesting reading, including some damning criticism of the current Yes line-up. Wakeman also talks about plans for future live spectaculars after 6 Wives at Hampton Court, and it's here he says some revealing things about money.
To some extent, the commercial success of music is irrelevant to the listener. If I enjoy a piece of music, I enjoy a piece of music, regardless of whether only 10 or 10 million others share my view. Some of my favourite albums have sold in tiny numbers (e.g. Biota's Object Holder or Andrew Booker's Ahead) and I've seen great live music with single-figure audiences. However, generally speaking, some degree of commercial success is needed to fund musical projects. If too few people are buying, projects simply don't happen, and many interesting ideas have foundered through lack of investment (e.g. the proposed Steve Howe/Annie Haslam album and the proposed Rick Wakeman/Keith Emerson live shows).
And this isn't just about the musicians making a decent wage. Musical acts need a throughput of money, where the income from the last covers the up-front costs of the next. Or, as Wakeman explains in his case:
"Negotiations are quite far advanced as to putting on Journey to the Centre of the Earth and possibly Return to the Centre of the Earth as well at the O2 next May [2010].
"To be brutally honest, a lot will depend on how well the DVD and CD of Hampton Court does as income from this would have to go straight into the production of the potential O2 show and also would hopefully help to attract investors and sponsors"
It's this cycle of money, one project paying for the next, that is often forgotten by fans.
PS: Watched 5 minutes of music television in Italy, and saw two videos for songs produced by Trevor Horn (from forthcoming albums by Robbie Williams and Kid Harpoon). He's one Yes alumnus with few money worries, I'd guess.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was the latest Rick Wakeman Communication Centre newsletter. It makes for interesting reading, including some damning criticism of the current Yes line-up. Wakeman also talks about plans for future live spectaculars after 6 Wives at Hampton Court, and it's here he says some revealing things about money.
To some extent, the commercial success of music is irrelevant to the listener. If I enjoy a piece of music, I enjoy a piece of music, regardless of whether only 10 or 10 million others share my view. Some of my favourite albums have sold in tiny numbers (e.g. Biota's Object Holder or Andrew Booker's Ahead) and I've seen great live music with single-figure audiences. However, generally speaking, some degree of commercial success is needed to fund musical projects. If too few people are buying, projects simply don't happen, and many interesting ideas have foundered through lack of investment (e.g. the proposed Steve Howe/Annie Haslam album and the proposed Rick Wakeman/Keith Emerson live shows).
And this isn't just about the musicians making a decent wage. Musical acts need a throughput of money, where the income from the last covers the up-front costs of the next. Or, as Wakeman explains in his case:
"Negotiations are quite far advanced as to putting on Journey to the Centre of the Earth and possibly Return to the Centre of the Earth as well at the O2 next May [2010].
"To be brutally honest, a lot will depend on how well the DVD and CD of Hampton Court does as income from this would have to go straight into the production of the potential O2 show and also would hopefully help to attract investors and sponsors"
It's this cycle of money, one project paying for the next, that is often forgotten by fans.
PS: Watched 5 minutes of music television in Italy, and saw two videos for songs produced by Trevor Horn (from forthcoming albums by Robbie Williams and Kid Harpoon). He's one Yes alumnus with few money worries, I'd guess.
Sunday, 13 September 2009
Virgil & models
So Virgil Howe, Steve's son, the one who did Yes Remixes, he's married to Jen Dawson, a model who's worked for lingerie company Agent Provocateur. And last year, he made an album with Mareva Galenter, former Miss Tahiti and Miss France. How does he do it? (You may want SafeSearch "on" before doing a Google image search on either of those names. Or you may not!)
By the way, I'm away on holiday in a few days so there won't be any updates to the Where Are They Now? site then for about a week. But keep sending me news for when I get back, and you can also leave comments here on the blog!
By the way, I'm away on holiday in a few days so there won't be any updates to the Where Are They Now? site then for about a week. But keep sending me news for when I get back, and you can also leave comments here on the blog!
Monday, 31 August 2009
Asia set list poll
Asia have just played their last show of the year, but there are plans for new studio and live work in 2010. Since their reunion, touring has focused on their debut album, understandable given its their best-selling and most favourably received. The band have made a few changes to the set list along the way, notably introducing a few tracks from new album Phoenix, but it's still largely the same show. Come 2010, will that still work or do they need to vary the set list?
That was the question that motivated the latest WATN poll, what would you most like Asia to play live on their next tour? 80 of you voted. First off, 11 of you admitted to no interest in Asia (I presume others uninterested in the band didn't vote at all!).
So, out of the remaining 69... overwhelmingly (51%), you want new material to be played live, with 21 wanting more from Phoenix and 14 wanting the band to play material from their next album. The decision to play "legacy" material, songs from their previous bands, has gone down well and 15 (22%) of you want more.
Asia have something like 11.5 studio albums to their name, but the original line-up are only together on three of those, Asia, Alpha and Phoenix, and they've made clear they're not huge fans of Alpha. Even settling for just three of them together only adds Astra, half of Then & Now and bits of Aqua. This line-up has more band members in common with Drama or Wetton/Downes' iCon than it does with the many years John Payne was in the band. So, how should this Asia handle their back catalogue?
17% of you want later Wetton-era material played. That's 5 saying more from Alpha and 7, more from after Howe left the band (Astra, Then & Now). Just 3 (4%) wanted Payne-era material (and no-one selected the option saying they had no interest in this line-up and preferred the continuing Asia Featuring John Payne).
That leaves another 3 wanting the band to stick to the focus on Asia. And there was 1 vote for iCon material.
So, Asia, if you're listening, the people who read the Where Are They Now? site, who may be a bit more hardcore than much of the paying audience, but anyway... they'd like lots more new material live in 2010, but chuck in a few songs from Alpha, Astra and Then & Now too. (Me, I'd love "Rock and Roll Dream" and "Days Like These".)
The next poll is rather different. I report on the news page about all these guest appearances the Yes guys make, but does anyone care? Me, I'm liable to pick up all sorts of random stuff because Bill Bruford played on a track, or Trevor Horn produced it, but what about you?
That was the question that motivated the latest WATN poll, what would you most like Asia to play live on their next tour? 80 of you voted. First off, 11 of you admitted to no interest in Asia (I presume others uninterested in the band didn't vote at all!).
So, out of the remaining 69... overwhelmingly (51%), you want new material to be played live, with 21 wanting more from Phoenix and 14 wanting the band to play material from their next album. The decision to play "legacy" material, songs from their previous bands, has gone down well and 15 (22%) of you want more.
Asia have something like 11.5 studio albums to their name, but the original line-up are only together on three of those, Asia, Alpha and Phoenix, and they've made clear they're not huge fans of Alpha. Even settling for just three of them together only adds Astra, half of Then & Now and bits of Aqua. This line-up has more band members in common with Drama or Wetton/Downes' iCon than it does with the many years John Payne was in the band. So, how should this Asia handle their back catalogue?
17% of you want later Wetton-era material played. That's 5 saying more from Alpha and 7, more from after Howe left the band (Astra, Then & Now). Just 3 (4%) wanted Payne-era material (and no-one selected the option saying they had no interest in this line-up and preferred the continuing Asia Featuring John Payne).
That leaves another 3 wanting the band to stick to the focus on Asia. And there was 1 vote for iCon material.
So, Asia, if you're listening, the people who read the Where Are They Now? site, who may be a bit more hardcore than much of the paying audience, but anyway... they'd like lots more new material live in 2010, but chuck in a few songs from Alpha, Astra and Then & Now too. (Me, I'd love "Rock and Roll Dream" and "Days Like These".)
The next poll is rather different. I report on the news page about all these guest appearances the Yes guys make, but does anyone care? Me, I'm liable to pick up all sorts of random stuff because Bill Bruford played on a track, or Trevor Horn produced it, but what about you?
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Led Box: The Ultimate Tribute to Led Zeppelin
Billy Sherwood has been involved with a large number of tribute albums over the years, and has been honest that some of these were to pay the bills. Along the way, he's recruited an extensive set of guest appearances including multiple Yes men. Most recent was Abbey Road: A Tribute to the Beatles, and before that, the subject of today's blog, Led Box: The Ultimate Tribute to Led Zeppelin. 10 tracks here are produced by Sherwood, with other tracks by Bob Kulick and, on the US release, some recycled from an earlier tribute album.
The challenge for any tribute album is the inevitable comparison with the original work. When covering bands like Zeppelin or The Beatles, you not only have the originals but umpteen previous cover versions with which to compete. One approach is to stick close to the original form, but it can be hard to play the song better than the familiar original. At the other end of a spectrum, one can turn in a radical re-interpretation of the piece.
With much of Led Box, as with earlier Sherwood projects like Back Against the Wall (a tribute to Floyd's The Wall), Sherwood and guests mostly stick to faithful versions. I think that's a mistake. I like some tribute albums that are fairly close to the originals, like the Magna Carta Rush tribute Working Man, but by and large I prefer it when artists take songs in different directions. For example, Tales from Yesterday (Magna Carta's Yes tribute) has some strong, faithful covers, like Steve Howe and Annie Haslam doing "Turn of the Century", or Kevin Gilbert, Mike Keneally et al. doing "Siberian Khatru" (although the latter succeeds in part because of a fantastic twist in the middle). But many of the best tracks are radical reinterpretations ("Don't Kill the Whale", "Release, Release"). I'd recommend as a good model Encores Legends and Paradox, the 1999 Magna Carta tribute to ELP. (Lousy title, I know, but great album.) It's half arranged by Robert Berry and half by Trent Gardner, both working with various guests including Igor Khoroshev, Peter Banks, Geoff Downes, John Wetton, Pat Mastelotto and half of Dream Theater. Here is a project that really lets its guest musicians loose. Khoroshev and Mastelotto in particular shine. Similarly, in the realm of Led Zeppelin tributes I'd recommend Kashmir, the orchestral Zeppelin project by Jaz Coleman with Martin "Youth" Glover producing. Very different sound to Zeppelin, yet still distinctively Zeppelin. Perhaps it's that balance that's the secret: similar enough to evoke the original, different enough to stand on its own.
So that's a rather long preamble, but now back to Led Box. For me, the stand out track is "Black Dog" by Keith Emerson, with Sherwood and Alan White in support, and tribute band singer Michael White (no relation) on vocals. Given you can pick the album up fairly cheap, I'm tempted to say it's worth it for "Black Dog" alone. That's because it's distinctively Keith Emerson and distinctively "Black Dog". It's not a radically different reading of the song, but it's full of Emerson's personality. Likewise, it's Rick Wakeman's "Nobody Home" on Back Against the Wall that I return to because it's distinctively Wakeman. What's the point of having, say, Dweezil Zappa play "Stairway to Heaven" on Led Box if it doesn't sound like him?
Leave aside my difference of opinion over how to approach a tribute album, and there's perhaps a more fundamental problem for me with the Sherwood-led tracks here: the lacklustre performances. It's the Bob Kulick-led numbers on Led Box that work better. There's a spirited "Houses of the Holy" from Pat Travers, for example. In comparison, we've got three quarters of CIRCA: doing "All My Love" and it just sounds lifeless. This is Zeppelin: it's big, powerful, growling music and I hear no verve in most of the Sherwood-led renditions. I know these people can play with passion and emotion, but I'm not hearing it on these tracks.
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
Cambridge Rock Festival
We went to Cambridge Rock Festival on Sunday 9th August. Plaudits should go to the organisers for a pleasant affair. "Pleasant" may seem an odd word for a rock festival, but these days, gatherings like these with an emphasis on classic or prog rock, are family affairs with all ages present. The location was good, the food pretty good, the toilets OK. I spent a while in the obligatory juggling space. What you want from a festival experience. Of course, we'd come for the acts, and three in particular: Karnataka, Focus and Asia.
Karnataka are a relatively recent prog band. On keyboards is Gonzalo Carrera, who also plays with Whimwise and dB-Infusion and may be known to Yes fans for working with Peter Banks. Unfortunately, Karnataka didn't get to play. Some never-entirely-explained problem saw the schedule for the main stage re-arranged to allow more setting-up time. While Simon McBride (3rd billing for the evening) got moved to a second stage, Karnataka (4th billing) were just dropped, through no fault of their own. I met the band who were still seemed shell-shocked by the experience. I hope to see them somewhere else soon.
No Karnataka left a long gap between up'n'coming prog band Touchstone and old favourites Focus on the main stage, so we bagged a sweet spot in front of the mixing desk and ate festival food. Despite all that extra setting up time, when they started, Focus were plagued by microphone/monitor problems, and a broken guitar string. Still, that didn't stop them or us having a good time.
Yes fans complain about a band with only three 'classic' members, but Focus is down to founder Thijs van Leer plus drummer, Pierre van der Linden, with two new members. Long gone is guitarist Jan Akkerman. The two new players are very competent and the two Focus fans I was with, my partner and her Mum, were happy enough to see van Leer. Perhaps because he's the other 'classic' member explains why van der Linden got three drums solos, which is about three too many.
As a band I don't know so well, I was happy for Focus to play their greatest hits with only a little new music, yet the next act I know so well that I don't want the greatest hits and would rather have new material. This is, of course, what bands have to deal with, an audience mix of some casual listeners and some hardcore fans.
That next act, headlining and closing, were Asia. Again, the extra setting-up time earlier seemed to no avail as they were over half an hour late, but a festival in a field out of town doesn't have to worry about a curfew so much and the band played their full allotted time.
Of course, Asia were coming off the back of 24 North American dates supporting Yes, and Steve "the hardest working man in rock" Howe was coming from 24 dates playing with both bands, but there was no sign of tiredness in their performance. The set, which was professionally recorded, concentrated on the debut album, although we got two Phoenix pieces and "Fanfare for the Common Man". I was sorry not to hear "In the Court of the Crimon King" and "Video Killed the Radio Star", which I thought would have gone down well with the festival crowd.
It was a good show, but it was a good show I've seen twice before and I was conscious that they will need to start varying the set more to keep audiences interested in 2010. See the poll on the Where Are They Now? front page for your thoughts on that.
Karnataka are a relatively recent prog band. On keyboards is Gonzalo Carrera, who also plays with Whimwise and dB-Infusion and may be known to Yes fans for working with Peter Banks. Unfortunately, Karnataka didn't get to play. Some never-entirely-explained problem saw the schedule for the main stage re-arranged to allow more setting-up time. While Simon McBride (3rd billing for the evening) got moved to a second stage, Karnataka (4th billing) were just dropped, through no fault of their own. I met the band who were still seemed shell-shocked by the experience. I hope to see them somewhere else soon.
No Karnataka left a long gap between up'n'coming prog band Touchstone and old favourites Focus on the main stage, so we bagged a sweet spot in front of the mixing desk and ate festival food. Despite all that extra setting up time, when they started, Focus were plagued by microphone/monitor problems, and a broken guitar string. Still, that didn't stop them or us having a good time.
Yes fans complain about a band with only three 'classic' members, but Focus is down to founder Thijs van Leer plus drummer, Pierre van der Linden, with two new members. Long gone is guitarist Jan Akkerman. The two new players are very competent and the two Focus fans I was with, my partner and her Mum, were happy enough to see van Leer. Perhaps because he's the other 'classic' member explains why van der Linden got three drums solos, which is about three too many.
As a band I don't know so well, I was happy for Focus to play their greatest hits with only a little new music, yet the next act I know so well that I don't want the greatest hits and would rather have new material. This is, of course, what bands have to deal with, an audience mix of some casual listeners and some hardcore fans.
That next act, headlining and closing, were Asia. Again, the extra setting-up time earlier seemed to no avail as they were over half an hour late, but a festival in a field out of town doesn't have to worry about a curfew so much and the band played their full allotted time.
Of course, Asia were coming off the back of 24 North American dates supporting Yes, and Steve "the hardest working man in rock" Howe was coming from 24 dates playing with both bands, but there was no sign of tiredness in their performance. The set, which was professionally recorded, concentrated on the debut album, although we got two Phoenix pieces and "Fanfare for the Common Man". I was sorry not to hear "In the Court of the Crimon King" and "Video Killed the Radio Star", which I thought would have gone down well with the festival crowd.
It was a good show, but it was a good show I've seen twice before and I was conscious that they will need to start varying the set more to keep audiences interested in 2010. See the poll on the Where Are They Now? front page for your thoughts on that.
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