This is a place that has fascinated me since I first read about it.
The Cutteslowe Walls location is out to the NE of the city, just off the A40 bypass.
There is an unassuming road junction, and where the 'T' of the junction is, two roads meet, and at one point, walls divided two estates: one rented and one privately owned houses.
A wall was erected for a while, separating the two types of housing.
Perhaps the best album of the year was a long form instrumental piece from the Pat Metheny Group.
Pat Metheny / acoustic, electric, slide, toy & synthesizer guitars, producer
- Lyle Mays / piano, keyboards, toy xylophone, co-producer - Cuong Vu / trumpet, toy whistle, vocals - Gregoire Maret / harmonica - Steve Rodby / acoustic & electric basses, toy violin, cello, co-producer - Antonio Sanchez / drums, toy xylophone
With: - Richard Bona / percussion, toy guitar, vocals - Dave Samuels / percussion
I went to see the concert as part of the tour for this album at the Hammersmith Odeon with my friend Simon. It was awesome. The Way Up was just the first half and then we had loads more classic tracks as well.
Here's a section, filmed in South Korea....
The album has competition from another album released that year.
There are some great tracks on the album. I've heard parts of this album played numerous times over the years since.
The song title is a univerbation of hoppa í polla (the -a in hoppa is not pronounced), which is Icelandic for "hopping into puddles", and the lyrics are mainly in Icelandic, with some nonsensical phrases, a "language" the band calls Vonlenska ("Hopelandic"). As with many of the band's songs, it was given a nickname in the early stages of writing. "Hoppípolla" was "The Money Song", as the band was certain they had written a song which would have commercial success.
2003 was important for music as this was the year that Apple launched the 3rd edition iPod - in white with a click wheel for navigation.
I still have mine and it still works. I have the charger and it's still got music on it.
By this time, the internet was providing opportunities to download tracks and iTunes had been around for a while. Streaming was still a way off.
Some of the downloads were illegal in that they didn't involve paying for the music. One of the locations online was Pirate Bay. This opened in 2003 too. This was a Peer to Peer torrent service. At this time, there was a lot of coverage.
The founders were charged with several offences linking to copyright. And yet now AI just steals the world's music....
I was able to listen to music that I could not afford to risk buying in case I didn't appreciate it, so probably ended up buying more music on CD and vinyl as I knew that I liked it...
Mike Oldfield released a single remix of the introduction to his classic album 'Tubular Bells' for a 2003 remix.
This track from this era has a similar vibe:
Rush released a live album recorded in Rio de Janeiro and also played a SARS benefit concert in Canada. Called SARStock it had a huge audience:
2002 saw the release of Vapor Trails by Rush. It was later re-released as a remastered album in 2013 which solved some of the album's muddy production first time round. It has some excellent tracks on it and I have the remastered version.
Ghost Rider was one of the stand out tracks for me. It is written about Neil Peart's own travels.
I did an assembly some years later about Mark Beaumont's first round the world cycle trip where he smashed the world record... but would later smash it again, circumnavigating the world in less than 80 days.
The band were not happy with the mixing and released a remixed version of the album in 2013.
Vapor Trails itself is an excellent track, along with Ceiling Unlimited - both refer to the sky and upper atmosphere... and the formation of Vapor Trails...
Earthshine - the opening track also refers to a geographical phenomenon which is outlined in the lyrics.
Bob Mould released the 'Modulate' album - a very different feel to previous albums, although he also worked with Richard Morel on a 'Blowout' album - I have all of them of course...
Most readers will be familiar with Band Aid and their charity song
There was also the American 'version'.
The Band Aid song was re-recorded a number of times, including one for preventing Ebola.
African musicians also made their own charity single for Ebola.
We currently have a worryingly large Ebola epidemic
I used to teach an 'A' level specification which had Ebola as one focus for a unit on diseases.
There were several shocking infographics which we used - as they had to be accessible to everyone, so were graphic in naure (in more than one way).
A collective of African musicians have come together to record a song to help raise awareness about Ebola in Africa. The song, entitled “Africa Stop Ebola”, features the singers Tiken Jah Fakoly, Amadou & Mariam, Salif Keita, Oumou Sangare, Kandia Kora, Mory Kante, Sia Tolno, Barbara Kanam and rappers Didier Awadi, Marcus (from the band Banlieuz'Arts) and Mokobe, and also includes the musicians Sékou Kouyaté (electric guitar, bass, electric kora) et Ludovic N’Holle (drums).
The song is a message to citizens about what they can do to help stop the spread of Ebola in Africa.
The song is performed in French and vernacular languages widely spoken across the region to ensure that the message is understood regardless of the level of literacy and education of the population.
As I post this, there is a new outbreak of the disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo which is apparently spreading rapidly.
Yes released 'Magnification'- an album with full orchestra which had some excellent individual tracks. By now I was married and living in a village on the North Norfolk coast and I remember listening to this while driving through the edge of the Sandringham Estate on the way to work in King's Lynn.
Also out in 2001:
Tenacious D were very popular, thanks to Jack Black's involvement. Their lyrics are vary sweary Mary and crude.
Parental advisory. Don't watch the following video... or enjoy it!
I lived in Hull for just under a year between September 1986 and May 1987 while I was training to be a teacher.
This was a time when one of the bands most associated with the city was active: The Housemartins. They morphed into 'The Beautiful South'. Some of the band members lived round the corner from where I lived.
I don't remember going to many gigs while at the university to be honest.
One was at the Hull Truck Theatre Company's venue. It was an evening of New Age music put on by Coda Records. John Themis played a great track from his album 'Atmospheric Conditions'.
There was also a band called Frugivores who played the same night.
The city is associated with a number of bands.
Another band from Hull was 'Everything but the Girl'. I remember someone showing me where they lived at the time.
The last concert I saw in Hull was Pat Metheny's trio concert when the SideEye tour came to the city as part of the City of Culture year. On the same night I saw a parade of large illuminated puppet figures and also some Bob and Roberta Smith art. The gig was superb and the venue was small.
The following night he played Barbican and I had tickets for that too.
This is the latest song in Peter Gabriel's o/i project to be released.
It starts beautifully... and is the best track released so far in the project in my opinion.
Peter explains the meaning and construction of the song:
“This is another song that comes out of the brain show that I am working on and the character has been effectively torn apart and is trying to reassemble himself one piece at a time. I needed a character for the story and I'd always wanted to do a little more with Mozo, who I had introduced many years back, and I thought, well, let's give him another blast here.
He's been brought back from the dead.
“What was interesting for me about Mozo was that he was not fully of the world and not fully outside it. For the original second album narrative he was found on this waste tip and there was a reference to alchemy, and how you only really get the opportunity to create gold out of the lowest material; shit. In Japanese culture they also have kintsugi (kin: gold, tsugi: repair) where a broken cup is repaired with gold or precious metals and the repaired cup with its faults showing ends up more valuable than the original. It's a beautiful symbol for humanity, because we're remarkably easy to break and trying to reassemble self, psyche and sanity, is really the journey of the song.
“There are two or three story songs on the record and I actually like the length of time they occupy and I like the fact that you have to stay in it for the ride to understand the story. It's like when you arrive in some hut in the woods and it takes a while just to settle in and get yourself tuned-in to the pace of that place. I wanted a bit of that in the song. If people are on for the full ride, they're going to take it through to the end.
It's a long journey, but I think it's place in the show, which is percolating in my head, it'll be towards the end, if not the end.”
Partly based on the biblical figure of Moses, Mozo was an enigmatic force who comes from nowhere, disrupts lives, and then disappears. But despite his transformative effect on the world, Mozo feels himself to be powerless. He is in the world, but not of the world. For the most part hidden and invisible, Mozo can only express himself and be heard with the aid of technology — specifically radio technology.
The figure of Mozo lives in a fantasy world created by what he picks up and transmits on short-wave radio. In this way, Mozo’s schizophrenic existence has prescient parallels with the disconnect between our own lives lived online and off. The broadcast is a construction — a projection of an imagined world — and a search for meaning and validation through attention.
Here's the song 'On the Air' where Mozo first appears....
The year 2000 saw some good albums released as the new millennium began.
Ian Anderson's solo album "The Secret Language of Birds" was the latest of his solo albums, featuring Andy Giddings on keyboards who also joined the live touring band for some years.
