Musical and geographical offerings from GeoBlogs: a 365 blog project for 2026.
A cross-posting from my Geography in/on Film blog.
I was very pleased to hear last night that David Byrne's current tour has been filmed. It continues the tradition when Jonathan Demme made 'Stop Making Sense' and Spike Lee filmed his 'American Utopia' tour.
This concert, that I saw in March at the Hammersmith Apollo was the best of the year (so far) and a tremendous visual spectacle.
Image: Alan Parkinson
In 2014, Pet Shop Boys performed at the BBC Proms. It was a piece about Alan Turing.
1. Natural wonders every child should know
2. He dreamed of machines
3. The Enigma
4. Other ranks
5. The memory and the control
6. The trial
7. Only in his death
8. A man from the future
The voice of former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was heard in the last section, recorded especially for this performance.
Juliet Stevenson narrated from within a specially constructed booth to ensure vocal clarity over the music. The BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers were conducted by Dominic Wheeler.
Neil Tennant sang alongside the BBC Singers while Chris Lowe played keyboards and electronics behind him and next to PSB programmer Pete Gleadall.
The band has now revised the piece.
BBC Radio 6 Music will broadcast the 2026 edition of “A man from the future” on Sunday 4th October within Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone (8-10pm), and Stuart will also hear from Neil and Chris and Andrew Hodges about the creative process behind the reworking, and their interest in blending electronic and orchestral music.KLOF Magazine is a very interesting music website.
It offers a range of Music from the Margins.
Folk, Avant-garde, Experimental Indie, Jazz, Field Recordings, Electro-acoustic, Minimalist, Ambient, songwriters and sonic explorers pushing boundaries in niche communities around the world – we cover music with the same depth and reverence the mainstream reserves for its tired canon.
It's also FOLK backwards....
Check it out....
There’s something really beautiful about using your life as raw material and making it into something that, if you do it right, it’s like a thing that’s there for ever and people can access it and it will do something for them.
Jarvis Cocker
I met Jarvis a few years ago in St. Pancras Station. I've seen him quite a few times heading to or from the Eurostar check-in with guitars and other luggage over the years.
The newspaper has an interview with Jarvis by Olivia Laing and there are plenty of mentions of the importance of the quotidian and the everyday in influencing his music, and that of others.
Jarvis' excellent book here is about his start in music and the influences of the everyday. It is similar to some of the work of Jonathan Meades.
This takes Jarvis back to his early days and is an inventory of some of the objects that remind him of different stages in his career.
There's a strong element of everyday geographies here too, and the ephemera that we collect. He shares images of items, and the design is nice as it changes from format to format throughout the book with lots of pictures e.g. early posters from familiar Sheffield venues such as the Leadmill, Hallamshire Hotel and the 1980s 'fun pubs' that I remember (avoiding).
Jarvis has been the frontman for Pulp for decades. My friend Simon saw him in New Zealand with Pulp playing live and said it was one of his favourite concerts - and he's seen Led Zeppelin and all the greats play live.
He has also worked on a couple of films with Wes Anderson.
I have a signed copy of the hardback first edition of the book and am going to get deeper into it to add something more substantial as a response to the book. I liked the memories of the hole in t' road.
Music is just organised noise.
A cross posting from my Iceland blog.
An article on Icelandic bands.
It mentions an artist called Rakel.
Alongside the recent passing of the legendary Dolly Parton, we also had the announcement of the passing of Tim Curry. He played the Lord of Darkness in the 1985 Ridley Scott film Legend and was also in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which features a few well known songs on the soundtrack.
Legend actually had 2 soundtracks.
Ridley Scott's choice was Jerry Goldsmith...
To give the movie a score that might resonate more closely with younger viewers, the production brought in German New Age synth band Tangerine Dream. The band had previously scored movies including Firestarter, and even Risky Business, using their signature ethereal synths. Unlike Goldsmith’s score, which was tightly tied to each beat of the film, Tangerine Dream’s score was more rangy, and loosely atmospheric. The Tangerine Dream soundtrack sounded quite clearly like a Tangerine Dream soundtrack.
European viewers generally saw the film with the Jerry Goldsmith score. American audiences mostly saw the Tangerine Dream version.
Here's the Tangerine Dream OST.
Mountain Dance is a piece by Dave Grusin.
A cross posting from my Geography on/in Film blog and Cultcha blog.
It was a picture of the band crossing the famous Abbey Road level crossing.
Image: Apple Records - taken by Iain Macmillan
This is a much copied image. The article mentions some other bands which have created their own versions for album covers.
For locals it is also a source of frustration as they are held up by lots of tourists recreating the scene for a picture. Caveat: I've done that myself...
Abbey Road is my son's favourite Beatles album. We listened to it recently while on a Kent road trip.
Frankie Vaughan released a song in 1983 in response to a newspaper competition.
Believed to have been recorded as a bit of a wink and a nod by Vaughan and lyricist Geoff Morrow, a songwriter and businessman from London, the tune came about as a response to an article by the Mail on Sunday which essentially dragged Stockport’s name through the dirt.
Sad news just now as I heard of the passing of Dolly Parton,
She did a great deal for literacy in the USA as well as her decades of musical achievements, charity work and philanthropy and theme park creation...
Here's a classic from 1973.
In November 2024 I went down to the Barbican Hall to see Tangerine Dream perform their album 'Phaedra' live.
Or did I?
The band was founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese.
The best-known lineup of the group was its mid-1970s trio of Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann (who later formed the record label Private Music.) Froese has passed away, and the other two original members don't perform with the band.
I'm seeing them play in Norwich next year too.
How about Kraftwerk?
They have been touring all summer, but only Ralf Hütter is from the original band.
They were formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Wolfgang Flür joined in 1973 and Karl Bartos in 1975. Schneider passed away in 2020.
And Steve Howe's version of Yes is basically just him from the classic line-up from the 1970s - and they released a new album recently called Aurora - meanwhile, I have tickets to see Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks at the London Palladium - the closest you will get to seeing Yes today? I'm lucky to have seen the classic line up several times, plus the Union tour and various solo tours and other incarnations.
Here's Anderson and the Band Geeks playing "Counties and Countries".
How about Pink Floyd without Roger Waters?
They reunited for Live 8 in 2005, but Richard Wright has since passed away.
Genesis without Anthony Phillips or Hackett or Gabriel? Well, there's still a chance they might get together again I guess...
Rush without Neil?
Well, there's one that has plenty of fans talking... but the tour seems to be going very well with some epic shows, and they are heading for the O2 and Manchester next year.
Which other bands are still going despite having very few (or no) members from the original line-up?
Richard King's 2019 book explores British music and its link with the landscape of Britain. Here's the 4th post connected with the book.
In a chapter exploring mystical connections, he focusses on Kate Bush's music and the video for the song 'Cloudbusting'.
The Uffington White Horse is three thousand years old. I visited back in 2010.
This pile of chalk is ready to be used to re-chalk the figure and keep it white and visible from a distance.
The Uffington White Horse sits below Dragon Hill.
This was the scene for the video of 'Cloudbusting'.
The music video, directed by Julian Doyle, was conceived by Terry Gilliam and Kate Bush.
This ends with 'Morning Fog'....
The White Horse was featured on the cover of the 1982 XTC album 'English Settlement'.
The book is available from all the usual places and comes highly recommended.
In the summer of 2023, I went to the Sandringham Estate to see 'The Who' performing tracks from 'Tommy' with an orchestra along with other classics.
My son was particularly keen to go as 'Tommy' is his favourite film. They did a few dates like this that year, and it ended up being their final UK tour as their final tour of all was only available for people in the US to watch. It was great to see all their classic tracks performed live to a large crowd on a warm summer night not far from home.
The concert they did at the Eden Project just a month earlier was recorded and was recently made available as a live album. It's a great memory of a great night...
It's 1994 or 1995.... and I am teaching in King's Lynn. A group of friends regularly meet to chat and enjoy a drink. The album that gets played more than any other is an album called 'Fumbling towards Ecstasy' by the Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan.
Here's a Sunday morning treat for you apropos of nothing....
Ralph Towner and Gary Burton playing 'Icarus' from the album 'Matchbook'
Some more contributions from people via the Google Form.
