7 posts tagged “eno”
Eno's final record. More backing vocals, of course.
Fela was known for his showmanship, and his concerts were often quite outlandish and wild.
- Wikipedia taking the safe route to avoid charges of exaggeration
Mr van Vliet gives us an insight into his evening eating habits.
The Herouvimska Pessen (Cherubic Hymn) is part of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy.
Nonsense songs, nonsense lyrics, always some music. Eno wrote somewhere that
all the world's problems can be solved with either oyster sauce or backing vocals.
Well, you know what he means. It's an old system. Call and response, field hollers, work songs. All conversations, gossip, salsa. I remember hearing a field recording from Cameroun or thereabouts: some women are standing up to their waists in the sea. As they sing, they beat the water with the flats of their hands; the sea is their confidant and drum, the other half of the conversation.
By his own admission, Brian Eno hangs around middle-eastern supermarkets in West London scrounging cassettes. The 'vocal wobble', the classic decoration used all over the Levant, is (he thinks) the most erotic thing in music.
Fairuz is one of Lebanon's treasures, an icon who has for instance been described by an Amazon reviewer thus:
To a Lebanese, Fairuz . . . created an image of a Lebanon that few are certain ever to exist. The remote village, grape vines under the moonlight, people singing with no care in the world. Particularly during and after the end of the civil war (1975-1990), people became attached to this image of Lebanon that no longer existed, and because of that, Fairuz became the Lebanon that we always wanted. It's probably hard to explain, but she represents Lebanon more than our flag does.
This, especially now, reminds me of Bruce Chatwin's elegy for Afghanistan, written shortly after the Russian invasion. At the time I thought it ludicrous - all things pass - but now it seems sadly prophetic.
I'll tell you a secret - it never really works with me and the Velvet Underground. They always seem too calculated and knowing, posing for Warhol. I prefer the early Lou Reed solo albums where he can sing naively
love makes you feel ten feet tall
and it sounds like this
That was the kind of stuff I wanted to play in the short and strange summer (rivers were no longer rivers and mountains were no longer mountains) when I played bass; I used to struggle with the Wild Child bassline, but alas but was only really able to turn out something as simple as Peaches.
Anyway, Sunday Morning. Always a good title.
