:: archive

November 06 - issue 1

Dearly Bewildered

Our "Unknown Soldiers" put-the-name-to-the-picture competition is being hailed in all quarters as the most fiendishly difficult and addictive pop quiz ever devised. If you haven't tried it yet go to the address above and start clicking. For the benefit of those parishioner who are unable to function as useful members of society until they know the answers, we shall be publishing the solution later this week in a special parish mailout. Meanwhile, life goes on.

WORKING WITH ANIMALS

Parishioner Val Jennings raises the important subject of pets on stage:

"At Croydon's Fairfield Hall a couple of weeks ago, I enjoyed two hours plus of

entertainment from Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman. To my surprise, they seem to

have successfully reached across the chasm that one would have thought divided the

curry-munching, oft-married, stand-up comedian virtuoso pianist from the high-voiced

vegan cosmic pixie from Accrington, and they are evidently the best of chums. Such good chums that Wakeman happily tolerated Anderson having his pet Scottie dog Harvey wandering about onstage for much of the second half. It evidently didn't bother the performers, but I (and a lot of the audience, I suspect) found it very distracting, particularly I was sure Harvey would need to relieve himself at some point, and those monitors surely looked inviting to him. Have any other parishioners witnessed concerts with unbilled support from the musicians' pets? (Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne don't count, since their poor animals were part of their acts)."

PACKAGING CORNER

We were wondering what was behind the recent changes that have taken place to the shape of CD jewel

cases. Parishioner Richard Evans comes up with an explanation: "I think you are probably referring to

these ghastly new things called the Super Jewel Box (their capitals, not mine). Bloody awful things to look

at and bloody awful things to design to. Whoever heard of music packaging with round corners, I ask you?

They remind me of 8-track cartridges. I recently had to design one for Endless Wire, The Who's latest

platter and I wish Polydor had stuck to the regular ones less bits to break off and lovely, lovely square

corners. Mind you, not as bad as the US version where a third of the back cover is taken up by a hideous

FBI warning saying that they'll come round to your house and remove your testicles if you happen to make a copy for one of your mates. Apologies for my rant, vicar but sometimes these things really make my blood boil." You can see Richard's work at http://www.rdevans.com

THE MIDDLE AIN'T

Parishioner Bill Bell: "Not sure if it qualifies technically as a middle 8 (because I can't count) but that section in Kashmir where it all sags and turns into a bit of a musical pudding always struck me as a rare lapse of judgement by messrs Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham. Curiously though it works rather better with the full Egyptian orchestra on the Unplugged (not) Page/Plant reprise of a few years back. If anyone is interested. Parishioner Ben Milne wishes to come back on the subject of Live And Let Die: I'd always put the middle eight problem down to Macca's use of the "cut and shut" technique. Take a bit of a completely separate song and stuff it in as the middle eight - it worked well enough for "Day In The Life" but I agree with Brian McCluskey that it falls on its arse in the Bond theme and most other examples. The "cut and shut" generally isn't a good solution to a creative problem; more often it's just a way of filling a mediocre song with enough notes to get it to the statutory three and a half minutes. "Say You Say Me" by Lionel Richie is a particularly egregious example, with a middle eight that has no relation in either beat or tempo to the beginning or the end.

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