The Concept of Albums

Today we hone in on the concept of a concept album. Now pay attention...

The Concept of Albums

I was listening to Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime today, wondering what makes a great concept album.

Apparently many people don’t know what a concept album is, judging from Wikipedia’s list of purported concept albums. I’m unfamiliar with many of the names, but a random sampling include Metallica’s ...And Justice For All and Load (wrong on both counts and if Load, why not Reload?), the first four Blur albums (I mean honestly) and Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage (this one I find the most baffling of all).

What’s just as surprising here is what’s missing, given these albums represent the criteria on which we are supposed to judge what makes a concept album. Metallica but no Megadeth, several of who’s album get nearer to approaching a unifying concept or theme. I’m not sure that a jazz album can be a concept album, but if Maiden Voyage is a concept album then I can think of several that have a better claim, including Hancock’s own 1973 album, Head Hunters and certainly Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain. As for Blur, well to paraphrase a line from something the source of which escapes me for the moment, stop it, now you’re just naming albums.

Most egregious in the Wikipedia list is the inclusion of The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the most famous concept album that isn’t a concept album, the clue being in the fact that The Beatles themselves said it isn’t a concept album. Abbey Road might have a better claim, or at least the second side of Abbey Road, which is broadly conceptual, like the second half of Queen II, an album which also appears in the Wikipedia list.

For me, an album must have something of the musical about it to be considered conceptual. It must be almost operatic. Which is odd, given that I can’t stand musicals and I can only listen to opera. Watching opera is like having teeth pulled. I do enjoy a good concept album. However, a group or musician attempting a concept album is like a footballer attempting a bicycle kick. Get it right and it’s spectacular. Get it wrong and you look like an absolute dick.

Operation: Mindcrime is a fine example of getting the concept album right. It contains all of the elements for a good concept album. It has the structure of an hour long musical, including talky acting bits in between songs. There are leitmotifs borrowed from Wagnerian opera, which return to haunt the album at various points. It also has a clear plot of revolutionaries, terrorism, murder and corrupt priests, which is quite easy to follow. The narrative is circular, ending at the same point at which it begins. 

Operation: Mindcrime also contains echoes of maybe the most famous actual concept album yet recorded, Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Especially near the end of Mindcrime will you hear very deliberate musical strains referencing The Wall. It’s a nice touch. You hear the same thing in Mastodon’s Leviathan, a concept album built around Moby Dick, which tips its hat to Iron Maiden’s 1988 concept album, Seventh Son of the Seventh Son, which is about... well, guess.

It’s perhaps a little kitsch to admit this, but I love The Wall. A friend of mine used to say that rather than watching horror films, he preferred sitting down to listen to a Slayer album with the lyrics sheet in front of him. I used to do almost the same with Pink Floyd. I would have a smoke or four, get into bed with all but my face wrapped in sheets and listen to the whole of The Wall in the dark through a pair of headphones. It beats the hell out of a emersion tank. The Wall’s musical narrative tell the story of the rock star, Pink, and his slow decent into madness. I love The Wall because it’s an album of eighty minutes of unrelenting bleakness, punctuated by two minutes of light at the end of the tunnel. I also love it because by accident or by design songs like The Trial contain many of the same tropes as Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

The Wall and Operation: Mindcrime can perhaps be better described as rock operas than concept albums, the same as The Who’s Tommy or The Kink’s Arthur. Yet this, in one sense, is exactly what makes a concept album. There are many that describe Floyd’s previous three albums, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals as also being conceptual. I would submit only the last album of the three for consideration. A concept album isn’t just one in which similar themes are explored, there has to be an overarching, unifying theme, if not an actual fictional narrative. If Dark Side of the Moon was a concept album, then so would most other albums ever recorded. I’m sure every One Direction and Justin Bieber album could be considered conceptual using this standard. Is that what you want? Is it?

  

Sloppy categorising is exactly the same thing that allows ...And Justice for All and Maiden Voyage to be accepted into what should be a highly exclusive club. For instance, what about the Alice in Chain album, Dirt? Is this a concept album? All but one of its tracks can be argued to be about heroin addiction. I would say that no, it isn’t, for exactly the reason that one track (Rooster) is about the experiences of guitarist Jerry Cantrell’s father’s experiences in Vietnam. Yet Dirt probably has a better claim than half of the albums in Wikipedia’s list.

As egregious as Sgt. Pepper’s inclusion in this list is the exclusion of PJ Harvey’s Mercury Music Prize winning album, Let England Shake, an album that is as conceptual as you can get without actually crossing over into rock opera. I honestly don’t think that a better album has been produced this side of the millennium, a record all about Britain and its involvement in wars now and centuries past. I have waxed lyrical about Let England Shake at length in my essay, The Sombrer Opacities of the Gloom.

Curiously, you also won’t find any Bob Dylan albums in the Wikipedia list. A convincing case can certainly be made for John Wesley Harding, given that it was recorded when The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper and The Rolling Stones were copying them with Their Satanic Majesties. Dylan meanwhile recorded an album that is about as far from psychedelia as it’s possible to go. An collection of songs that don’t contain any choruses is certainly a concept. A argument could also be made for Blood on the Tracks and Time Out of Mind, great divorce porn albums them both. Yet like Alice in Chains Dirt, the concept doesn’t  entirely track across either album. A better case can be made for Jack White’s Blunderbuss, which is both divorce porn and consistently conceptual.

Tom Waits has recorded a handful of concept albums, but many of these were recorded for actual plays (The Black Rider, Alice and Blood Money). Nighthawks at the Diner from 1975 though is that rarest of breeds, a concept album recorded live, in which Wait’s channels the spirit of Jack Kerouac’s beat poet performances. There is also the curious case of the Easy Star All-Stars. The Easy Star All-Stars rerecord classic albums, Dark Side of the Moon, Ok Computer, Sgt. Pepper, Thriller, etc. in reggae and dub styles. That’s conceptual art for you. Meta Conceptual even. Easy Star All-Stars’s version of Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky is one of my favourite things ever.

 

Perhaps the most exciting artist to be producing conceptual albums in recent years is Janelle Monae. Her debut EP, Metropolis, and two albums, The ArchAndroid and The Electric Lady continue the same narrative, where Monae’s alter-ego, the android Cindi Mayweather, falls in love with a human being in the future and travels back in time to the present day to escape arrest. It’s high concept indeed, heavily influenced by Fritz Lang’s science fiction silent film, Metropolis, as well as the robotic stories of Isaac Asimov.

I’m not exactly a fan of modern R&B, but genius comes in many forms and Monae is there or thereabouts, taking her influence from artists as diverse as Michael Jackson and Prince, Outcast, the B52s, David Bowie, Scissor Sisters, Rachmaninoff and George Gershwin. Like Dylan, she had the foresight to write a polemic entitled Mr. President, without mentioning the incumbent at the time (Dubya). My one criticism is that she should spend more time singing the song during Obama’s administration and less time hanging out at the White House. After all, Dylan continues to perform It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) whether the President who ‘must sometime have to stand naked’ be Johnson, Nixon or one either of the Bushes.

So there you go. I hope we have managed to establish the concept of a concept album. Or at least tightened our definition. OK Computer, yes (just), Kid A and Amnesiac, no. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, yes, The Kink’s Muswell Hillbillies, no. Any Frank Zappa album, yes, any Captain Beefheart album, no. Got it? Good, ‘cause I don’t want have to run through this shit again (*winks*).

Get it done.

Exhibit 9A

Today's post is a short story that I wrote four years ago and has been sitting on the hard drive of a broken laptop since then until I finally bought a piece of kit on eBay to turn it into a USB drive. It arrived today. Best £3 I've ever spent. Enjoy...

Exhibit 9A: Initial interview with Ian Murray 21^st July 20--

D.I. Henderson: Ok, the date is 21^st July [inaudible]. The time is 17:37. This is a formal interview being conducted with Ian Murray. Interview is being conducted at Cairndow Police Station, Argyllshire. Present are myself, Detective Inspector Henderson of Strathclyde CID, and Sergeant Anderson of Cairndow Constabulary. Before we start, Ian, can we get you anything?

Ian Murray: No.

D.I. Henderson: Good. So, why don’t you give us your account of the events that led up to this morning’s incident. Take your time, we have as long as it takes.

Ian Murray:  Er, ok, well, it were all Jacob’s fault.

D.I. Henderson: This would be Jacob Levi, yes?

Ian Murray: Yeah. Here, have you found him yet?

D.I. Henderson: We’ll come to that in a while. Continue. How was it Jacob’s fault?

Ian Murray: Well, he were one said we should go for a walk. Were his fault we got lost.

D.I. Henderson: I understand you’re on holiday here.

Ian Murray: Yeah.

D.I. Henderson: Camping, is that correct?

Ian Murray: Yeah. By a loch like. Not this one. Another one.

Ser. Anderson: Loch Long. Ardgarton Campsite. We’ve spoken with the owner, he’s confirmed two births rented for three nights.

D.I. Henderson: And you’ve been in Scotland how long?

Ian Murray: Drove up four days since.

D.I. Henderson: Where were you before Loch Long?

Ian Murray: Er, Loch Lomond I think.

D.I. Henderson: Ok, just a couple more questions, so I can get everything clear in my mind. You are from Leigh in Lancashire, is that correct?

Ian Murray: Me and Carl, aye. Jacob ain’t though, he’s from somewhere in’t south.

D.I. Henderson: Do you remember where?

Ian Murray: Nah. I mostly zone that cunt out when he starts speaking.

D.I. Henderson: Ok so, I’d like to understand the dynamic between you.

Ian Murray: How’d ya mean?

D.I. Henderson: I mean, how do you all know each other? From your tone, I assume no love is lost between you and this Jacob.

Ian Murray: Do you blame me after what he’s done? Well me and Carl, we’ve been mates since we been lads. Carl met Jacob at uni.

D.I. Henderson: Durham, yes?

Ian Murray: Yeah.

D.I. Henderson: Thank you. Ok so, you decided to go for a walk. Continue.

Ian Murray: So, yeah, we went for a walk. Late setting off ‘cause Jacob wanted to take a shower. Couldn’t have one when we got back. No, course not. So it were like four o’clock before we even set off. We drove up road to this Forestry Commission place and had a look around and found out where we were going.

D.I. Henderson: And how was it?

Ian Murray: It were good. I hate walking, but at the start there I was actually enjoying it. We’d been watching Withnail & I before we came up and we’d been quoting it all week. Y’know the kind of thing, ‘We want cake.’ and ‘I demand to have some booze’ and ‘Monty, you terrible cunt’, that kind of thing [laughter]. Getting some right looks from straights coming down path, but we didn’t give a shit. And then climb started. Could have carried on up path, but them two wanted to go up hill and gay it up on’t scenery.

D.I. Henderson: Sorry, what’s gay about scenery?

Ian Murray: Scenery’s fine, for a bit. Me and Carl were knackered half way up, but Jacob’s rushing off up hill. Can’t wait to get his journal out and write down all his feelings about the grass and the heather and mountains and all that gay-arse shit. Course, then Carl gets his journal out too. Jesus, Carl were a top bloke, but he were always a bit funny, were always reading books and studying and shit. He were always one out of our lot that were going to go to uni.

D.I. Henderson: You don’t approve?

Ian Murray: Nah, it’s not that. Fair play to him, I couldn’t wait to get out of school and get earning, but he were good at that shit, I got a couple of Cs ‘cause of Carl. He changed when he went to uni though. Changed when he met Jacob. Wanted to be like him, went all pretending he were middle class. There were nothing wrong with who Carl were, he worked hard, his old man worked hard to make sure all his kids got a decent education. Jacob’s kind never had to work at anything, he had everything handed to him on a plate his whole life and look where it’s got him.

D.I. Henderson: Ok, ok I think we’ve gone off track here. So, you went up a hill and the others were jotting things down in their journals.

Ian Murray: Yeah. So we led around for a bit and chatted some and it were fine. And there were me thinking, we’ll be heading back down in a minute. We’ll be climbing down the hill and back along the path and getting in’t car and driving down to village and spending rest of day in pub. And then we’ll stagger back to campsite and have a few smokes and get the midges stoned and that’ll be that. And instead this. ‘Cause that pompous Jew cunt has other ideas. He’s making himself a walking stick out a branch he found. Cutting twigs off it with his penknife and giving it all, ‘Oh Chaps, now come on, one simply must enjoy the bounty that nature has provided us with. We’re on vacation, surrounded by all this wonder, I simply insist that we make the most of it’.

Ian Murray: Was then I got to thinking how much he sounds like fat one in Withnail & I. Which tells you everything, right! Prick. And I’m thinking, fuck’s sake, I just wanna get pissed, but of course I can’t say owt, ‘cause Carl gets all protective over his bum chum, that’s why I ended up getting my own tent, so I could get some peace from pair of ‘em talking about poetry and shit. Anyway, Jacob races off wrong way, down other side of hill and Carl goes after him, me standing there a sec, wondering whether to tell ‘em both to go fuck themselves and head back on me own. And then I remember Carl’s got car keys, so I followed them. Slowly as possible just to fuck with ‘em.

Ian Murray: T’other side of hill were half as high as way we came up and it led to a kind of field, tree line off in distance ahead of us and more heather and bushes and shit like that all around us. Ground’s a bit squelchy. That should have been our first clue. I tried telling ‘em but Jacob’s blathering on about some butterfly he’s seen and Carl’s too distracted to listen. And this butterfly he’s going on about, well it flies off towards trees don’t it and he goes running after it, Carl in pursuit, me thinking, nah fuck it, let ‘em wait for me to catch up, I ain’t running, I’ve already climbed a fucking hill today.

Ian Murray: Must have been twenty minutes before I saw either of them again. There were a path through trees, but were obviously only that way ‘cause trees had been planted that way. Forestry Commission, innit. Were like walking in a ditch, firs or pine or whatever they were on either side of me on’t high ground and I can’t see more than a few feet ahead of me ‘cause of the way the ground moves. I had to get up near the trees ‘cause the ground’s getting more squelchier. Then at last I hear happy couple up ahead of me and I’m thinking, fucking hell, finally decided to wait for me, eh? I gets to them and I see, no, they hadn’t been waiting at all. We’re now not only deep in’t forest, we’re in middle of a fucking peat bog. And that was when I lost it.

D.I. Henderson: Lost it?

Ian Murray: Yeah, had a right go at them, didn’t I. Felt bad after of course, but right then I were fuming. Running off, leaving me, not even caring if I got lost. Were like they were surprised to see me, like they were both thinking, oh yeah, Ian were with us. Well I told ‘em what I thought of ‘em right there and then. Carl’s kicked off with me, not getting it, not getting why I’m angry, but Jacob, fair play to him, he’s apologised, said it were all his fault and asked me to forgive him for being thoughtless. Too busy chasing butterflies. Says he gets all single minded with things like that. Well it right took wind out of me sails it did, ‘cause I couldn’t stay angry with him after he said that, no matter how much of a prat he is. Fuming with Carl though, we’re supposed to be mates. Supposed to mean something where we come from.

Ian Murray: And, well, like dynamic, like you call it, changed at that point, ‘cause like I say, we were in the middle of a bog then. And I’m saying we should go back, but Carl’s saying how we’ve come this far, we should just keep going. Well Jacob agreed with him for a while, but after we’d been walking for over another hour and we’re still surrounded by trees and bog’s getting worse and we’re having to take detours through the trees to keep going, well even then he starts saying we should turn ‘round. But Carl always were an arrogant fucker and he’s determined to see it through to end. Says it’s Forestry Commission land, has to be a way out eventually. I think he saw it like as a personal challenge by then and the worse things get, the more determined he gets to keep going. He’s marching ahead of us and me and Jacob keep giving each other looks.

Ser. Anderson: Looks?

Ian Murray: Well, like we were both shitting it that we were going to die out there, but Carl’s getting all macho about it, like the forest’s his enemy and he has to defeat it. I reckon he’s watched too much of that Ray Mears survival guy, him. I’m pissed off cause it’s been hours and I should be in’t pub, not out in the middle of fucking nowhere and there’s one bit where we had to climb over this tree that’s come down and I slipped and me foot sinks in the peat up to me knee and me boot came off when I got pulled out. So I got shit all over me jeans and I have to put me hand in’t bog to get me boot out and then Carl has a go at me for washing peat off me arm with water we had, ‘cause we don’t know when we might need it. Oh, says me, I thought you reckoned we’d be out of here by now. If we’d turn ‘round when I said, we’d be in pub by now. But no, too fucking arrogant to know when you’re beat and look at us now. So he had a pop at me.

D.I. Henderson: You mean he hit you?

Ian Murray: Nah, cunt just grabs me by jacket and tries to tell me what were what. Gobbing in me face, he were shouting so loud. Says how I’m jealous of him, cause he’s gone off to uni and I’m stuck in Leigh working for cunts I hate. Says he doesn’t know why I came up here when all I’ve done is moan and sulk and slag off scenery. Reckons I reckon I’m too good to sleep in his tent, which were why I went an’ bought me own. Real nasty shit yeah, says I’m always lounging around and leaving him to do all work. It’s only a couple of fry ups and some soup I tell him, I were expecting to eat in pub and chippy and that. And that’s another thing, he says, we’re on holiday, if I love pub so much, I should have stayed at home and pissed me holiday up with t’other wasters in’t White Horse. Or gone to fucking Marbella. I tries telling him to calm down, but he won’t hear it, just kept going on and fucking on.

D.I. Henderson: And where was Jacob when all this was going on?

Ian Murray: Oh, he’s just standing there, speechless like. He were as shocked as me.

D.I. Henderson: Then what happened?

Ian Murray: Well this went on for a good quarter hour like, ‘til Carl just blew himself out and let me go. Then he seemed to sag a bit and went sat down on this boulder and got right quiet. Staring off into space. What space there were. I were red in’t face, fuming with him, but I know well enough what he’s like. I ain’t about to mess wee him. When we were lads maybe, but not now. Not then.

Ian Murray: So we just sat there, three of us like, rock each, everyone dead quiet, just some birds singing and water running off in’t trees somewhere. I wanted to see what time it were and were then I noticed I’d dropped me phone somewhere. Not that there were any reception up there, that were the first thing we thought of when we saw we were lost. I were looking around for it, skenning whether Carl had knocked it out me pocket. And he’s skenning ‘round and looking at us, with that look, not saying owt.

Ian Murray: Then Jacob pipes up, giving it all, ‘Can I make a practical suggestion? It’s getting late’, he says, ‘it’s going to start getting dark soon, and while we should obviously keep going for as long as the light holds, we should maybe think about gathering firewood’. Carl heaves a huge sigh and says, ‘Good idea Jacob, we should do that’. All praise for his boyfriend, innit. All the good it did him.

Ian Murray: So anyway, we got up and moved on and Carl’s darting into tree line, picking up wood on’t ground and Jacob’s got his penknife out and slicing bark off trees. Kindling he reckons. I helped a bit and found a couple of carrier bags in me pocket to carry it all in. Bog weren’t getting any better, but it weren’t get no worse neither, which were good. I were tired, me legs were killing me like, but weirdly it seemed a bit more fun now we were, y’know, resigned to be out there all night. Were adventure like. Even so, I had that song stuck in me head. Place Called Home. Y’know, P. J. Harvey. And I were dying for a pint.

D.I. Henderson: Go on.

Ian Murray: Well, there’s ain’t much more to tell. It got to like ten, who knows, and we came to a bit of clearing and made decision to stop for night and get warm. Me and Jacob got fire going and Carl took placky bags and wrapped them round some branches, for the moisture like, and we just sat there for ages, staring in’t flames. Everyone were exhausted like. Then Carl turns ‘round and he says, he says to me, ‘Ian lad, I’m sorry ok. It were myself as much as you I were angry at. Was just pissed off, ‘cause I knew you were right, we should’ve turned ‘round when you said we should, and well, I’m just sorry, ok’. I said it were nothing. Not to think about it, we’ll be in pub by lunchtime, I said. He just laughed. Then he says something about being upset to see me the way I were. Knowing I were a clever lad like and struck in’t job I hate. Think it were last thing he said to me.

Ian Murray: Me eyes were stinging off smoke and I thought best close then a mo. All that Scotch air, must have knocked me right out, ‘cause next thing I were dreaming. Running through trees, ton of ‘em everywhere I looked, everywhere I ran, just mother fucking trees everywhere. Didn’t know where I were going or how to get home, but I knew somewhere there were a place called home. And then I could hear it, that song playing and I knew if I just followed the sound I’d find White Horse. Could almost taste first sip of me lips.

Ian Murray: And then all this grunting started. Distant like, muffled. Well it must have been loud ‘cause it woke me right up. It were getting light, but were this mist everywhere and it felt like I were in’t shadows. Summit were wrong but it took me a minute to figure it out. Then I twigged. Jacob. Jacob’s standing over me. Oh God!. Jacob were standing over me and he’s covered in blood. Got his knife in his hand. I had sleep in me eye but I can see it’s got blood all over it. He’s got this manic look on his face and I can see he’s about to go for me, so I rushed to me feet, as he rushes at me. Don’t ask me how, but somehow managed to grab wrist with knife in and we’re struggling and I look down and Carl’s just lying there, dead, covered in stab wounds, fucking blood everywhere.

Ian Murray: Well that did it. Soon as I saw that I screamed out of anger like. Summoned up all me strength, throwing Jacob to the ground and I just fucking ran. Anywhere, didn’t matter, I just ran for me fucking life.

Ian Murray: I could hear him behind me, shouting, screaming my name. I just kept running, wheezing, chest hurting, fear keeping me going, crazy look in’t crazy fucker eyes. I were running downhill, which I reckoned were good, until I took a tumble and went flying. I figured I were done for, that if fall didn’t finish me off, that crazy Jew cunt would. But the heather and shit on’t ground slowed me down. I got up, me ankle hurt, twisted it when I fell, but I kept going.

Ian Murray: Fall probably saved me life, cause the tumble brought me near the path down to here. I could see water and houses and got angry ‘cause I saw how near we’d been to safety, that if we’d kept going half an hour more Carl’d still be alive. I hobbled down and found here, the police station and raised alarm. That’s it. That’s what happened.

D.I. Henderson: Well it’s certainly an intriguing story you’ve told Ian. Of course that’s all it is isn’t it? A story.

Ian Murray: I don’t get ya.

D.I. Henderson: Ok so, me and Sergeant Anderson have been making enquiries with the campsite owner, a Mr McGraw. He remembers you, but states categorically that only you and Mr Calhoun signed in. He remembers noting that the two of you weren’t sharing a tent.

Ian Murray: Right. Wait, what? Jacob was there too. He were asking where showers were. Me and Carl were shaking our heads at him.

D.I. Henderson: Officers in Lancashire also spoke to Mr Calhoun’s mother. She was upset, naturally, but she doesn’t remember ever hearing the name Jacob before. In fact Naomi Calhoun, Carl’s sister, says that she waved you off when you left on Saturday morning and is adamant that not only has she never heard of a Jacob Levi, but there was definitely only two of you in the car.

Ian Murray: But Jacob were there, he were riding shotgun, boring the ass of me playing his fucking classical music. Why are they saying this? This a fucking set up.

D.I. Henderson: And why would anyone be trying to set you up Ian? Durham University have no record of anyone called Jacob Levi studying English in the last five years and when we rang genuine university friends of Mr Calhoun, kindly supplied by Mr Calhoun’s mother, none of them could recall ever hearing the name. You yourself say that you are unable to recall where he is from. All of which leads me to one inescapable conclusion: That there were only the two of you that came on this trip. You went for a walk, you got lost, you argued, and at some time in the early hours of this morning, you yourself Ian, you stabbed your friend to death as he slept.

Ian Murray: [sobbing] What’s going on? It’s a lie. I wouldn’t kill Carl like, he were me friend, we were mates from when we were lads. What about his journal eh? You must have his journal. His journal must say about Jacob, Carl were so in love with him.is HiHis Hi

D.I. Henderson: Oh we have Mr Calhoun’s journal and it certainly mentions a Jacob.

Ian Murray: Oh thank fuck.

D.I. Henderson: No Ian. We haven’t had time to go through it all yet, but it would seem that all of the references to Jacob are in relation to your incessant complaining about someone at work. I understand that you told Mr Calhoun that Mr Jacob Levi was your boss’s son and had been employed by his father as foreman over the summer. Some kind of holiday job. Yet when we spoke to your employers, they told us that no such person exists. In fact I understand that your employer is Muslim rather than Jewish.

Ian Murray: This is fucking ridiculous. Jacob were Carl’s uni mate, Jacob had been staying with him all summer, they were joined at hip like. Jacob murdered Carl.

D.I. Henderson: Now come on Ian, don’t you think that this charade has gone on long enough? We have the murder weapon and it has been sent for forensic analysis. When the results come back I fully expect them to show that your DNA is all over the weapon.

Ian Murray: No.

D.I. Henderson: Ian Murray, I arrest you for the murder of Carl Calhoun. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not reveal something that you may later rely on in court.

Ian Murray: No. No. No, it were Jacob [screams] NO!

D.I. Henderson: Ok so, I can see we’re not going to get anywhere else this evening. Take him back to the cell Sergeant. I’ll arrange transfer to Glasgow in the morning. Interview suspended at 19.05.

[TAPE ENDS]

Exhibit 9B: Carl Calhoun’s Journal

18/07/--

First full day in Scotland and I feel brilliant. 22 years old, why the hell has it taken me this long to make the journey up here? Woke at dawn and wandered down to the water’s edge. A thick fog was lying on top of Loch Lomond, the cool, still waters indistinct through the fug. I closed my eyes instead, got a lungful of pure Scotch air, that also brought an array of early morning sounds.

I heard birds chirping and children laughing and couples bickering from too little sleep and too long spent together in cramped conditions. I was glad to be single for the first time in a long time. A light breeze rippled through the trees, a noise rich in nature, that also brought the aroma of frying bacon and I thought, this is it, this is what it feels like to be alive.

I opened my eyes, and there in the distance, Ben Lomond loomed out of the murk, over-towering and ancient. I saluted it, the beacon with two backs as I have renamed it. The beach here is all rocks and stones smoothed out by the ebb and flow of generations. I skimmed stones for a while, absorbed by my own thoughts. Then I removed the book of Burns poems from my pocket, sat on the bank and become lost in the density of dialect.

I am increasingly glad that Ian chose to buy his own tent. Not only is it relaxing to have my own space, but all he’s done since we set off yesterday is bitch and moan about EVERYTHING! We’re supposed to be on holiday and yet all he’s done is go on and on about his boss’s son. If he hates working for Jews so much why doesn’t he just quit? Jesus. Go somewhere else then I told him. I’m sick of hearing about it and I told him so, started giving him the mantra of A.A.: Accept the things you can’t change and change the things you can’t accept. Put up or damm well shut up. Cheeky get didn’t even offer to do any of the driving up here, had to do it all myself. And the cooking. Too used to his mum doing everything for him. Ian’s a clever lad, he just need to apply himself. Either that or find a woman that’ll whip him into shape. Give him a good kick up the arse.

Do like this camping lark though. I like the idea of carrying your home around with you, like a tortoise. Camping’s changed so much since I were a lad. God, I feel old saying that, but it’s true. Can remember having to come home early from one family camping trip cause the tent pole snapped in the night and we had to pack up in the night and head

P.T.O.

Get it done.

In Appreciation of Captain Beefheart

Today, Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart

In Appreciation of Captain Beefheart

The first year of the millennium found me working at a temp job with a girl who would become my girlfriend during the course of the contract. There was only the two of us working in the room, so she brought in a tape deck and we would take turns to play music for each other. As we listened to The Kinks, The Beatles, The Clash, Stones, Elastica, Joy Division and Dylan (even Bill Hicks and Eddie Izzard), we’d also talk music to while away the hours.

One day the conversation turned to Captain Beefheart and how neither of us knew much about him, except that ‘Trout Mask Replica’ was supposed to be a masterpiece that sounded like white noise when you first heard it. We ended up driving to the local library that lunchtime to see if they had it. They did, but the CD was out and someone had it reserved for when it came back. I ended up buying a copy from HMV after work and putting it on tape for the next day.

She was either hung over or hadn’t got much sleep the night before, but what I remember is her with her head cradled in her hands, begging me to turn it off because it was making her brain bleed. She’d lasted twenty minutes into an hour and twenty minute long album.

Someone once told me that if you’re going to be drinking mixed spirits, like rum and coke, you should always have the first one neat. This will make every subsequent drink taste mild by contrast. I mention this only because the comparison with Captain Beefheart’s back catalogue is apt. Listening to ‘Trout Mask Replica’ first renders everything else the Captain did mild by comparison. ‘Trout Mask Replica’ is a masterpiece by a twisted genius, who kept his band under cult-like conditions in a house in the suburbs of LA for eight months, where they were made to practice the tortuously complicated compositions for fourteen hours a day. On coming to record the album, produced by Frank Zappa, the majority of the music was recorded in one four and a half hour session.

‘Trout Mask Replica’ is a difficult album, full of free jazz and irregular rhythms and off key horns. Not being a musician, the only thing I can compare it to is that perennial favourite of mine, the novel ‘Finnegans Wake’. The first time through it simply makes no sense and even by the tenth, the hundredth time even, parts of it will remain bafflingly obscure forever. Like jazz, you have to learn to speak a new musical language in listening to Beefheart. ‘Trout Mask Replica’ is like a Latin primer for everything that sits around it. I read somewhere that ‘Dachau Blues’ is the song you play at the end of a party when you want to get rid of the last stragglers. I agree. A masterpiece to be sure, but fourteen years after first hearing it, ‘Trout Mask Replica’ is a still a masterpiece I have to be in a very particular mood to be able to listen to.

It’s only the first shot of the evening though. If you can survive ‘Trout Mask Replica’ then you’re well on your way to appreciating Captain Beefheart’s genius. His first two albums, ‘Safe As Milk’ and ‘Strictly Personal’ almost sound like typical 60s pop records when placed next to his third. Almost. ‘I’m Glad’ could be a Motown single, but with ‘Ah Feel Like Acid’ and ‘Electricity’ we’re in more familiar Beefheart territory. What makes his music unlike almost any other artist in musical history is Beefheart’s refusal to conform to anything like a regular rhythm. His music rarely does what is expected of it. Even reggae isn’t as offbeat as Beefheart.

The first couple of offerings are as near to mainstream as anything Beefheart ever recorded, mixing blues, rhythm and blues and 60s psychedelia. His dig at the Beatles and Rolling Stones in ‘Beatle Bones ‘N’ Smokin’ Stones’ (“strawberry moth; strawberry caterpillar strawberry butterfly; strawberry fields”) signified the change that was about to occur.

After ‘Trout Mask Replica’, he never looked back. ‘Lick My Decals Off Baby’ is almost a continuation and again I have to be in the mood. Yet, ‘The Spotlight Kid’, ‘Clear Spot’ and especially, ‘Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)’ are extraordinary albums that can lift the mood in a heartbeat. Boy bands and a thousand and one guitar orientated rock clones send the workforce somnambulistically to production line office death camps for the soul. Try listening to ‘Bat Chain Puller’, ‘When I See Mommy I Feel Like a Mummy’, ‘Sun Zoom Spark’ on your way to work and see how long it is before you despair of your situation. I doubt many ‘X-Factor’ contestants who sang ‘Run Paint Run Run’ or ‘Big Eyed Beans From Venus’ would get through the auditions, or whatever it is they do. I don’t know, I’ve never seen ‘X-Factor’. I have thumbs.

Tom Waits’s fans subdivide his back catalogue into two eras, the one before he heard Captain Beefheart, and the period after he heard Captain Beefheart. The Captain’s influence on his music is obvious and it is revolutionary, for which we have to thank Waits’s wife, Kathleen Brennan, who got him deeper into Beefheart (Waits and Beefheart shared a manager in the 70s). Waits released some great albums pre-Beefheart, like ‘Blue Valentine’ and the live album ‘Nighthawks at the Diner’, where he’s virtually channelling the spirit of Jack Kerouac. Since1983’s ‘Swordfishtrombones’ up to 2011’s ‘Bad As Me’ inclusive, Waits has been on another level. In recent years, he has eclipsed even Dylan as my favourite recording artist. The influence of no-one else seeps through to his music quite like Captain Beefheart.

Beyond Waits, Beefheart’s influence is wide. You can hear ghosts of his rhythms in many ‘Talking Heads’ albums, particularly ‘New Feeling’ and ‘Psycho Killer’ from their debut, ‘Talking Heads: 77’. ‘Beck’ and ‘The White Strips’ have covered songs by Captain Beefheart. You also hear his influence in much of ‘The Fall’. It’s what makes ‘The Fall’ so great, Mark E Mark the Mancunian Beefheart (compare, ‘Who Makes the Nazis?’ with ‘Dachau Blues’). He even recorded a version of ‘Beatle Bones ‘N’ Smokin’ Stones’ on one of their peerless performances for John Peel (see ‘The Complete Peel Sessions’ disc 5). Peel himself said, “If there has ever been such a thing as a genius in the history of pop music, it’s Beefheart.”

Then there is Beefheart’s influence on PJ Harvey, a woman whom I can’t say enough about (though I had a go, see ‘The Sombrer Opacities of the Gloom’). Up until his death in December 2010, Harvey would send Beefheart advance copies of her albums. This fact alone makes her more boss than virtually any other artist alive. Her early albums are infused with Beefheart’s influence, but of all his musical godchildren, Harvey found her own way. PJ doesn’t stay still for very long and by the time of her own masterpiece, ‘Let England Shake’, very little trace of Beefheart remained.

In 2004, I saw former members of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band perform a full set of his tracks at the Manchester Bridgewater Hall. It wasn’t all that. Without the Captain’s effervescence, it felt like we were watching session musicians going through the motions. The middle section of the set was entirely instrumental. I saw a few hard core Beefheart fans walk out in vocal disgust. The real deal hadn’t recorded an album in over thirty years, not since 1982’s ‘Ice Cream for Cow’. His music never gained the widespread appeal it deserved and he abandoned the music industry for painting. He became a ‘recluse’ (a label used by journalists for people with who don’t want to talk to them). He’d also started to suffer symptoms from the onset of multiple sclerosis.

Sadly, as is often the way, it was only after the Captain’s death that I went back and discovered the rest of his back catalogue. ‘Trout Mask Replica’ should have opened to doors to discovery, but I was too engrossed by his disciples. We get where we need to be in the end. Now Beefheart is ingrained deep down in my soul. Safe as milk.

Get it done.