The Ministry Of Truth

213 weeks.

1,494 days.

Four years, one month and two days.

It’s not a long time.

And that is how little time elapsed between the release of Please, Please Me on 11 January 1963 and the release of Strawberry Fields Forever on 13 February 1967.

That is how little time it took for The Beatles to re-define pop music TWICE.

Having blown away years of musical torpor and stagnancy with their harmonies and harmonica, their calls and responses and undeniable joie de vivre, The Beatles rode a four-year wave of insanity before being forced to retreat to the recording studio.

When they emerged from that exile with Strawberry Fields Forever (and the almost-but-not-quite-as-scintillating Penny Lane), they had re-written the rule book again.  In doing so, they undoubtedly lost some of their audience: those ten-year-olds in January 1963 were still only 14 and not many 14-year-olds could cope with the loss of the lovable Moptops and the emergence in their stead of this weird-sounding band.

Because 213 weeks is not a long time at all.

The UK picture sleeve for The Beatles’ 1967 double A-side single,
Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane

It is a scientifically proven and well known fact that Strawberry Fields Forever contains precisely 4,825 sublime moments in its four minutes and five seconds: McCartney’s Mellotron introduction [0:00-0:09]; Lennon’s “Cranberry sauce!” during the second fade out [4:00-4:03]; the backwards cymbals [2:13-2:29]; the stabbing of the brass section [1:55-1:56]; the blissful interjections of Harrison’s newly acquired swordmandel [1:19-1:21 and 2:05-2:08]; Ringo’s astounding drumming [from 0:12]; the reversed tape [3:37-4:00]; the Morse Code [0:15-0:20]; the fake fade out [3:22-3:37]; the variations in time signature; the entire lyric; you name it.

And, of course, The Big Edit [at 1:00].  Everyone knows the story - two takes, recorded at different tempos and in different keys, painstakingly merged into one coherent finished product by producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick.

It is no less aurally impressive for all that retelling; unless you are directed to the precise moment of the Big Edit (between “I’m” and “going” at the start of the second refrain), it’s almost imperceptible.  It’s relatively easy to do things like this when you’ve got a massive computer-driven desk at your fingertips; it’s something else entirely when it’s just you, a razor blade and a manually-operated variable speed reel-to-reel tape player.

Sound engineer Geoff Emerick receives a Grammy award from Ringo Starr in March
1968 for his work on the sessions for the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
album, sessions that began on 24 November 1966 with the recording of Strawberry Fields Forever

And yet none of this innovation is the SMIP that has brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion.  Strawberry Fields Forever’s SMIP belongs to the sixteenth-century stringed instrument, the violoncello.

In the spring of 1982, a music teacher tried to convince me to learn to play the cello.

It was never going to happen: the instrument was alien to me - I simply could not relate to it.  While I knew that cellos existed, I could not then point to a piece of music to which one was an integral part.  My parents owned no classical music records, they did not listen to Radio 3: it was something for which I genuinely had no reference point.

I wanted to learn the piano - an instrument that sat in the corner of every pub, bar or hotel and was always on stage alongside my favourite singers and groups.  There were no piano lesson slots available when I joined the school for the summer term of 1982, so I was left with the cello.  But being stuck with a big violin between my knees was never going to cut it for me.  I was a shabby student who didn’t practice, didn’t try and didn’t care.

Had my music teacher tried to inspire me not with names such as Bach, Beethoven, Elgar and Haydn but with names such as Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr I might have been more motivated.  Had he gaffer-taped a pair of headphones to my head and forced me to listen repeatedly to Strawberry Fields Forever my interest in the cello might have been more profound.

Blessed with a producer, orchestrator and arranger as gifted as George Martin, The Beatles had a resource denied to their peers, one they mined for all it was worth: the baroque, Bach-like harpsichord bridge to In My Life was, for example, written (uncredited) and performed by Martin.  Cellos littered Beatles songs - 1965’s Yesterday (astonishingly only an album track in the UK) featured a string quartet while the 1966 single, Eleanor Rigby, contained no “rock” instruments at all, the band replaced by a string octet.

George Martin in the Abbey Road studio with Paul and Ringo, c.1968

While John Lennon might not have known too much about counterpoint, Martin did.  When tasked with providing an arrangement of strings and brass to enhance and embellish Strawberry Fields Forever, Martin employed the technique in the song’s third verse to stunning effect.

For thirteen delightful seconds [2:17-2:30] across eight glorious bars, 32 gorgeous strokes of a cello’s bow weave above, below and around Lennon’s nonsense - “I think I know/ I mean, ah, yes/ But it’s all wrong/ That is I think I disagree” - and define conclusively what represents beauty in pop music.

Were I permitted to pick the last sound I would ever hear (and could not choose the voices of my loved ones), it would be this segment of this song.

Happy holidays.

Yes, yes - a million times yes.

Alexandra Burke - the pointless insult to proper musicians that has won this year’s X Factor…

Hallelujah is fragile and personal, and hearing this wailing cookie-cutter nobody wobbling her way through it is offensive…

A characteristic of Simon Cowell’s multi-headed, music killing monster is the emptiness you see in its eyes. Take a look at that video again. Is there a soul behind those eyes?

Get in.

Jeff Buckley made number two; even Leonard Cohen’s original made number 38.

Get thee behind me, Satan.

Each December the man who is julesallen puts together a Cultural Review Of The Year, with contributions from friends, acquaintances and hangers-on.  The Director’s Cut of this year’s Ministerial contribution is reproduced below for your delight and amusement.

Written Word

I put together a fine share purchase agreement this summer: does that count?

Stage

I failed to set foot inside a theatre all year.  The theatrical world did not complain.

Cinema/DVD

I don’t think it was a great year for Cinema overall - The Dark Knight, Mamma Mia and Quantum Of Solace all made me pray for death to come - but I enjoyed quite a few DVDs.

The year started well, with me catching up with the brilliant Tell No One and The Lives Of Others on DVD.  Juno deserved its success and I thought Ellen Page’s performance was terrific.  No Country For Old Men was just excellent in every respect.

I really enjoyed 2 Days In Paris and Paris, Je T’aime.  I liked Vantage Point until the final 20 minutes.  Venus made me laugh a lot, as did Stranger Than Fiction and Priceless.  Rendition was a well made movie, notwithstanding the presence of Meryl Streep.  I surprised myself by liking Catch And Release: chick-flick producers take note - cast Kevin Smith in a romcom and even I’ll watch it.

My favourite movie of this year, though, was Lars And The Real Girl.  I only finally saw it on DVD in October but I loved every frame (even, surprisingly, those frames in which Emily Mortimer featured).  Ryan Gosling is one of the five most interesting actors working today and, while I’m automatically well disposed towards any movie that emphasises the importance of society and socialism, this was just a smashing story, well told.

Website

I’ve really enjoyed the writing on Popdose throughout its first year, a collective effort from a network of lovers of popular culture.  Lifehacker continues to feed my inner geek.  One of the many music blogs I visit, The B Side, introduced me to many new pieces of great music and the incredible life story of ‘Sir’ Lattimore Brown.

Above all, though, three websites made the US general election for me: Politico and FiveThirtyEight.com were invaluable resources, while Things Younger Than Republican Presidential Candidate (Oh, And Did I Forget To Mention War Hero?) John McCain was a daily treat that occasionally had me weeping with laughter.

Televisual Entertainment

I’ve all but given up on TV.  If I had my way the Ministerial Residence would no longer have a television: now I’ve finally learnt how to use proxy servers and torrents it’s just a big, irrelevant box in the lounge that used to insult my intelligence.

For lack of anything better to watch over dinner I sat through and quite enjoyed Reaper (E4) and Chuck (Virgin 1) but neither pulled up any trees.

30 Rock was and is immense, though why it’s taken Five so long to show the second series is beyond me.  Fortunately, copyright-bending technology means I’m already onto the third…

The only other thing I’ve gone out of my way to watch is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (More4).  161 editions in 2008 and about 120 of them were laugh-out-loud funny, which is a mighty strike rate.  I suspect Stewart is even more gutted than me that the show is on hiatus when someone threw shoes at Dubya…  It’ll be interesting to see if the producers can keep up the standard when their fella moves into the Oval Office.

I feel I should like Gavin & Stacey, as lots of people I respect rate it very highly.  However, every time I see a clip it leaves me cold.

Sport

For the first time ever I don’t have a single football memory from the year: the game has eaten itself and barely interests me anymore.  Padraig Harrington retaining The Open was great viewing; for a few hours on one Sunday in July, I became a tennis fan - the Wimbledon final was astonishing; it was lovely to see Paula Radcliffe win the New York Marathon, particularly after her insane insistence on completing the Beijing race despite being unable to walk had me in tears at 3am one Sunday; and the last lap of the season’s last Formula 1 grand prix was like something out of Boy’s Own.  (That said, I’m delighted the nonentity of a man that is Lewis Hamilton was beaten to the BBC Sports Personality award by Chris Hoy, who not only deserves it for his brilliant achievements but also seems actually to have a personality.)

Otherwise it’s the Olympics.  Lots of great moments - Michael Phelps, Christine Ohuruogu, Rebecca Adlington (you can take the girl out of Mansfield, but…), the rowers, the sailors, the breathtaking performance of our cyclists (I’ve become a big fan of Victoria Pendleton) - but the stand out was the performances of Usain Bolt.  Sometimes your brain can’t quite comprehend what your eyes are seeing and I had to re-watch his performance in the 100 metres final a few times before I believed it.  Thank God he appears to be clean.

Music

Best Album
Raphael Saadiq – The Way I See It
Mark Ronson has inexplicably built a career and reputation out of slapping some half-hearted horns on a karaoke backing track and claiming that this lends it a Sixties/Seventies Motown/Philly vibe.  Raphael Saadiq (Charlie Wiggins to his friends) shows the preening prinny how it’s done and has produced some blissful tracks that at times stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the output of Holland-Dozier-Holland and Gamble-Huff.  As the beatspermil.com review says:

The Way I See It is a good record to give to your dad, it’s a good record for making love, and it’s a good record for your wedding reception. And it won’t make you want to blow your brains out after you hear it at your fifth high school dance. Because this isn’t just a retro throwback – Raphael Saadiq has out-mastered the masters. Play it for your girlfriend – you’ll get laid.

Very Good Albums
The Killers – Day & Age: shouldn’t work but it does
The Last Shadow Puppets – The Age Of The Understatement: at times sublimely good
Snow Patrol – A Hundred Million Suns: strictly by the numbers but no less listenable for that
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Raising Sand: I hope this is a one-off because I’m not comfortable liking anything with which Plant is involved

Good Half-Albums By Those Who Could Have Done Better
Bon Iver – for Emma, forever ago
Neil Diamond – Home Before Dark
Ray LaMontagne – Gossip In The Grain
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Cardinology
Adele – 19
Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
Kings Of Leon – Only By The Night
Kaiser Chiefs – Off With Their Heads

Partial Returns To Form By Those I’d Long Since Written Off
R.E.M. – Accelerate
The Verve – Forth
Oasis – Dig Out Your Soul

Those Whose Back Catalogues I Have Explored In Depth For The First Time And Greatly Liked
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Chic

A year on and I still can’t decide about Duffy.

I’m going to shoehorn radio into this category.  I love radio but have despaired over the paucity of British commercial radio for years.  While BBC Radio 2 has diversified and widened its scope and - in so doing - become the most popular radio station in the country, commercial radio has responded by constantly narrowing its computer-generated playlists in an attempt to elminate any risk of alienating its core audience without ever attempting to attract new listeners.

Radio 2 plays 750-800 different tracks each week, whereas in the week to 27 September, Capital Radio played just 234 different tracks and repeated them an average of 9.7 times.

When Virgin Radio re-branded as Absolute Radio it bucked this trend.  In its final week as Virgin, it played 500 unique tracks and repeated them an average of 3.5 times.  In its first week as Absolute, it played 732 unique tracks with an average repetition of 2.4; in its second week it played more than 900 unique tracks with an average repetition of 2.  Whether this approach will work remains to be seen, but the station has become much more listenable at least for the time being.  I’m enjoying it while I can.  (Absolute also employs Iain Lee, whose Sunday night phone-in is the funniest thing on the wireless.)

Cultural Highlight

Undoubtedly, the US Presidential election result.  Enough has been written on that subject by far better writers than me (indeed, more than enough has been written previously by me): suffice to say I had a smile on my face on 5 November, 6 November, 7 November, 8 November…

I’ve quite liked how a fun-sounding little “credit crunch” has turned into the most profound failure of free market capitalism in history.  Still, never mind, eh?  We all make mistakes with other people’s money.

In the same vein, it was nice to see a few Chancers getting their comeuppance, even if another dozen filled each gap they left.  For example, Richard Branson’s increasingly tarnished marque was rejected by the people who bought his Megastores and the people who bought the radio station – meaning that he lost two massively lucrative trade mark licence fees in the space of nine months: that should make for interesting reading in the group accounts.  Oh, wait a minute: he doesn’t publish his group accounts, does he…?

Gideon Osborne was exposed by one of his Bullingdon chums as the Chancer he is after his Club Med freebie; the Barclay brothers got the caning they deserved by the serfs of Sark and promptly showed just how much they respect democracy; the twonk who co-founded the Carphone Warehouse eventually learnt that public companies are not private playthings, while that nice Conrad Black chappie is nine short months into a 78-month prison term for failing to learn that lesson himself.

And Jim Beresford and Douglas Smith, partners in the Doncaster-based Beresfords Solicitors, were struck off for ripping off hundreds of invalided ex-miners and their families to the tune of tens of millions of quid.  Shame.  My heart will bleed even more for them when those funds are traced and find their way back to their rightful owners.

Let’s hope 2009 holds a similar fate in store for Satan Cowell.

A late contender for cultural highlight came from Muntadar al-Zeidi who managed to hold Dubya to greater account with a pair of size nines than any of the American legislature, the American judiciary, the American people, the United Nations or the International Court in The Hague.  A marvellous piece of old-fashioned political protest.  I loved the fact that CNN reported it with the explanation: “In Arab culture, throwing shoes at someone… is considered an insult,” as though doing so in Pig’s Knuckle, Arkansas is a sign of affection.

Cultural Nadir

Manuelgate.  Seriously: WTF?

I know I’m a light-year-and-a-half behind everyone else, but I actually watched an episode/edition/broadcast of The X Factor – the final, in fact – for the first time last weekend.

It’s made me fear for the future of Britain and convinced me absolutely that Simon Cowell is Satan.

I saw Peter Kay’s recent parody and assumed it had amplified and magnified everything but, if anything, what I saw last Saturday suggested that Kay had actually underplayed the original’s ludicrous pomposity and emotional blackmail.

As with Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin, the parody was all the more forensically cruel because it used the very lingua franca of its target: indeed the word “journey” should now be expunged from the Oxford English Dictionary, having been bsatardised out of all recognition by programmes like this and presenters like Dermot O’Leary.  (Oh, Dermot: you showed such promise once.  Is being Cowell’s shill really worth such self-debasement?)

Why do people lap this shit up?  It’s manipulative, the sob stories are almost certainly embellished and everything about the production is just naff.

I don’t deny that the lass who won can sing a bit, though she’s Fourth Division rather than European Cup.

I certainly don’t deny that Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is an excellent song - it’s one of the five best pop songs written in the Eighties.

I do, however, believe that Alexandra Burke and Hallelujah make about as easy bedfellows as Dick Cheney and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Let’s consider Ms. Burke’s interpretation of the lyrics in the song’s first verse:

I heard there was a secret chord…
It goes like this -
The fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall
And the major lift…

As every woman entering The X Factor competition must do, Ms. Burke asks herself: “What Would Mariah Do?”

Mariah, being as thick as mince, would recognise the words “fourth”, “fifth”, “fall” and “lift”.  So if she screeched “fourth” she would display four fingers.  If she yelled “fifth” she would add an extra digit.  For “fall” she would point down towards the ground.  For “lift” she would reach for the sky.

Needless to say, Alexandra Did Exactly What Mariah Would Do For That Is What Satan Decreed.

On witnessing this debacle, anybody remotely familiar with either John Cale’s or Jeff Buckley’s versions of this beautiful and frail little song must have cringed as I did.

On seeing the white-clad gospel choir then stroll onstage they must have started chewing their cushion along with me.

(Satan thinks: “The word “Hallelujah” appears in the Bible and gospel choirs sing religious music therefore we must have a gospel choir on a song called Hallelujah.”  Never knowingly understated.)

Cue a crashing I Will Always Love You-esque snare drum and a thousand layers of syrup for a big finale - shouty lead vocals, synthesised strings, gospel choir, gloop, gloop, gloop, repeat to fade.

To quote Alan Connor:

The final chorus is more like Handel’s original Hallelujah Chorus mashed up with Cher’s I Found Someone.

I agree with Connor - the saving grace is that the quarter of a million quid about to hit Cohen’s bank account is hugely deserved.  The shame is that Laughing Len’s so broke that he’s had to allow a delicate concoction that took him a year to create so painstakingly to be slaughtered on the altar of Satan.

I’ve done all I can: I spent £15.80 downloading Buckley’s Hallelujah from iTunes 20 times last night in an attempt to get something - ANYTHING - else to the top of the chart for Christmas.

If the ITV masses prefer Burke and Satan’s overproduced, overinflated bobbins, well: fuck you.

Whether you believe him or not The Minister persists in maintaining that, between roughly 1968 and 1973, Neil Diamond was perhaps the best, most underrated and most innovative pop songwriter around.

In 1968 Diamond acrimoniously left Bang Records - the company that made hits of Solitary Man, Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon, Thank The Lord For The Night Time, Kentucky Woman and Cherry, Cherry - to hook up with UNI after Bang’s owner Bert Burns refused to give The Artiste his creative head.

Diamond’s first releases for UNI bombed spectacularly.  Introspective, autobiographical ballad Brooklyn Roads - a million miles from the bubblegum of Cherry, Cherry - peaked at 58 on the Billboard chart; Latino-infused rocker Two-Bit Manchild made it no higher than 66; and the anodyne singalong country number Sunday Sun crested two places lower still.  The album from which all three were taken - Velvet Gloves And Spit, its back cover bearing a picture of a leather-jacketed but shirtless Diamond leaning on an armless tailor’s mannequin (as horrifying a visual proposition as it sounds) - failed even to make the Billboard Top 200 album chart.

Diamond, New York, c.1968
(inner sleeve of Bang Records’ 1973 Double Gold compilation)

Today, such a run would almost certainly spell the end of the careers not just of the singer in question but also of the record company executive who signed him.  The music industry in the late Sixties was a very, very different beast.

So it was in January 1969 that a sallow, Brooklyn-born Jew decamped from New York to Memphis to record at American Sound Studios, where house band The Memphis Boys awaited to commit to tape a gospel number (complete with mid-song sermon by a fictional preacher) that would be lead single from an album that would be released with this artwork:

Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show - the album:
further evidence of Diamond’s shirtless late-60s tendencies
(Click here for larger front and rear covers if you dare)

It’s probably not a business plan that would meet with Simon Cowell’s approval…

The Memphis Boys may not have the name recognition of their Memphis neighbours Booker T. & The MGs, Alabama’s Muscle Shoals house band or Motown’s Funk Brothers, but their pedigree is unimpeachable.

In 1967 The Memphis Boys had propelled Aretha Franklin to superstardom thanks to her and their reinterpretation of Otis Redding’s Respect; a few months before Diamond arrived the band had backed Dusty Springfield on her seminal Dusty In Memphis album; the next session at American Sound after Diamond’s was for Elvis Presley, who would record with The Memphis Boys Suspicious Minds and In The Ghetto.  In their heyday, American Sound and The Memphis Boys created 122 Billboard hit singles in the three years from 1967.

American Sound Studios, Memphis, Tennessee, derelict in the
1980s before it was demolished to make way for a parking lot

The Memphis Boys comprised organist Bobby Emmons, pianist Bobby Wood, drummer Gene Chrisman; bassist Mike Leech; and guitarist Reggie Young.  They were produced by Stax-alumnus Chips Moman and Tommy Cogbill (who would also sometimes play bass).

The Memphis Boys with the King in 1969

Whether the song was originally designed by Diamond as parody, pastiche or homage (his own explanation of the song’s genesis has varied down the years), these good ole Southern boys understood gospel revivalism and in one of the happy coincidences that litter the history of pop music, the right song found the right musicians at the right time in the right place.

From Wood’s opening chords [0:00-0:084], played above Emmons’ gentle organ and [from 0:04] Leech’s pulsating bass, this record catches the ear.  It didn’t - and still doesn’t - sound like anything else on the radio.  Whether we’re in a Harlem church hall or a revivalist tent we don’t yet know, but this is not vanilla pop music.

While it doesn’t quite rival “Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom” as pop’s greatest opening line, Diamond immediately paints the picture:

Hot August night
And the leaves hangin’ down
And the grass on the ground smellin’ sweet
[0:08-0:16]

Wood and Leech propel matters along [0:16-0:22] until more of the canvas is unveiled:

Move up the road
To the outside of town
And the sound of that good gospel beat
[0:22-0:30]

Then Wood signals a change in mood [at 0:33], Leech cuts out the fancy stuff, the backing singers start to “Woooooo” and the build to the chorus begins:

Sits a ragged tent, where there ain’t no trees
And that gospel group tellin’ you me…
[0:35-0:46]

Having gently kept time throughout the first verse, now Chrisman cuts loose [0:45-0:47] to demonstrate why he’s possibly the finest rock drummer whose name you’ve never heard and we reach one of the daftest choruses ever laid down on tape, underpinned by Emmons’ pulsing organ riff.

It’s Love, Brother Love’s, say, Brother Love’s Travellin’ Salvation Show!
(Halle! Halle!)
Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies
And everyone goes
‘Cos everyone knows
Brother Love’s shows
[0:47-1:02]

This is mental.  Absolutely crackers.  And superb.  Which is why we stop it dead in its tracks and, with the help of trombones punctuating the sultry summer night air, we continue to paint the wider picture:

Room gets suddenly still
And when you almost bet you can hear yourself sweat
He walks in.
Eyes black as coal
And when he lifts his face every ear in the place is on him.
Startin’ soft and slow, like a small earthquake;
And when he lets go, half the valley shakes
[1:09-1:48]

And when Chrisman starts beating the crap out of that drumkit again [1:47-1:48] you know what’s coming around again:

It’s Love, Brother Love’s, say, Brother Love’s Travellin’ Salvation Show!
(Halle! Halle!)
Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies
And everyone goes
‘Cos everyone knows
Brother Love’s shows
(Hallelujah!)
[1:48-2:04]

Was this really the same man that had written I’m A Believer, sitting at number one for The Monkees precisely two years earlier in January 1967?  Where had this come from?

BROTHERS!
[2:06]

To quote Keanu Reeves: “Whoa.”

I-I-I SAID BROTHERS!
[2:09-2:10]

What the fuck?

NOW, YOU’VE GOT YOURSELF TWO GOOD HANDS:
AND WHEN YOUR BROTHER IS TROUBLED
YOU GOT TO REACH OUT YOUR ONE HAND FOR HIM
‘COS THAT’S WHAT IT’S THERE FOR;
AND WHEN YOUR HEART IS TROUBLED
YOU GOT TO REACH OUT YOUR OTHER HAND,
REACH IT OUT TO THE MAN UP THERE -
‘COS THAT’S WHAT HE’S THERE FOR.
[2:12-2:30]

He’s freaked out.  The New York Jew is sermonising in the middle of the song like a Southern Baptist.  You can’t do this on a pop song.

Take my hand in yours,
Walk with me this day.
In my heart I know
I will never stray.
[2:32-2:45]

He’s calmed down again.  We’re back in familiar territory - singing instead of screaming.  Soothing piano chords atop the organ.  That’s a bit better.

No, it’s not.  He’s off again - smacking a tambourine - and this time he’s got the girls in tow:

Halle! Halle!
Halle! Halle!
HALLE! HALLE!
HALLE! HALLE!
[2:46-2:52]

Chrisman must have got through three snare drum skins in those six seconds alone.  Leech is no longer just playing his bass - he’s positively spanking its strings.  And at 2:53 the trumpet heralds the crescendo of the final choruses.

During this final part of the song, the kitchen sink is thrown at the master tape in a manner that even Phil Spector would admire.  Diamond has thrown off all pretence of decorum and is simply yelping out the words to the chorus.

If one of the many criticisms laid at Diamond’s door is that his vocals too often lack soul - that his performances do not reflect the passion at the heart of pop music - his critics are not familiar with much of his output from this time.

This is a sultry and sexy performance, the singer throbbing within the music’s groove.  This is a vocal that is utterly convincing, particularly as the song swells through the choruses and when Diamond adopts the persona of Brother Love for the “sermon”.

There is, appropriately, a fervour to the production, arrangement and the playing of this music - and the singing reflects that fervour.  The coarseness in Diamond’s voice is undeniable and, if anything, the disappointment is that the record fades a little too soon - might there have been a full-blown vocal wigout if we’d gone round the chorus one more time?

As it is, our SMIP prefaces the final chorus we hear.  Repeat to fade.  And what a fade.  Lost in the moment, gasping for air, Diamond’s voice involuntarily leaps an octave.

I-I SAID!
[3:06]

The “I” becomes a half-strangled, half-screamed howl.  He’s in a different place - a magical, mysterious place only music can go - where the only thing that matters is staying atop the cacophony of drums, cymbals, piano, organs, gospel choristers, trumpets, trombones and tambourines that make up the final 40 seconds of one of the strangest, yet most seductive, singles of Neil Diamond’s career.

At the healing hands of Brother Love, that career was reborn.  Released on 22 February 1969, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show would reach number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, ending an almost two-year-long run of six single releases that had failed to hit the top 40.  Diamond’s live performances were also revived by that good gospel beat, Brother Love becoming his set’s closing number to this day.  (A peerless, stripped-down live version can be heard on Diamond’s March 1970 album Gold: Recorded Live At The Troubador.)

Neil Diamond, March 1970, backstage
at The Troubador club, Los Angeles

[While this paragraph is for completists only, this particular completist would like to note that the best version of Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show is rarer than hen's teeth in this digital era.  The single was mixed in mono, with double-tracked vocals and more prominent brass and percussion than the album's stereo mix.  The mono mix is more fevered, urgent and intense... and unavailable outside the original 7", despite being the version that compelled people to listen to the song in the first place.  Every available Diamond compilation features the album mix.  While the vocal yelp that comprises this SMIP is fully evident in the version featured below, the album mix is nevertheless a flatter and less thrilling concoction than the one featured on the 7"-diameter piece of vinyl sitting in the Minister's now-never-opened record box.]

Emboldened by the creative and commercial success he rediscovered in Memphis, Diamond would return to American Sound in March 1969 to record Sweet Caroline, Emmons in the process improvising one of pop’s catchiest and most distinctive introductions.

You think you know the rest of the Neil Diamond story.

You don’t.

As we shall see in due course.

Buy it.

Don’t say I didn’t tell you.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee’s a mystery gi-i-i-i-rl!
[4:05-4:15]

For Ministers of a certain age, Roy Orbison was one of many childhood musical figures of fun.

Through the mid to late Seventies, the same old faces would do the rounds of awful light entertainment shows, miming to one of two or three prehistoric hits to pay the mortgage.

If it was Gene Pitney, it meant we were about to hear Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa or Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart.  Lonnie Donegan’s dad was a dustman or had something to do with a gap in Cumberland.  Tom Jones didn’t exist outside the narrow confines of What’s New, Pussycat?, It’s Not Unusual or The Green, Green Grass Of Home.  And Shirley Bassey would send me running from the room before she could bellow the second syllable of Goldfinger or Big Spender.

The final column around which British variety TV shows were built in 1970s Britain was Roy Orbison.  Every few months he’d turn up, standing motionless, dressed head to toe in black, eyes and any emotion hidden behind sunglasses, miming the bizarre and alien cadences of Only The Lonely, Crying or Oh, Pretty Woman (”Mercy!”) before silently sloping away once more.  For some reason, there did not seem to be a more disconsolate human being on the planet.

Contrary to the Minister’s recollection,
Roy Orbison did sometimes wear
something other than black in the Seventies

I’m sure I even recall Orbison turning up on more than one edition of The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, which might as well have been filmed at the Working Men’s Club at the top of my street (a glass of shandy and a packet of salt and vinegar on a Saturday afternoon while my grandfather watched the ITV Seven) and was mainly noted for Bernard Manning crooning pre-war ballads most weeks.  (Yes, really.)

Like Diana Dors’ predictable chat show innuendo these singers seemed principally to exist, without discernible contemporary achievement, to remind adults of a bygone time when they had to make their own entertainment by candlelight.  Nothing more, nothing less - the routine never changed and these people had nothing original or relevant to offer me.  The BBC strike in late 1978 and the four-month-long ITV strike of 1979 at least meant we had to find something else to watch for a while…

WIth the benefit of hindsight and maturity - though I still have nothing good to say about Shirley Bassey - I’ve come to realise that Pitney and Orbison were great songwriters, that Donegan is the bridge between rock’n'roll and The Beatles, that Jones was a brilliant entertainer and - above everything else - that Roy Orbison possessed one of the two best white male voices in pop music.

Roy Orbison, smiling
(almost certainly pre-1966)

If you look up the adjective ‘tragic’ in a dictionary of popular culture, the definition is replaced by a picture of Roy Orbison: if he looked disconsolate and sounded desolate, it was because he had every right to be.  When Orbison sang that he was crying or that it was over, he knew what every word of it meant: his wife died in a motorcycle accident in 1966 and less than two years later his house burnt to the ground, killing two of his three sons.

Writing in the wonderful The Heart Of Rock And Soul, Dave Marsh says of Orbison:

If Phil Spector is pop music’s truest romantic and John Fogarty its greatest fatalist, Roy Orbison stands as its ultimate stoic.  Maybe he wore those shades all the time to disguise the fact that he never blinked no matter what you threw at him… Orbison was different than any other rock star of his period.  He was relatively middle-class, college-educated and on easier terms with more kinds of music - opera and Mexican ballad singing, for instance - than any of his peers.  His songs possess a psychological complexity that is commonly believed not to have existed in pop music until Dylan and the Beatles…  No other singer with this much range displays anything like Orbison’s complete emotional commitment - when Roy sings ‘from this moment I’ll be crying,’ there’s no reason to believe that the tears will ever stop.

According to Dylan, writing in the sleeve notes to the posthumous compilation The Very Best Of Roy Orbison:

Orbison… transcended all the genres.  With Roy, you didn’t know if you were listening to mariachi or opera.  He kept you on your toes…  [He sang] his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff.  He sang like a professional criminal…  His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttering to yourself something like, ‘Man, I don’t believe it’.  His songs had songs within songs.  Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile.  There wasn’t anything else on the radio like him.

Bolero, chanson, opera, mariachi, symphony - not words ordinarily associated with rock and roll, but all of which can be applied to Orbison’s oeuvre.  No wonder it confused the young Minister.

Orbison placed nine singles within the Billboard Top Ten in the five years from 1960, with even greater chart success in Europe and Australia, but for twenty years after that Orbison floundered, consigned to the clubs and variety shows.

One of the unlikeliest musical career revivals ever began in 1986 when In Dreams featured in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet; a year later, another movie song - a re-recording of Crying with k.d. lang - would earn Orbison a Grammy Award; in 1988 Orbison would join Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne in The Travelling Wilburys and record Mystery Girl, his first album of new solo material in over a decade.

Orbison in 1988

After performing this new material in concert just a handful of times, Roy Orbison would die - literally of a broken heart - on 6 December 1988, at the age of just 52.

Mystery Girl was released two months later to levels of critical acclaim and commercial success that had eluded Orbison for two decades: The Travelling Wilburys Vol. 1 and Mystery Girl would simultaneously reside in the top five of the Billboard album chart in early 1989.  A few months later, filming began on a Richard Gere-Julia Roberts movie that would introduce Orbison to a whole new generation, with Oh, Pretty Woman earning him the 1991 Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

In 1989, Orbison was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall Of Fame and in 1998 he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.  A year later, Only The Lonely and Oh, Pretty Woman were inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame; Crying joined them in 2002.  In 2004, those three songs and In Dreams made Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time.

Mystery Girl is a splendidly fulfilling album, recalling Orbison’s heyday without sounding like self-pastiche.  His voice soars as high and strong as ever within well constructed and sympathetically arranged songs.  The most successful single from the album - You Got It - revives the timpani of It’s Over and the twanging guitar of Oh, Pretty Woman - and its co-author and producer Jeff Lynne for once resists the temptation to make his subject sound like the Electric Fucking Light Orchestra.

She’s A Mystery To Me (CD single)

The album’s crown jewel, though, is She’s A Mystery To Me, penned for Orbison by U2’s Messrs. Hewson and Evans.  At the end of the Eighties, Bono and Edge had a penchant for penning persistent ballads, initially driven by gentle percussion and noodling guitars that build inexorably to a dramatic and climactic crescendo: She’s A Mystery To Me comes from the same place as The Joshua Tree’s With Or Without You (1987) and Rattle And Hum’s All I Want Is You (1988).  It stands apart from its siblings, though, in that it swoops and soars across a wider span of octaves than Bono could ever manage himself, taking full advantage of Orbison’s magnificent range.

Like most of Bono’s output, the lyrics deserve barely a moment’s consideration; like a lot of Evans’ music of that period, it would drone tediously without a hearty vocal performance to propel it upwards.

It’s not until after the first verse that Orbison first begins to cut loose [1:00-1:10], but that’s only a tease.  There is no chorus as such - merely the repetition of the line “She’s a mystery girl,” in a higher range - and first time around Orbison rocks even more gently than Val Doonican.  Producer Bono allows the song to fall back to the verse and Orbison’s voice falls two full octaves for the next 40 seconds.  From 1:55 to 2:15, we’re back at the ‘chorus’: his voice of necessity emboldened to rise above the rising waves of cymbals, guitar and piano, Orbison now takes the line out for four walks around the block and his power up to 50%.

Still we’re not where we need to be.  We need to summon all our strength for the final push over the top, and a gently tinkling piano line atop Edge’s guitar motif gives us time to draw breath [2:17-2:22].  During the final verse, Bono introduces a string section [from 2:25] to swell the ranks further for the last battle; from 2:44 a snare drum signals the final stage of an introduction that takes three minutes and six seconds to take the listener to the Promised Land, the place where Roy draws in a lungful of air and lets rip.  One final crash of cymbals [3:06] and our boy’s away.

Power, passion, vibrato and falsetto - from 3:07 Orbison gives it the ghostly, full-throated works for almost a minute.  There is no question about this girl’s mystery when Roy seemingly lets the matter rest at 3:59.

But after a few seconds of the band playing on, the musicians almost audibly astonished by the singer’s efforts [3:59-4:05], The Big O hits the very highest note one last time - for two bars, across five full seconds [from 4:05] - and the hairs on the back of the neck stand up to applaud.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee’s a mystery gi-i-i-i-rl!

Singer and band spiritually and physically spent, that last word - extended to five distinct syllables [4:12-4:14] - masks their exhaustion.  In those two seconds the percussion, guitar, piano and bass all fall silent.  When Roy lets go the last sound he has, just a solitary violin string fading into the background [4:15-4:16] brings matters to a conclusion.

Neither Roy Orbison nor U2’s best song, She’s A Mystery To Me nevertheless archives two talents at the height of their games.

Immense, beautiful and haunting - there has been no other sound in pop music like Roy Orbison.

Conscious that I keep banging on about wanting to write about music more than I do here, this is my entry in Upstart Blogger’s Inner Circle competition in the popular music culture section.

This list, mes braves, is why I love the now-on-hiatus Popdose.

(Even if at least 78 of the 100 are wrong.)

How wonderful to see this particular gem finally recognised, too:

17. Nick Lowe, “Cruel to Be Kind”
Nick Lowe has become known for many things in his time: writing “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” one of Elvis Costello’s signature songs (see #88 below); earning a cool million in royalties when Curtis Stigers covered it for the soundtrack toThe Bodyguard in 1992; having his single “Heart of the City” be the first ever released on Stiff Records; producing the first British punk album ever released (the Damned’s Damned Damned Damned); being Johnny Cash’s son-in-law; and rhyming “Rick Astley” with “ghastly.” For the members of the general populace who aren’t card-carrying music geeks, however, Nick Lowe is just the guy who sings “Cruel to Be Kind,” but, really, that’s a pretty decent credit to have on your resumé in and of itself. Backed by fellow former Rockpile members Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner, and Terry Williams, “Cruel” — which he cowrote with another Brinsley-Schwarz alumni, Ian Gomm — possesses a hook that has been stuck in people’s heads since they first heard in 1978, but it also has lyrics that sneak up on you with their profundity about the cyclical nature of a love-hate relationship. “You say your love is bona fide, but that don’t coincide with the things that you do,” sings Lowe. “And when I ask you to be nice, you say you’ve gotta be cruel to be kind in the right measure.” Although this is ostensibly “a very, very, very good sign,” our hero continues to pick himself back off the ground, only be knocked back down again and again until the song fades to a close. So does that make us romantic sadists for wanting to sing along? –Will Harris

As of next Monday, when I get my hands on this…

…I’m going to drive everyone around me nuts.

VERY Cool Software, indeed.

(I already have a Mellotron on my iPhone.)

Two things.

First, Google has announced a deal under which it is hosting and making available the millions of photographs from the past 150+ years that comprise the Time-Life archive.  Special landing page here, or or add “source:life” to any Google Image search to search only the Time-Life archive (eg “computer source:life”).  Be prepared to lose the next hour of your life.

Second, I think we’ve all known what to expect from the forthcoming Guns n’ Roses album.  Yet in one gorgeous opening paragraph Popdose’s Jeff Vrabel shoves Chinese Democracy even further up Axl’s hole than the Minister ever imagined possible…

Unless you’ve spent a lot of time in the company of William Shatner, Chinese Democracy will likely be one of the most ridiculous audio recordings you ever come across. It is sprawling and stupid and ludicrous and hilarious and will make you shoot milk out of your nose and cringe and it is not very good and sometimes extremely terrible, and just when you think things cannot possibly get any more extraordinarily strange, that’s when Axl Rose drops the MLK sample on you.

Glorious.