It seems an age since I wrote an 'Alternative Weekend'. With my occasional thoughts going into @ablaze's Three-Tune Tuesday I haven't listened to much music lately.
If I am at home the music tends to belt out which goes down badly with @bingbabe, who doesn't get my tastes and thinks the neighbours are going to complain due to the excessive decibels, despite us living in a detached property with a 40-foot gap to the next house.
I can understand if it's Death Metal, but that is very rare for me these days. Speaking about 'those days', let's get into the content starting with some Big Big Train.
Big Big Train – The Underfall Yard (The Underfall Yard – 2009)
“Those days have gone, those daysssss….”, cries David Longdon with more than a tinge of nostalgia. By the time these lyrics appear you will have already been on a long musical tale and are somewhere close to the halfway point.
I am listening to the magnificent ‘The Underfall Yard’ once again and it must be 25+ plays by now. Considering this track (not the album of the same name) is just short of 23 minutes long that’s a fucking lot of listening.
By the end of ‘The Underfall Yard’, you are really feeling it, especially when the very English brass section starts. The melancholy, the nostalgia, this has a lot of feeling and brings out the emotions of us blessed beings who have that music appreciation gene.
...'Big Big Train are big big band, with seven members..., more than the average. They might not be super popular but they mostly wear shades and that's a start'.
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Is it that good you might ask? Yes, it is, but it's equally difficult music to ingest and I might have given up if it wasn't for the wonderful harmonising repeating vocal chorus of the late Mr Longden and whoever the band used as backing singers.
David Longden has been accused of sounding like Peter Gabriel but I feel he sounds more like Phil Collins, and that depends on your views if that is good... or bad. Do they sound like Genesis, no, not in the least though the comparisons have been made.
Big Big Train boast a daunting large back catalogue, and it’s going to take me some time to get into it all, that’s if I want to.
Thanks @steevc for throwing this one my way and make no mistake, I am no stranger to the band, I simply ignored them for the longest time. 'That's a stupid name for a band', was the reason, and it's a poor one.
"This is the end of the line…" - just fabulous!
The Pineapple Thief – White Mist (Dissolution – 2018)
"The Pineapple Thief', another stupid name, but no more than any other of these newer bands. This is a band I have listened to occasionally, and though the music is kind of progressive it has never had enough 'OOMPH' for me to get it.
This is a shame as the band is still together, barely anyody has heard of them and they have links to 'Porcupine Tree' via the drummer Gavin Harrison who's a legend to me.
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...'I always considered them a poor man's Porcupine Tree, even if Gavin is a member'...
On more than one occasion I have seen them shilling concerts in Manchester at some small venue such as Manchester University, a great intimate place where you can get close and your heroes are not pinpricks in the distance.
‘White Mist’ is the closest I have come to liking any of their songs and it took a lot of listens. Being half the size of ‘The Underfall Yard' at a mere 11 minutes it should be easy to digest, right?
No..., it’s as bad as any of these newer bands (besides Porcupine Tree), to appreciate. If they had a few more guitars and would ramp up the metal a little I think I would be a fan.
Skeeter Davies – The End of The World (Skeeter Davis Sings The End of the World – 1962)
Let's finish of with something that's as far from alternative as I can think of, and if you think the first two songs are far too long then this is under 3 minutes and great for you lot with short attention spans.
I don't know where to fit this in, but I am struggling with a third song that I have not posted before, and that would constitute repeating content.
Having recently downloaded the re-master at 60 FPS, I decided to give Fallout 4 another crack and am regretting it. These types of games take over your life and draw you in, and if you crank up the difficulty to Hard, it's even better.
...'Fallout 4, cracking game and as deep as it gets for a single player experience, but be careful of over listening to Diamond City Radio'...
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@meesterboom will probably know this one if he's played Fallout 4 and tuned into Diamond City Radio. The play old songs on that station, and I mean songs that your parents or even grandparents might like.
Talk about cheesy music, I could shut off the radio and after hearing many repeats of ‘The Wanderer’, ‘Anything Goes’ and several other terrible songs I may well do that.
One that stuck out was ‘The End of the World’ which fits the game perfectly but not the time zone. I was surprised the song is from as late as 1962, whereas all this other older shit is from the 1940’s.
…'I am not a great fan of anything older than 1965, in general..
'Skeeter Davis', I had to look up this song and found another stupid name. I’m thinking more ‘Rita Skeeter’ from the Harry Potter books, but ‘Skeeter’ was not her birth name.
From the times when female vocalists didn't warble and kept a smooth consistency, comes this very sad song, and it got into my head as an earworm..., how annoying.
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If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, rehive, engage me or all of these things.
