Parsed Participle

The Who ended the Japan leg of their 2008 Tour with tonight's concert at the Budokan. I was actually not aware that they were now down to only two members (bassist Entwistle died in 2002) - Townshend and Daltrey.

The show was pretty much fantastic. The band was super-tight, the legendary showmanship was there, the sound was excellent, despite the high volume - the levels at the Budokan are much more bearable than a monstrous venue like the Tokyo Dome where I saw the Police perform earlier this year. The Budokan is also relevant because it's where so many great bands have performed in Tokyo. This was where The Beatles made their debut in Japan. Apparently, this is The Who's first visit to Japan. Unlike the Beatles, and the countless British bands that blessed Japan with concerts and tours in the 70's and 80's, The Who never made it here until now.

Roger Daltrey noted this fact with regret as he expressed how impressed he was by this "beautiful city and it's wonderful people."

The Budokan was as I expected: that Showa-era feel and interiors of a building constructed in the 60's. It wasn't hard to imagine the Fab Four walking around in it's corridors, since the place has probably never been renovated since. I'd seen videos of performances at the Budokan earlier (most notably Dream Theater and Yellow magic Orchestra), and it really does have that 'rock-and-roll' history feel. Before the show began, Thilo and I looked around at the mixing consoles, trying to guess what kind of software all that impressive array of equipment was running. We noticed the R.A.F Roundel motif everywhere.

The set began with Can't Explain, at a volume loud enough that made it impossible for me to excitedly ask Thilo if he'd heard/heard of the Scorpions cover version. The sound was muddy when it began but smoothened out rapidly. Maybe it was my ears getting used to the volume, but the later into the show we got, the better the vocals and guitar tone sounded. Pete Townshend actually changed guitars for every song - all Fender Stratocasters except for the acoustic guitar that appeared in the second encore. Despite their age, their on-stage antics were almost identical to what you can see in footage of their 70's performances (ask YouTube for Baba O'Riley) - Windmill strokes, and Thilo joking that 'a wireless mike would not work for him (Roger Daltrey).'

Obviously the most brilliant part was Baba O'Riley and the performance of a significant part of Tommy in the first encore.

I've noticed that while enjoying myself obviously make me happy, seeing other people enjoying themselves (to a greater extent than I am) actually not only makes me happier, but adds to it a warm, fuzzy feeling. I realized this during the ASIA concert in February 2007, when this forty-something lady in front of me simply went wild when the music began. Today, there was this quiet, fifty-something unassuming gentleman next to me, I guessed either a salary-man or a mid-level executive of some local company - who had come alone after a normal day of work, and I imagined that most likely he was suffering from that guilt associated with leaving the Japanese workplace earlier in the evening than is usually expected, skipping the almost regular overtime. When Baba O'Riley broke out, he went nuts, in a good way. I mean, imagine a suit-attired man like any other fellow you are squeezed against inside a crowded train, and here he is, sleeves rolled up, jacket thrown off and ecstatically singing along next to me, waving his arms in that rock and roll high. There's too much sentiment and joy to classify an experience like this as 'entertainment'.

Richard Wright, the pianist/keyboard player of Pink Floyd, died of cancer a little over a month ago: In Japan, at least one article in the local media referred to him as the 'ear' of Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd's music colored my view of the early adult experience, and despite not having listened to any of it for several years now, they remain one of the few bands from my classic-rock phase that I can still listen to with the same level of emotional connection.

At a time when keyboard solos were being done to death by all the other British progressive rock bands, Richard Wright was unique in his sense of coloring and complimenting the Floydian sound in unobtrusive, perfectionist yet emotionally powerful ways.
I've spent the last thirty days listening to a great deal of music from Pink Floyd's 70's phase: from Meddle to Animals - but with special attention to those fabulous sections where Gilmour and Wright harmonize (Us And Them, Echoes), and also where Wright sings lead - In Time for instance, his articulation of Roger Water's classic line about 'Hanging on in quiet desperation..'

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

The Classic Albums documentary on the making of The Dark Side Of The Moon features interviews where Alan Parsons takes these best vocal sections apart on a console, while Wright himself demonstrates how he borrowed a chord from Kind of Blue for Breathe.

Not that I was hoping to see a Pink Floyd reunion concert anytime soon (I think they all gracefully gave up that idea a few years ago), but one can't help feeling, as Waters himself states - that Rick's was a premature death.

I'm watching Echoes / Live at Pompeii: great organ sound, great harmonized vocals, no shirts on.

Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me.

Thanks for sharing this, Praveen.
http://measureformeasure.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/toms-essay/index.html

Me and my sister grew up listening to songs like Luka, though we never knew what they meant for years. Suzanne Vega talks about her other hit (she describes herself as a two-hit wonder) - Tom's Diner, and the role it played in the development of the MP3 format. She also talks about her trouble with technology, and her tech-savvy mom.

The warm-and-fuzzy factor would be complete if only MP3 were a free format, though. A very interesting read, nevertheless.

I've never been a fan of guitar processors. One good reason for that has been, of course, that I never actually play (any of the guitars lying dormant in my possession that I may have bought on a whim or 'borrowed'). Another reason could be that I was spoiled early on by such wonderful things as a Fender Bassman (which, as I recall was fed by an nameless antique PA valve amplifier). In fact, back at home (and I am referring to Chennai) the last amp that used to clutter my room was a similarly salvaged valve driven PA, and I'd never moved the knobs on it after I'd figured out the sweet spot: very bright, warm and ringy sound from a Strat-ish single-coil guitar that also used to clutter up my room.

The only stomp-boxes I ever liked were the Boss OD-1 and (though I never owned one) the Tube-Screamer.

Of course, I am referring to overdrive here; all the other stuff - delays and chorus effects were another matter, but even then I rather liked the stomp-boxes compared to those nasty early guitar processors with their knob-less menu-and-mode-driven digital interfaces and displays.

This is why though I'd been in Japan for long enough (and this is where you can get almost any processor in existence. If you are a guitar enthusiast and have not discovered Ochanomizu yet, you should), I'd never sunk the cash for a processor.

However, a few days ago, for no apparent reason I found myself window-shopping at this guitar store in Shibuya, and even more surprising, a little later I found myself buying a guitar processor. I had never even asked to plug it in and see how it sounds. (Then as if to add one more tiny notch to the unexpectedness of the whole thing, I cycled home with the large box precariously half-stuffed into a bursting backpack)

It was the styling, the knobs, the 707-cockpit-like appeal of a very analog looking, metallic, clunky yet intuitive interface: meet the BOSS ME-50 Multiple Guitar Effects processor. Essentially a stomp-box pedal-board, only that it's all in one single unit, and no fussing with inter-pedal connecting cables and unwieldy power supplies. Construction is extremely rugged and the expression pedal feels great. The idea behind the interface (all knobs) is that you have a familiar, all-at-a-glance view of the settings on all the effects as you fiddle around for the sound you want. I imagine this is amazingly easier than any button-ridden processor, where each interface needs to be 'learned'.

Of course, the amp-modelling sucks (I'm sure it is fantastic and all that, it's just that amp modelling never appealed to me), but in a while I found great overdrive tones (the overdrive panel has an OD-1 mode) that suit me just fine. Oh, and delay is awesome: just like having a Boss Digital Delay built into a chunk of the unit; after just a few minutes of fiddling, I even figured out how to do the 'Slang' stunts (i.e., Jaco Pastorius' improvisations over a delay-looped 'rhythm track', as performed live in the track called 'Slang'). This is of course, meant to be a 'live' processor - that you plug into traditional amps, where most of the overdrive actually happens. Consequently, the amp-modelling is not the focus (which suits me fine). In the meantime, it sounds great through open-air headphones!

This post is 3 days late, but that's because I was too busy watching video clips of The Police, mostly from this tour, earlier (relatively ancient) tours and also a lot of interviews.

Like I said, I'm a fan.

About the concert: Needless to say, it was a fabulous experience, the only real downside being that it's now over.

This was the first really big concert I've been to. Big in the sense of the whole Arena Rock sort of thing (not that one can label The Police's music itself as 'Arena Rock'; for the term has negative connotations) - I mean, I simply did not realize how far from the stage we were going to be until we actually walked into the Tokyo Dome - that place is huge. My first worry as soon as I laid eyes on the stadium was not that the band would appear as barely perceptible miniscule dots; it was the fact that the (a) It was going to be very loud and (b) However good the sound system turns out to be, clarity, dynamic contrast and sonic detail would suffer thanks to the physical constraints of having to fill such a large venue with sound. At least, that would be the case from where we were sitting (well, we only sat as long as we waited for Sting, Andy and Stewart to arrive). I instantly regretted not having sunk the cash for whatever premium tickets were being sold. Perhaps the sound would have been much better closer to the stage.

The opening act was Fiction Plane, and since I didn't know right then that the singer/bassist was Sting's son, I actually wondered for a moment why there was something vaguely Sting-ish about him. Unlike his Dad, though, it appeared that he put in quite a bit of time with his Japanese.
The band itself was OK, but the biggish-ness of the sound began to worry me. Since for the most part, I listen to Jazz these days, Rock, especially when played really loud (and that's usually at a level beyond the threshold of pain), sounds lacking in detail and feels hard to listen to at such volume levels.

But the sheer excitement of watching the band that wrote some of the most memorable songs of my childhood (though I really began to listen to them more closely past the age of 16) walk onto the stage, and break into 'Message in a Bottle', sans the big video displays (they came on only during the next song, "Synchronicity II"),

lasted long enough, through the entire show. It was utterly brilliant. And it would still have been, even without the help of all that light and sound power.

Message in a Bottle itself seemed like a bumpy start, performance-wise; (but like I said, it didn't seem to matter) I mean, the main guitar riff sounded muddled, and as is the case with so many big concerts, the first song ends up feeling like a sound-check - levels of this and that kept going up or down till they find their optimal position.

I've always thought that Synchronicity II was rock-anthem material, sound-wise at least, and performance-wise it was awesome. I'd picked up a copy of the programme, and in it it said that The Police had sort of worked out their mix of improvisation while keeping the songs as familiar-sounding as possible. This they got right. The improvisations were awesome (so long as you had not already seen them on those YouTube videos of earlier shows on the tour - these seemed to be rehearsal-time improvisations, not performance-time); During Synchronicity II, when Sting sings,

Grandmother screaming at the wall...

I was instantly reminded of Vasanth, an old friend from school, who also played bass and sang at the same time - the wall.. part of that line sounded so similar to something Vasanth would have done with his melodic improvisations (Vasanth, as I remember his, was also famous for improvising with lyrics, since he could never remember them. At some times, it would end up being pure Scat).

Stewart Copeland was utterly amazing. While Andy Summer's guitar sound did take a hit or two in terms of detail loss, the percussion was clear, precise and super-tight. Well I suppose it's one of the inherent difficulties of playing live as a 3-piece band - for the guitarist, I mean - you can lay down tracks in a studio, but on a stage a guitarist sometimes has to drop a solo or improvise in such a way that things do not sound empty. Look at any live performance of The Police from the 80's and you'll see what I mean. Maybe too high levels of sound really take away more than they give. Maybe even at the Tokyo Dome, the sound was probably superb on stage, coming out of the monitors.

Another thing is the song-writing value. Sometimes you know a song for it's lyrics; which have a certain context, an interpretation (that you may or may not even be right about). Some of this feels lost when performed in uniform, stadium-filling rock-anthem spirit: many of the Police's songs are in my opinion subject to this slight skew - when performed with an energy and spirit not really connected with the song. Let's face it: So many Police fans simply love the not-so-upbeat lyrical twist to the songs, which in their studio versions are laid out with sparseness and precision, preserving all the cynicism, imagery, and sometimes outright darkness. I suppose that these things, highly subjective that they are, are especially hard to get right, even if one so wishes, in a large adrenaline-charged concert.

He walk unhindered through the picket-lines today
He doesn't think to wonder why

... another Vasanth-esque improvisation on the 'why' ...

Well I may sound confused and self-contradictory, but man, was it a brilliant show or what. Nothing feels sadder at this moment, than the fact that it's over and there's nothing quite as great to look forward to.

The tickets to the 2007 Police world tour (which, in Japan, will be 2008 by the time they get here to perform at the Tokyo Dome) just arrived. Thilo, (my colleague and more-than-occasional sufferer of my worst puns) for whom I picked up a ticket as well, is beginning to be concerned about my general euphoria, and is also getting a little tired of having to parse out-of-context Police lyrics in lieu of coherent sentences.

I'm allowing myself that smug feeling of reassured satisfaction. Looks like the Screen scraping idea paid off. These are relatively good seats (they had better be; they cost 13,000 yen each), and might I add that though I managed to get them relatively early, the previous day's show (February 13th) was already sold out.

I suppose one could call me a fan. After years of not listening to classic rock, leave aside The Police, I suddenly find myself buying all their classic albums. In fact, I just bought almost all of them. Amazon is evil, I tell you, with their accursed 'Customers who purchased this item also purchased...' feature:

• Reggatta de Blanc
• Ghost in the Machine
• Zenyatta Mondatta
• Synchronicity

Only Outlandos d'Amour is needed now, to complete a full collection of all the band's studio albums.

And, what timing: 2007 sees Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland not only reuniting as the original 3-piece band, but with any luck, I get to see them live in Tokyo in February. If I buy the tickets on time that is. I have a horrible track record of missing out any good live music in a city that's not exactly deprived of it.

I must be a fan; I've spent all weekend watching YouTube videos of The Police, both clips from their 2007 world tour and the old music videos from the early 80's.

I only hope they don't get completely bored of playing the sames songs over and over again, by the time they get here.

I was lucky to see Chick Corea and Bela Fleck at the Tokyo Blue Note: Here's what they played (for the second set at least, which was what I went for):

1. Brazil
2. Children's Song #6
3. A Strange Romance
4. The Enchantment
5. Joban Dna Nopia
6. Mountain
7. (Encore)Spain / Waltz For Abby

Joe Zawinul, legendary Jazz-fusion keyboardist of Weather Report fame passed away yesterday, at the age of 75.