My Songs

 

While I'm on the subject of Sting, I finally got around to the 2019 My Songs album.  There's probably a quite a bit of criticism about Sting's continual touring of his back catalog (and the re-releases such as this).  However, it could be argued that it shows a lot of dedicated hard work to his art, fans, and legacy (although he could add in some more thorough US tours)  This is an interesting collection of reworked material, a much better idea in my opinion than a greatest hits work. I think this could have been a great opportunity to put  together a definitive collection of his body of work, but as it is it's a little half-baked.  First, the songs that are only remixed really don't belong here. As far as the songs of The Police finally done as solo studio versions, the question might be: what took so long?  It's interesting that while these songs are definitely part of his musical DNA, going back to the beginning, the songs I Can't Stand Losing You, So Lonely and Next To You were all shelved for 25 years, only re-emerging in his sets after the Police reunion. As for Fields of Gold, and Shape of My Heart, there is a nagging question of why these songs needed rerecording?

Despite an intriguing idea, this collection feels a little thrown together.  What I would have like to have seen would have been a one or two volume double-disc collection either studio or live in the studio   recordings with Dom and David Sancious, and Vinnie or Josh. Start disc 1 with the essential Police recordings.  As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'd really love to see his first two solo records re-recorded with Dominic and with him back on bass. This would have been the perfect opportunity.  Just using the live post-1990 arrangements would be satisfying for a Volume 2, perhaps adding highlights of the albums with a few revisits to the forgotten, although significant, tracks: Love is the Seventh Wave, Lazarus Heart, History Will Teach Us Nothing.

Tracks done with this band so far: If Your Love Somebody, Love is the Seventh Wave (rare), Russians, Children's Crusade (rare), We Work the Black Seam (studio only), Consider Me Gone, Moon Over Bourbon street, Fortress Around You Heart (truncated), Be Still My Beating Heart, Englishman in New York, They Dance Alone (somewhat rare), Fragile, We'll Be Together, Straight to My Heart, Rock Steady (rare, excerpt), Little Wing (rare), Sister Moon

Newer songs seem unnecessary for re-recording, although this inclination of Sting's could always be questioned. Perhaps selections from Brand New Day and Sacred Love could use a stripping-down, and brought back to a tight rock-band feel (although live versions would probably suffice).

As it is, the Special Edition with live disc makes the purchase worth it (although, why he can't just release live albums from each tour is beyond me)

Bags of Blood (More Songs About Death and Water)

 "The world has seen enough impatient bags of blood" - Marillion - Be Hard on Yourself

“We are but bags of blood and bone.” - Sting - The Bridge

As we emerge from the morass of 2020/21, one of the first questions to elicit a response is how the pandemic will influence the cultural subconscious and how that will be manifested in artistic constructs, since it certainly could not be avoided.

Of personal interest, both artists of primary significance to me, are releasing albums at the same time, both consisting of themes admittedly motivated by the pandemic event. In an example of synchronicity, both artists (the pre-eminent songwriters about death and water) have converged on the "bag of blood" image of post-pandemic human reflection. 

 

The first "single" release from Marillion's An Hour Before It's Dark - Be Hard on Yourself is a promising track, following FEAR's attention to the larger global threats to civilized stability. Musically this is clearly a continuation of fifth-era [1] Marillion, with structure similar to Sounds that Can't Be Made and FEAR.   But this time there is the feeling of a more dynamic motivation and tension, an ongoing momentum, unlike the tempo slow-downs on FEAR which impeded the flow of the songs, and undermined the critical urgency of the content. Their piece-together-a-bunch-of-musical-bits approach has yielded some great music, although it retains some clunky transitions and could perhaps use some more editing (where a less-is-more attitude might improve the flow). Hearing Hard, along with a snippet of Care, Marillion has seemingly evolved the experiments of the last two records into something that more resembles their essential sound.  As for any water themes, we'll have to wait until March for the full release. 

As a side note regarding the title (and yes I know I do not yet have the full context, but as it is my page here, I'll give my initial thoughts), the titles of this era have seemed a bit . .. awkward.   Returning to something a bit more concise and literary, Before Dark would have seemed sufficient and appropriate, but then I think titling Sounds That Can't Be Made as simply Power, would have exerted ... more power.

As for Sting's record, the pandemic force has seemingly pushed him in the opposite direction.  While The Bridge is a nice collection of songs, the first thing I would say is that this is not a rock record.  It is the most stripped down work he has ever done.  There is acoustic guitar, and presumably some bass, but overall not much electric guitar or drums, and lacking in foreground keyboards (maybe next time we'll see the return of the venerable David Sancious). This is a work of classical, traditional English, and folk music.  While Miller's classical approach to guitar has had a tremendous impact on the direction of  Sting's composition for the last 30 years, this work feels, finally, like a collaboration between the two, with Miller's style merging with Sting as a singer and writer/storyteller.  While there are hints of Ten Summoner's Tales, it is with a post-57th & 9th band and mentality.  There are also a lot of hints of Mercury Falling, both the best and worst results of that session. [2]  Thematically, like Ten Summoner's Tales, Mercury Falling, and Sacred Love, this is collection of tales - morality tales.  There is a lot here about God and redemption, in a quite explicit manner.  Similar to much of Marillion's work, this could be viewed as a religious work, without the religious ideology, ritual, and dogma over-dominating the personal experience found in examining the self as coming-to-terms and living with itself.

[1] Eras: 1- Fish, 2- Classic H (SE through TSE), 3 new sounds (Radiation through Anorak), 4- the 5 discs in 4 years output of cross-session songs (Marbles through Happiness), and 5- the post-near-breakup return with the stitch together method.

[2] Best: traditional maritime "water" style, worst: 70s feel (with horns).  Less apparent on the album is the classic Blue Turtles to Soul Cages feel.

Fugazi

 

 

Do you realise, this world is totally fugazi
Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries, where are the poets?

With the deluxe release of Fugazi now out, I thought I would take some time to catch up my thoughts about this re-release series.  Fugazi finishes up the Fish years, and holds a peculiar position in Marillion history, being a classic-but-forgotten album.  This mostly stems from H's avoidance of its material, leaving it essentially dead as far as Marillion themselves are concerned.  But, even before Fish's departure, songs like She Chameleon had disappeared from the setlist before the tour. Furthermore, both fans and the band found the mixing disappointing, a situation which has now been rectified with this opportunity.  I confess this applies to my own listening rotation as well.  Randomly select any point on Fugazi and you will instantly hear top quality classic Marillion music. Given that my introduction to Marillion started with Brief Encounter, Real to Reel and The Thieving Magpie, these tracks were part of the core sound that fascinated me as a new musical world.  Certainly, you could say that this is where Marillion developed their sound. Although they were at the lead of pushing the genre into the neo-progressive era, the first album consisting of much material which was aligned with what previous bands had done, as well as pre-developed material from the early proto-Marillion band members. But, this album as a whole just seems . . . incomplete? Unfinished? Short? Missing one more anchoring track? While Assassing and Fugazi are strong songs in the band's history, Jigsaw and Emerald Lies, while being excellent deep cuts, somewhat reside in the shadow of those book-end songs, and both Incubus and She Chameleon now seem a bit dated and controversial from a post-2010 viewpoint. The only single, Punch and Judy is perhaps the one Marillion track that most foreshadows Fish's post band career. Every thing done here would eventually come together more coherent and powerful on the next record.  Really, this is a prototype for Misplaced Childhood, and may have worked better in that album's ultimate format.

The deluxe series, being theoretically the definitive version of each album session, is in a difficult position.  Marillion has done an excellent job of releasing just about every recorded note of value to outside listeners.  The remasters series with collected demos and B-sides covered the original eight records (starting with their emergence only four years after the band left EMI).  And, the Making-of series beginning with Brave has covered not only the demo sessions, but the pre-demo musically sketches.  Appropriately, Afraid of Sunlight has revived the most coverage with the deluxe version containing demo material beyond the remaster release and the Refracted making-of.  There simply isn't much old material to be found.  On the live side, Marillion might be the best documented band in history (at least for the last 15 years of material), featuring 50-some live albums, considerable tour downloads since 2008, two live box sets covering the EMI period and the 50 FRC live albums which also represent the H period well.  Only the Fish years have possibly been under represented, and the only unreleased material that could have been included would come from that live history.  Torch Song had a dozen live performances in 1987 (and was recorded), including that with Clutching At Straws would have been the first release of it's live version. As for Script (and its live connection to Fugazi), inclusion of the 1982 Marquee show would have been the first release of the song Institution Waltz as well as a unique release of the original version of She Chameleon (provided there exists an adequate recording).  Other than these performances there doesn't appear to be anything unreleased.

Regarding the form and structure of the new releases, the main selling point of the deluxe series resides in the live shows documenting each corresponding tour, the making-of interviews, and the new mixes, including 5.1 and 48K or 96K stereo versions.  With maddening inconsistency, this series has progressed to show an evolution (ignoring chronological order) that makes later releases "definitive". Script added video content with the addition of Recital of the Script to the Blu-ray, and Fugazi includes an extra bonus with a 1984 live performance video.  Both of these discs also include HQ versions of their corresponding live discs. Furthermore, a second documentary has been included for Fugazi. There has been much whinging about the extra tracks being moved to the BD disc (although the 2-disc remasters have been around for twenty years for those unwilling to give up their CDs).  Unfortunately, the Brave release omitted some of the extra tracks even on the BD disc, and Script ignored some of the Market Square Heroes material and demos, every other release has included all of the 2-disc material (and Clutching at Straws, Brave, and Afraid of Sunlight containing the original mixes of the album).  I have grown to find the format of the last two releases preferable as the Blu-ray contains the full HQ album, the extra tracks, the live album in HQ and the video content all on one disc. Looking back, it would be nice to have the first four releases to have HQ live material and extra tracks on that disc. As for the live video, it would have been a great advantage on those other releases, but being rare and expensive at the time, and dependent on the rights-holders, it is understandably not present. One issue regarding Fugazi content involves the relegation of Cinderella Search to the video disc.  While not complete for inclusion on the original album, both fans and the band alike view this track as one of the strongest of the session (it is even included within the song commentary).  Given this recognition, and the perceived shortness of the album, as a retrospective opportunity it would have been an added value to included it on the album disc (and remaster/ mix it) as both a convenience and aesthetic choice.

With the upcoming Seasons End and Holidays In Eden releases, the band's most important evolutionary period will be covered, leaving only the Racket years left for possible revisiting. While it will be nice from an aesthetic viewpoint to have the following ten (or twelve) albums done in this format, the period has been so well documented that there probably won't be any further primary material to be excavated, leaving 5.1 mixes, documentaries, and a complete collection all in one singular release as their raison d'être.

It seems prescient that Fugazi became the first post-pandemic release, a statement of the times, as the world truly has become Fugazi.

Jeremiah Blues 2020+

 How can one make sense of the experience of 2020?  Perhaps the best way is the realization of the no-sense that underlies history.  There is clearly a sense that 2020 will be a crossroad point in history, with change of direction that will lead the path into the future. A convergence of replays of 1918, 1929 and 1968 (and the 1860s) have dislodged our sense of stability and security.

    The initial "historic" event of the year, COVID-19, was beyond what most had experienced in several generations - the inability to "solve" the emerging problem, the uncertainty  (with its certain destructive impact), and the inescapable ubiquity of a true pandemic have undermined our modern society.  The necessity of realizing the breakdown of normality has  caused a psychological trauma within our collective unconscious, the first felt by most outside of "unthinkable" modern spaces like Sarajevo or Syria).  This force has infiltrated and subverted the impregnable defenses of the unshakable first-world. The only way to comprehend the unnegotiability of this event, is to realize it as an intrusion of the Lacanian Real into the "Stable" construct of Symbolic Reality.  Our language, laws, ideology, principles, and even our science, cannot contain it or shield us.
     

As Tony Myers has described the Real, it is:
    "anything that is interpreted differently discloses the presence of the Real. AIDS is a good example of this. Some people interpret it as a punishment for homosexuals, a divine retribution for carrying on a  non-Christian way of life. Others see it as part of a plot by the CIA to stem population growth in Africa, while other people consider it the result of humankind's interference in Nature. All these explanations circle around the same brute fact of the disease which carries on regardless of the reasons attributed to it. In other words, AIDS is an irruption of the Real. It is meaningless in itself and all these interpretations of it are attempts to Symbolize it, attempts, we might say, to divine a message in the Real where none exists. For the Real is meaningless and senseless-it just persists, and meaning can only be found within the reality of the Symbolic Order."

This example of another coronavirus illustrates the trauma of Covid as as an intrusion of the Real.  It's a Chinese plot to destroy Trump.  It's an American plot to destroy China.  It's a global plot to inject microchips into the population. All ways to interpret this brute intrusion.  This event itself would be historic enough in its direct impact on the totality of individuals that constitute global activity.  However, beyond that we must ask: How does history happen?  Do events, (and their resulting cultures, policies, and world-views) occur as we pre-plan and enact them through reasonable and practical considerations? Or do they involve a certain amount of randomness, occurring beyond the precise world that we can carefully control?  Like our own best-laid lives, history "is what happens while we make other plans."

Against the background of a Covid world, the tension was going to inevitable break into violence, and the Real infiltrates not only nature, but society. For those "law and order" advocates that condemned the protests-turned-riots by the criminal undesirables, let us not forget Philadelphia 1985 when police bombed (literally) and burned down a neighborhood, killing 11 people, including five children.   It is interesting to note Jean Baudrillard's work America, in which he discusses the concept of asepsis:

"In Philadelphia, a radical sect named ‘MOVE’, with a bizarre set of rules, including one forbidding      both the practice of autopsy and the removal of rubbish, is cleared out by the police, who kill eleven    people by fire and burn down thirty adjacent houses, including those (the irony of it!) of all the neighbours who had called for the sect to be removed. This, too, is a clean-up operation. They are getting rid of rubbish and patina, getting back to an original state of cleanliness, restoring. ‘Keep America Clean.’"

Of course, now that the radical right has shown definitely that it isn't really about the law, its about control (Fascism), and power defines what the law means.  There is nothing above it (or more fundamental). It was the transition into a new year and new political landscape that finally synthesized social violence and politics. A breakdown of both political and daily social function has shown the intrusion of the Real into the Symbolic systems that found our everyday functioning. Of course, the right-wing propaganda compares the 2020 election to the 2016 one, and the capitol siege to the 2020 riots. 

As for the election, in 2016 the Democrats were accused of refusing to accept legitimate results when they wore pink hats and had peaceful marches.  Far removed from organized (conspiracy) attempts to overthrow the legitimate 2020 results.  No one on the left claimed the Trump did not officially occupy the office of president, only that he was sworn in on a technicality - a deficiency built into the fabric of our system,- and the outcome, however legitimate, was a result of  voter influence by foreign propaganda and political maneuvering (Comey).  The impeachment did NOT exonerate him from these accusations.  He very much did NOT have a mandate.  A professional, honorable person in that position would have been very prudent and should have appealed to the opposite side - the majority- for cooperation.  As for being President by upholding the office through professional action, the four years revealed a failure in this respect, culminating in the capitol siege.

In terms of the violence, the comparisons would be laughable in less serious circumstances. Once again, the left is accused of condoning the riots.  Of course no one in any rational manner, or in any political capacity endorsed, condoned, encourage, incited or promoted such activity.   As criminal activity, it was never labelled as anything but criminal.  Two major differences stand out:

1. It was extra-political, or at the least extra-legal.  While making a political statement and attempting political goals, these events aimed at something outside of the parameters of the functioning governmental process. While groups like BLM are closer in thought to the Democratic party,the are not synonymous, nor was it was a Democratic sanctioned issue.  No one did in the name of Democrats and no one sported shirts or flags and acted in the name of an individual.  Furthermore, the protestors have a legitimate cause. The problem is that the justice required for the solution is not to be found with the justice system nor the political process.  Without recourse to an established system, only no-legal means might remain, hence an extra-political situation.  As such, the manifestation of frustration and anger may be illegal, but whether it is unethical remains in question. Certain from inside the system it appears so.  But, as already revealed the system is incomplete and any progress to an equitable system may necessitate criminal behavior.  When criminal behavior is enacted for a purpose, it is up to the individual to commit to responsibility for it.  They must consider the repercussions and be prepared to face them.  If they find that justice will be further advanced, then the ethical decision is for them to make. For example, freeing a slave pre-Civil War was clearly criminal. Nevertheless it was the correct action.  While the circumstances are not currently as clear-cut as that, it may be proven in the future that discrimination in civil rights requires revolution outside of the system. Reflecting on the serious of rioting, let's not forget that some rioting is quickly overlooked (and it's a bit of an American tradition).  Burning garbage cans, overturned cars, and broken windows are not unheard of results of sporting events, and have no inherent value at all.  But, these crimes are dismissed as nothing (but crimes). So, to claim that the 2020 riots were downplayed in respect to 2021 is disingenuous at best.

 However, what just happened was not equivocal, it is distinct level  , and direct comparisons area category mistake.

 2. The siege was Anti-American. A far larger difference between the two events involves the political overlap.The siege was not just criminal, it was a higher level of violation: treason.  In attempting to overturn the election and destroy the legal process, it attempted to negate the very laws of the land.  In this itself, this event has no relation to the riots. But, far worse, is that this insurgency is led by the Comander-in-Chief himself.  Not since Emperor Palpatine have I heard of a leader controlling two forces pitted against each other.  With some Senator and Representative already complicit in treason with the President, the insurgency is both internal and external to the established government and unequivocal to criminal riots. 

Before the Capitol siege, the State Capitol takeovers by Militias in the summer were already well beyond protests. If you attend a protest armed- that is terrorism, plain and simple.  Even worse if do it on government property.  As a way of influence politics through fear and intimidation, brandishing weapons is terrorism.

What we are dealing with is not just differences of policy, and beyond differences with ideology.  It is meta-ideology.[1] A deeper ideology which has co-opted, corrupted, and radicalized the conservative ideology.  The growing cult (influenced by QAnon) has expanded to redefine the Deep State as to include The media, academia, the FBI-CIA-intelligence agencies, the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell, Fox News, Big Tech, Walmart, the cabinet, and VP Mike Pence. Every thing and everyone the defends the Constitution becomes a target, an enemy of the state.  America as a state is now the enemy of the "patriots." The coup of the Republican party is evident in the RINO accusations, when solid conservatives are condemned as not real Republicans.  The is absurd and obviously backwards.  That split is apparent only because the party was commandeered by a far more conservative and radical ideology.  A more authentic party, clear in its ambitions and presentation would be honest in its alternative to the Republicans, something like "The America First Party", "or the American Fascist Party." As a far-right party, the choice would be clear for voters.  Instead, we have political action on false pretenses, a cult unlike any previous party - stores of propaganda merchandise, shirts and flags with an Messianic icon. It is a Twenty-first century update of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, patterned on the Book of Revelation.  It is more than a political movement, it the foundations of a religion, a very false and dangerous one. "Draining the swamp" means destroying a democratic society and leaving an omnipresent swamp of corrupt oligarchy. Fighting the Deep State means ignoring, violating and overriding the US Constitution.

Ultimately, the Republican party was the Frankenstein that built the monster of Trump. And, Trump is the Frankenstein that built the monster of his cult. It is all out of their control.  And, the spreading danger it possesses needs to be eradicated before it consumes American democracy. Covid was not the only virus to mass spread in 2020, and we are now living in the Real, hoping for a Symbolic reconstruction to normalize history.

Addendum: I just noticed that the last post I made, High Rise, involves the fracture of the Symbolic social order into the Real. Although written by April, I was reading it at the end of 2019.  I guess 2020 was doomed to be the coming storm.

[1] Not only is it an ideology - a viewpoint considered universally true and foundational (when it is contingent and arbitrary), but one that resides secretly underneath an ideology- creating a double falsity.