Archive for the ‘David Gilmour’ Category

Chillaxing guitar with Clapton and David Gilmour

Thursday, April 23rd, 2020

Liona Boyd
L’Enfant
Sorceress
Labyrinth
Persona

Liona Boyd’s wikipedia page says that she is “often called the first lady of the guitar” with a big fat [citation needed] next to it because it’s probably not true. She has an album called First Lady of the Guitar, but using an album title to designate yourself a grandiose moniker is like trying to give yourself your own nickname the first day of junior high; it’s just kind of sad. If I was forced to designate someone as “first lady of the guitar” I guess I would probably choose Bonnie Raitt? I don’t know, the title itself is kind of demeaning, doesn’t it mean that the woman is married to her guitar? Am I overthinking this? Probably, I got a lot of free time, after all.

So who the hell is Liona Boyd and why the hell am I sharing her music? These are valid questions. Liona Boyd is a guitarist (duh) with a lengthy career that goes back to the 1970s with over 20 albums. She’s not a shredder or anything like that, she’s a classically trained guitarist who specializes in acoustic music. She primarily performs classical music, with some excursions into other, equally mellow genres. She has a lot of Christmas albums, which makes sense.

I don’t know anything about her career. I’m very sorry for all of the die-hard Liona Boyd fans out there. The songs I’m featuring by her tonight are from her 1986 album Persona. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not featuring said songs because of Boyd herself, but because of who joins her on said songs.

The tracks “L’Enfant,” “Sorceress” and “Persona” all feature guitar by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, while “Labyrinth” includes electric guitar by one Eric Clapton. The entire album is full of guest appearances, actually. Yo-Yo Ma pops up at one point, and nearly all of the album features work by composer Michael Kamen (Lethal Weapon, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Dead Zone), performing various other instruments. He also arranged the entire album. I have to imagine that the guest spots by the two superstar guitarists were the work of Michael Kamen as well. He had worked with Clapton on the Lethal Weapon movies, and he’s worked with Gilmour quite often.

I typically can’t pick out instrumentalists just by hearing them, but I was able to guess pretty well which tracks Clapton and Gilmour played on this album without even seeing the liner notes beforehand. Sure, it helped that they’re both playing electric guitar on an album that is largely dominated by acoustic guitar, but I think that nearly everyone with even just a passing interest or knowledge in Clapton would be able to instantly recognize his style on “Labyrinth.” The obvious blues influence, the sustain, even the pacing of the notes, it all screams Clapton.

Gilmour is a bit harder to spot on a few of his tracks. I hear hints of him on “L’Enfant,” but the only reason I think he’s playing anything on “Sorceress” is because the liner notes tell me so. However, about two minutes and twenty seconds into “Persona,” an electric guitar solo kicks in that sounds like it was taken from outtakes of the “Comfortably Numb” sessions, it’s that recognizable at Gilmour’s work. It’s always hard for me to define what makes a Gilmour solo sound like David Gilmour, I guess I just know it when I hear it, like on the absolutely stellar “Pink and Velvet” by Berlin, which features one of Gilmour’s best solos of all-time. Listening to that track for the first time, I could tell instantaneously that it was Gilmour kicking out that solo. That album also features a shockingly good guest solo by Ted Nugent too. Weird record.

Again, hope everyone out there is staying as safe and as sane as humanely possible. Do whatever it takes not to go crazy. I’m trying my best and losing, so if you got any pro-tips in that area why don’t you pass them along.

 

Pop Floyd and Garage Rock Disco Covers

Saturday, February 27th, 2016

The 10th anniversary of Lost Turntable is about a week away, and I do have something special planned. Not only that, but in a rare example of me planning out this blog in advance, most of it is already written and ready to go. I’m trying to go for something that focuses a lot on what I feel makes this blog great (in my humble opinion) and will really run the gamut in terms of content and tone. I think there will be something for everyone. I hope you all enjoy it, because I’ve really put a lot of time into it.

David Gilmour
Blue Light (Vocal Remix)
Blue Light (Instrumental Remix)
Is there a name for the genre of music that most 70s rock stars saw themselves falling into during the early 80s? You know what I’m talking about. Steve Winwood, Phil Collins, Pete Townshend, Robert Plant, just to name a few, at the dawn of the Reagan-era they all stripped away damn near everything that made each of them unique and all drifted towards the same incredibly generic, synthesizer-based dance/pop/rock sound. Nebulous-yet-catchy, and utterly dated not five years after the fact. Does anyone still listen to Robert Plant’s “Tall Cool One” in 2016?

That song is better than this track, however, a failed single off of Gilmour’s 1984 album About Face, which was not a good record in 1984; not a good record when I discovered it in the late-90s, and remains not a good record to this day. This is probably one of the better songs off of it, and I can say that it at least works moderately well as an upbeat rock track. Gilmour’s vocals are decent, and he manages to work in his trademark echoey guitar effects into what would be a rather bland pop track otherwise. It’s still strange to hear Gilmour perform music like this though. His more recent solo efforts, while also far from perfect, are much improved, and I think play more to his strengths, those being spacey guitar solos and much looser song structures.

While I’m not a fan of Gilmour’s solo work, I would still say that his solo output is better than his bandmate Roger Waters’, which has served to prove that Waters is a lyricist first, bass player second, and a musician eighth (positions three through seven are “professional asshole” if anyone was wondering). Gilmour’s solo records are boring, but at least the guitar solos are good. Waters couldn’t catch a melody if his life depended on it. He is tone deaf after all.

If you’re interested in checking out good 80s Gilmour that doesn’t involve Pink Floyd, I strongly recommend you give a listen to Berlin’s “Pink And Velvet,” a lost masterpiece that probably features Gilmour’s second-best guitar solo behind the one for “Comfortably Numb.” A jaw-droppingly stunning lost classic.

Thelma Houston
96 Tears (12″ Remix)
File under “Covers I Never Thought I’d Hear,” right next to KMFDM’s take on “These Boots Are Made For Walking” and Eagles Of Death Metal’s “Save A Prayer.”

The album version of this cover can be found on Thelma’s 1981 album Never Gonna Be Another One, however, this epic seven and a half minute version is 12″ exclusive and out-of-print entirely. It’s not as epic as I hoped it would be, but I’m still enjoying it.

How I Spend my Friday Nights

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

Hey look, it’s music on a Friday night/Saturday morning!

Blue Pearl
Alive (Goa Mix)
Alive (Radio Mix)
Alive (Organapella Mix)
Down To You (Massey Mix)

Last year much hoopla was made of Metallic Spheres, the new album by The Orb that featured Youth from Killing Joke and David Gilmour. The funny thing was that both of those guys already worked together at least once before.

Blue Pearl was a collaboration between Youth and female singer Durga McBroom, who worked as a backup singer for Pink Floyd in the 1980s. I guess she had a fan in David Gilmour, who contributed some guitar work to Blue Pearl’s only album, 1990’s Naked. According to Wikipedia Richard Wright from Pink Floyd also contributed on the album, but I don’t know if his work is on any of these tracks.

As for the songs themselves, they are very 80s house sounding, and pretty dated. Still, McBroom has a crazy amazing voice and the tracks are an excellent example of that kind of music.

Youssou N’Dour
Undecided (Deep 12” Dance Mix)
Undecided (12” Dance Instrumental)
Undecided (Deep Radio Mix)

I know nothing about Youssou N’Dour. Sorry. I bought this 12″ single on a whim and dug it for its Deep Forest-ness. Enjoy.

Soft Cell
Numbers (Extended Version)
Barriers

Now this is an artist I know about. I thought that by now damn near every obscure 80s track had been re-released on CD or digitally, but I guess I was mistaken. These versions of Numbers and Barrriers are not in print in any digital format (although the extended version of Numbers was on one re-issue of a Soft Cell album at one point, I can’t find that one anymore.)

Now look, I love me some Soft Cell. Tainted Love? Easily one of the top three songs of the decade. Sex Dwarf? Easily the best named-song of the decade. But these tracks? Well…I’m sure if you’re a devoted Soft Cell fanatic you’ll be very happy to find them here. Um, enjoy.