OFF: Ficton & Nektar

[Jon Jarrett]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004, Henderson Keith wrote:

> JonJ relates...
>
> >I had no idea what to expect from Nektar, as I'd only discovered
> >minutes before I got in that they weren't German
>
> Yeah, they're all UK natives, but the band was formed and based in
> Germany (originating in Hamburg at that famous Star Club I think,
> just like the Beatles) :)  from their formation in c. 1970 until
> sometime around 1976 when they migrated to New Jersey, where all
> but Roye Albrighton (who is still in the UK) continue to live.
> So lots of people consider them part of the 'krautrock movement'
> even though none of them are German.

        Yup, I learnt this from album sleeves as I pondered which to buy,
so I wasn't completely surprised by it when they came on stage.

> "Down to Earth," the circus-based concept album, where Calvert is
> 'ringmaster.'  The album is spotty, but Calvert's bits are fun and
> I like "Nelly the Elephant."  Which perhaps they played live for you?

        I don't think so, no, but I wouldn't have known it of
course. Nothing with obviously connected lyrics that I remember.

> Yeah, that one is consistently good throughout and "Desolation Valley"
> is one of my favourite Nektar tracks.  The very first album, "Journey
> to the Centre of the Eye," which is now available in that 5.1 sound
> format on CD (plays normally on a regular stereo system, so it's a
> "hybrid" disc), is the true Space-rock album from Nektar.  A classic.
> I wish they would play some songs from that one (esp. Dream Nebula).

        They had the 5.1 version on sale, or rather I think an SACD with
conventional CD layer and a 5.1 version as bonus material. Actually this
is what you describe, isn't it, ignore me. But I'm pretty sure they did
play `Dream Nebula', or at least something with those words in. If that
helps?

> >Keyboards, played apparently by a Welsh hobbit,
>
> :)
>
> He has the strangest accent of any person I've ever heard.  I can only
> understand about every fifth word!  I thought he was from Liverpool,
> hearing some similarities to other Liverpudlians I've heard (Lister
> from Red Dwarf is one, yeah?), but perhaps north(?)* Wales is just a
> more extreme version of this bizarre accent.  ?

        Welsh and Scouse (colloq. term for Liverpudlian) are some way off
from each other to my ears, even where the vowel sounds are similar the
intonation in Scouse is much more scathing and less lilting than
Welsh. But I come from nearer the relevant places of course.

> *He doesn't sound like Terry Jones, who I use as a Welsh example, but
> then I don't know what part of Wales Jones hails from.

        For all purposes of accent, Terry Jones is from Oxford. His accent
has nothing of Wales about it to me at all. He was born in Colwyn Bay
along the north coast of Wales, but it doesn't seem to have left any mark
on him.

> Anyway, his name is Allan Freeman, but he goes by "Taff."  (Isn't there
> another Allan Freeman who is a DJ in the UK somewhere?  At one point,
> I thought maybe it was him, but since Freeman lives in NJ, it couldn't
> be.)

        `Taff' is usually a nickname for a Welshman too, so this was why I
wasn't surprised by his accent and why I think it was Welsh. The other
Alan Freeman, known more widely as `Fluff' (because he's always at the end
of a gramophone needle, I suspect this line has aged rather with digital
media) is still around, but is much taller, more cadaverous and whiter of
hair than Nektar's keyboardist (who is none of these things :-) ). I did
also wonder when I saw the name though.

> I thought he did pretty well with the digital stuff.  Granted, it was
> better at Burg Herzberg '03, when he had his 'real' keyboards, but then
> he was also low in the mix, so mainly he was prominent just in the quieter
> parts.

        Is this a strategy of theirs then, or just that his amps aren't as
good as the stringsmen? The album I have isn't mixed that way...

> I like the current PT just as much as the old PT, but in a different way,
> as they are now seriously metallized (poor Barbieri has almost nothing
> to do now) and hardly any psychedelia remains in the mix.  But Wilson
> is still a good songwriter, and as long as he keeps the sappy choral
> vocals to a minimum, and doesn't do any more of that string orchestration
> (as on Lightbulb Sun), he's still got my interest.  And now Adrian Belew
> will be contributing to the new PT album, so we'll see where that goes.

        Meanwhile I discover to my complete surprise that Mr Wilson has an
entire new album out under the name of Blackfield, which is a
collaboration with an Israeli named Aviv Geffin. I've got the CD Services
mailout about it which seems to pitch it as an even more song-based
PT-style album. This does not immediately make me leap to get it; has
anyone else heard it to comment?

> >Now, someone tell me what I missed, OK? Yours,
>
> You mean the encore?  "Fidgety Queen" perhaps.  An ok song...from that
> "Down to Earth" album.

        No, I meant what I'd missed from BOC, about whose shows there has
seemingly still been nothing posted except from Southampton. It's either a
telling sign of how suddenly fandom can die or someone is not speaking
out... I believe the Nektar encore, from the look of their website which
suggests that they play all of _Tab In the Ocean_ in gigs these days, must
have been `Crying in the Dark', which I don't remember from the main
set. So in that xcase, if I missed it I at least took it home with me
:-) Yours,
           Jon

ObCD: Hawkwind - _Love in Space_
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)