After a brief intermission from this week's theme due to the untimely death of Jimmy Bain, it's time to get back to my oddities week with a question: What happens if you take a German cabaret song and give it a Norwegian new wave? You get something completely new. The sonic palette is icy and filled with the latest in synthesizers (for 1981), and the vocals, sung by an immigrant from West-Germany, become both haunting and menacing, in stark contrast to the warm and husky original. The band was The Cut and the song still is In Dieser Stadt.
I am not sure why this song became a staple in my household. I believe it was one of Norway's submissions to the European Broadcasting Union's radio pop music show Europatoppen, where youth from several European countries got to vote on songs, creating a pan-European hit list. I believe my dad taped the song and played it quite a bit. What I do know is that it stuck. I haven't sought out the full album by The Cut yet, but as the song was available for purchase as a digital download at Amazon.com, I decided to at least get that song. I don't know much about what happened to the members of the band either, although I just found out that Volker Zibell, the singer, is a graphic designer and artist working in the comic book industry in Norway. The one I did know more about is the bass player, Torgrim Eggen, who is a very successful - and very good - Norwegian author.
But, I digress again. Taken from smoky clubs upon its initial release by Hildegard Knef in 1965, when the song, aged by whiskey and cigarettes, already sounded at least 20 years old, the city is a much colder place, filled with concrete and smog, when The Cut took us there in 1981.
When I was born, I have a feeling that my parents dropped a giant rock in the ocean. This rock was my musical starting point. It had The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Abba, Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon, and Chris de Burgh. That was music both of them liked - although my mom was more Beatles and my dad was more Rolling Stones. Then my dad brought in some songs that were more out of left field, and the one that really sticks with me was Norwegian new wave band The Cut and their version of In Dieser Stadt (I'll have to include that later). That was on the fringe of the rock, but it was definitely part of it. There was probably more to the rock as well, but the pieces that entered the ocean were definitely the ones I remember best.
What happens when you drop a rock in the ocean - or water in general? Waves... Waves form like rings way, way out. And that is what my musical life has been all about - chasing those wavy rings... I found a rock of my own to toss in and create some disturbances in the pattern when I discovered Kiss in 1980, my music teachers tossed in a rock of some classical music, especially Die Moldau by Smetana, which still stays with me, and then Arve started tossing in country music. These disruptions in the patterns didn't stop me, they made me look farther and farther - always seeking the new and the different. The fascinating thing is when you discover rings from rocks that had been tossed in earlier - such as my middle school music teacher Reidar Fiske's love for 10CC - or when they merge unexpectedly, creating new starting points for yet other rings to explore.
The reason I went to such great lengths to describe how I found Opeth, and then in turn Steven Wilson, is that this is once more a set of rings that both separate and unite. From Porcupine Tree I discovered the extraordinary drummer Gavin Harrison, who in turn has been playing for King Crimson, whose records have been remastered and mixed for 5.1 surround sound by Steven Wilson again - and who use Tony Levin as a bass player, whom I first encountered when listening to Peter Gabriel. And, as I previously mentioned, Steven Wilson worked with Fish - and I decided to see what those two albums were all about and found that I had given up on him too soon. I keep chasing those rings in the water, and by following them once more, I found Gavin Harrison's release from 2015, Cheating the Polygraph. It turned out that he had taken some of Porcupine Tree's compositions and arranged them for big band. Now, my experiences with big band music have been limited, but watching the movie Whiplash really made me appreciate some of it a little bit more - and I have had a taste for the work of Mingus and his big band for some time - so this sounded interesting to me. And then I listened, and my mind was blown away. This is challenging music, but man, is it good... Please, give mr. Gavin Harrison a chance and listen to Hatesong/Halo...
