Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Tara Busch - Pilfeshire Lane - It's all in the footnotes (and liner notes)

I once had a good teacher give me a love for footnotes. Perhaps it sounds a bit geeky but the truth is that this interest in footnotes in books and liner notes for CDs has served me well. It is the basis for many of the books I read and how I also again and inside understand of music that I listen to, that is, liner notes.

In these evil days of the Internet (ok, I know, thats what I am using now), one tends to believe that unless its hot off the fingers of a blogger, its not worthy of print. Newspapers are now in danger of going out of business and with Kindle, one begins to wonder if the book if not soon to follow.

Despite the fact that this is a blog, I am still nostalgic and yes, I do have a lot of books. Books have permanence and if someone bothers to footnote one, then all the better. It shows that they are serious about what they are doing and willing to share their inner thought process and basis for what they are saying. Something that our politicians should take a book out of rather than hiding behind legalize all the time. Lawyers, harder to get rid of than roaches.

OK, that's enough of the politics. I listened to Pilfeshire Lane last night and it immediately brought to mind two impressions. First, that it was unapologetically electronic (first plus - ok, I am biased but what can you do). Secondly, in so many ways the equipment list was very much like on of my favorite prog bands, Pink Floyd. The Hammond B3 and Fender Rhodes took their prominent place (I recognized the B3 right away). Something new in their as well, a list of Moogerfoogers, The ARP Solina (used by Tangerine Dream and Floyd ("Wish You Were Here", "Animals")) and a few rare oddities that really caught my eye, the "Melloman" an odd "Walkman" based re-incarnation, and the Optigan, a little known optigal disk remake of the Mellotron that never really caught on. Of course, there is also the Vox Jaguar which Tara recently parted with.

I also see on Mike Walters list the Minimoog (suprizingly no Voyager). And of course, the ARP Axxe, a lesser version of the Oddessy.

What all this tells me is that Tara and her band have a love of vintage equipment which I do as well. Tara's music is also unique which is one of the reasons I like it. While reminiscent of the past in some ways, it is not a copy of the past. Artistic integrity is so lacking in many types of music and, in my mind, has rendered hip hop, an artistic graveyard (ok, sorry, had to get that little bash of hip hop in there).

To be honest in would be difficult to classify "Pilfeshire Lane" in any musical category and that is an often rare commodity in music today.

Congratulations to Tara and company for bringing some creativity (and electronics, vintage and otherwise) back to music.

No comments: