But since people do take McArdle seriously for some reason, here's The Hunting of the Snark countering the argument that changing the health care system in the US will stifle innovation.
Daniel Davies, again at Crooked Timber, examines the claim that humanitarian intervention in Rwanda would have stopped the genocide and concludes that it wouldn't, because it didn't.
Finally, does anyone know if anything that looks likethis creature is common in Austria? Many years ago while vacationing there, I was spooked by a large twitchy insect thing with false eyes, and seeing this picture brought it all back. The critter in the picture is a click beetle and was shot in the United States
Just one year after "Recovery", Loudon Wainwright III has another album in the pipeline, and it's another project-oriented record, based on the life and career of old-time North Carolina banjo picker Charlie Poole. It's called High Wide & Handsome and there's some video documenting the project and highlighting the songs on the project's website. As you can see, he's brought the whole family in - while I don't like everything that all of them have done, there's no denying that his ex-wife and offspring are a fantastic talent pool.
This is one record I'm gonna snap up unheard when it comes out. Loudon has been on a very strong streak in the past four or five years, and from what I hear in the video's, this record, too, should be a goody.
Embedding is unfortunately disabled on this live recording of "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme from 1968, but it's worth a look, both for the musicianship and for singer Jacqui McShee's unearthly appearance. And dig the way bassist Danny Thompson detunes his lowest string at the end to hit that last, extra-low note!
Here's one that will allow itself to be embedded:
They still used that stage arrangement on their 2008 reunion tour!
The fifth studio album by Norwegian gangster-polkarockers Kaizers Orchestra is a bit of an odd duck - it's a compilation and also a new album, and it's a studio album that often feels like a live album. Kaizers have re-recorded a number of songs that were previously played on tour, put on demo's and played on the radio or otherwise previously recorded but not commercially released, spanning their entire nine-year recording career. It almost works, too: though the songs can be traced back to the writing sessions for each of the previous studio albums, the record as a whole sounds cohesive, warm and lively, with a good balance between the group's traditional beats (two-step, tango and rock) and pump-organ/guitar interplay and the brass, horn and banjo additions that broaden the sound of individual songs. Våre Demoner could pass for an album of completely new material easily, except for one thing: this time around, the Kaizers' sound's charm wears off before the album is done and things begin to sound somewhat samey. The tracks that were left off the earlier albums were, taken as a whole, almost as good as the material that did make the cut, but not quite.
This makes Våre Demoner an album for the dedicated fan rather than a good introduction to the band playing their best work; for that, any of the first three studio albums will work a lot better.
Våre Demoner was a limited release in Norway, with only one pressing being made based on the amount ordered during the first week of release. The Dutch iTunes store still has it though as do iTunes stores elsewhere.
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Below is a run-down of the individual songs and which original writing sessions they were taken from:
"Medisin & Psykiatri" is the best track on the album; a menacing intro followed by a two-step that sounds more like an old Johnny Cash track. Originally from the Maestro sessions.
"Våre Demone", also from the Maestro sessions brings a neat Sixties/surf influence to what is otherwise a typical Kaizers Orchestra track.
"Die Polizei" from the Evig Pint sessions and featured in live shows dating back to the Maestro tour at least. A slow, melancholy track.
"Fanden hakk i hel" from the Maestro sessions is hystrionic but unremarkable.
"Kavalér" from the Evig Pint Evig Pint sessions, is more jaunty, but was probably rightly left off that album.
"Gruvene på 16" from the Ompa til du dør sessions is slowish and laid-back, probably more so than it would have been if it had been recorded at the time.
"Señor Torpedo" also from the Ompa til du dør sessions. Has a stomping bass beat that is similar to "Kontroll på Kontinentet", the opening song from that album and probably their best-known song.
"Den sjette sansen" from the Maskineri sessions is a pretty unremarkable track.
"Sonny" from the Evig Pint sessions has a strong lyrical resemblence to "De Involverte", one of the best songs from that album, and is pretty good in its own right.
"Prosessen" from the Ompa til du dør sessions is an OK song given a nice lift by the added banjo part.
By "Stormful Vals" from the Ompa til du dør sessions, the album is beginning to outstay its welcome. Luckily it's the last song on the record "proper" and it's an OK song with neat brass and horn arrangements. It might be a grower. It's not a waltz, by the way.
By the bonus track "Under månen" from the Maskineri sessions, the record has definitely outstaid its welcome. What did that track sound like again?
I watched this when it was broadcast. Then, as now, I loved the fact that the producers cared enough to have the song subtitled. When I showed the clip to DFG, she thought LWIII's head movements and slurred speech were the result of him having had a little too much too drink before the interview, but as far as I can tell, that's just how he is.
LWIII gets misrepresented as a jokey songwriter a lot, especially by journalists who want to talk up his (significantly less talented) offspring at his expense. In his best songs, the humour is in the service of something deeper, and occasionally disturbing.
That said, the jokey, clownish part of him is there, and here's a clip of him on the BBC's Jasper Carrot show in the 1980s - the trousers are not part of the clown act as people really dressed like that at the time - singing I Don't Think Your Wife Likes Me and hamming it up for the camera.
And...one more, singing Cardboard Boxes on Wogan, at around the same time.
British television in those days was a goldmine! Below are three clips from BBC Pebble Mill ca. 1982, featuring Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick from Fairport Convention playing as a duo. I love Swarb's violin style, but what stands out is how good Simon Nicol could sound as a guitarist and a vocalist. His voice is limited in power and range and tends to drown out in a larger band, but in the first one of these duo performances it sounds impassioned, raw and much more powerful. And of course, the only reason he never got much credit as a guitarist is that he spent years performing with Richard Thompson next to him. Time to Ring Some Changes:
The least of the three clips, but still worth a look if you made it this far: Three Drunken Maidens - cheesy but fun, both in content and presentation. Swarb's annoying habit of humming along to his playing is unfortunately very much in evidence.
A couple of years ago, I reviewed Swarb's then latest album Swarbrick Plays Swarbrick and mentioned his health troubles. Not long later, he had a lung transplant and within a few months he was back on stage. Below is a clip (with unfortunately poor sound quality) representing what he sounds like today, accompanied by guitarists Kevin Dempsey and Martin Allcock, another much-underrated guitarist. Swarb looks rough (but not as rough as before the transplant) but his playing is as energetic as ever.
The music industry's slowest remastering program lurched forwards one more step towards completion this week. Starting in 1995 with the 25th anniversary edition of Deep Purple in Rock, it has now finally managed to get around to the release of the 35th anniversary edition of the album Stormbringer that was originally released just 5 years after In Rock. For Deep Purple fans, of which I still am one, it's a big event. For many years, the original masters were missing and this reissue had been eagerly anticipated even by those who, like me, always thought it was a bit shit compared to their best work. After the 2004 30th anniversary edition of its predecessor Burn, I concluded that the album had really come back to life with its new and improved sound quality, and that it was much, much better than I remembered it being. Likewise, Stormbringer has come back to life with its new and improved sound quality. Unfortunately, it's still a bit shit, and in some ways is even less inspiring than I remembered.
It starts off well enough with the title track, a mid-uptempo rocker with some nice brash keyboard work from Jon Lord, that uses the vocal teamwork of David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes well. Problem is, it does that in pretty much the same way as the opening, title track of Burn from less than a year earlier, and "Burn" is the better track of the two, with a faster tempo, a more energetic rhythm section and some of the best guitar and keyboard work in the group's history.
On the rest of Stormbringer, though, the band are either going through the motions of creating Deep Purple tracks or experimenting with adding soul and funk elements to the formula.
Many fans absolutely hate the soul and funk elements, but they could have worked if everyone had been into it. The main problem was that guitarist Ritchie Blackmore was spending his time and energy working on solo material, wasn't interested in the funk and did not have the professionalism to even try to make the group's material work. He famously played one of the solos with just his thumb. It shows: someone who did not know Blackmore's other work would not hear what was so great about him on this record. Apart from a few flashes of his old lyricism, such as midway through the solo in "Hold On", he plays obvious, unoriginal licks without putting much of his energy into it.
The result is a mishmash. Nothing on the album is embarrassingly bad (that would have to wait, as far as studio work was concerned, until 1987's House of Blue Light and especially 1990's Slaves and Masters) but as a whole, little of it excites or lifts the spirits and many tracks wear out their welcome pretty quickly.
One caveat: my review is based on the download sold through iTunes, which means that I'm missing out on several things. One of them is the CD booklet - I really wish a digital version of that had been included, because the liner notes from present and former band members and champion Deep Purple trainspotter Simon Robinson have always been great reads and given plenty of context to the album for those of us who, like me, weren't there at the time. The other is the quadrophonic mixes. They are present on the iTunes edition, but they have been mixed back down to stereo so they don't add all that much to the package (although some of them are alternate cuts that do hold some interest for Deep Purple completists). The physical disk, on the other hand, comes with a DVD in which they can be experienced in 5.1 multi-channel. I'm not really into that, but if you are, then buying the physical package is probably worth it and may redeem this so-so record far more than a straight stereo remaster ever could. For me, as someone without a 5.1 system and someone who hasn't even played records directly from CD in years, it would just be another plastic disk to fill my shelves with, so I've passed on it.
If the rumoured new Doe Maar album actually materialises, I will do a "Countdown to... " on this blog in the days leading up to the release date, like I did with the Kate Bush album Aerial. I'll review all previous albums in order, one a day, including the live albums and the Dub album. I might draw the line at reviewing all the compilations, though.
It's that big a deal to me, and besides, it'll be fun introducing a nationally-famous Dutch group to my international readership and trying to explain why they're a big deal.
In my review, I said that the songs from Klaar didn't have the relevance that the earlier albums had. I've been listening to that album though, and my statement shouldn't be intended to mean that the album is bad. It's very, very good - just not up there with their 1980s material in terms of hitting the nail on the head all the time.
24 years after they split up for the first time, the legendary Dutch pop group Doe Maar can still sell anything with their name on it, so their second reunion stint (4 club shows, three gigs at Feijenoord Stadium and a festival gig in Belgium) sold out in no time. But did they have anything to add to their first reunion in 2000, especially now that they didn't come up with a studio album this time around?
Yes.
Hell yes.
How about much better sound, to start with? The 2000 gigs, great though they were, suffered from the fact that they were in Ahoy' Sports Hall, notorious for its reverb-laden acoustics. Tonight's concert at Feijenoord's stadium had crystal clear, well-balanced sound with the deep, pure lows that the group's reggae-inspired style needs. In fact, it was easily the best sound I'd ever heard at a concert?
How about a leaner band? Back in 2000, I felt at times like there were too many people on stage - a percussionist, a brass section, an extra guitarist doubling Henny Vrienten's bass lines. I wanted to see and hear the four main guys - Vrienten, Jansz, Hendriks and Pijnenburg. This time, there were still additional musicians on stage, but the way it was handled was that the band was augmented by three people, two of whom were multi-instrumentalists. There were also two guests who came on stage for two or three songs each. While the total number of musicians was the same as last time, the impression was of a leaner band that had to choose which parts to play and which to drop.
How about a stronger set list? Though the set started and ended pretty much the same as on the 2000 gigs, the two and a half-hour concert had some real nuggets in it - "Ruma Saja", "Situatie", "Winnetoe". Paradoxically, the fact that the band didn't have a new album to promote helped make the set seem more up-to-date. The old stuff is still relevant in a way that much of the material from Klaar never managed to be.
And how about having Joost Belinfante back in the band? I had heard he was going to show up to perform his ode to cannabis sativa hollandica, "Nederwiet" but I didn't know he was going to be on stage all the time, as one of the three additional musians mentioned earlier. Belinfante is one of those performers who are more than just musicians - his mere presence added a touch of unpredictability to it all, like a morris Fool. Where Doe Maar as a whole sound like a well-oiled machine, you never really know what Belinfante is going to do next, and how his favorite plant will influence him. "Nederwiet" doesn't have a fixed lyric or even a fixed number of lines in the verses, so the musicians have to be on their toes.
And what musicians they are! With the improved sound quality, leaner band and timeless set list, Doe Maar really showed off their skill at creating tight, danceable, dynamic performances. The most impressive part of their sound is their rhythm section, with a precise, angular style driven by Vrienten's bass work. Jan Hendriks on guitar has one foot in the rhythm section, spending most of the evening strumming chords on the afterbeat - but when he gets some solo space, he uses it very well indeed.
If you're Dutch, you almost certainly know the songs. If you're not, let me tell you that Doe Maar have some great songs - humorous ones, thoughtful ones, touching ones, but always understated ones whose poetry is in their simplicity. This night, they impressed me greatly. Best concert I've ever been to.
I haven't seen any watchable footage from the 2008 gigs on YouTube yet, but here are some YouTube highlights from the 2000 gigs, taken straight from the DVD:
Reinder Dijkhuis is a translator and cartoonist living in Hoogezand, the Netherlands. He is married, with two stepkids, a dog and cat, and a bevvy of sporadic co-bloggers.
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