It is traditional in the SF industry to moan about the way publishers categorize books, but browsing through record stores in London on Wednesday got me thinking that we don’t have it so bad after all.

Fopp, for example, has separate categories for “Alternative”, “Classic Rock”, “Metal” and “Pop”. The Alternative category seems particularly odd, because it is essentially the equivalent of having a separate set of shelves for small press books. I think we should be grateful that our major publishers haven’t yet got so obsessed with best-sellers that we need such a thing.

Then there is “Urban”, which might once have meant Rap and Hip-Hop but seems to have morphed into meaning “Music by Black People (that isn’t Jazz)”. Not good.

Oh, and don’t forget “Dance”. That’s different from “Pop”, even though most pop music is essentially dance music. You won’t find the very wonderful Ladytron in Rock, Pop or Alternative, they are Dance (or in some stores “Electronica”).

My efforts to buy Koop records were a dismal failure. The chap in the HMV jazz department informed me that Koop were “Dance” because they used some electronic instruments, which proper jazz musicians never did. I guess that just goes to show that the music industry has learned nothing from the Bob Dylan Goes Electric fiasco. Well, Waltz for Koop did have an electronic edge to it, but is any self-respecting Dance department stocking Koop Islands? Of course not. It would die on a disco floor. -sigh-

Ah well, back to the US, and the Tower Records web site. The good thing about web sites is that they allow you to search by band name.

Saturday October 28th is turning out to be a very busy day. Were I in London I’d be wanting to get to Camden for the Electric Proms concert featuring Kasabian, Guillemots and the BBC Concert Orchestra. But it is sold out and anyway I’ll be in California. Where the San Francisco Civic Auditorium has a gig featuring Devo, backed by Bow Wow Wow and A Flock of Seagulls. A bit nostalgic, that one, but interesting. Not sure that it is Kevin’s sort of thing, though. Ah well, I’m hoping that the BBC will broadcast the London gig and that I can at least get to listen to it.

Not much to say on the pop/rock front right now as I’m still working my way through an enormous pile of recommendations from the very wonderful Marc Gascoigne. I do, however, have a couple of jazz discoveries that I’m intending to follow up.

The first I found via 3hive. How can you not want to listen to someone called Lullaby Baxter? And when you do, listen closely to the lyrics and you’ll find that she’s delightfully silly. Besides, he new album is called Garden Cities of Tomorrow. I don’t suppose she has actually read Kathleen Ann Goonan, but I like to think she has.

The other discovery came via the Telegraph, which was entirely unexpected – I came across the article by accident while looking for Geoff Boycott’s article. We should remember, however, that second to its right wing politics the Telegraph is best known for its fondness for odd sex stories. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that it decided to run a feature on a hot new jazz album by two Swedish transvestites. Like Baxter, Koop are a thoroughly accessible jazz outfit. Their previous album, Waltz for Koop, is as danceable as the title suggests, and is tinged with electronica. The new release, Koop Islands, appears much more laid back and elegant, as befits the black evening dresses and pearls that the boys have donned for the publicity shots. The sample track, “Koop Island Blues”, sounds like it would be best enjoyed on a warm Caribbean evening, sipping cocktails and admiring the view. That, and three tracks from Waltz for Koop, are playable but not downloadable from Koop’s MySpace site.

Playing the Tourists album reminded me of one of those daft Worldcon ideas that the world was saved from through overwork of those who might have perpetrated it. In response to the inability of Boston fans to pronouce ConJosé, I came up with the idea of an official convention band: ConJosie and the Pussycats. This would probably have ended up as a masquerade entry, the conceit being that we would be the half time entertainment. We would have had to come up with some sort of excuse as to why we couldn’t actually play, so as to save fandom from my appalling singing – bad sound system, not getting paid enough cream, something like that. In any case I was far too busy to push the thing through, and I’d never have managed to lose enough weight to look good in the costume. But I’ve aways wondered what we would have played had we been able to do that set.

Much as I might have wanted to slip in a few Ramones tunes, I think it fairly obvious that the Pusscats would have been an eighties power-pop band. So here are some suggestions for the playlist:
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Also in amongst the mail when I got home was a CD I have been waiting eagerly for. I have finally got a CD version of an album by The Tourists. It isn’t the debut album that I once spent weeks scouring Southampton looking for (long story), it is a compilation of songs from all three of their albums. But it does include the fabulous “Blind Among the Flowers” (adored by Annie Nightingale and me, but ignored by the boorish British public) and the brilliant cover of “I only want to be with you.” Happy, happy.

Those of you scratching your heads and wondering who The Tourists are/were take two demerits and go to the back of the class.

My other discovery from the Mercury Prize is jazz pianist, Zoe Rahman. Her album, Melting Pot, is a very different offering indeed to that of Guillemots.

The first thing to note about Ms. Rahman is that she has hair to die for. When she’s sat on a piano stool it reaches the floor. So I’m jealous, but then Rahman has other talents that I don’t have either. And if I were in her position I’d be wondering why my record company thought that the most important thing to highlight about my work on the album cover is the length of my hair.

People are welcome to argue all they like about whether I am qualified to review books, but I think there’s little doubt about my lack of qualifications to review jazz piano music. Indeed, I suspect most serious musicians would claim that I’m no more qualified to review their work than I am to review a book written in Mandarin. Certainly it isn’t easy.

Reviewing rock and pop albums is a lot easier because such material tends to rely largely on catchy tunes, something that even my tin ear can recognize. Jazz piano doesn’t have the same basis at all, and if you are listening out for tunes then almost the whole of Melting Pot can sound pretty much the same. And that, of course, would leave me sounding like some old fogey complaining, “that pop music, it all sounds the same to me.”

So what can I say. Rahman is clearly exceptionally talented. I spent enough time trying to learn to play the piano (and failing dismally) to know that. Her music is very restful and relaxing. It probably also requires careful listening to in order to get the best out of it, and it is therefore rather shameful then I’m likely to use it mainly as background music when I’m working. More than that, I can’t really say because I lack the vocabulary and the analytical tools. I’ll just note that the final track, “Muchhe Jaoa Dinguli”, with its clear Middle-Eastern rythyms, is memorable because it is so different.

Somehow I can’t see me finding myself humming Rahaman’s music the way I already am with Guillemots, but I suspect I’ll be playing her music just as much.

Having got to be somewhere that I can play music over speakers rather than on headphones I’ve been been putting rather more effort into listening to new bands. High on the list has been Guillemots, one of the finalists for the Mercury Prize. Through the Windowpane has grown on me with listening. The album is a pleasant mix of driving pop rhythms on tracks such as “trains to brazil” and “annie, let’s not wait” with much more delicate tunes such as “redwings”, “little bear” and “if the world ends”. The mutli-cultural background of the band was one of the things that attracted me to them, and I’m pleased to see that it comes out well in things like the big horn sound on “trains to brazil”. Above all, however, Guillemots are not afraid to experiment. It doesn’t always work. The end of “annie, let’s not wait”, for example, dissolves an unfortunate chaos, but I’m happy to forgive them that and more for the magnificently audacious final track, “sao paulo”. This probably marks me out as the sort hopelessly pretentious git who can only have grown up during the era of pomp rock, but so it goes. I knows what I likes.

In theory the web should be a very good place to find recommendations for new listening material. In practice it isn’t quite that simple. Ariel recommended allmusic, which is an excellent site for information about bands, but their audio facilities insist that you install Windows Media Player, which I refuse to have stomp all over my existing audio set-up. As discussed elsewhere, Pandora is a very intreresting system, but is only (legally) available to listeners in the USA. But now I have discovered 3hive. This is a rather clever idea. What the guys who run it have done is look around the web for sites that have samples from albums freely available (whole songs, not snippets). When they find something, they do a blog entry about that album, complete with links to the downloads. They are now starting to get bands sending them sample songs to use. There’s lots of material there already. I think I’m going to the site very useful.

One of the disadvantages of living in California is that the music radio stations appear to be a little dull. I’ve been happy to let Kevin have news radio on instead. He does after all, need to keep an ear open for traffic announcements. And even when I’m back in the UK, as now, the loss of John Peel has left a vast hole in my listening. So I’ve been very remiss in keeping up with the music scene. Jeff VanderMeer has had some intreresting recommendations on his blog, but I really need to go listen to new bands myself.

In view of this I decided to check out the finalists for the Mercury Prize. I’m afraid I don’t quite get all the fuss about the Artic Monkeys, but I was quite interested by the samples I found online for Guillemots and Zoe Rahman. I picked up the Guillemots album last week and have finally got a chance to listen to it on speakers (albeit not good ones) rather than on headphones. So far I’m quite impressed. There’s a nice mixture of infectious beat with ambitious composition. Rahman next. Suggestions appreciated.