upside downer

Monday Morning 5:19 - Rialto

Ghosts of Princes in Towers - Rich Kids

You'll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties - Jona Lewie

This Is Not a Love Song - PiL

Forget You - Cee Lo Green

You Stole the Sun From My Heart - Manic Street Preachers

It's all about the Arabic maqam, the method used in much of the music of the region. Not a chordal structure, it's more an improvisational melodic approach based on 24 tone equal temperament. Or 17 equal temperament. There's others, too. It gets very confusing. The headless instrument is a saz, aka bağlama, great fun to play. If you fancy something different I'd recommend getting one. Such a wonderfully versatile instrument.

Love that. 'What kind of music do you play?' 'Interestingly diverse' is my default answer now (even if it might not be 100% true!) 😁

'Abdulcanbaz' was probably not the best song to show off the microtones but I just really like that tune! The band play a combination of traditional Turkish folk music mixed with electronica and other influences from around the world. The saz has 17 notes to the octave (the microtones come after the sharps as we know them on a 12 note octave) and they now have an oud player from Greece with them too which gives them quite a unique frontline. Maybe the microtones are more 'subtle' as it's just another piece of their musical jigsaw? This next tune sounds a bit more unusual to western ears.

On A Rope - Rocket From the Crypt

Congratulations! 👏👏

Thunder In the Mountains - Toyah

Crikey O'Blimey, this is chaos!

That's When I Reach For My Revolver - Mission of Burma

Michael, Row the Boat Ashore - Peter, Paul and Mary

Can Can - Bad Manners

On the advice of some comments in the 'Your most listened-to-live album' thread....

As Jim Bowen (almost) said, "You can't beat a bit of baglama!"

Another one for 'Live After Death' by Iron Maiden here, also 'The Original Pistols Live' by the Sex Pistols recorded in Burton-on-Trent in 1976. Haven't heard either for a good while, will rectify that shortly!

'Ullo John! Gotta New Motor? - Alexei Sayle

Interesting. Here's another 'Lizard' band who went down that route on their splendidly named album Flying Microtonal Banana.

Iggy Pop David Soul Brian Emo (sorry)

Fair point. You've convinced me to stick with my farting orangutan of a voice 😄

Here's my entry for this month. I've gone down the 'David v Goliath' route where the little guy stands up for himself. It's all recorded as usual with Wavepad and Audacity, drums programmed using Hydrogen and the instruments used include a Yamaha keyboard utilising the Japanese Koto sound effect, a Westfield violin bass, an Epiphone guitar for rhythm and the lead played using my recently built 4 string cigar box guitar with a bit of flange and delay. Once again I had my usual turd-polishing saga with my vocal line (and some may say with the words, too). I really must ask my old singer to warble over the top of one of these instead.