Cloudy With a Chance of Chicago Bulls

The Chicago Bulls preseason game was about to start on NBA TV, and I called my six-year-old daughter, A'ishah, over to watch the introductions.  She's familiar with the song "Sirius" due to my playing the Alan Parsons Project in the car when I drive.

Sure enough, when she heard the song she got real excited.  "Abah!" she said.  "This is the song from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs!" :)

Alan Parsons - Fragile

(Yeah, I know; I'm on a roll. Two days in a row.)

I had heard about Alan's new song, Fragile, some time ago, but I only got to see this music video and hear the song for the first time last night. It's pretty good. Check it out!

Alan Parsons - All Our Yesterdays & Alpha Centauri

My favorite artist, Alan Parsons, continues to keep active in writing and performing new music. Two new songs have just been released (so new that I'm listening to the songs for the very first time as I write this): All Our Yesterdays and Alpha Centauri. The latter song, unsurprisingly, has a sound reminiscent to Parsons' mammothly popular song from 1982, Sirius.

Bedtime Music: Ambrosia - Biggest Part of Me

The last band in our theme this week of "Alan Parsons Six Degrees of Separation" is Ambrosia. While none of the original Ambrosia band members have ever been part of The Alan Parsons Project, the four original musicians (David Pack, Joe Puerta, Christopher North, and Burleigh Drummond) all appeared on the first APP album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Later, David Pack would appear on the first of the "solo" Alan Parsons albums, Try Anything Once. Likewise, Parsons was engineer for Ambrosia's self-titled first album, and producer for their second album, Somewhere I've Never Traveled.

This particular song, Biggest Part of Me, appears on Ambrosia's fourth album, One Eighty (so named because it was recorded in January 1980). The song reached #3 on the US charts, and the album generated three Grammy nominations, including Best Pop Vocal Group. This particular video I believe comes from The Mike Douglas Show.

Bedtime Music: Pilot - Magic

Sorry about running late tonight; it's been a very busy day and evening. Anyway, it's not bedtime for me just yet, so it's still Bedtime Music. ;)

Tonight's band is Pilot, with their 1974 hit Magic. Great song; the lyrics are still catchy even today. And the band's connection with Alan Parsons? Alan produced the debut album, Pilot, which this song was on, and Pilot band members Ian Bairnson, David Paton and Stuart Tosh (who also worked with 10cc, as I mentioned last night) were all key members of the Alan Parsons Project.

Bedtime Music: 10cc - I'm Not in Love

Next up is 10cc's I'm Not In Love, from their 1975 album, The Original Soundtrack. In keeping with this week's theme, 10cc is related to Alan Parsons through two of their musicians, Eric Stewart, one of the original band members who sang a number of songs on Alan's albums through the 90s, as well as drummer/songwriter Stuart Tosh (Stuart MacIntosh).

There are some interesting facts about I'm Not In Love:

The song was originally written in a bossa nova format (which might have been very interesting to listen to).

The dreamy, ethereal choral backing to the song was created through numerous overdubs of the band members singing a single note in unison. Through mixing and recording on 16-track tapes, a virtual chorus of 256 voices was created. Billy Joel later used the same effect on his song, Just the Way You Are, as did Queen with Bohemian Rhapsody.

According to Stewart, the band was already being courted by Phonogram to leave Jonathan King's UK Records label and sign a new deal. He said: "I rang them. I said come and have a listen to what we've done, come and have a listen to this track. And they came up and they freaked, and they said, 'This is a masterpiece. How much money, what do you want? What sort of a contract do you want? We'll do anything.' On the strength of that one song, we did a five-year deal with them for five albums and they paid us a serious amount of money."

The woman who says, "Be quiet, big boys don't cry...", is Kathy Warren, who was the receptionist for the studio where the song was recorded.

Bedtime Music: Al Stewart - Year of the Cat

This week's worth of Bedtime Music will be shortened due to the fact that I didn't have the time to prepare last night's post.

New theme this week: Artists who have "one degree of separation" from Alan Parsons. Yeah, I'm a (very) long-time Alan Parsons fan, and those of us on the Alan Parsons e-mail list (the Roadkill gang) have occasionally played "six degrees of separation" using Alan instead of Kevin Bacon. This week, I'm going to play four different groups that have some sort of tie with Alan. Tonight's musician is Al Stewart, playing Year of the Cat. This song came out in 1976 on the album of the same name, Alan having produced the album.

According to Songfacts:

Al Stewart originally wrote the lyrics after seeing the British comedian Tony Hancock in Bournemouth, England in 1966. Hancock was very depressed, and the show was a disaster, with the comedian going to the front of the stage and addressing the audience directly and pouring out his soul. In Al Stewart: The True Life Adventures of a Folk Rock Troubadour, Stewart is quoted: "He came on stage and he said 'I don't want to be here. I'm just totally pissed off with my life. I'm a complete loser, this is stupid. I don't know why I don't just end it all right here.' And they all laughed, because is was the character he played... this sort of down-and-out character. And I looked at him and I thought, 'Oh my God, he means it. This is for real.'" Hancock killed himself in 1968 with a drug overdose. Stewart's song was originally titled "Foot Of The Stage," with the chorus, 'Your tears fall down like rain at the foot of the stage.'

Many of Stewart's songs have alternate lyrics, and he wasn't happy with the Hancock-inspired words, as he didn't want to take advantage of the man's tragedy and besides, no one in America knew who Hancock was. Al re-wrote the lyrics as 'Year Of The Cat,' which he delivered to Parsons.

The Alan Parsons Effect

As you can see on the baby ticker to the right, Milady and I are expecting a baby in a little over three months from now (the expected due date is in early August). In the morning, if we have time, I will talk to the baby, reciting both the English and Arabic alphabets, the numbers through ten, and then singing the scale (do re mi...). This morning, Milady and I had a little extra time, so I pulled out my handphone, which has about thirty albums on its memory chip. The first song I played for the baby is Alan Parsons' "Ignorance is Bliss," which is about as close a song that band has to a lullaby:

A shelter from the storm
A room without a view
A place where you belong
And like a mother's kiss
That carries you to sleep
The ignorance is bliss
-- Ignorance is Bliss, Alan Parsons

"The baby was kicking harder when the song was louder and more distinct, like the saxophone and piano solos. Try something more upbeat." OK, how about some Billy Joel?



Hmmm, maybe we should play more kids' songs. How about from The Jungle Book?





"Play some of the Qur'an for the baby."







And by this time, she had gone back to sleep.

Evangelizing for Alan

This week's Friday Random 10 over at Street Prophets asks the question, "Choose the ten songs/works off any album that you think best represents your favorite artist (singer, composer, band...)." This is my (very long) response:

Being an evangelical for Alan Parsons, I find a mere 10 songs very limiting for a man who's been creating music for over 30 years now. After all, he's come out with 16 albums, so I can't even represent one song per album. Still, I'll try to give a sampling of both his greatest hits and some personal favorites to give an indication of what his music is like.

1. The Cask of Amontillado - From "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" (i.e., TOMAI; the Alan Parsons e-mail list uses tons of acronyms for both album and song titles). Most people would probably choose either The Raven or Fall of the House of Usher (a long, symphonic arrangement), but I like "Cask" because it's about a chilling murder that's beautifully sung in a duet form (John Miles singing both parts). (This is a common feature of Eric Woolfson's lyrics: he writes music about how much he hates or despises certain people, but it's all done to a catchy melody. ;) )

2. I Robot - From "I Robot" (IR). One of the best instrumentals by the band. It certainly set the standard by which all future instrumentals by the Project were judged.

3. Games People Play - From "Turn of a Friendly Card" (TOAFC). The big radio hit on this album was "Time," but I've always preferred "Games People Play," sung by Lenny Zakatek. The Project used a large number of vocalists for various songs, primarily singers from bands who may or (more often than not) may not have hit the big time. Zakatek is my favorite vocalist from the Project; he primarily sang high-energy songs.

4. Psychobabble - From "Eye in the Sky" (EITS). My favorite song. This particular album was probably the most successful of all the APP albums, and there are a number of songs from this album that are still played regularly today, such as the instrumental "Sirius" (which is a popular song for athlete introductions at various sporting events), "Eye in the Sky" (the title song), and "Old and Wise," which is extremely popular in the Netherlands for some reason (according to Dutch members of the e-mail list). This song and "Prime Time," from the next album, "Ammonia Avenue" (AA), are very popular among the fans at concerts because they feature extended guitar solos (often lasting five minutes or so) in the middle of the songs.

5. Days Are Numbers (The Traveller) - From "Vulture Culture" (VC). Up through this time, the mid-80s, one of the more important members of the band, Andrew Powell, had been writing orchestral arrangements that gave the Project's albums a lush, progressive sound. However, Powell had been hired to write the soundtrack for the movie "Ladyhawke" (with Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer), and wasn't available to orchestrate VC. As a result, VC has a more traditional rock sound to it. This particular song, "Days are Numbers," is more in the way of a ballad, and I've always liked it.

6. Freudiana - From "Freudiana." By the end of the 80s, the Alan Parsons Project had completed its contractual obligation of nine albums to Arista. Eric Woolfson, who had been the principal songwriter and one of the main vocalists for the band, had wanted to branch out into more theatrical music; this album, "Freudiana," is the first of those albums. In fact, there are two versions of this album floating around, "Freudiana White," which is performed by the Alan Parsons Project (although whether this really is an APP album has long been in dispute), and "Freudiana Black," which is the original cast recording, sung in German. Freudiana was the last album Eric worked on in collaboration with Alan. Since then, the two men have had a equitable working arrangement: Eric has written a number of rock musicals based on previous APP albums (his music is especially popular in Korea, for some reason), and Alan is allowed to use the songs Eric wrote for his concerts. Despite a strong desire by the fans for the two men to work together once more, they continue to work separately.

7. Turn It Up - From "Try Anything Once" (TAO). This was Alan's first non-Project album under his own name. However, it remained very much a "project" in that Alan relied heavily upon other people to write the music, especially lead guitarist Ian Bairnson. This song is by Ian, and is very popular.

8. Apollo - From "On Air" (OA). Like most other AP/P albums, this album followed a theme, in this case, "flight." Some of the songs were very personal; one song was dedicated to skysurfer Bob Harris, who died while filming a Mountain Dew commercial, while another was dedicated to Ian's cousin Erik Mounsey, a British helicopter pilot who was killed in a friendly fire incident above Iraq in 1994. "Apollo" is a somewhat typical AP/P instrumental, but it's unique in that it's the first of several "techno" instrumentals.



9. Ignorance is Bliss - From "The Time Machine" (TTM). This was one of those albums that should have done better commercially. By coincidence, Alan had written an album about time travel that came out when Mike Myers' second Austin Powers movie, "The Spy Who Shagged Me," was released, which discussed a "time machine" (be sure to make the quote marks with your fingers when you read that) by the noted Cambridge physicist, Dr. Alan Parsons. Later versions of the album include a remix of the title track, the "Doctor Evil Edit" by Alan's son, Jeremy, who's performed on several of his dad's albums since TAO. This song, "Ignorance is Bliss," is perhaps the song closest to being a lullaby, and has been on my mind a good deal recently as my wife is about four months into her first pregnancy.

10. Chomolungma - From "A Valid Path" (AVP). This is Alan's most recent album, released in 2004, and "Chomolungma," which is one of the names for Mount Everest, is the last song on the album. AVP is Alan's move into Electronica, to see if he could find a new, younger audience for his music. The first 80% of the song is a fairly straightforward instrumental, heavy on percussion; however, the last 20% gets a little odd: first, there's a snippet from a radio interview of John Cleese that Alan heard and got permission to use, and then the song ends with a dog barking (presumably Alan's family dog). The bit by Cleese is funny and relates to the background noise; the thing with the dog barking, I have no idea why it's there.

The Falcon Will Rise Again

One of the people on the Alan Parsons e-mail list has asked which one of our posts to the list we are most proud of. There are a couple posts I've written that I've liked, but I've always enjoyed this one, where I "quibbled" over whether the song "The Eagle Will Rise Again" (on the Pyramid album) should have used the imagery of a falcon instead. This was originally written on Sunday, March 21, 1999:

This letter may seem to be quibbling over a minor point on "The Eagle Will Rise Again," but I'll quibble anyway. :)

First, some introduction. This past Thursday, I visited the "Splendors of Ancient Egypt" exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum. This exhibit is on the last leg of a five city tour, consisting of over 200 artifacts from the Egyptian collection of the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany. The response to the exhibit has been truly amazing. This is not an exhibit where you can just walk in and look around. You have to purchase your ticket in advance for a specific date and time to tour. When I arrived on Thursday night, there were signs all over the doors saying the exhibit had sold out of tickets for the rest of the exhibition (which is supposed to close at the end of the month). Touring the show was a fantastic experience for me, and I'm very glad and fortunate to have seen the artifacts. After the tour, I purchased the show's catalog, which I just finished reading yesterday.

In the catalog, there are some references to the relationships between the various kings/pharaohs, gods and the animals which are sacred to the gods. One of the central myths to the ancient Egyptian religion involves Osiris, Horus, Isis and Seth. "After the creation, Osiris was given dominion, or kingship, over the land. He ruled with justice and maintained order, but his brother Seth was jealous and murdered him. Osiris's wife, Isis, used magical means to bring him back to life. He then became the principal god of the afterlife. A dispute over rulership ensued between Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, and his uncle Seth, with Horus emerging as victor and asserting his right to follow his father on the throne of Egypt."

A little later, it says, "The myth of Osiris, who was able to gain eternal life by the grace of the sun god Re, was central to the practices of preparation for burial and the belief in the possibility of life after death in another world. It was also of vital importance in the orderly transition of power from the deceased king to his son. The new king was likened to the young, living Horus with the dead father considered to have entered the next life as Osiris."

Earlier in the book, I came across the following passage about falcons: "The falcon, for example, was associated with the celestial god Horus and the bird, as a representation of the present ruler or "living Horus," was an important symbol of Egyptian kingship." There were other birds mentioned in the text (the ibis, which was associated with the god Thoth, and the vulture, which represented the goddess Nekhbet), but there was not a single mention about eagles. Now, granted, this book is not an exhaustive text on the topic, but it did get me to thinking that perhaps a more correct lyric would have been "The falcon will rise again" instead of "The eagle will rise again."

Like I said, a quibble over a minor point. :)

That Guy...

A short but very humorous video clip of "that guy" dancing to The Alan Parsons Live Project. The song is "Don't Let It Show" from the album "I Robot." The singer is P.J. Olsson.

Alan Parsons - Apollo

This is from an album, On Air, that I have back home in storage, but haven't been able to buy just yet here in S'pore. As a result, I just heard this instrumental, "Apollo," for the first time in a number of years. The song was written by Stuart Elliott, who wrote several songs for On Air and The Time Machine. After one of Alan's concerts in Tempe, Arizona, I met Stuart after the show and told him that I liked the techno instrumentals that he was creating, and he said (paraphrasing), "Someone has to drag the band into the 20th century." :)



This video has been dedicated to all the astronauts and cosmonauts who have lost their lives exploring space.