Friday 15 May 2009

Happy birthday, Brian

May 15th is Brian Eno’s birthday, and oddly one of the few birthdays I ever remember.  At school a few friends and I used to hold ‘Eno Evenings’ on May 15: once at Auckland Airport where we persuaded the chap in charge of the airport sound system to play ‘Music for Airports’ for us, which was very cool; and once under the stars in the crater of Mt Eden, where we sat around a small fire with several bottles of wine and as large a ghetto blaster as we could get hold of – which, given this was some years before ghetto blasters and none of us were particularly wealthy, wasn’t very large at all.  But it was still fun.

So happy birthday, Brian.  We’ll raise a quiet glass to you again tonight – undoubtedly followed by several noisy ones.  Here’s Brian now:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heh, good story. M4A was bootlegged around High School, and I've spent a few nights with friends in the almost dark listening to the architect of sound.

I think of him as a bit of a pirate. He took that awfully boring John Cage idea & employed it into songs, so it became listenable by having a thread of purpose. But then the best artists steal. :)

Happy birthday, Brian. U2 still needs you.

- Sam P

Canterbury Atheists said...

Any self-respecting collection should include Another Green World.

Prefer the singing Eno with the Ambient one.

The new Byrne/Eno thing is fairly average if you ask me.

Too folksy for more liking and nothing like 'My Life in The Bush of Ghosts'.

Ta

Paul.