Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Alternatives To Valium - Alastair McKay - # 11 Rod Stewart

 


I'm coming to the end of this so I'll stop here. It isn't a narrative of Alaisatir's life anymore, just a series of excellent freelance interviews he made down the years so I'm not selling Alternatives To Valium short by taking my leave today.. 

Rod Stewart is an interesting one in that he's always been around, but I've never really ever thought about him much. There's a bloke in what I still call my local in Newcastle  but don't actually go to much now because I don't really drink alcohol much anymore.

Anyhow there's a guy who drinks there. Usually with his close circle on Sunday nights. I think of him as Rod Stewart because he always puts a long string of Rod classics on the jukebox at some point on the evening and is always flying off to places. Las Vegas usually. To see the man in concert.

I was a child and became a teenager in Richmond Upon Thames. It was and is still a great place to be. One of the urban legends about Richmond is that Rod Stewart was discovered there. Singing drunkenly on a  Richmond Station platform early one morning. This episode is detailed here. Apparently it's true. The song was Howlin' Wolf's Smokestack Lightning.

Rod comes across in the chapter here as good company first and foremost. Someone who loves football but never arrives before the kick off and leaves before the end. He never worries about anything. Well he's got enough money not to have to. He's a singer with a rare ability to inhabit songs. He doesn't see the need for a Faces reunion, reasoning that there are plenty of good bands. He reminds Alaistair of George Best. When he tells him this, Rod replies, 'He's probably shagged some of the same women if we were to compare notes.' We'll start a new book tomorrow. I'll decide on the book later today.



Steely Dan - Their Thirty Greatest Songs # 5 Rikki Don't Lose That Number

 


When it comes to Steely Dan songs that people know, this comes pretty top of the list. It has a refrain that sounds like an advertising jingle. I imagine it probably has been one.

Like a surprising amount of Steely Dan  songs it's about sexual desire. Becker and Fagen were a lot hornier than I ever realised before I started this. This one was about an unrequited crush on Rikki Ducornet, wife of Fagin's Bard College Professor. The lyrics are poignant if you listen to them which I haven't ever really done before this morning. Pop songs are like that. The tune is one to die for. 

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 561 Stina Nordemstram - People Are Strange

 


I remember liking the idea of Stina Nordemstram andher records when they came out though I never actually heard or bought them. She was the kind of artist I was naturally prone to. An elfin Scandinavian who idn't want to be contained. 'I want to be invisible and private.' she said at one point. I like the contradiction of musicians like this.

People Are Strange came out in 1998 and is a strange of disemboied covers of very well known songs which sound like you've come across a strange girl singing to herself in a bandstand in the park. Accompanied by a friend playing minimal piano parts on a badly tuned piano.




500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 429 Beastie Boys - Licensed To Ill

 


I've come to enjoy much about The Beastie Boys but immediately I was certainly not taken. I didn't care for the shouting and banging what sounded like pots and pans around. There is a lot of shouting banging what sound like pots and pans around on Licensed To Ill.



Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,986 The Alan Parsons Project - The Turn Of A Friendly Card

 

I tend to leave records like this to the tender care of my good friend Chris Barron who I know appreciates these things more than I ever can. I'm sure he will give it a very good home.



Song(s) of the Day # 3,682 Ancient History

 

One of the great thrills of writing a blog like mine is coming upon records like this. Ones which will never so much as get a mention from Mojo, Uncut or The Guardian but strike me as every bit as special as the ones they cover. More often, because of what they come to mean to me.

This morning a Pittsburgh based musician named Don Ducote, who joins the dots between Lo-Fi and Experimental Indie practice on his magical latest record Dollar Consolation Prize.

A record that made me think of Beirut, Sufjan, Mercury Rev, Joanna Newsom, Dark Tea, The Shins and all those guys at different moments of its spin. Outsiders and dreamers, toiling away on seams of thought through  guitars and more unworldly instruments in upstairs bedrooms and reaching for the stars they see twinkling in the night time sky as they stare into the night from behind their net curtains.

Not a record with memorable tunes exactly but certainly one which casts a spell that traces its roots back to The Fugs, The Merry Pranksters,  Cassidy, Ginsburg and Kerouac and beyond.

I loved Dollar Consolation Prize almost immediately. It makes its own rules and drifts off from there into the starry night guided by the windpower of its dreams. An enchanting record and journey. 


  


Monday, March 18, 2024

Alternatives To Valium - Alastair McKay - # 10 Hank Williams

 


Alastair goes dungaree shopping with Tilde Swinton in Aberdeen while she's playing a part in John Byrne's Tutti Frutti. And gets a highly illuminating interview out of the process.

Swinton is very self-consciously an artist. Everything she says is an exploration and an attempt to discuss the journey of her life and its expression through her work. This offers plenty of scope for her to be dismissed as a self-absorbed luvvie by those that won't take this kind of behaviour seriously. But he does allow her to speak. And her ideas and art are always interesting. Ince their chat is done she gets herself some nice dungarees.  



Steely Dan - Their Thirty Greatest Songs # 6 Deacon Blues

 


'Encapsulates all that Steelt Dan excelled at, spotless and gorgeous playing rich in the rimance of Jazz, and a lyric narrate by a character that is, sad to say something of a loser.'

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 560 Rakim - The 18th Letter

 





500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 430 Felt - Me And A Monkey on the Moon

 


Felt number among the greatest underachievers of the Eighties. Frankly, it was a long list and another book I hope someone will get round to writing. I think it's interesting subject matter.

Felt were the masters of self mythology, again in a decade when any number of bands mythologised the fact that they were under apreciated and their chart positions didn't match up to what they saw as their their value.

This is Fekt's farewell statement after ten years, ten albums, ten singles. The record came out in 1989 and got as much attention and sold as many records as pretty much all of their albums. That is, not much. It's a sweet, melodic and elgaic record.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,987 Metric - Fantasies

 


A slightly faceless record from Toronto band that uprooted and made their way to New York to connect with what was going on in Brooklyn. 




Song(s) of the Day # 3,681 Alison Cotton

 

You don't always wake every morning hungry to embrace Pop Tunes, Sometimes you're in the mood for something slightly more sombre to greet the sun as it it rises in the heavens outside your windows.

If that's your wish, I'd direct you towards Alison Cotton's latest album Englechen. It's one SOMBRE record, let's put it that way. Portentious is another adjective which comes to mind. One to take you back to the late Thirties perhaps. If that's where you wish to go. Forty minutes to reflect. Before war and calamity break out. On all sides. Perfect for times when all the world is talking about more wars breaking out and plenty are well underway.

Essentially a chamber piece with bonus Greek Chorus. The kind of record embraced by the likes of The Quietus, Stewart Lee and misery guts of your acquaintance.

 I quite enjoyed it myself. But then I'm prone to wrinkling my brow, stroking my chin and thinking profound thoughts myself of a morning. This makes excellent company for this kind of behaviour. Embrace your inner intellectual. 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Alternatives To Valium - Alastair McKay - # 9 Iggy Pop

                                         

                                          'The guy who puts Dostoevsky in Louie Louie...'

I ran a bath just now. When it was drawn I got in and read most of the chapter devoted to Iggy Pop within this while thinking about whether I wanted to go to church or not. Towards the end of the chapter the woman downstairs started shouting at the man downstairs. Not wishing to eavesdrop I got out of the bath and finished the chapter at my desk. I had already decided I would go to church. The alternative seemed to be to go a bar.

Alasitair McKay is an excellent writer. His writing appears to have no structure but I suspect it has lots. This is the most difficult kind of journalistic writing. The best thing about him is  his generosity. He gives his subjects a lot of space and tries to represent their ideas as truly as he can. And through their ideas them. In this second section of the book he only writes about himself as a chanel.

If you have to read seventeen pages about Iggy Pop you could do worse than read these. Iggy and the state of his soul doesn't seem to have changed much since he was seventeen. That's greatly to his credit. He was alreay grown up by the time he was seventeen. He's still struggling just as much as he ever was with how to engage with society. The most difficult thing of all. He's devoid of self pity. The definition of bravery. The definition of an artist. He also does jokes.





Steely Dan - Their Thirty Greatest Songs # 7 Aja

 

I saw that this rundown's # 7 was eight minutes long. So I tipped out the eemainder of my cup of tea down the sinkand brewed myself a fresh cup. Carried it back to my desk so I could appreciate it in full at my desk with the volume pitched high and my headphones on. 

'Their impeccably produced Jazz Rock zenith,' according to Mojo. It's certainly impeccably produced. Possibly a precednt for The Nightfly, It;s wistful. I always like a bit of wistful. 'Music to luxuriate in over the long distance.' Sometimes it's better to lift someone else's words if they choose them better than you coudl. Not my favourite Steely Dan. I prefer their tunes. This reminds me of the kind of Jazz I get a bit impatient with. Because it doesn't seem to go anywhere. But it's very well done.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,988 Michael Jackson - HIStory - Past, Present & Future Book 1

 


I wouldn't mind listening to a couple of Michael Jackson tunes this morning. Off The Wall and Billie Jean come to mind. But I couldn't bear to have to endure the whole descent. Into trauma, abuse and navel gazing, So on secon thoughts I didn't go there. Looking down the tracklisting now I'm glad I didn't. Off The Wall isn't on it.. 



500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 431 The Damned - Strawberries

 


I seem to remember I almost bought this at the time. I think I read a good review and was coming alive to the fact that I was a late developer and perhaps needed to make up for lost time..

Listening to it now I'm glad I didn't, even though it's got its moments. The Damned never made their minds up exactly what kind of band they wanted to be. A Punk, One, a Psychedelic One, a Goth One a Metal One. Or none of these things. They ended up none of them most of the time and often an unearthly mess. Best sampled on singles or stand out album tracks.I'd say The Stranglers are a more reliable option.


 

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 559 Alabama 3 - Exile On Coldharbor Lane

 





Song(s) of the Day # 3,680 Oldfield Youth Club

 

I do love bands that start their albums with anthems about themselves. Intended to be sung on football terraces. I also love albums with self written reviews on stickers attached to record sleeves. Written by people like you  or record company pluggers, also a bit like you, that wish to draw you into their universes. Hoping to change you. Forever. Or at least until next Thursday. 


A couple of weeks back I was browsing through the racks. In the Beatbox Record Shop which lies directly across the road from my flat in Central Newcastle. A record took my fancy. Largely because of the feverish, faintly rabid review of it on the sticker attache to its sleeve.. The Hanworth Are Coming, the debut album by Oldworth Youth Club. 


The Go Betweens. Vic Godard's Subway Sect were mentioned as fellow travellers. I didn't really need to read the rest. I knew I'd enjoy the record without bothering to do so. I was their natural constituent.


Now I'm listening to the record on a Friday morning in my parents house in Canterbury and writing about it for you. It's a very English record despite its nods to McLennan, Forster, Morrison and Vickers. Particularly Forster at his most arch I'd say. But the record itself is more English than Australian. It has that essentially English sense of underachievement to it.


For this is a record which comes out aiming itself first and foremost at people who stiill haven't quite recovered from the first time they heard Another Girl, Another Planet. Critics and the type of people who attend Indie gigs in the damp upstairs rooms of small pubs. An album which clearly has no intention of scaling the upper reaches of national charts. That would be undignified. Being Number One in its own head in its own chart will clearly always be more than enough.


Oldfield Youth Club I imagine would be more than happy if Marc Riley played their songs a few times on his evening shows. If he invited them in to record a session they would probably have kittens. What more could they want? Luke Haines turning up unexpectantly at one of their gigs possibly. Nodding appreciatively in his shades at the lip of the stage in his shades.

Oldfield Youth Club are the kind of people you know have record collections and bookshelves like yours. Lined with Kinks albums and well thumbed Penguin Classics. Made by people who would be wonderful company to drain a couple of pints with at a downtown microbrewery surrounded by people like you. Sometimes this is enough. Oh btw I love the record. For its organ sound. For its backing vocals. And the way it speaks to the likes of me about my life and tastes. Lifestyle choices.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Songs About People # 1,382 Shane Warne

 


Back to Lord Esme. I'll just repeat myself. The best song about a recently departed spin legend you'll hear this year.



Alternatives To Valium - Alastair McKay - # 8 Nirvana

 

A short but wonderful chapter where Alastair meets and interviews Cobain and Novolesic while Nirvana are playing support to Tad in Newcastle shortly before Nirvana break big and have such an impact so immediately.  A number of things become clear. What a great writer McKay is to get this all down. How smart both Cobain and Novolesic are. How Kurt is in genuine pain. Of course we now know it will kill him. That his talent and his sensitivity and pain are always going to.

How genuinely revolutionary Smells Like Teen Spirit is. How it will change everything and nothing like all the best music. How genuinely sad the Kurt story is. How he is still missed. 


 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 432 Van Halen - Women & Children First

 

I have my blindspots. Irrational prejudices and sticking points. Heavy Metal for starters. What is commonly called Heavy Metal.I like Led Zep, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath as well as the next man. Would anyone really wish to make a case that any of these are Heavy Metal, Thin Lizzy certainly.Quo occasionally. All have their moments and memories. 

Not so for me, Dio, AC/DC. Tygers of Pantang, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Def Leppard. Sorry but no thanks. And you can add Van Halen for that matter. Or certainly not what I've heard or seen of those guys. They just look the kind of jocks who would have made the walk down those locker lined corridors you always see in High School movies seem like a true rites of passage exercise each and every time. Running the gauntlet. And what for. So a bunch of weak and cowardly people can bond? Sorry Van Halen fans.

I always found those scenes in those films where the sensitive guys got picked on quite chilling frankly. For the likes of me who always felt they might run the risk of being bullied and possibly pummelled if they caught the wrong guys eye at the wrong moment. I'm not prepared to let it go quite yet. I'm not willing to forgive and forget the O'Bannions. I've met them in the workplace since.

Perhaps I'm holding a grudge too stubbornly but I grew up during an era where you chose your sides instinctively at fifteen. Plus I listened to this record yesterday. Or as much as I could stomach. Never liked the look of David Lee Roth and still don't really. And never liked the sound of Eddie Van's guitar. No matter how highly he's rated. 



Steely Dan - Their Thirty Greatest Songs # 8 My Old School

 


Tune. We all maintain a thing about our old school. Fagen and Becker first met at Bard College, a bohemian school in upstate New York. In 1968 the local fuzz busted dormitories of long-haired students for marijuana possession, including F&B.'

Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 558 Bob Dylan - Time Out Of Mind

 

I still generally listen to new Dylan music. And usually rate it. Remarkably for an artist of his venerable age he's not quite done even now I'd say. He generally has and what's more deserves the respect accorded back in the day for Old Testament prophets who appear suddenly from the desert with something new to say after years away.

Time Out Of Mind is one of the more highly rated albums he's put out since his sixties and seventies heyday. It still takes some endurance levels for a non obsessive devotee like me to listen to start to finish. I didn't make itjust now I confess. I listened to a few tracks, felt 'It's alright I s'ppose.'. Wishing I were listening to Blonde on Blonde, Desire or Blood On The Tracks for the most part though. 



Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,989 ABBA - The Album

 

I was raised in a household with very few records. When ABBA invaded Europe from 1973 onwards with their musical equivalent of Total Football my parents responded by buying most of their albums. Starting I suspect with this one. They were played on repeat in our house for years on our primitive Fidelity sound system. If I hear some songs they can still make me cry.

So they were my formative musical education in many ways. You could have many worse. This is a wonderful, wonderful record. Tell me otherwise. They ruled the charts for years and with good reason.



Song(s) of the Day # 3,679 Lord Esme

 


Welcome to the World of Fragile Indie. Where gamine girls with wondrous, flowing hair and wardrobes full of floral dresses, dance to Felt tunes with blokes who dream most nights of being in the Byrds bashing a tambourine like Gene Clark and singing heavenly harmonies. That's if their haircuts are anything to go by. 

A world where everybody is polite all the time and people let you through to the front at gigs when the band starts to play. One where every Fourteen Iced Bears release makes the Top Thirty and gets played all day on Daytime Radio.

WAKE UP INDIE LOSERS! YOU'RE DREAMING YOU BLOODLESS WASTRELS! But never mind. You might like this. It's Lord Esme, Sydney, Australia's latest Indie sensation. Their debut album, the thrillingly entitled, A Nice Sit Down is just out and it's Indiepop Heaven in a glass! 

The sleeve has a hearty looking lady with wavy hair and wearing a lovely frock. She surveys her pint and regards the viewer at one and the same time, with studied indifference through psychedelic shades. Promising. 

The record itself? It's ripper peeps ! Setting off with Shane Warne. The best song about a recently departed spin legend you'll hear this year and proceeding winningly from there. Lord Esme is all about having a gentle good time with your besties and never showing more urgency than is absolutely necessary.

Male and female players harmonise winningly and a wonderful time is had by one and all. Melbourne clearly doesn't have a complete monopoly on alternative guitar fun.

Friday, March 15, 2024

The Hanging Stars - On a Golden Shore

 


The Hanging Stars. A bunch of relaxed guitar strummers with a great name. Easy going Cosmic Cowboys you get the feeling Alan MacGee might be prone to and get slightly dewy eyed if he caught them by chance playing in his local on a Friday night. Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. Big Star and Gram.

I almost saw them playing in the Brandling Arms in Gosforth a few years back. Pretty much a local of mine where I live in Newcastle. A short bus ride from my front door anyhow. But the gig came just as the point that the curtain was coming down for Lockdown and the gig was called off at the last minute just as it was being decided that human beings could not congregate safely together for a while.

The Hanging Stars soldiered on. Kept gigging and putting out records.  On a Golden Shore is the latest and it joins the dots in the Rock & Roll Colouring Book. From Roger and David to Gram to Alex and Chris to Teenage Fanclub. It's all impeccably written, played and wonderfully mellow.

This is another set of songs that say Take It Easy whether The Dude likes it or not. The steel pedal is used, but judiciously It's polite and melodic, doesn't outstay its welcome and the band stays behind to clear away their bottles and help polish the surfaces before closing time. My kind of record and people frankly,. 

Alternatives To Valium - Alastair McKay - # 8 The Pogues

 


After an earnest chapter where Paul Weller, Mick Talbot and Billy Bragg furrow their brows and consider the best way for us all to get to Socialism as fast as we can, we return to some kind of Pop normality. With Shane McGowan at his most argumentative. He is wearing a badge which states, ' You piss me off, you fucking cunt...' The discussion which ensues lives up to the badge.'



Steely Dan - Their Thirty Greatest Songs # 9 Any Major Dude Will Tell You

 

'Like Woody Allen and Neil Simon, Becker and Fagen use the 70s comic trope of the New Yorker transplanted in Los Angees  uncomfortably awah in sunshine and alfafa sprouts.'



500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 433 Motorhead - Ace Of Spades

 

I bought this. A mangy, worn second hand copy. I've barely played it and if so probably just played the title track a couple of times. I don't do heavy. I'm sensitive and not ashamed of the fact.



Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 557 Cornershop - When I Was Born For The Seventh Time

 

'There's dancing. Behind the movie scenes...'

An album I bought and very much loved at the time. On CD of course. I saw the band shortly afterwards. Playing at the Brixton Academy on a splendid Indie bill with my sister. Playing with Teenage Fanclub. Gorky's Zygitic Mynci and Warm Jets. I'm glad I was there.

Listening again this morning  was a proper treat. My idea of a BritPop album. Eclectic. Of its time. With an acute sense of the past but living in the here and now. Cornershop have always been intent on that.

There's so much here. It's like a stall of household knick knacks on proud display on a Sunday morning car boot car sale. In a field in the middle of nowhere. Allen Ginsberg, C&W, Bollywood, Beatles. And much much more besides. 'Mine's on the 45 ...'


 


Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,990 Modest Mouse - Building Nothing Out Of Something


Pretty much what you would expect to find in the lower positions on the countdown of the Best 2,000 albums ever made. A band called Modest Mouse of all things  
that make Pavement seem almost conventional. An opening song called Never Ending Math Equation.

Let's face it these gutys are all American Geeks. The kind of people that would never fit in anywhere. Save perhaps for an American Indie Guitar band. Or else a Dungeons & Dragons Club for going nowhere teens.

This is not even a conventional studio album. But a collection of B Sides and such like. The Modern Obscurantism writ large.






 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,678 Bleachers

 

Bleachers is a very American English word. You don't quite understand it if you're English. Have to look it up to check. Two nations divided by a common language. For interested parties Bleachers are the uncovered part of sporting stadiums. The cheap seats.

Bleachers are also an American Rock band and their debut album is called .... er Bleachers. It has a picture of an all Anerican guy grinning out at you from its sleeve.Leaning proudly on his prized car.  Muscled, tanned. But pleasant enough looking. A jock but not one of the ones that bully freshmen. A good bloke.

The record itself is a very American one. Somehwere between Springsteen and The National. Bleachers are from New Jersey and they instinctively understand the importance of having a good car, and taking care of it are to the male American psyche. 

Some things change. Some things never will. This is a smart, thoughtful record with any number of cared for, well turned out songs. Not a reinventor of a wheel that certainly doesn't need reinventing just yet for the most part. Occasional they stray from the Girls & Cars path and try something a bit more modern and dancefloor. It's all interesting.

I really enjoyed this. It wear its heart on its sleeve, never tries to be anything other than what it is for fifty minutes and fourteen songs as it makes its way down the modern American highway.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

The Kinks

 


Alternatives To Valium - Alastair McKay - # 7 The Cure

 


Alaistair makes his way out into the world. We are into the interviews. In his own words he is 'a reticent introvert with an inflated sense of self-importance and and as yet unpublished fanzine which demonstrates critical acuity and an acidic wit. Or not.'

The notable musicians he meets speak in articulate, fully formed paragraphs. Coherent thought and articulate paragraphs. The Fall. The Cure, Associates. Thy're all worth an entry here but I'm documenting the book in 25 page daily sections. The book is worth buying just for the chapter with Billy MacKenzie. He lays his soul bare,

Robert Smith has just come to the end of The Cure's gloom doom three album cycle; 17 Seconds, Faith an Pornography. He says they don't reflect his general mood. He's usually quite happy and content but only usually writes songs when he's feeling a bit miserable.



Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 556 Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

 


I always rather liked Spiritualized. Even though Jason Pierce always struck me as a rather bloodless aristocratic Opium Eater. Slightly self regarding and pompous. Chatterton. There's nothing wrong with an unerring devotion to The Velvet Underground, MC5 and The Stooges mind and  Ladies And Gentlemen doesn't put a foot wrong let's face it.



Steely Dan - Their Thirty Greatest Songs # 10 New Frontier

 


Actually Number 10 in the Mojo rundown fact sticklers. Also Donald Fagen rather than Steely. But a song that merits recognition. In Donald's own words ' The songs on this album represent certainfantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up in a remote suburbduring the late 50s and the early 60s, ie one of my general, height, weight and build.'




500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 434 Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising

 


Not the Creedence song. More's the pity..Sonic Youth's second album and the seeds of their impending greatness are here but I certainly wouldn't say this is essential. You can heat their wonderful guitar thing beginning to ignite. Nevertheless, you probably deserve some kind of a medal if you endure all 53 minutes. I certainly didn't..



Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,991 ISIS - Panopticon -

 

New to me. Boston based quintet.Panopticon comes from 2004. I gave it a couple of tracks but it struck me as Goffy and unremarkable and I didn't care for the singer's feral and unremarkable howl so I moved on.



Song(s) of the Day # 3,677 GHLOW

Immediately recognisable as a record of a particular sort. GHLOW's Levitate is a horse of a certain colour. Dressed in a sleeve showing a feral, furious dog in mid bark. It all reminds you of nothing quite as much as the moment when Siouxsie and her contingent first boarded the train from Bromley to ignite the capital in the early months of '76.

It's almost impossible not to think of The Banshees listening to the songs here. The record has a furious, engaged intent. Although the tracks have a distinct saminess to them, this is not The Scream, it's a reminder of just how influential and important that band were in terms of igniting a movement which still has a vivid flame and energy it's difficult to douse,

 GHLOW call themselves Electropunk are  duo essentially and hail from Stockholm. They're not retiring Scandinavians by any means and you might like to warm your hands at their inferno.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Revolutionary Spirit - Paul Simpson - # 10 The Teardrop Explodes

 


Paul moves into middle age and has notable encounters with Bill Drummond and Julain Cope along with the four Bunnymen the men who define his early twenties. He drives cross country with one and climbs with considerable difficulty upon an elevated poddium onstage at a concert venue to play a version of perhaps the finest song he is associated with on the keyboards in support to the other.                        PHEW Rock & Roll !!!.



Astrel K - The Foreign Department

 


Darren Jones, also know around here as Starbuck the scrupulous and steadfast mate of It Starts, has come up with another suggestion which escaped my notice. And typically it's another good one.

The Foreign Department. The latest album by Ulrike Spacek's Rhys Edwards. Darren directed me to the previous Astrel K one. It was total amzeballs! This is another winner.

Like Ulrike Spacek who I saw last year, Astrel K have a clockwork quality in terms of the way their parts work. Where they seem to differ is that there is a Mittel Europa paranoid quality to The Foreign Department.

I was led to thinking of Central Europe. Of Vienna, Prague and Budapest. Cities which have a special place in my heart.

These cities, particularly the latter two, have a tendency to be referred to as Eastern Europe. I'd contest this is a misnomer. They're very much Central Europe to my mind. The home of great novelists and playwrights. Kundera, Kafka, Koestler and Musil. Film directors such as Milos Forman. Classics like The Third Man. atmospheres of general ennui and slight confusion. But fabulous nonetheless.

The Foreign Department has it's finger an diesem puls.Schalte deninen geist aus. Entspannen sie sich unt treiben sei flussabwarts. Danke sehr Starbuck. Ein leben auf der meereswelle.

Alternatives To Valium - Alastair McKay - # 6 Gram Parsons

 

The Eighties seem to be about signing on the dole and occupting Conservative Party buildings. At least if you are a right minde studdent. I was one too. The Conservative Party have managed to get severely worse since then. 

Alaistair meanwhile remains the boss of great prose. He finds himself writing a fanzine in the early Eighties. Everywhere he goes he meets people who hold grudges about the bands he writes about their bands. One of them tells him he's a c*** . 

He writes for a magazine called Cut where the wages are appalling. But he gets loaned a Gram Parsons record by the editor as payment. His music taste is maturing. 



Steely Dan - Their Thirty Greatest Songs # 11 Bodhissatva

 


'The rock band as ultra-compacted Duke Ellington Orchestra.' Given my tastes, this is ghastly Proggy noodling to my ears. I find it almost unlistenable. But I can appreciate the musical artistry. Even as I take it off.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 435 John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy

 


John Lennon was shot early in December 1980 and the world went into a protracted process of public mourning that went on for several months. I didn't really know who he was. I was a late developer and suffered an extended and unfortunate adolesence which it took me a while to emerge from. Lennon meanwhile had been a house husband living in self imposed selection for half a decade. I know who he is now. 

Listening to his and Yoko's last recorded document Double Fantasy was a negligible experience just now. The songs aren't that great. Perhaps as reports suggest Lennon had been listening to B52s,and  Wire in his last months, but it doesn't make this any more of an edifying experience. The emergence from prolonged seclusion is evident.  It's not a great record and time hasn't been very kind.The well known tracks are worth salvaging from the wreckage.






Mojo Collection - The Ultimate Music Companion # 555 The Buena Vista Social Club - The Buena Vista Social Club

 





Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 -1,992 Roger Waters - The Pros & Cons of Hitchiking

 Joseph Conrad's Modernist classic Heart of Darkness, The Horror! The Horror!' The indescribable madness of Belgian Nineteenth Century African colonialism. It's a short book but for some reason I've never been able to complete it. 

Or else perhaps Conrad had the album cover of Roger Waters 1982 album The Pros & Cons of Hitchiking in mind. In protest I am refusing to either listen to the ghastly record or print its reprehensible sleeve image here.



Song(s) of the Day # 3,676 Slow Hollows

 I woke early this morning worrying about things I couldn't do anything about. Listening to this calmed my mind. Music serves this purpose like nothing else.

Understated and spare minor chord Indie Guitar rock record that takes its time because there's no point getting agitated is there. Here's an album which feels it's more important to find its own space and maintain its own momentum.

Slow Hollows. An American man named Austin Feinstein. Everything stripped down to the bare essentials on latest album Bullhead. The strictest bare bones approach make it an easy and comforting record to listen to. 

In the words of the RoughTrade review of the record,. 'There are shades of Neil Young and Elliott Smith at the core of these songs.' I'm never going to complain about a record that sounds like that. This was a calming rush. A good start to Wednesday.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Alternatives To Valium - Alastair McKay - # 5 The Commercials

 

It's difficult to convey exactly how fast everything moved between 1977 and 1982. Alastair gives it a great go by comparing the rush of hormonal Pop which changes almost unrecognisbly with every season with what is happening to the bodies and souls of confused teenage types where pretty much the same process is taking place with every passing day.

Alastair of course is always in a band. The Magic Whips become The Commercials and go to Glasgow in an attempt to impress Alan Horne and persuade him to sign them to Postcard Records. He tells them that they sound like Au Pairs. Apparently not a good thing.

They put out a record anyway. Some people like it. Here is one of the B Sides. Sounds fine to me.



Steely Dan - Their Thirty Greatest Songs # 12 Babylon Sisters

 


From 1980's where production values became too all consuming for me and it all gets rather slick and to my mind slightly sickly. There's not much that interests me in Babylon Sisters I'm afraid..

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 436 Adam & The Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier

 


This was much more to my tastes than Bloody Toto. Adam & The Ants were quite an exciting thing when they came into people's lives on Top of the Pops with Dog Eat Dog. They were a big deal at school in the months leading up to their chart entry but of course after TOTP there was a wild rush to disassociate yourself from them and adere to something more obscure and hipper. The album is now probably most notable for the still fabulous singles. Some of the filler is rather harder work.