August 15th 1958 Madonna

Song of the Day # 574 Roseanne Cash

When I was 19 I had a gap year job for six months working at a guest home / hotel in Southern Switzerland. During my time there my younger sister sent me a mix tape which included a number of tracks by a young Australian band called The Triffids. They were odd, offbeat songs, with unusual arrangements and lyrics including one called My Baby Thinks She's a Train. I could never fathom out its title. 

Thirty years on and I chanced upon this yesterday. A Number One Country hit of the early eighties by Johnny Cash's daughter which I imagine was the inspiration for The Triffids song title though the two songs bear little relation to one another otherwise. Nevertheless,I have a lot of time for both.

 

Instrumentals # 44 The New York Dolls

One of The Dolls calling cards.

Song(s) of the Day # 573 Faith Healer

Here's another album released this year well worth a listen. Thanks to Rod, friend from my university days, going way, way back now who put me onto this with an e-mail yesterday afternoon. A great listening experience to wrap up the working week. Rod described it as like hearing Cate Le Bon fronting The Velvet Underground which hits the nail squarely on the head. The opening track Acid virtually lifts the groove of  Sweet Jane and then embellishes it quite beautifully, transporting it utterly to 2015.

From there the record just takes off. Second track, Again, the Velvets are a less obvious presence and the song is just a leap of joy. The album that follows is a thing of rare beauty. The only thing I can't get wholly behind is the album cover, a rather disturbing picture of uneven yellowing lower teeth which seem to belong altogether on another record.

Despite this slight caveat though I recommend the record wholeheartedly. The brainchild of Edmonton, Canada singer-songwriter Jessica Jalbert, this is a crafted distillation of old and new that shifts in mood and design from track to track, constantly surprising and soothing.  It's got an altogether beautiful personality if only someone could persuade the cover star of the record to kindly close their mouth.

There are darker emotions here at work as well I guess. But that's life. Perhaps you have to experience the bad to really appreciate the good. The record chugs, (a good word to describe any record that takes the lead from the late sixties Velvets sensibility and takes it somewhere new),  from darkness up towards the light and back again that makes for a very pleasurable rollercoaster ride. It's a constant and pleasant surprise,  Listening to each song unwrap is a joyous process of discovery.

It's also led me to start the weekend proper on Saturday morning by playing the Velvet 1969 record, perhaps the best live rock album ever made to really get things going. So all in all a win win situation.

August 14th 1941 David Crosby

Song(s) of the Day # 572 Novella

I've heard a lot of good songs this year but unless I've missed them there haven't been so many great albums. But this one, the new record, Land, from Brighton based Novella is pretty special. It could probably be described as Shoegazey in terms of influence but has enough character of its own to be worth a listen. 

B Sides # 31 The Who

One of countless Who tracks with slightly dodgy, unspecific subject matter. Good song mind. B Side to I Can See For Miles.

Songs About People # 117 Gertrude Campbell

Song for infamous Victorian journalist, playwright and socialite, also known as Gertrude Elizabeth Blood. Her story is well worth reading and can be found here. The song, well what song there is, is by Salad who emerged in the mid-eighties in the UK to their misfortune at the same time as the Brit Pop scene which they had little in common with. Best known for their Dutch lead vocalist Marijne Van Der Vlugt, who was also an MTV presenter, though not for their remarkable commercial success. It has to be said in addition that Salad is a shockingly bad name for a band and probably didn't help their cause.

August 13th 1958 Feargal Sharkey

This has all the momentum of one of the great mid-sixties Stones singles.

Death # 7 Lee Hazlewood

Time to bring this series back to life. Lee Hazlewood makes the little flowers grow himself as we speak. Sadly!

Song of the Day # 571 Groupe Folklorique Montagnais

The best thing I heard yesterday. Native American Folk Music. Absolutely fantastic! Builds and builds. I was directed here as with the Takeshi Terauchi yesterday by the Allah Las wonderful set of mixtapes on their website. Much recommended.

B Side # 30 Boz Scaggs

Do you have a hankie ready? B Side to 1977's Lido Shuffle. Made famous by Rita Coolidge. AOR heaven.

August 13th 1949 Mark Knopfler

Dire Straits have some pivotal memories for me. My best friend in my teenage years, and yes now, Philip, was a fan and would make gatherings listen to long Straits songs in the dark at parties at his house to the approval of most of those present but not of mine. I'd sit suffering, thinking the best moments of my life were going to waste and we should be listening to the stuff I was in thrall to, early R.E.M, Smiths and Aztec Camera instead. Never got a look in. Rocky Horror generally came next.

I've given him a hard time ever since, but he, sensibly, shrugs it off. Dire Straits were the band that famously took the place of Gang of Four when they were denied the opportunity to play Top of the Pops with At Home He's a Tourist , when they refused to change the lyric related to condom use in the song. The Straits played this on the show. Punk arrivistes, Knopfler was pushing thirty along with most of the rest of the band when they finally began to make it. Still their best song. 

From The Old Grey Whistle Test, not Top of the Pops. Still, at least they're playing their instruments.

Instrumentals # 43 Takeshi Terauchi

Now this is indescribably wonderful. Japanese Electronic Surf Music from a maestro and his band 'His Blue Jeans'who is still going strong at 76. He favours a Mosrite, like Johnny Ramone. These records, I think, came out between 1966 and 1974. I know no more, but bow down before them.

Sometimes the Japanese know best!

Song(s) of the Day # 570 The Loft

Indie, but not weak. Tough, edgy and concise. The Loft, one of Creation Records leading original bands, splintered after a brief career with a dramatic, ego-driven onstage argument at the Hammersmith Palais supporting The Colourfield in 1984. Nevertheless, they left behind some golden moments. Not least this. The instrumental breaks in the song are things of beauty. Oh, and here's one of their best known songs for good measure. another small, perfect moment. I'm nineteen again!

August 11th 1954 Joe Jackson

Top 10, both in The US and the UK in 1982.

B Sides # 29 Paul McCartney & Wings

B side to Band on the Run. The reprise of that song nips in at the end of this. Also the last track on the album of the same name from 1973. 

Vic Godard

The latest in a very long series of wonderful poster images for Vic Godars and Subway Sect gigs.

Song(s) of the Day # 569 The Steve Miller Band

Came home yesterday and saw this record sticking out of my shelf. Bright, yellow sleeve, that's what did it. I took it out and played it and was pleasantly impressed. Not really an album that I even knew I had. I have no idea either where or when I bought it. On one of my trips to The States I suspect, (ten years or more back), as it has the tough card sleeve that's so distinctively American. I don't think I've played it once since.

But I have now and it's a good record. Brave New World, The Steve Miller Band's third, released just after Bozz Scaggs left. It's got certain features of the late sixties, San Francisco scene that the band emerged from. Bluesy, funky, Rock and Roll feel, walloped drums, good time music. But it's also got more consistent, commercial nous that many of the hipper more elitist of those bands, consistently optimistic and positive and not overtly political or interested in the drugs culture. Not particularly concerned with anything really, except maintaining a happy state and churning out poppy good time tunes. Every track works. I imagine it's very few people's favourite albums. It's not ambitious enough for that. But it's consistently good company, like a friend you get round to going out for a drink with every eight months or so.

There's a clear influence of the psychedelic Beatles on here in parts in the arrangements and the drumming, particularly the first two songs here. McCartney featured on the final track My Dark Hour under the pseudonym Paul Ramon and Lady Madonna's, Fats Domino melody features shamelessly on Space Cowboy I imagine with Beatles' permission. It seems clear why he would have been keen to take part. Miller had something of his own, light, commercial touch. 

Otherwise it's pure West Coast. Nothing is overdone or heavy and it's not difficult to see why the band did so well in the seventies and adapted their sound so successfully to the demands of AOR radio where they're best known for The Joker and later still, Abracadabra. I'd take this record over those.

August 10th 1928 - Jimmy Dean

His best known song. Number 1 in The States, Number 2 in the UK in 1961.

Song of the Day # 568 Syd Barrett

First song on the second side of The Madcap Laughs. After which Syd wanders off for the rest of the record which he was prone to do. This though, I think is great.

Songs Heard on the Radio # 73 Smokey Angle Shades

Old school Faces, Rock and Roll but it's current. A very nice thing to hear on Sunday morning radio.

The NME

The NME is shortly going to stop being published for weekly sale after 63 years, to become a free publication. This is sad, but probably inevitable as there's no longer a market for what it once did so well. It was a huge part of my, and countless others youths. So here are a series of memorable covers.

Song(s) of the Day # 567 Delaney & Bonnie

Friends of the stars. Clapton, Duane Allman and George Harrison were in the band at various points. They also toured with Blind Faith and The Plastic Ono Band. Very much mired in a particular time and place, but these choices still sound just fine to me. I think theirs was the original version of the song The Carpenters made big with Superstar, here rather less romantically entitled Groupie. I prefer this version. A yearning, painful song.

Here's a third selection. I think you can hear the germs of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours sound here. The track's got pretty much everything. A thing of beauty. Sadly, it was not meant to last and the band split when the pair's relationship ended in the early seventies.

Songs About People # 116 Kurt Russell

 

An interesting melange of sound. With plangent, Byrds guitars, sixties harmonies and fey, Suede-esqe vocals. It was destined never to reach commercial critical mass. From an indie-guitar band slightly beloved of the British music press in the 1990's with a very large singer called Tiny.

August 8th 1933 - Joe Tex

Perhaps not the soundest gender sentiments for this so called more enlightened day and age. Never the less, quite wonderful.

Song of the Day # 566 The Kossoy Sisters

Where we're all going. Like it or not. Old school stuff from identical twin sisters born in New York City in 1938. From their 1956 album Bowling Green. Later featured on O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Songs Found on my Local's Jukebox # 82 Gladys Knight & The Pips

Is it as good as the Marvin version? How do you judge these things? It's pretty great whichever way you look at it.

August 7th 1942 B.J.Thomas

Song of the Day # 565 Lead Belly

Joy Division

Song of the Day # 564 Marie Queenie Lyons

Fancy a serving of thick funky stew? Here you go! I like the idea of Marie Queenie Lyons. Her name, her look, her voice and delivery, her records. This comes from her only album, 1970s Soul Fever. Do yourself a favour, make yourself a thirty five minute window, grab some headphones and listen to it on YouTube here.

August 5th 1965 The Beatles

This was Number 1 in the UK fifty years ago. Lennon later said of it:

'When "Help!" came out in '65, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock-'n'-roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. It was my fat Elvis period. You see the movie: He -- I -- is very fat, very insecure, and he's completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was.'

Record Sleeves # 37 Caetano Veloso

Song of the Day # 563 Rachel Sermanni

Spotify without a contract often exposes you to the most irritating snippets of music in between the tracks you've actually chosen to listen to yourself. At the moment though they're getting it right by playing this. It's not a new track, dating back on this video to December 2013, but is on a newly released album. called Tied to the Moon. Beautiful song with a beautiful video. For some reason it makes me think of Yorkshire.

B Sides # 28 Bobbie Gentry

Remarkably, this began life as a b-side. To Gentry's debut single Mississippi Delta. This was the one that got the record to Number 1 in The States. One of the truly great story/ puzzles songs, in the great Southern tradition.

Songs Heard on the Radio # 72 Beth Gibbons & Rustin' Man

Because it sounds great coming out of the radio late on an early August evening.

Songs About People # 115 John Coltrane

Peter Sarstedt is now almost exclusively known to the general public for Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?, which kept Space Oddity  off the Number 1 spot in the UK at the time and has since been given a new lease of life by being featured on the Darjeeling Limited recently. This song is fine in itself but there's more.

Though much of his output seems to exist vaguely in the shadow of Donovan with whom he shares a basic style of breathy delivery, a taste for melody and fondness for flights of fancy. He's also prone, like Donovan, to moments of high pretension. I came upon a song of his called Hemingway, which I wondered about in terms of inclusion in place of this series until I actually listened to it. It's blessed with the lines.'Hemingway and I went hunting for sharks. Just off the coast of Lorenzo Marques' , and then gets progressively worse from there musically and lyrically.

'll leave you to track that one down if you choose to. I did though also chance upon an album of his called The Lost Album by him today, recorded in 1970 but which remained unreleased until very recently which is uniformly excellent. Not just the song I've posted which I'd say is something of a lost classic but pretty much the rest of it too. Brief further research told me that Sarstedt himself is now in poor health having been diagnosed with dementia recently. I wish him well and commend you to The Lost Album. Watch the video below too. It could bring you to tears.

August 4th 1967 Pink Floyd

Released 48 years back.

Miles Davis & Sonny Rollins

B Sides # 27 Arthur Alexander

B-side to You Better Move On, which made the American Top Thirty in 1962. Much loved by the Mersey beat bands and covered by The Stones.

Song(s) of the Day # 562 The Youngbloods

Now here's a minor classic. The Youngbloods' third album Elephant Mountain, released in 1969, and sounding very much like a 1969 record. Originally from Boston, they relocated to California and this came out round about the same time as their best known song, their version and the definitive one of the much covered Get Together, was re-released and hit the American Top Ten.

This is all reminiscent of that. Leader and songwriter Jesse Colin Young has a beautiful laid-back voice that can only be described as gentle, and the band's sound follows the lead, easy jug band, folk rock that could be slotted into a record collection next to Buffalo Springfield and The Lovin' Spoonful but has enough of a voice of its own to merit attention. The sound of accomplished musicians enjoying each others' company.

At the end of the first side there's a noodling twelve second instrumental called Turn It Over reminding you that it's time to do so. Proper record from olden times. Hunt it down if you haven't heard it already. 

August 3rd 2006 Arthur Lee

Arthur Lee passed nine years back. And it's August.

Song(s) of the Day # 561 Cilla Black

Cilla Black passed away yesterday. A very English phenomenon, she had a solitary Top 30 hit in America, and really a showbiz one. Listening through to her records yesterday I couldn't find much that grabbed me. I'd go with I've Been Wrong Before her cover of a Randy Newman song which i posted a few weeks back and this, later covered by The Smiths plus another of her early Top Ten singles in a clip briefly featuring Lennon and McCartney. 

Getting it wrong!

John Mulvey in the NME writing about Blondie's return with Maria. He's quite wrong in every way.

Song of the Day # 560 England's Glory

Peter Perrett practices his Lou Reed moves before The Only Ones.

Covers # 18 Rick Moranis

Lynn Anderson

Lynn Anderson, best known for this, has just died. I imagine it's being played all over the world today.

Song of the Day # 559 Radiohead

It could be any one of umpteen Radiohead songs here. But I liked this. A track from the Amnesiac sessions.

Songs About People # 114 Brian Rix

While we're jingle-jangling through the mid-eighties here's a song for the infamous star of London West End farces, most famous for being caught with his trousers down in the final act by outraged, cuckolded spouses.The video has all the gaudy charm of British music hall. As well as Brian Rix himself.