1982 Top 40 23rd May # 34 New Order

 

                                                     Temptation still has a cold, minimal, unclad beauty. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,352 Maria BC

 

Monday afternoon. A good time for a Marathon. The latest album from Maria BC. Threadbare folk songs from Oakland, California; exhaustion, resignation and uncommon beauty It's a record that yearns and emotes as the earth turns

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 211 Sufjan Stevens - Michigan

 

An hour in Sufjan's company is an invitation to a marmite feast. Personally I'm highly prone to marmite.. He's an artist highly prone to ennui and what might be regarded as self pity. But essentially the music to me is an act of immersion, historical enquiry and celebration.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,419 Cat Stevens - Teaser & The Firecat

 

As for many people I imagine Cat Stevens is a portal back to childhood. Older sister's record collections..

1982 Top 40 23rd May # 35 Kid Creole & The Coconuts

 

Kid Creole & The Coconuts broke through big in 1982 with Tropical Gangsters and they were greay to see. A fully fleshed out, lurid technicolor narrative.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,351 Flea

 The much heralded Honora, the debut album by Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea is here. It's a cool platter versed in Blue Note Jazz, collaborations with contemporary greats and tasteful restraint and resistance to the populist tide.

I like the record a lot. It doesn't so much preach as pray and it has all the chops and attitude and breeding you could possibly want for . Stretch out with the Sunday supplements and embrace the afternoon.  

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 40 The Go Betweens - Liberty Bell & The Black Diamond Express

 

Listening to this record for at least the thousandth time it strikes me as a misshapen but utterly sincere Act of Love. A marriage that may have not been built to last but remarkably has. Two songwriters, their partners and a bassist with a Brian Jones haircut . Singles which should have been but weren't hits,

I saw the band at the time when this came out. Almost exactly 40 years ago. At Kingston  Polytechnic for a pound. The band did their soundcheck in full and startling lights before the gig. A month later I started going out with one of the enduring loves of my life. This is another one. Some emotions, and songs, are built to last. 

Armed Forces

 

George Harrison

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 212 Leonard Cohen - Ten New Songs

 

Ten New Leonard Cohen sings, Frim 2001. I sat down and listened. It's one for the ages. Conflicted. Resigned. Secretive. Resigned. Caught between Heaven and Hell. Trying to fund rest. Leonard knew. Difficult to fund. But we keep searching. .Keep straining towards the light.  

1982 Top 40 23rd May # 36 Altered Images

 

One spot above Siouxsie & The Banshees, their younger Scottish cousins. Gorging themselves on pop and cake and jellybeans and squirting party streamers at one another.

  

Song(s) of the Day # 4,350 Snail Mail

 

Slow wins the race. April is almost here. Ricochet, the third album by Ellicott City, Maryland's finest Snail Mail is on the doormat, I've got a large beaker of tea, Off we go. 

It's a very 2026 sounding album. Marie Osmond was a little bit Country and a little bit Rock & Roll.. This is a little bit Indie with a healthy dollop of winsome, self ennui for dressing.

It's a trifle bland tbh. But sounds fine on a Saturday morning. I wonder about the lack of ambition of youthful product  sometimes. Linsey Erin Jordon (for Snail Mail is she), is 26 and has three albums under her belt. Joni Mitchell had five at the same age. Including Blue and For the Roses .

There's nothing on  Ricochet which would merit a starting slot on either but these are different times and there's plenty that you might like to add to a playlist. Fair to middling.  

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,420 Gil Scott Heron - Pieces of a Man

 

Came out on Flying Dutchman in 1971. Captures a seeker. And a moment of phenomenal flux and pressures of activism and resistance. It questions everything. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 213 Joni Mitchell - Travelogue

 

A 22 track album from 2002. The Mitchell voice doesn't sound like what it was, Lyrically she's still sharp. This is incredibly rich and literary as you'd expect .It's hungry and broad.  I always feel with Joni that she writes like a painter.

1982 Top 40 23rd May # 37 Siouxsie & The Banshees

 

I remember this time. Fireworks and Back of Love were in the charts together and Siouxsie & The Banshees and the Bunnymen filled my imagination. They seemed impossibly grown up. I craved that adulthood.

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,349 Courtney Barnett

 

'Put on my favourite t shirt...Please be patient....' 

I've been stood up on Friday morning. I've just sat outside a virtual classroom for 45 minutes and not been admitted. Never mind. I've used up at my tissues. There are more seriouser issues. I have an hour and forty five minutes to kick my heels and listen to Courtney Barnett's latest record Creature Of Habit a couple of times and share my thoughts with you here. Life gets worse.

Courtney has been an old friend of this blog in its thirteen years and counting. One of it's consistents. I love Courtney. I'm not ashamed to say so. I've been in he same room with her a few times and it was always a pleasure. Creature Of Habit  finds her doing what we've come to expect of her. Share some wry and sharp witticism and her latest portfolio. Her latest favourite things.

It's a workable record without immediately appearing to be a classic. I suspect it needs to be worn in like a pair of shoes, and that's what I plan to do over the coming weeks. Get to know the songs. Just like it takes a few weeks to get to now your new students when you get a new class. This feels good. It won't be an irksome task.

Courtney has a particular gift. It feels like she's talking to to you. And as a listener I have too say that feels really nice. That's a rare gift. I'll fix some breakfast and keep listening. On first hearing, last track Another Beautiful Day sounds like the standout. This might change. I expect the songs to grow.. Chutes in a pot.   

Go Betweens

 

Green Shirt

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,421 Gram Parsons - Grievious Angel

 

'Out went the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels...'

Gram Parsons is one of those people you're probably going to grapple with and explore the myth if you have any pretentions to building a record collection to accompany you through your lifetime as seems too have been one of my main missions of mine.Grievious Angel is an album that never fails to put you in a mood and keep you there. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 214 The Japanese Popstars - We Just Are

 

That's a Rock & Roll band name if they ever was one. And this is a Modern Rock & Roll band. Not one I was familiar with before just now. I get the impression Sophia Coppola would like this. I certainly do. This glows. 

1982 Top 40 23rd May # 38 Monsoon

 

Sheila Chandra from Monsoon was in Grange Hill. Ever So Lonely stayed in the charts for nine weeks following a re-release. It was also big in Ireland, Holland and Australia. It was kind of a one off. But a rather splendid one.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,348 True Green

 

True Green's Hail Disaster is true gold for true believers in an ancient faith. Guitars in harmony with The Turtles and The Byrds Mr Tambourine Man. Flamin' Groovies, Bug Star and R.E.M. The Only Ones and Power Pop. Pavement and Silver Jews. You, know. The good stuff.

I listened through to Hail Disaster in a single sitting. It's happy sad, wry, like much of my record collection. People will always like records like these and there will always be people around who appreciate the qualities of good writing and playing nd will want to provide it for them.. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,422 Jackson C, Frank - Jackson C, Frank

 

The model apparently for Llewyn Davis. An incredibly evocative and magical record. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 215 Vic Chesnutt - At The Cut

 

There's a rare pained poetic  beauty in the music of Vic Chesnutt. This is gnarled and tortured but claws at the light, This is the kind of albums that hipster types wax lyrical about. With justification.

1982 Top 40 23rd May # 39 Prelude

 

Originally a hit in 1974. A take on Neil Young's rare and special song from the album of the same name. A song of rare wonder. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,347 Dagmar Zuniga

 

 Dagmar Zuniga's In Filth Your Mystery is Kingdom/ Far Smile Peasant in Yellow Music is rare poetry. Weird Outsider Folk which originally came out last year but I'm claiming for 2026 because I like it so much. Cindy Lee , Anastasia Coope and other cooler than thou types come to mind. As do Vashti Bunyan, Bridget St John, Linda Perhacs and any number of Sixties and Seventies Folk Nuggets. Cooler than thou will ever be !  

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 216 Engineers - Engineers

 

I found this rather beautiful. Engineers meet The Clientele on Gideon Coe's show, And the consequence was; Indie Bliss,

Song(s) of the Day # 4,346 Underscores

 

U by Underscores is a hip as can be record that I can get along with without me feeling I need to get the t shirt. For a better informed review please go here  or here  Pop's mist brilliant brain apparently !

1982 Top 40 23rd May # 40 Pigbag

 

That childhood sensation of getting to the bottom of a slide and wanting to go straight back up and experience the thrill and exhilaration again never entirely goes away. So I'm going tp start another now. 1982. The year that I left secondary school. An entirely wonderful year for Pop Music.

And a wonderful Top Forty starting with a brilliant tune. Something special was happening in Bristol and this nails the essence of that wonder. Phenomenally versed.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 41 Klaus Wunderlich - Golden Hammond Pops

 

Today I've taught three online classes. Charming, intelligent people. I've tried to help them as best I can with the present perfect, intensifier adjectives, how to use and identify the value of articles. My first student Frieder told me his opinion about the forthcoming Hungarian elections and what many Germans feel about Victor Orban and what should be done about his flagrantly criminal approach and attitude, 

Now my lessons are over and I'm listening to an album in my boxes of records which compose almost entirely the ground floor of my mezzanine basement flat. They overflow wherever you look and now it seems I have little to do for the rest of my life but to listen to as many of them as I possibly can as often as I can.

Today is the 60th Birthday of a beautiful, impossibly petite Belgian princess who I worked with in Dortmund at a language school in the early 90's . I still have my diaries of these days and they act as a reminder to me of carefree youth and why I went into teaching in the first place and focused on teaching abroad and experiencing and embracing life to the greatest degree. I did the right thing !

I'm back now focusing on the teaching I did then and it feels like my life has come full circle. I work from my flat and love what I do. No meetings. Very little paperwork. Students who frankly I learn from more than I'm obliged to teach. It doesn't feel like work .Am I early retired at 60?

Klaus Wunderlich is as cheesy as it gets. Easy Listening Hammond Organ takes on Spoon Full of Sugar, I Was Kaiser Bill's Barman et al. ,What more could you or anyone want. It reminds me of one of the best friends of my lifetime who I also met and spent a lot of time in Dortmund with. 

I still miss Matt and cried a great deal when he departed early and painfully about ten years back. I used to have his photo on my desk and would come back from the bar on any number of occasions in my cups and sob my eyes out. I've put his photo un my drawer.. He wouldn't have wanted me to get upset. But to live my life to the full just as he did. And probably play Klaus Wunderlich occasionally.

I realised when I got onto the third side of this that I'm probably just happy. Never a bad idea 

   

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,423 The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free

 

I was out of the UK when this came out so its significance rather passed me by. Listening to me now it has a certain Brummie street magnificence.  

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 217 Brian Eno & David Byrne - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

 

A brilliant album title and way of looking at existence. Byrne and Eno did some quite wonderful work together, Not least here.

1979 Top 40 - # 1 The Police

 

I'm going to start another one of these tomorrow. There are plenty of charts to run down. Plenty of memories to harvest. In 1979  I was making my way through secondary school which early on felt a bit like a jungle. I was sensitive. 

Music appealed to me. And this song and The Police certainly did. I really liked The Police. Perhaps it was not cool to admit it. Perhaps it still isn't. But I liked the look and lyrics and liked their ambition . Their musicality. Their bandwagon swagger. 

And this song is still one of their best. The riff. Andy Summers still takes enormous pride in it. The video. The conceit that Rock & Roll bands sit and sing their songs together backstage in their dressing rooms.  It captures the sheer excitement of the times. The idea that millions were sitting down together around the television all over the UK  and watching Top Of The Pops together.Talking about it at school the next day. 

The idea of the song. A central idea and emotion. That loneliness is a central, inescapable part of the human condition. And we'll never entirely get away from that fundamental fact. Still. The tune's fantastic ! Have a nice day !. 

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,345 John Craigie

 

I've got all my eggs in one basket peeps. But never fret. Because I've got a toght grip on the handle and I'm heading into the woods. Fear is a thing of the past.  I'm listening to John Craigie's I Swam Here. I'm going in too. The water's lovely. And so is this record.

It's Americana Folk Enchantment. Not a million miles away from Cass McCombs or Phosphorescent. But marking out it's own lane. There's incredible sincerity and poetry here. Plenty of the spirit of mid 20th century Samba and Jazz. It's an album flecked with rare beauty. Check it out.  . 

Patty Boyd

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,424 Cat Power - You are Free

 

Freedom is a much striven for and discussed goal. Sat power's freedom seems to involve creating her own space. There's no one like her.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 218 Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

 

I had a very good friend who was crazy mad for Elvis Costello. He was also very keen on Spoon. This seems to be logical listening to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.Very nice I must say.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,345 Sunday Mourners

 

 I've been keeping this in reserve for a few weeks. Planning to post it on a Sunday. Now is the time. It's no longer Sunday Morning but here are the Sunday Mourners. You know what you're getting very early on with A Rhythm Absolute . And that's what you get for ten songs and 41 minutes.

Strokes, meets Nap Eyes meets Television meets Richard Hell & the Voidoids . 'We were saying let us out of here before we were even born. 'There's little deviation from the set script but if it's broke as the saying goes, why fix it ! This is an album that seriously rocks in an appropriately unhinged manner.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,425 Black Crowes - The Southern Harmony & Musical Companion

 

I bailed from Lightning Bolt after a few songs and switched to The Southern Harmony & Musical Companion and it was rater more familiar territory. The territory of 1972 to be precise. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 219 Lightning Bolt - Ride the Skies

 

Lightning Bolt are a Rock & Roll duo from Providence, New York. They met and formed in 1994. Ride The Skies is their second album. They are indebted to Sun Ra and Philip Glass. Ride The Skies sounds as if they quite like Glen Branca too. It's an assault and how much you enjoy it may.depend on how well you are able to withstand sonic assault.

  

Song(s) of the Day # 4,344 Huw Marc Bennett

 

Saturday morning and I'm up early. If not with the early bords, at least wuth the wormd. And my listening fare. Huw Marc Bennett's utterly charming Heol Las.

'Welsh Folk Whimsy' ? Is that a category. It is now dear reader. It is now, This reminded me of Oliver Postgate and Camberwick Green. Ivor the Engime and the joy of being alive. Ancient music seen through a modern prism'

These are Glamorgan tunes infused with sitars and spice. This has ticked my boxes good and proper. Time for my bath, 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,426 Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil

 

Listening to Wayne Shorter albums you haven't heard before feels like an on going education.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 220 The Knife - Silent Shout

 

An update of the Sweet Dreams are Made of this perspective for the New Millennium. With added interiority, A duo from Gothenburg.

. .

Song(s) of the Day # 4,343 Kim Gordon

 

Kim Gordon's Play Me is a textbook 'how to' guide on growing older on your own terms and thereby staying young. It' came out last week but I'm only just listening to it. A week ahead on Courtney Barnett's latest and a day ahead of the weekend.. I'm rather taken by it.

This is very true to Gordon's musical legacy and lifetime accumulation of Pop, Gender and Political Culture. This is like a Mixtape of critical modern thinking. There's something fir everyone. A fascinating record. Dive in....  

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,427 Ween - Chocolate & Cheese

 

Certain bands are just an acquired taste that you will never entirely acquire the taste for because you lack the endurance to make the required investment, A lot of this is much to my liking. But generally when It reminds me of other artists,

1979 Top 40 - # 2 Blondie - Dreaming

       Blondie had an Imperial Phase that was impossibly and gloriously prolonged. This has songs and                                              ambition that are rarely seen in the Top Five.  

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 221 Jill Scott - Who Is Jill Scott Vol 1

 

Positive vibes. You can't fault it. Smooth as silk.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,342 The Paper Kites

 

We've been quiet for a couple of days on here but let's pick things up a bit. We're coming up to the weekend . With that in mind, let's go fly some kites. 

Melbourne's Paper Kites rock a familiar cosy, fireside folk sounds on latest record; 'If You Go There I Hope You Find It. It's something you know completely already. But will want to hear again. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,341 The Notwist

 

Notwist hail from Weilheim near Munich and have been releasing albums since 1990. Their latest album News From Planet Zombie carves out new pathways on their flourishing range. There's something incredible veined and characterful about the record. Labels seem spurious here. This feels like a whole new colour.  

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 222 Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope

 

I was in love with Regina Spektor for a while. She's a very specific talent. There's nobody quite like her..