A mythical and tragic figure in Rock & Roll lore and a record I'm pleased to own. It finds its way off the racks and onto my turntable every six months or so and immediately radiates a brash and slightly tagged glory. Morrissey loved this as a hapless lad and little wonder. He met Marr which helped him make his way to acceptance.despite his inner fragility and essential oddness. It seems Jobriath never met his Marr or his Mick Ronson though Peter Frampton played on this. His tragedy. It's a blessing we have this. Its a record which deserves and will be remembered.
I'm listening to Caravan on my television. We might as well be living in The Jetsons. It's certainly a different universe from the one Caravan released Into The Land of Grey & Pink into in April 1971 on Deram Records.
The record is unmistakably quaint to 2026 ears. But that's precisely why it will appeal so much to so many not born when it came out. It's a skip down long inhabited lanes. Caravan take their time and although the fluidity of the jams might try your patience occasionally it has a purity that's highly beguiling. Over hill and dale.
Big Big Train serve up a big big sound on latest album Woodcut. With mixed results. They dip their ties in every Genre known to man. Yeah we have access to all this music but there's no need to try to use as much of it as you can. This is Prog, then Christian Rock from the Greenbelt festival then Queen off- cuts. I gave up after ten minutes.. Ghastly and confused
'I'm always running behind the time. Just like this train. Shaking into town with the breaks complain.'
Joni reflects on a relationship that's failed. Always one of life's more interesting activities. Looking at the possessions around the place that you lived that you shared with them. Some schadenfreude here.
This is an album of a particular quality, an essence. Some Joni. Sime Nick. But thise were the chord changes that characterised the time. There's something that marks out a space for Parallelograms that's all its own.
Regina Spektor is an artist who takes her own road and has an admirable ambition and taste for melody, quirkiness and romance. She understands that an important element of life is to take your own road. Whether the high road or the low road.. At times this is straining for grace.
Failure is not endemic or inevitable. Don't believe the hype. Listening to Failure may be a good move. Some records and artists sometimes sound as of they were designed in test tubes rather than being genuinely creative poetically birthed exercises to me. There's something of this going on here for me. I'm not complaining, I realise my own ideas of musical perfection and majesty are not shared by everyone.
Take Failure. Los Angeles Failure in case you want the failure pinned down to a specific region. First of all that's a great Rock & Roll name if ever there was one. Where did you get the idea that Rock & Roll was about success. Do you really fancy a peek at Elon Musk's record collection?
Failure have been round the block a few times. They were originally active between 1990 and 1997 and reactivated in 2014. Up to now they've released seven albums and any number of EPS.
Latest record Location Lost feels strangely weightless. I was minded of a hot air balloon kicking clear of its moorings and heading towards the heavens Their sound is dense but strangely crystallised and poised. A list of points of influence and interest on their Wikipedia page was instructive and covers a lot of ground; Bowie, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Kate Bush . Doesn't really sound like failure to me. Cool record !.
Every line is a short story. A realised dream. The best night out of your year. Ot mine for that matter I don't mean to be cruel. But Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars makes life sound unbelievably exciting. There aren't very many albumstwhere every single line is impossibly thick with possibility. Spin it and weep !
Val Doonican. Where to start with Val Doonican. Saturday nights growing up in the late Seventies is one place to start. Val had a show oo BBC One on Saturday evenings. Mid evening. Not going out and hanging on street corners like the cool kids in your class. Not where the action was. A Stranglers concert somewhere. Out in the night....
Val in his comfy sweater and hus comfy slippers on his comfy rocking chair. Everything was comfy and safe. Val, Vickty and Lavinia his dreamy backing vocalists swaying over his shoulder. Somehow it all felt like the saddest thing on earth. Now of course you'd do anything to get back there. Two Streets is as wholesome as you could possibly want.
We're always travelling between storeys. On the way from somewhere to somewhere else. The Charlatans realised this. They had a lot of death to deal with, as we all do. But they kept the essential nature of their sound constant and also moving onward.
Between 10th & 11th was the bands second album It came out in 1992 on the Situation 22 label, a subsiduary of Beggars Banquet. The album was recorded in Rockfield Studuis in Monmouth, Wales. It was critically slated for it's laziness on its release but has later been reevaluated and I'd say deservedly so . For its thoughtfulness and introspection. It's desire to survive
I like the record because of its sense and desire for transition. It almost feels like a mission at its best. The Charlatans first big hit The Only One still perhaps their definitive song, quotes The Byrds and harks back to The Sixties as a Golden Age. Between 10th & 11th kicks up a gear on the second side and there's a magical questing quality to the music. A direction in the lack of specific articulation of direction, They were listening to Dylan. Never a bad idea. .
Th last two tracks Chewing Gum Weekend and (No One) Not Even the Rain are my picks of the litter. At theor best The Charlarans weaved a fog for themselves and lost themselves in it. I didn't buy this myself at the time but I'm glad I have it now,. I was transitioning myself. At home with my parents in Teddington. Still recovering from an illness that I realise now could have pulled the plug on me. Onwards. Ever onwards.....
Arlo Parks puzzles me. She seems unwilling to nail her colours to the mast three albums in. Ambiguous Desire is neither here nor there. 'I kind of wish I wasn't me' she wonders at a certain point/ ' Whyever would you feel like that Arlo? Life is good and you have a record deal. She seems caught between the heaven and the deep blue sea.. Alright, but surely there's more to life than embracing the bland. This is a hymn to the colour beige
'I don't want to lose this good thing. That I've got.'
I brought a record the other day. Listened to it. I'm listening to it again now. I'm in a good moment in life at the moment. I have space. I can really listen to records and that's what I try to do most days. Really listen to them. Try to enter into the spirit and times they were made in. Appreciate the craft. Today's Song(s) of the Day is a prime example of the value of taking time out of your day to make an effort to do that,
Eddie Floyd is primarily remembered now as a mid ranking Sixties Soul journeyman. He put out a number of albums, a clutch of singles on Stax Records. He hit one big bullseye. Knock On Wood. I've got his debut album which bears the same name and was recorded in sessions take took place between July and December 1966. Perhaps you prefer to listen and wonder at Revolver or Pet Sounds. They're incredible. No criticism intended of either. But sometimes I like to sit down and listen and think. And try to write about something like this.
Floyd had the Stax house band Booker T & The MGs playing and writing with him on the record. Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Booker T Jones, Al Jackson Jr . It has Isaac Hayes on piano. We're talking the elite here. A band and set of musicians who played on any number of the best known Soul and Rock and Roll records ever made. They're no mere backing band. They punctuate the records they appear on. Ingest them with heart and poetry as well as backbone. Such is the case here.
The singer provides the narrative. Floyd is no Otis. no Aretha. But the songs and his vocals provide storylines that you don't require a PhD or a streak of genius to follow and appreciate. On Knock on Wood you get songs that anyone who ever had a heart. Had it broken, or broke someone else's or made up the peace and kept soldiering on. Working on the seam. Anyone with ears can read or relate to this.
Over the course of the album you get; I can't believe you're stepping out with me. I can't believe my luck. But I don't plan to take this for granted. We're all working at a seam. On the mystery of love.. And that's just in Knock On Wood itself. Elsewhere Eddie and the boys work on related seams in the goldmines of love, pain, desire and heartbreak. They keep things simple. If you want something more showy there are plenty of Sting records for you to listen to. This by contrast is simplicity itself. .But if it was that simple everybody would do it. That's enough from me. Track down the record and try to work it out for yourself. This is a universal language. The best kind ever invented
Out of Focus were a German Progressive / Krautrock band. Formed in Munich. Named after a Blue Cheer track . This is their first album from 1971.
It immediaitely feels like the wildest party you have never attended but always wanted to.. The freeform expression you most crave. Longhairs and intoxication, songs that don'r seem entirely sure where they're heading but make you want to catch a ride. Recklessness, wilderness and freedom.
A must hear for any interested in this kind of thing. There's so much in the mix here. Put me in a fantastic mood for the rest of my Sunday.
I immediately warm to Maya Hawke's latest album MAITREA CORSO as soon as I perch my headphones over my head and sail into opening track Love of My Life.Maybe I'm in a good mood but she's good company with her soothing approach to the curveballs mid Twenties living throw at the sensitive.
Maya parents are Ethan Hawke and Una Thurman and you've got two options. Either to hold her good fortune against her or concede she may have had experiences you're not entirely familiar and cup an ear to try to discern what they might be. I'd like the record regardless of knowledge of her lineage.
MAITREA CORSO is warm and endearing and unexpected from the off . I could make a lot of comparisons to other female artists working in the same neck of the woods but it would be lazy. It's funny, sharp and constantly surprising.
A ghastly cover. Like one if those appalling Seventies Pop Art images where everybody thought they were the spawn of Salvador Dali. I liked it as a teenager. But I'm not a teenager anymore. The record's a bit meh! Just my taste. Nit particularly Deep purple. Fans of the Oh Sees form an orderly queue.
Joni ponders on relationships and releases dappled melody. The idea that you will understand someone better in time as a relationship comes to an end. Transcending the pain with insight.
This is a great lesson to any aspiring artist. If tiu come to the end of a relationship don't cry about it. Write a song. A short story.. A poem. Paint a picture. That's the best way of understanding it better. Also providing a service to others ro help them understand and come to terms with their pain.
Madness were Number One. With a song about kids not really knowing about sex but being fascinated but wanting to dive in. I didn't really. I was a mummy's boy and wanted to remain innocent.
I didn't really care for Madness particularly. There was plenty of other stuff going on. 1977 to 1982. The years of my secondary education. It was perfect. But now I realise how lucky we were. How good the times were.
An album that takes me back, The years fall away and I'm eight years old . It's yesrerday once more. One of seven again. In a large house in Nottingham called Private Road. A little boy in short trousers with a proud head of curly hair. Two older brothers. Two sisters. One older . One younger sister. A mum and dad. Struggling with money and a new life. But all very happy together. In the Seventies. One of the strangest but most wonderful decades of all.
We were just back from Zimbabwe. Where we'd returned from in 1972. Adjusting to a different climate and a different world. My mother retraining as a Social Worker. My father had a job with Boots. One of the most prominent employers in Nottingham. Dad travelled off to Eastern Europe every few months. Trialling Nurofen behind the Iron Curtain.
Enough of my Family. Back to Family. They came from neighbouring Leicester. Where my father had been born in 1934. But had long since decamped to London where they were surrounded by glamorous women and dressed in gowns, beads and saffron. Patchouli oil and incense sticks. They were much feted. The next big thing
Their first album was produced by Dave Mason of Traffic who has recently passed. Jimmy Miller was also in the mix. The record was called The Doll's House which reputedly led The Beatles to change the name from the same name to The Beatles (yeah, The White Album).
The Doll's House is a staggering, evocative album . Like so many of its time. It's a world that's effectively gone now. But AI and The Internet can recover and carry you back apparently, This effectively is the very reasin I started thus blog 13 years and counting back. And why I continue working in the seam. So let's put Bandstand on and spin back in time.
It's their sixth album, bands worked hard back in those days and this one came out in 1972. The exact year the seven of us departed Africa and arrived in England. The original sleeve was a Die-Cut in the shape of a Bush TV22 screen. Family are going straight. Or as straight as they can. Utilising more conventional song structures and arrangements. Wistful sentiments and stylings.
Swedish Psych Rock debut from 1970. Thus ine is shrouded in obscurity. Very little is known about the band and the record I imagine is highly collectable. It sounds like a Pagan gathering one moment, the support band fir Can the next and a commune family gathering the next. A mesmirising discovery. As it seems every day is, on this altogether wonderful countdown.
From Adam Ant to a Joni Mitchell song called Dog Eat Dog. 'Brush me Jonio.' Very of its time. Eighties production. Apparently her working relationsiup with co-producer Thimas Dolby was slightly frosty.
Pigeon, Margate's finest . Latest album OUTTANATIONAL rocks. Spacey cover. Post Punk. Psyche, Krautrock, and Afrobeat all stirred into the mix. . Also the Kitchen Sink. Leftfield meets WITCH on the way round to Tracy Emin's .I imagine you'd expect nothing less. But it's disciplined, cool. martial. A great listen for Friday morning spring to summer flat cleaning.
Adam Ant was no longer a cool name to write in your pencil case or school bag. But looking back this is an incredibly quixotic song to get to Number Three in the charts. I didn't know who Al Green was. 'Don't drink don't smoke. What do you do? ' Apparently it was a dig at Dexys.
There are worse ways to spend 50 days thtn listening to 50 Joni Mitchell songs. Starting wuth the last collection of new material. One of the great things about Joni is her use of space.
Only You. Listening to thus takes me back to the tume it came out. Listening to it I was of an age where I didn't understand the incredible depth of emotion that it was talking about. The profound.
With time to me Unknown Pleasures becomes less about biographical detail and more of an act of artistic inspiration. It's a record with genuine pagan qualities
I'm listening to an album from 2002 called These Were The Earlies by The Earlies. It came out in 2004. It's already clasped me close to its chest and I've taken off my headphones, gone off and made myself a cup of tea. Returned to my desk. Put my headphones back on. Now I'm going to listen to the rest of it. I've found another one.
It's immediately obvious that the record has a strong sense of self mythology. This is a strong essential component of the DIY independent mythology which has always been a component of Rock & Roll alternative culture. A SUB culture. A hidden universe.
This is a band from Texas. But I felt sure they must feature membes of The Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev because the DNA of the record seemed so immediately familiar. Like my own skin. .The instant familiarity of records becomes one of its essential attractions with time.
This is a cute record. Coy. But with boundless and vaulting admirable ambition. Like many great records an incantation. An invitation back to childhood. The low door in the wall.
2026 seems to be a slightly enchanted time music wise, What magical time and place to you want to be transported back to today? The early Seventies? The late Sixtues? Encased in now. Why not. Juni Habel and her third album Evergreen In Your Mind. The slow, deliberate act of becoming according toThe Line of Best Fit. That sounds as if it will do,
And so the album proves . It's elfin twinkle toes delight. Tenderness and playfulness meet in a Norwegian meadow and frolic and gambol to their hearts content as the sun decsends. It makes your mind go back to the likes of Vashti and Sandy. Forward to the arrival of the bew Aldous Harding album which is due soon. This will do,
I never mind listening to The Stone Roses. It's such a glorious record. Ever! It's such a fundamental record. It's why people like me listen to records so much. It takes me back and guides me forwards. It genuinely changed things.
Perhaps Brown Horse's are Norwich's finest. They're certainly a horse of a different colour. Third album Total Dive might at first seem like an open invitation for doomscrollers of the world to unite and feel sorry for themselves.But persevere. For there's much here for lovers of Neil Young, The Band , Springsteen and the open road to celebrate. I'm not quite sure what Alan Partridge might think of it really. But frankly, what dies that guy know,
This is a band that must be growing used to being compared to artists and records that came out over fifty years ago. This is tonally not necessarily the cheeriest record you're likely to hear this week but it may well be one of the best. I went to university in Nowich but it certainly doesn't remind me ofThe Fine City. It probably reminds me of somewhere like Omaha, even though I've never been there and am probably unlikely to ever get there. Good recirds do things like that to you. This is a very good record !
I just listened to Let It Be. Naked. On my television. No that's not what I meant. I'm not that kind of person.This is a record which us so incredibly of its time. You can't help but visualise The Beatles. Feel the tension between them. Feel the Sixties become The Seventies.
One of the characteristics musically speaking of the current age appears to me to be the encroaching march of the Fleetwood Mac brugade. As in the Nicks Buckingham incarnation. I don't mind them but I do sometimes rail against the overwhelming blandness they bring in their wake. This album is emblematic of that tendency . Frankly I wondered if I was drowning in marshmallow.
This seems a world away from where I'm sitting now. But maybe it's not. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band feeds on an energy that is reborn with every succeeding generation. An urge to get back to the garden. A fear of what might germinate and grow.
Heavenly harmonies and vibes. A sense that this album might not actually be bought by that many people but it will be loved by those that make the effort and spread the word.
I listened to Jesse Ware's latest album Superbloom last night. I'm listening to it again now. She takes the heady essential ingredients of original Seventies Disco. Distuls them to the essence and then unleashes the cork and allows you to rise to the ceiling like Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins. So you're floating up towards the ceiling. With all your favourite people. The helium fuelled staircase to heaven !
We all miss out on essential lives. Our essential vocations. My essential vocation was to dream I suspect. Mu 91 year old parents sit together in the living toom with a set of pictures of their children to their right. There's a photo of me which I think is the essential photogtaph of my lifetime .
It shows me walking down a garden path in Zimbabwe towards the swimming pool at the bottom of the garden. Chameleons in the trees. Banana tree ahead of me. Africa in all its verdant majesty and vibrant life all around me. I have a far away look in my eyes. A dreamer. I doubt if I will ever escape my essential self. I doubt if anyone does really.
My other essential selves are. Working in record shops. I've never done that so. I haunt them instead.I lack ambituin except to live. Collecting records. Collecting experience. Teaching now online. Reaping the rich harvest of life abroad. Experience life. As i said teaching. Learning .First in class. Now online. Every class is dofferent. Every time you play a record the experience is never the same
I should have been in a band. I would have been in a band loke The Clean. Minor Cult players. Not the big boys. Velvet Underground, Doors, Roxy Music, Joy Division. Essentially happy. But aware that life is a mountain path and the road is the long and winding one and we could trip and fall at any moment. Don't point that thing at me!
My very dear friend Philip is completely obsessed with Tight Fit. I should encourage him to write the band the tribute they clearly deserve in their honour. Personally I reckon they're just Bad Pop and even worse Camp !
