The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 28 Down To You

 

You bruah against a stranger and you both apologise.'

Court & Spark has a flow. I;ve bought it recently and I keep playig it as it has a warmth and space. An appreciation of light and colour. The moment,

Song(s) of the Day # 4,402 Aretha Franklin

 

Life is a miracle. Best not to try to ratonalise it..Swim in the stream of exitsence. Music is the best way I know to experience the sheer joy of ibeing alive. Realise how lucky you are and experience the moment, If you're not fully cogniscent of your good fortune look at the news. Go to your bathtub switch on the taps. 

Lady Soul by Aretha Franlin is a miracle. The way Aretha and her co-vocalists syncioate and verbalise. Chatter. Gossip. Swoon. Sigh. Soar. It's beyond words. Move into the next song. Move into the new day.My book about the miracle of Lady Soul and what makes it tick can wait for another day.. I have a bath to run. 

1967 Top 40 8th June # 24 Dusty Springfield

 

Everybody you could possibly want is in this chart.Those were the times.

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 62 Karen Dalton - In My Own Time

 

This is a different approach to a different hillside. A new kind of sadness. A quite extrairdinary woman with a sad and lonely narrayive but an extraordinary bittersweet beauty. Sometimes .

the pitching verges on the unhinged but generally this deserves all the garlands.

.

The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 29 Paprika Plains

 

Paprika Plains is seventeen minutes long pretty much. But I'm game. It's rather a slog. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 162 The Pastels / The Tenniscoats -Two Sunsets

 

Boho Heaven. Tea and cake at Rennie Mackintosh Wilow Tree Cafe, gazing down at the soft daylight of Buchanan Street below. Dreaming of Kyoto. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,401 Radiohead

 

I've just had an extraordinary weekend. Every weekend seems extraordinary these days. Every day seems to be. I suspect it's just the age. Terrible things happen. Wonderful things happen. The world spins and we wonder how. 

I listened to Radiohead's Moon Shaped Pool this morning on my TV. I'm lisening to OK Computer now in the evening on my laptop. In between I've been to church itself an incredible experience if light and peace to calm a congregation trying to find peace in their own worlds.

I've had a tech mini crisis which has arrived to a satisfying narrayive like a Raymond Carver short story achi  eving poetic closure and now I'm sitting here typing this as OK Computer plays and the sunlught shines in refracted patterns through my blinds. They all lived happily ever after.! . 

You wouldn't know it listening to Raduihead generally I think Radiohead most of all take the pulse of these last thirty years.Tehey're not my favourite band but you can't help but have the upmost respect for them. They seem to understand the tenor of the times better and more consustently than any other band of these momentous and bewildering tines.

This age of anxiety. These days of miracle and wonder. The times when Andy Warhol fifteen munutes if fame comment surely became reality. 1984. Brave New World  'You watch your feet for the cracks in the pavement,' Uptight! Uptight !

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 63 Brian Eno - Before & After Science

 

I could buy lots of Brian Eno albums. There's am overpriced  copy of Taking Tiger Mountain in a rack in a Record Shop around the corner from me where I'm sitting now that I can feel tugging at me. My need for ownership.

Instead of pulling on my jeans and going out to experience the thrill of purchase I'm listening to Before & After Science on my television . I feel that Eni would appreciate this. He's that rare thing. A reasonable millionaire. An enlightened man. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 19 Ezra Furman - Transangelic Exodus

 

I likes me a bit of melodrama. Perhps not in my life so mych. But I'm always rather prone to an emotional skirmish blaring from my record player.Tansangelic Exodus . Purple vinyl spinning. 'Don't tell my mu, Din't tell my dad. I've been driving dowm to LA wuth my baby...'

It pays its dues to Shangri La's and Jimmy Dean. The New York Dolls. Springsteen. . It takes you somewhere. You can see the cliffs. Feel the waves. All you can ask. .

Song(s) of the Day # 4,401 Ed O'Brien

 

Simetumes it's great when a fine goup splinters. You get more for your money. The individuals within the band start putting out albums of their own and the plot thickens. The harvest is enhanced. Our general lot is improved. Take Fairport Convention . Take Can. Take Kraftwerk. Take erm The Beatles.

Take Radiohead. It's Saturday mirning and I find myself at my desk listening to Ed O'Brien's new record Blue Morpho.. O'Bruen has made a series of videos where he talks about how the record was brought firth by crisis. It sounds like Radiohead. It sounds like those who Radiohead picked up the banner for and forged onward. Nick Drake, Krautrock, Egypt. The Heavenly Choir.It's a deft, magical record. The eye of the storm.... 

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 163 Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - Bavarian Fruit Bread

 

 Bavarian Fruit Bread does what Hope Sandoval has done since She Hangs Brigthly. Comfirtably Nymb  for those who prefer The Velvet Underground to Pink Floyd. I am not being snide. I love the record

The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 30 Cactus Tree

 

Relationships as ownership.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,400 Lucky Break

 My Lucky Number's 4,400. I'm done for the day and heading out for Friday night Lucky Breaks debut made it is playing on my television and the sun is streming through the window. All is calm in the world.

This is a record that charts those important years. Nineteen to Twenty Three and all its uncertainty and enotional vortexes. It's not an album that paves a new road .Lana meets Mazzy Star meets Liz Fraser. But it walks its road with a glacial stride.   

1967 Top 40 8th June # 25 Troggs

 

Troggs trod the elven path. They lived in the Top Ten of the singles chary in 1966. Slipped a little in 1967 . And didn't chart thereafter. 

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 64 Agitation Free - Malesch

 

Obscure but highly revered Krautrock album. Psychedelic and Arabic by turns. A whole new sunset

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,393 Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles II

 

Modern Enchantment.

1967 Top 40 8th June # 26 Traffic

 

Paper Sun is one if the mist beauriful songs that I know. It's all youth and magic,

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 65 The United States of America - The United States of America

 

The world has changed. We must accept that. The world will continue to change. We must embrace that. This album had a high hip quotient in the Eighties when I was busily tracking this stuff down. It's almist impossoble to umagine what the world that inspired an album like this was like. It still sounds incredibly uncompromising ,It explore duffernt pathways to the sun. Thrilling,.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 164 Kings of Leon - Because of the Times

 

They were the Kings of Leon. By 2007 they were shooting to the stars . But I'd rather lost interest in them which I don't imagine concerned them. Sometimes you spend some time with a band and their trajectory shifts out of your orbit. 

The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 31 Song For Sharon

 

With Joni you can't help thinking about the people she write about as much as the songs she wrote. Her albums are populated with lives which rise and fall. Ebb and flow,

Song(s) of the Day # 4,399 The Lemon Twigs

 

The Lemon Twugs hail from Hicksville, Long Island.You couldn't make it up.  Look For Your Mind their latest LP is their seventh in all. It sounds like several albums they have already put out. The twig it seems have no desire to become a branch. Meanwhile as the record spons it seems clear 1973 is reluctant to become '74.

But the 1973.The Lemon Twigs inhabit is stranger still. It harks back with endless yearning to the Golden Age of jingle jangle. 1965 to 1967 where The Beatles, the Rest of the British Invasion kicked in .The likes of The Left Banke. The Cryan' Shames 

What The Lemon Twigs do on latest album Look For Your Mind , they do very very well. It's not a very different album from others they've put out, They're working on a seam. But it's also decidedly unadventurous .Firmula  It never makes a break from the pack breaks out of the straightjacket of the records they clearly venerate and heads for true greatness. .

You never quite believe that the girl who's breaking their heart is actually flesh and blood or that she diesn't have a perfectly valid response to The Lemon Twigs entreaties. The 9 to 5 was ever an actually a 9 to 5. It's a conceit evidently. It's so jingle jangle tastic  Still, The Lemon Twigs are heading back ti my home town and they're playing a bigger venue from last time. Why should they care about my reservations, Good for them.    

The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 32 Man From Mars

 

Joni had a cat called Nietzsche , He ra

an away this inspired this rather lovely song,

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 66 Popul Vuh - Hosianna Mantra

 

I've taken off Dizzee Rascal and put on Popul Vuh. The mood has changed. I peel a tangerine. It's a classical mien sddemly. This is a band that took their name from a Mayan manuscript. So they're a lot smarter than me and I'm immediarely grateful that they made this and I'm listening to it,

This came out in 1972 and suddenly it feels like 1972 again. This is quite extraordinary. You don't get this sensation from listening to a Mott The Hoople record

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 165 Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner

 

I'm listening to Boy In Da Corner for the first time. It's 23 years old. It's pretty good. Funny. Sharp. Urban.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 20 The Skids - Days In Europa

 

You can't fault The Skids for lack of ambition. This, their second album. Songs to sing on the way to the match. On the terraces. On Friday night wuth a bevvie. It was of the tomes and they were rousing ones. Top of the Pops was great every Thursday night for five years. Turbulent political times. Here was another great band to align with. To put on when you got hime from school and waited for your tea when mum and dad got home. A deceptively thoughtful rollercoaster ride for teenage hormones and black sheep thinkers.

Produced by Bill Nelson. He helped moved the band's sound on  to the point where they sounded like an impressive leggy 800 metre runner coming off the final bend and pressing for medals in an Olympic Final behind Coe or Juantorena. The original sleeve was quickly withdrawn and replaced after a furore about Nazi imagery. It was something many flirted with although it was evident Skids followed the right line. I was deeply besotted with Working For The Yankee  Dollar. I haven't listened much to this but I certainly will do. The whole thing sounds fighting fit. coming up to fifty years on.

1967 Top 40 8th June # 27 Jeff Beck

 

This reminds me of a moment. December 1983. Just back from The Soviet Union on a College Trip. Mount Ararat Road in Richmond. A gathering of young women. And me for some reason, A girl enthusing about how this was the best record ever. And playing it again and again. .

Song(s) of the Day # 4,398 C.O.L.A.

 

Drinking a Cola, listening to C.O.L.A.'s latest; Cost Of Living Adhustment. Aren't I just the Post Punk, Punk. It's a cool album. Cure meet Wire in Toronto at a Surrealist Exhibition.
.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,394 Deep Purple - Burn

 

This is very much the world I'm immersed in at the moment. A sub reality. from 50 years and more back, given the Sublom Medoa countdown I'm experiencing.

Deep Purple and Burn from 1974 fits right in to this mood. It's teeming wuth irc and elven narrative and meaty riffing !

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 166 Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare

 

Pause for thought. We are as far away from the first couple of Arctic Monkeys albums as The Sex Pistols were from Elvis. I don't have particularly strong feelings either way about Arctic Monkeys. This is jolly energetic. Gathers momentum at a certain point and feels like getting drunk for the first time. or losing your virginity. But then you realise this is truly compelling narrative with elemnts of Greene and Fleming, the Kitchen Sink Angry Young Men novels and films. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 21 Neil Diamond - Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Song

 

Neil Diamond seems to occupy the space between Rock & Roll and Showbiz. It's a dirty job but someone  has to do it. Apparently the most annoying man backstage at The Last Waltz concery. He was going backstage telling anyone who would listen that he was about to blow them all offstage. While they were wondering why he was playing st all.

I like him, and I like this. From 1969 when I like pretty much everything about him. His voice. Which is incredibly rich and resonant. His lyrics. His peroccupatuins which strike me as highly singular . He frequently has more corn than High Chaparal and Bonanza Not all of the material is completely frontline but Diamond drags us all along with him. Super trouper that he is. 

The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 33 Carey

 

Memories can be the heavuest things . I alwasy associate Blue with a flat in Dortmund and a friend I visited on Friday's at the end of the working week. We uded to smoke a bit and drink a bit and joke a but. But we also used to listen to music a bit. Blue was one of the records Matt played and I feel something descend in me as I write this.. An anchor to the bed of an ocean.My mood plummets. Then rises again.

But 'the wind is in from Africa.' Carey is the story of a hippyush romance on Crete and you feel the joy and the transition and the joy. The sunlight streaming through the window. Let's go to the Mermaud Cafe have fun tonight.

 

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 67 Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue

 

Occasionally it's best, if you're feeling distracted or anxious to let it go and give a record your complete attention. In the case of  Pacific Ocean Blue that means lettung it wash over you in every respect. It's that kind of record. It's nit hard to relate ti .We've all been to the sea, (or pretty much all of us I imagine) and we've all been children. 

We may not know the beaches if California that  Dennis Wilson is describing but we can imagine them. The tide going in and the tide going out. The joy and the sadness. The eternal. The beautiful planet we share..

This might seem like a rather desolate album in some ways. Wilson was coming to the end if his own particular line. But there's actually an enormous amount of generosity and artistic wisdom here. The tide comes in. The tide rolls out.

. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,397 Doug Gillard

 

A quiet work day is a difficult thing for me these days/.I have nothing to do. So why not just enjoy doing nothing. It was something you didn't have the slightest difficulty with as a child. But now you feel you must be doing something. Running up some hill. Worry about something.

But I'm, not going to. I'm listening to Doug Gilliard's new album Parallel Stride . It's straight as you go. Neat licks and chord changes. Doug sounds like the guy in Urge Overkill and the band sound like a Power Pop band from 1974 or a New Wave Band from 1979. It's a place where men are always playing with the queen of hearts.And the joker ain't the only fool.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,395 Big Thief - U.F.O.F.

 

In many respects Bug Thief are a band out of time. They often sound as if they'd have graced the bill at Woodstock. But their music is not mannered or conceit.

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 68 Kvaertten Som Sprangde - Kattvals -

 

Listening to this countdown, one album a day as spring become summer is an almost unprecedented experience, I don't know many of these albums but am in awe of most of them. Certainly this.A freewheeling instrumental  Psychedelic Progressive Folk album that is frankly hreathtaking. This is not music I ever imagined myself becoming so enraptured by, but it's happening

1967 Top 40 8th June # 28 Herb Alpert

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 167 Prefab Sprout - I Trawl The Megahertz

 

Prefan Sprout; The Musical

The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 34 For The Roses

 

For The Rosesis aparticularl favourite of mine. It feels tangled and troubled. As if some are going where they need to go. And others are getting left behimd.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,396 Gun Outfit

 

Gun Outfit occuply the same emotional territory as Allah Las, Mazzy Star and The Paisley Underground bands and the likes pf the Doors, Love and Buffalo Springfield. They live on the saddle and their records invite you to join them. Out in the prairie. Under the stars.

Latest album Process & Reality takes it's time and stretches it's spurs on the blanket on the ground. It all feels rather 2026. Rather Wes Anderson on the Range. But I ain't complaining cowboy ! 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,396 David Bowie - The Lodger

 

Great music is frequently an act of escape. An immersion in an alternative and more inviting reality . Such is the case. You are in the pages of Ballard, Bowles and Burroughs. And anything is possible.

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 168 Rokyskopp - Melody AM

 

This is, how should I put it? Monumentally bland !

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 70 Gentle Giant - Octopus

Whimsical Athletic. Not so much for me this one. Though it has its twists and turns.

 

The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 34 Roses Blue

 

Young Joni is naturally quite different from middle aged Joni and slightly elderly Joni. It's only natural. But this makes it dufficult to assess the songs in this rundown. As if you are walking through a gallery playing tribute to a great artist where their paintings are not ordered randomly but in confusing sequence,

Anyway I love this song and if asked to order my own countdown of favourites would put it higher. It seems to warn listener against the appeal of the occult and supernatural. 'Sceptisism has rarely sounded this transendent.'  

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 22 Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

 

Famously the album that either made ir saved Richard Branson. Memory us the strangest thing. For some reason I'm transported back to a garden in Teddington. I think the neighbours are playing this and Concorde is flying overhead either to or from Heathrow. A number of people who are important to me are still alive and I have more hair on my head than I do now,

Now Tubular Bells is playing again on my strereo. 40 years have passed but it's not very long in the scheme of things.It sounds rather magical ti my ears.Medieval.  I particularly like the foolish effects and reverence for what is gone.. Generally it has a rather regal air. It only cost me a quid, plays like a dream  and I probably play it once a year, I like it,

1967 Top 40 8th June # 29 Engelbert Humperdinck

 

Please release Engelbert Humperdinck and his dubuius sudeburns. It's been almost sixty years now,

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,395 Mildred

 

I keep falling hard for new albums. Long may this contunue.This morning... Mildred. No, not  Yootha Joyce. Morrissey acolytes. But Oakland, California's finest. That's saying something. There's always plenty happening in Oakland, California. But today it's Mildred. And their latest record Fenceline. 

It's neat, reflective Amerucana.A little bit Sulver Jews. A little but Whiskytiwn. A little bit Mildred.  'Driving out to the orchard for a weekend job.' Down avenues Lined with memory and regret. And happiness. Laughter. With life. 

It reads like well written Short Stories by Raymond Carver or John Cheever. Like a sit down meal with life veterans. Survivors. Refugees. Makes me feel like watching Sideways again. But I'll keep on listening to this. It's Sunday morning.. And this is beautiful. 

Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 71 Dark - Round the Edges

 

Sorry Spotify haters ! I understand your argument but I have justifications of my own. I like listening to ludicrously obscure albums on my television set. This certainly wasn't an option when  Dark  Round the Edges came out in 1972 and I was a curly headed tot blissfully wrapped up in Chicory Tip and Newcastle United. 

As for the record its creamy British Psychedelia, reminiscent of Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead.It was made in Northampton. It's apparenrly the 17th most valuable album ever made according to The NME. It's also quite wonderful !

500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 169 Johnny Cash - American IV; The Man Comes Around

 

These late Johnny Cash / Rick Rubin albums are extraordinary. A cast spell with Biblical dimensions.

1967 Top 40 8th June # 30 Jimi Hendrix Experience

 

Purple Haze still sounds impossible. A visitation.

The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 35 The Beat of Black Wings

 

Late Eighties Joni and it sounds it . All rather over egged production wise for me. The melody has a more-ish tug