I bought this when it came out in 1986 and listened to it a lot. I was going through an incredible phase in my life. I was 21 and terribly sick and so was my older sister. I went into recovery. I couldn't open jars or peel potatoes or open windows I looked weird. I lost confidence, I almost had hallucinations when I drank too much and it reacted ro the strong medication I was taking. It took me years to fully 'get back',
I was constantly drenched in sweat. I wrote poems about living in an elephant's skin We were in a house with my parents and my sister. My sister meanwhile died. She went to the hospice. We brought her home my mother tended her and she died. My mother went up one evening. We were watching television in the living room.
My mother came downstairs said Sarah was dead and the four of us went upstairs held hands at the foot of the bed and said goodbye to our darling Sarah. The experience changed me and has been something I and all of us have been coming to terms with ever since. But forty years later I'm alive and happy. I don't believe in living in the past and the one thing I absolutely know is that Sarah would not have wanted us to be unhappy. So I'm determined to honour her wishes
And all the time through those years I was listening to this jagged, uncompromising record and not knowing really what I felt about it except that I liked ir. I'm listening to it now, I still like it. It was given incredible reviews. The band were compared to Joy Division and The Birthday Party. Kirsten Hersh the Throwing Muses leader had been knocked off her bike and her skull had been fractured in three places when the band were coming together at High School which skewed their happy go lucky trajectory and made them Sylvia Plath's for the mid Eighties alternative set.
It's still an incredibly powerful album. There's self harm and threat in most songs. It's still not an album a mother would want to come into a room and hear her little darling listening to. There aren't conventional verse chorus structures. Or lyrics. Each song seems to have gear changes every fifteen seconds or so.. It's not the stuff of mass acceptance. A record destined for the margins though of course it gets Mojo retrospectives. A display in the Unorthodox Hall of Fame
It's melodic, colorful but self consciously unsettling. Disturbing and deceptive. Demanding further listening. I've been listening for forty years and I'm not quite sure what I think yet. The mark of a great record.
He's still the King you know. Hard one to discount Elvis and their are worse ways to spend a Sinday afternoon than listening to his debut album from 1956 on Sun Records. It has a beautiful purity and clarity.
The instruments are differntiated so clinically in the mix. There's a purity in the mix and it still makes you move. Takes you back and carries you forward.
I went into the record shop across the road from me yesterday morning and saw the latest Board of Canada album in the front of the rack of new releases going for a cool 40 quid. Lumme. I remember buying freshly released records for a fiver or so. Back in the day. I suspect I'll never own it, But I'm listening to it now as the sun sets and imagine I'll probably listen to it on a regular basis. All year and beyond. Because frankly it's a completely staggering achievement. .
Now the sun is up, it's Sunday morning and I'm listening to it again. It has heft and gravitas. It feels like a document for our time. It's the Scittish duio s furst album for 13 years and I imagine I'll be playing it on loop.Record reviews hint at the great themes; the occult, doomsday, climate collapse, melancholy, depression, mourning, grief, economic, political, cultural upheaval. Same as it ever was. The Manson family read all kinds of similar things into Beatles songs and it led them to do monstrous things. Perhaps they should have just staye at hope and listened to and appreciated the music. . Inferno should be played as a suite.That's what I'll be doing.
A Swedish Prog Psych album from 1970 'Unpolished in the best way possible...' according to the author of this., It sets off with ragged but quite intriguing covers of All Along The Watchtower and Satisfaction an dbuilds from there. Another record that has a quite remarkable cumulative effect
'I met her at the Burger King. We feel in love by the soda machine...'.
Leave Home is the Ramones album to die for. The cover. The tunes. It took me a while to realise the full genius of The Ramones. That this was essentially an art statement every much as Television or Patti Smith were.
It's funny and sharp and lean and mean. But also tender. It aches. It has a great sense of Pop History and where its going. You never really Leave Home.
Blue is a versatile word. Dependent on its comtexy. This is an extraordinary song. About Joni's upheaval from the end of her relationship with James Taylor. Sometimes you need to resist the temptation to listen to the whole album and just listen to the same song again and feel its weight and wonder..
This was the first Clash album I bought. I got it soon after it came out. I liked it. I liked The Clash and I still do. I never bought into the rhetoric or inderstood why they didn't want to go on Top Of The Pops. but liked the tunes. I still like the tunes and the lyrics. It felt like something was coming to an end.
I have a friend who they took on the road when he was 15. It formed him I imagine. I have anither friend who swears by them but wrote this to me recently. 'It doesn't matter what people in their 50s and 60s think fifty years after the fact. They were important in their time but now it's just background music' I've turned the record over and I'm listening to Know Your Rights. It still seems to speak to me. .
Everybody has their sound. Spiritualised sound is nominally that of The Velvet Underground, the Stooges and The MC5. Stir in some Sun Ra and Soul. Bring to the boil. Then remove from the pan. Simmer. Pour into bowls
It's difficult not to blink sometimes . Sometimes I'd say it's best to try not to. It's Friday morning. At the end of May. It's my sister's birthday. I imagine she'll be rising and will take her Bulgarian rescue dog for a walk at some point today. Across woods and sunlit meadows of bluebells, primroses. and the like My brother is rising in Galicia with his wife. Making their way up steep slopes. It's hot as blazes he tells us. We're all walking up steep slopes aren't we? It's the only way we know
My mother will stir and go down to prepare my father some breakfast. .Fix a tray with corn flakes, raspberries, yoghurt, toast and a cup of tea. Just how dad likes it..Run her bath, dress and descend to the living room to do her sudoku and crosswords. Classic FM. Everywhere people are rising. Heading into their day, The world turns. The weekend is coming
I run my bath and dress, I look in the t shirt drawer and find a Jane Birkin t shirt Alison gave me for a birthday many years ago. Jane Birkin isn't with us an more but the t shirt still is and I put it on. It will do me for today, It's appropriate.
I've got Alena Diane's new album Who's Keeping Time playing on my television. On my television You see what I mean about not blinking, It's called Who's Keeping Time? Who Knows Where the Time Goes ! Ir's a lovely record. With a sleeve adorned with images of Alela surrounded by a gathering of geese clustered around a dining table on a prairie. Little Table on the Prairie,.
I teach my first class. Dennis, Julianne, Beheshata. Clinical Professionals heading into their own days but making a window for English. We talk about implants and why the body rejects them. Stones in our internal organs and what we can do about them. Broken bones and our experience of them comes up. One to Ones with our line managers and how best to approach them. How to best demand appreciation and ensure commensurate recompensation for our labour. Not being taken for granted. What we have looking forward to at the weekend.
In Beheshta's case this means a drive to Rotterdam to a wedding tomorrow. A stay in a hotel and then a quick look around Antwerp. A drive back to the Ruhr Gebeit and a baby shower with friends on Sunday. Fitting in a bit of life before work starts again on Monday morning. All the while the stones keep stirring in our inner organs. The blood keeps flowing between our arteries.
I have some downtime between classes so I send off powerpoints for my classes and fix myself more tea. Boil an egg, I fancy a change from Alela so I put Soft Machine's Third on my turntable and the stylus clicks into its groove and my flat fills with light and cool burbling, meandering Hippy Jazz sound.
I've been entranced with this magical record for a few weeks. I saw a vinyl copy at one of the record stores around the corner from me where the price of the vinyl copy of this in their racks had dropped from £39 to £29 so I saw my chance, made my move and bought a copy. It already sounds like a good investment for my sixties.. A long term downpayment that should pay back in terms of stillness and space.
Onto Class Two. Olli and Stefan. Insurance professionals. Tuning in from Dussledorf and Nuremberg. We always laugh. There's time for football, family and fun. .Chat about cheese..I have a quiz on cheese prepared. This doesn't happen entirely by accident. We debate who would win the World Cup of Cheese Why does Emmental have holes. Olli and Stefan read an article to find out. Spoiler. It's the flecks in the hay folks.
The conversation meanders back to 1970. A podcast I'm engrossed in about a World Cup related Conspiracy from when I was five and in Zimbabwe and my sister was just a baby Gordon Banks drank a beer in a bar in Mexico a few days before a World Cup Quarter Final against West Germany. And was struck down with tummy trouble and missed the match which England lost,. The podcast posits that it was all a CIA related plot. There's no end to the mystery and wonder in life. Why bother doomscrolling about the here and now. Being right wing . Being scared or angry. Blaming someone else..
Onward from Srefan and Olli to Pierre. A Broker Manager from the same organisation with a great Wes Anderson look.. Charming and kind. Just turned 50. He tells me about his weekend in Holland with his mum, brother and their kids. We talk about erm football again. Where will Cologne's finest prospect Mala go in the summer. Brentford possibly.
Should my team Newcastle make their move. They've just lost Anthony Gordon to Barcelona not Bayern. Much to Olli and now Pierre's amusement. Then we talk about how he can find the word he needs when he needs it in business contexts when talking to Poles or Indians about contract and brokerage stuff. We develop a strategy which I follow up after the lesson. This doesn't feel like work.
Soft Machine have taken the place of Alela as my ongoing soundtrack as my Friday turns its attention to the afternoon. I'm in a trance for Part Four of my Friday online odyssey. The ideal state for Marina. My Friday afternoon Extemadura Angel. In Amsterdam working for a bank but always Extemadura essentially. There's never, ever a dull moment with Marina.
She's charm and intelligence personified. We're training her up to be CEO within the year. She confides at a certain point this afternoon that she doesn't actually want to be CEO but she certainly gets my vote if she ever needs it. We have the dreaded Internet is down panic midway through. That hasn't happened to me for a while. We reconnect. There are fifteen minutes left before the weekend lands.
So we get to the heart of the matter. That's what Graham Green would do. You can get to this point after four pints on a Friday night with a mate if you choose but in my experience it's far better at four on a Friday afternoon with a canny operator like Marina who knows what she's talking about. .Does Love exist? Does the Soul?
From Marina's perspective the idea of a Soul is ludicrous. It's something we want to believe in but it's actually a huge red herring. Wishful thinking. .Like Lloyd Cole though, Marina believes in love. There's been persuasive scientific research she says. She's persuaded. It's nice to hear. A good time to wish each other a happy weekend. Next week we'll discuss Atomic Habits further and delve into the Third Conditional. Anyway I need to go to Rosie's and find out who I've got in The World Cup Sweepstakes. These things are important.. Fellowship. Banter. A fiver.
I make my way up the slope from my flat. Turn into Stowell Street. Newcastle's Chinatown. Millie is perched in his place at the end of the bar. Where he belongs.. I've got Belgium. He's got Mexico. No chance for either of us. Neither Belgium nor Mexico have ever reached the World Cup Final never mind won the bloody thing and paraded round the pitch kissing the golden trophy and blowing kisses to the crowd. That's for France, Brazil, Germany, Spain and Argentina.
Millie and I. Like Belgium and Mexico are content to be supporting players. In the chorus. Halfway down the final credits. I ask Millie if he's got a tab and his eyebrows head for the ceiling. 'You'll be the death of me.' 'Not too soon I hope Millie.' I thank him and head for the exit, Get back to the flat. Put Soft Machine on again while I smoke my tab. Call Mum at half five as I always do.
She tells me of her cleaning lady Linda's latest travelling drama. Coming home from Majorca the flight was delayed. A passenger was taken off the flight.. Charged with murder in Majorca. Where is Morse when you need him? Perhaps Nigel Farage who Linda feels is the bees knees is the answer. I doubt it personally. That guys a spiv. Private Walker.
I say goodbye to mum. She's going to a birthday party tomorrow. Makes a change from funerals. I go upstairs collapse on the bed. Wake up at nine and make a cup of tea. Alison has had a good day. She's having a barbecue. There are parakeets flying over her lawn. She likes the Bowie book I've sent her. I go to bed.
Now it's Saturday morning. I'm listening to Who's Keeping Time again. I commend it to you. Time to head into the new day. Somewhere the geese are flying .
Icelandic freewheeling hippy psychedelia from 1972. It's only natural that records like this exist.. But it's a magical experience being directed to them.
I can't think of a record that brings me so immediately and powerfully back to the teenage unwashed state which I experienced with such a thrill as X Ray Spex' Germfree Adolescent. I'm back in Richmond High Street. Stepping iff the 71 making my way home passed Woolworth's hormones running amok. The record's just a blast and an ummatchable document. The rush of it all. It's brimming with the lunacy and riotous noise of puberty.. And the ideas on the album are as startling and vital as they ever were.
There's a purity in a song like this.Music like this serves a purpose. It takes you back to your safe place in a day when the sun is overcast or you get some bad news. It takes you back to a sunny day. A better place.
Shocking ! And not in the Hitchcock as in the classic dig your nails diwn your boyfriend's palm sense. But in the this is really, really piss poor car crash respect. The Cure meets Bauhaus meets the worst of The Scream OSTs. Go back to Drama School lads. Do not pass go. Ever again !!!
I liked Little Barrie's albim from last year Electric War. I like Gravity Freeze from now. It's full of funky bass runs. Drummers getting wicked. Crossing the tracks. We got to get back !
Some artists like a fine wine improve with time. Like the finest wine. Only Ones are such a band for me. They're deceptive.'In the darkness and in the light'Fluidity savagery and tenderness. In equal measure. Sadness and somehow against the odds, survival. The tough streets of Catford and from there the tough streets of London. And off. To explore the world,
I only encountered them at university. Obviously that song. The one they're most remembered for but only one in a casket of priceless jewels. I tracked them all down in time. You had to work a bit harder then. But the search was richly rewarded.
Even Serpents Shine is nit Marquee Moon. But only Marquee Moon is Marquee Moon, This is a crafty cousin with dirty fingernails but a wicked grin. It diesn't play by Pink's rukes but Baudelaure's. It lifts licks from the Stones when it chooses but is a far far better record than anything The Stones were putting out at this point of time. It's Poet Maudit for the late Seventies set nd those that came thereafter. Just ask Pete Doherty.
When I came to Newcastle almost twenty years ago, I probably wouldn't have harboured thoughts that at 60 I would sit in my flat at 60 waiting for a jacket potato to warm in the oven for my tea while listening to Mike Oldfield albums and really quite enjoying them, But there you go.... I won't last the course but Ommadawn is not unpleasant.
Former Moby Grape guitarist Skip Spence had recently left. Bellvue Hospital following an attempt to attack band members Don Stevenson and Jerry Milled with a fire axe. This is his only solo record.
It's a wonderful record. One that creeps ip om and gradually spooks you. It clearly has a heavy heart and a troubled tread but its not a record whose legend has a longer shadow than it deserves. It sings the blues.
'Love is the strangest thing,,,,' Scrub love for life. I've been working since eight on a screen. Almost five hours in all. Teaching, or more accurately in my case, trying to learn from students in Dussledorf, Amsterdam and Hamburg. I learned a lot. I hope they did.
Then I nipped down to my local library to seek some supplementary information. More leads. Diversification, never a bad idea. The case is never closed regardless of what Tom Verlaine thought, The one thing I know is I'm happy behind my desk. I never really plan to do anything else. Never back at an office. Back on the chain gang.
On the way back I nipped into the record shop acriss the road. A record sleeve grabbed my attention. That's what record shops are for. Surabaya. Indonesian outfit Thee Marloes second album Di Hotel Malibu. A reminder which is always welcome that the world is impossible exotic, and mystical.
I'm back at my desk now, The album is on and it's enchanting fare. Sultry, stuff to lure you onto the dancefloor and into a Seventies dream
I probably play Strange Boutique ince a year and that's clearly not enough. The Monochrome Set came to prominence in a glorioys age; The Cure, The Only Ones, Gang of Four, Echo & The Bunnymen, XTC, Joy Division, Steel Pulse. Days when bands invented wirlds that you could step into and walh the streets of miraculous cities.
It was a great time to be alive.To be young, To experience these cities on Radio One during the evenings with John Peel, Kid Jensen, Janice Long. Peter Powell. And at the weekends Annie Nightingale. John Waters. The Monochrome Set had impossible charm. Exotic allure . You could listen to their songs and imagine it was the sixties and we would all live forever.
I remember Nazareth's cover from the time, Slightky scary. I probably had no conception of who Joni Mitchell was. That probably had to wait untul my NME reading days in the Eighties.
Ome of the most evocative songs about one of the most evocative and memorable experiences that life affords us. .Flying. Another chapter in the book I'll never write.
I live The Btrds. R.E.M. led me to them and I have severl records. But not this. Perhaps I need this. It came out in the year I was born. Perhaps it's playing here!
Sussurus Station, Mythomania, A Portland, Oregon Electronic Duo with a touch of Mariachi Mexico in the mix. . Their sixth album and first for me. Thanks Darren.. Trying to feel free and a little less alone according to this, Sailing for the distance horizon. Works for me.
The Decemberists have always appealed to me wuthout ever completely winning me over. This may be my loss.Oddly, during the course of the album the lead singer seems to transmute into Mark Morris, lead singer of second wave Brit Poppers which was a rather odd turn of events. I warmed to the record increasingly as it span. It began to come on like an amiable Arcade Fire..
This is an album you're supposed to like. Liking it marks you out as a thunker. A reader. A cineaste. I like it. It's got a winning glow of dread. .And some decent tunes !
Life is a miracle. Best not to try to ratonalise it..Swim in the river of existence. Music is the best way I know to experience the sheer joy of being 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.
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.
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 Radiohead generally I think Radiohead most of all take the pulse of these last thirty years.ehey'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 !
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.
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. .
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....
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
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.
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,.
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.
