One of the true classics of Eighties Indie. Flying Nun's Verlaines were as good as it got. The real deal. Breton topped bedroom dreamers. Poets themselves. Their name was by no means accidental. As treasurable as The Go Betweens. I put this on this morning and couldn't bring myself to take it off. If you want to get yourself a copy of this prices are exorbitant. It's a wonderful record for those who invest emotion and more into this kind of thing.
It's great being young nd cool. Completely on the tip. This is a perfect exmaple of this. This is twenty years and more ago , That's almost irrelevant. It still sounds fresh.Street savvy and positivity. Stirring up consciousness.
An album called Dopesmoker by a band named Sleep with a set of nomadic wanderers on a desert landscape brandishing autimatic machines on the cover. Not the most appealing prospect at half six. Particualrly as the opening track is over an hour long. I listened for a few minutes, it drifted into dirge like trance. I decided to skip.
Another of the windswept votages into dream and ennui that seem to be such a feature of my 2024 musically. This time from Atlanta's Thomas Howard and his current record i only remember the good parts.
I hope we all do. Memory os not always kind Or as great or as truthful a friend as we kid ourselves sometimes. This is an occasionally slightly gooey foray down memory lane and into emotional attachment.
After a while I got a bit impatient with Howard's self-absorbtion and moved on in search of something a little more substantial. Not a bad record by any means, but I've come across better examples of this sort of journey in recent years.
A simple concept. Between 59 and 60 reord labels. A short chapter on each, A selecion of albums or single you might want to invest in. Easy for me. A chapeter a day. Starating with one of the best.
This was the height of Yuppie Rock. Sting guesting about getting on MTV. Then playing on Live Aid. Mark wore a headband. Played a silver embossed guitar. It was an invitation to go into Real Estate. Real Estate needs people. But it's not a sound that appeals to me any more now than it did then. .
Round about the millennium you could hardly get away from Eminem. Now we have Taylor but back then he and Britney seemed to be the controlling sensibilities As a follower of Pop culture I bought one of his CDs and liked a couple of the hit singles. But really his was a hateful vision and sensibility that was at odds with mine and I don'r really want to be reminded of it. Great a talent as he is.
I always like listening to Cure albums I don't know. They dreamed their dreams for us for over forty years. Their records are always diverting, They describes London suburbia and its deep eeriness better than any other music I know. This is from 2000. It casts the spell, paints the picrures you hope it will.
It doesn't take much to turn my head and realise immdediately that I'm onro something. A couple of chord changes. An eerie lead vocal . Quaint, recherche and unsettling. A realisation that you're in Stereolab, Pram and Broadcast teriitory and are in for a treat.
New York PsychoPop band are new to me but I imediately fall in love with them, thirty seconds into their latest album, AMAMA, theur first since 2021. It reminds me of those bands.
I just had it on my TV as I was prepaing to go out and some of it is slightly disposuble. What's immediately beguiling becomes a bit samey and repitive a few songs in. Aural wallpaper. There are worse things than aural paper mind. Worth a listen.
John Phillips, Amanda Lear, Andy Warhol, and Jed Johnson at Sly Stone and Kathy Silva's wedding reception at the Waldorf-Astoria's Starlight Roof in NYC on June 5, 1974. Photo by Oscar Abolafia
Another from the Sofia Bolt Vendredi Minuit reviewed recently.
I'm not particularly enaamoured of Henry Rollins enlightened jock approach or Black Flag's Sabbath riff machine adjusted for Hardcore Punk bonehead purposes. The songs are smart and state of the nation critiques and they were a key and essential band. It's just not the kind of thing I listen to.
There are worse things to do first thing in the morning than becoming acquainted with a Tom Waits record that you haven't heard before. He remains consistent to his beautiful, crooked vision. He's an artist, in the truest meaning of hte word.
At the time if its release I wasn't ready for Janey Jackson's Control. I didn't care for Michael Jackson's records at the time so wasn't going to give his sisters albums a fair listen. Now I think I've grown up a little in terms of musical appreciation I can see the recordd for what it is. State of the line, conveyor belt Pop priduction. Also exemplary Feminist role model assertion, Pretty flawless frankly.
I never had much time for The Vaccines. U thought they stripped what was magical about the Rock & Roll formula. But not in an inspiring way like the Ramones approach back on 1976. I found the Vaccines reductive and faddish by comparison.
I'm very taken by Halloweens Opera Singing at The Salsa Bar by comparison. It's a Vaccines offshoot from Justin Hawkins and Timothy Lanham and I find it much more diverting and alluring than most Vaccines albums.
It's a bright, inventive theatrical exercise that's really good company for its eleven minute thirty five minute run Hawkins channels his talents wonderfully here. A sparkling, dreaming amd tpiching record.
Felt didn't get their due. In sales or critical respect. John Peel shunned them early and this was key in the Eighties. They never stood a chance. This is a compilation of some of their finest Eighties janglers. They're now worshipped in American Indie circles. Not that this helps' Lawrence's bank balance much.
Damon Albarn's long pennance for his BritPop's sins. They weren't half numerous. But fair play to him. He's made no end of completely fantastic music since. This for instance.
Mick Head seems to be enjoying a surprising but well deserved curtain call of late. As someone who's always appreciated and sometimes been blown away by his work since he first emerged with Pale Fountains in the end days of Eric's it's a gratifying thing to witness.
Head has always been a talent to note and enjoy. Personally I've sometimes found him a little too in thrall to the past. That of his heroes. Arthur Lee's :Love, Simon & Garfunkel, The Byrds. I love that tradition too, so I'm not about to complain but I've never thought it entirely healthy to immerse yourself so utterly in times which have gone by. Look at Morrissey. You lose track of the here and now and your pursuit becomes an exercise in nostalgia and can sometimes lose its way. Those who peddle in this too staunchly are not always reliable witnesses.
This seems to be a particularly Scouse tendency and prediliction. Head is not alone. There are plenty of Liverpudlian fellow travellers. Lippy types. McCulloch, The Coral, Bill Ryder Jones, Lee Mavers. Head has always been probably the mist restrained and artistically inclined of these. Intent as much in his legacy as his present and his past. A painter at the easel at the port or the bay. Beret cocked, False moustache. Paintbrush at an angle.
He's painted another minor masterpiece in Loophole latest record with the Red Elastic Band.It's one of his best records I'd say and will get his fanbase swooning in the aisles.It's an 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' exercise. Mistly he hits bullsetes.The quality contril is very high. Sometimes the steals are a bit blatant. The Human Race filches Lou Reed's Hangin Round lock stock an barrel. But what did Oscar say about imitation.The man knows what he likes and plenty of others will love this too. Good luck to the man. Well done too. I imagine he's enjoting this. .
A Rocky Mountain reared dreamer now based in Nashville, Tennessee. Winston Yellen's lastest record Mountain Radio is a joy from the off. It seems to concern itself mostly with the creation of beauty and awe. I'm not about to complain about that.
It's a lovely recird, right the way though. Yellen comes across a better adjusted hick cousin to Mark Kozalek's urban toiler. This is a much more contented listen than Kozalek's remarkable but deeply troubled records.
There's something of Bon Iver's late career poetic ennui to Mountain Radio too. This is a very American record in essence. A gorgeous one. Lost in the stars.
A Golden Voice from Mali. A wonderful record full of the trial and tribulation and joy of so many African records. Mystery too as Keita sings in French, a language I don't really speak or understand. This doesn't stop the record being utterly intriguing and captivating. In short beautiful.
After istening to the fab new Beth Gibbons, this is another album that makes you think about what it means to be alive. Sturgill Simpson doesn't do standard C & W and is all the more unteresting for that. Incredibly ambitious. Not always for me as it tends towards schmaltz more than I personally like, but this is a very strong album for those who scatter sugar liberally on their corn flakes.
It's great to wake up on a Friday morning looking forward to your 8.15 class with Business People from a Pet Food provider in Kreveld, Germany and with a fantastic new record to accompany your ablutions and breakfast rituals as you make your way towards it.
This morning Beth Gibbons and her debut album Lives Outgrown. Anyone vaguely familiar with Beth and her work down the years with Portishead will have the vaguest idea of what to expect here. But all expectations are immediately outstripped. This instantly forwards itself as one of the best, and certainly one of the most haunting records you are likely to hear all year. Any other year for that matter.
Beth Gibbons is not necessarily the happiest of campers. She never has been frankly. More like a prophetess of impending doom. Don't go to Lives Outgrown hoping for covers of Wake Me Up Before You Go Go and the like.Cheerful is not necessarily the go to adjective. If that's what you're after I direct you to.... well Wake Me Up Before You Go Go might be a place to start.
Instead you get a series of siren songs that bring to mind the German concept of the unheimlich. The uncanny, a philosophical idea that is difficult to explain completely but essentially gets to the root of what makes us human and unites us with the fantastic and spectral existence of the planet we find ourselves cast adrift on. The very reason why we're alive and wake to each new day with renewed hunger for it.
Perhaps I haven't described the record very well. It has all sorts going for it. Ritual, ceremony, drama, tunes. It's an album apart and I haven't even listened to it all the way through yet. Auf jeden falle total toll. Forwarts und aufwarts.
Homemade Power Pop gem from 2002.
There's little that you could want than Aretha and Aretha Now!
I had a small package delivered yesterday morning An NME from back in the day.First bought and devoured when I was 19 and preparing myself for university. My gap year, Michael Stipe from R.E.M. on the cover. I came down to London to see them both in my first term from Norwich. They'd just been on the same show of The Tube on a Friday night. I saw them both in four days, Still both among the best gigs I've ever seen.
The copy of NME is something else. A portal to a vanished time and place. Full of bands and artists that I've forgotte or missed at the time. You could easily miss things back then if you weren't paying attention. Even if you were, Tuxedomoon for example.. An experimental Post Punk jazzy outfit from San Francisco.
They operated mainly un the late Seventies and Eighties. Self Consciously on the margins. In the space that people like DEVO and Pere Ubu opened up. Operating from the margins. Much more interested in making an artistic starement than getting up on their hind heels and salivating for filthy lucre.
But I listened to Pink Narcissus this morning. A ghostly eerie instrumental avant gard record which they made in 2014 when they reconvened. It's the kind of record that immediately resonates and reminds you of a time long gone. The short article and interview with them in the NME is priceless. Such things are worth remembering and archiving. .
The second Gillian Welch album. A true talent. Versed in the rich American C& W and Folk traditions.
I sometimes listen to and try to review albums that I don't really understand what they're saying or exactly what they're trying to do. Dylan John Thomas' debut album, out recently is a case in point.I'm not quite sure whether I like it.
He's a Glaswegian singer songwriter with a floppy mop like Dylan and a thick Glaswegian accent. The Dylan connection s obvious but his songs are not Dylanesque except that they're guitar driven. They're immediate but have no immediate message or depth. The aim seems to be Radio 2 and 6 Music play.
Immediate gags like 'if time is a healer give me tequila.' don't light my fire I'm afraid. This is all rather flippant. I wish Dylan John Thomas well, but he almost feels like a recotd company construct to me. NEXT !
Alternative Rock band from Wassila, Arizona, now based in Portland, Oregon. Their name is inspired by Bowie's Bigger Than Life concept. Evil Friends from 2013 is a weird bit beguiling journey. Life observed from the outside by born bohemians. Worthy of kicking back to. Putting headphones on and taking your time over your breakfast. I've just done just that.
Vendredi Minuit by Sofia Bolt. The kind of records I write this.blog for. A personal vision and statement. Alternating between French and English.
Sofia Bolt is French born. She's collaborated with Van Dyke Parks and been praised by Iggy Pop. Vendredi Minuit is eclectic and stylish. It's dreamy, pensive and visceral according to Spotify bio notes.Looks like someone else has swallowed the synonyms dictionary.
This is a contradictory but strangely apt description. It's a record that choose the winding path down the mountainside.
It tells tales which is what you want from a record. It's at once a chocolate box and a collection of short stories that reward investment
Cuban Jazz musician in a Cuban music family tree. Prepare yourselves. This one swings.
A wonderful curtain call for one of the truly great bands. Here's something I wrote a few years back.
A singer whose career blossomed late. In her forties. Better late than never. The sound of the bars of Lisbon bars.This has wings.
I've alwats had slight difficulties in writing about Los Angeles based singer-songwriter.Jessica Pratt on here. In an English context her name sounds strange and slightly unfortunate and there's no real skirting the issue.
Her music though is quite another matter. It's been consistently enchanting and spellbinding down the years. Labelled Retro Pop in some quarters. An appropriate tag in this case. It trasnports you on gossamer wings to yesteryear.She's a talent with rare gifts.
Latest album Here In The Pitchw was awarded on album of the month award in Uncut a coupe of issues back. It deserves such status and notice, It's a record that finds her refining her specific talents to wonderful effect. This is a special one,. She's a special one. One to watch the sun set to.
An old school undertone of fervour and rage. Pixies bass, Sonic Youth feel. 'The Queen of the Freak Scene.' 'Public Image, Joy Division and other dark political outcasts'. Increasingly I find it's a good idea to allow bands and artists to review themselves, Imploding is out now.
I'm afraid I've never been able to stick The Flaming Lips for the most part. Such was the case with this album this morning.
A few years back I got slightly obsessed by Amen Dunes dark anthem Miki Dora and Freedom, the album it was attached to. Both had a vaguely sinister but appealing undertow that I kept coming back to.
That was 2018. Freedom registered at 30 in my rundown of records in an exceptional year. Now Amen Dunes, or more precisely Damon McMahon, the rather earnest young American who plots their course is back with a belated follow up Death Jokes.
It steers a similar edgy path to its predecessor. Songs that don't adhere to traditional roadways and rhythms and instrumental patterns. McMahon has taken his time, often a sensible option. Death Jokes is dark but illuminated with insight and hypnotic purpose.
A standout record on a Friday evening. A Folk tinged album with a pair of voices dovetailing together over traditional instruments. Redsetter by Memorial is a record that doesn't settle on easy solutions but asks plenty of valid and interesting questions..
Ollie Spalding and Jack Watts are Memorial 'Kings of Convenience meets Simon & Garfunkel at their harmonious best.' in the words of 6 Music DJ Chris Hawkins. It's not really a description that suits Redsetter fully, but points you in the right direction perhaps.
The way Spalding and Watts voices work together and drive this forward is a crucial factor in the substantial appeal of the record. It's a good one to listen to first thing the morning, last thing at night. And one I'm sure that's will repay return visits
Madonna took her inevitable tilt at God at the end of the Eightoes. I'd largely lost interest by this point. The singles weren't so much fun and didn't make me feel like dancing anymore. I wasn't Catholic so the idea of attractive people dancing around in crucifixes and worrybeads did little for me. There are some good songs on here but the album as a whole drags rather.
I love Mull Historical Society. They, or rather Colin Macintyre and the musicians he gathered around him were a breath of fresh air when they first appeared at the turn of the millenium and started churning out wonderful records on Rough Trade. My brother in law had a hand in the design of their terrific recordscovers. Loss is a good a place to start as any in an appreciation of Macintyre's madcap but treasurable vision.
'the thing that makes the best first albums truly wonderful is that feeling that every great lyric, every great thought that's ever slipped through the composer's field of thought in his life are represented there on that first record. The deuyt album is a filter and a mission statement of the writer's accumulated brilliance- so far. Imagine then, if you will, that your inspiration and observations have been gleaned from a remote-ish isle oof the Western Highlands if Scotland.'
Christopher Owens. A wonderful, precocious talent who seems to have fallen off the map of late. The pains of being pure at heart.
'Between 200 and 2,000 species go extinct each year. I'm not that special, but I'm still here.'
A humble but valliant assertion of self. Cambridgeshire's Mammoth Penguin who've been round the block plenty of times in their ten years on the circuit. New album Here, sets out its stall in very minimal, no nonsense fashion. They're a three piece, guitar, bass and drums project, the kind you'd enjoy greatly if they were playing in an upstairs of your local pub on a Friday evening.
Emma Kupa, who takes the Penguin mic has a strictly no nonsense approach. Here is twelve songs and forty minutes long and it goes by before you know it. Stories of being in a giigging band, setting up and packing up your gear, merch stalls, flters and fanzines. Tales of a lifestyle grounded in music and dreaming escape from 9 to 5 drudgery..
There's a sense of natural insecurity here, but you'll be OK because you're will like minded mates and you'll be fine. Much pondering the nature of the nature of existence and our place in the scheme of things. This never stops let's face it, it's the fundmental principle of existence. Sturdy, resilient and likeable stuff. I thought 'The Housemartins'. Sometimes it pays to keep things simple.
From 1958. That fine boogie woogie piano rolls though everything. Jerry Lee over the top. Hillbilly preacher and not one to allow near your younger female family members. Doesn't hang around. Twelve songs in less than half an hour and its gone.
Jon McKiel's Hex. Another of those fascinating leftfield indendent records that a ruimentary browse through the Friday morning playlists of new releases helps you come across.
This is a Southern playground. The occult. Saxaphone. Dr John and The Neville Brothers.Hex reminded me of Kevin Morby's fabulous Singing Saw from ten years back.
It's not an album that stands still. Plenty here to keep you coming back for further plays. Some fascinating interludes and digressions. It's a ghostly, haunting record.But not short on melody and atmosphere.
I'm woken by sunlight streaming through the living room windows of my mezzanine flat. I'm snug in bed but it's good to wake up and rise early and prepare for my day.
In recent weeks I've generally had three online lessons to prepare for on Tuesdays, now two of them have come to an end for a while. One of the students for my early morning double hander has cancelled and I just need to prepare myself for the eventuality that Juergen arrives.
I put on a Mercury Rev album on my headphones and start to prepare stuff for the possibility that Juergen might show. I adhere to routine these days since I went freelance and spend much of the week at home. I'm happy that my life has taken this turn.
One thing I don't and will never miss is the office space. I came to the conclusion that it had nothing to do with what I was doing, which was teaching. Now I'm my own master and my bank account seems reasonably healthy without giving me enough money to really make a nuisance of myself.
Every morning I've got a handful of albums to work my way through in the ascending and descending chart lists I chronicle on her. It's a comforting routine. The Rev's All Is Dream is a smooth listen this morning although I've never cared for the guy's voice. He sounds like a homesick ET cast adrift in a Bond OST here. I shrug and get up to run my bath.
I put It's a Sin on. That's better. It takes me instantly back to the late Eighties. The Pet Shop Boys always do. Not always the happiest time of my life. In fact quite the opposite. The first time I was ever really tested. But I was young and I came through. Even though it has the most painful memories.
When It's A Sin runs its course I put on their new album Nonetheless and listen to a few songs while my bath runs. Tennant and Lowe know exactly what they're doing. They always did. The humdrum meets the widescreen. Works for me for precisely the reason why Mercury Rev doesn't. Because Tennant's persona doesn't grate while the homesick ET at the heart of Mercury Rev always does. Nonetheless is excellent. They've never put a foot wrong. They've got great taste.
Juergen is prepared for anyhow. If he turns up we'll talk and seewhat he wants to do. I've got some grammar work on the back burner which I'd say is what he really needs. Just in case. He's in charge. This work with German business people that I'm embarked on is fundamentally reactive. Responding and teaching to students needs. It's enjoyable work and often doesn't actually feel like work. Early retirement in many respects. I'm responsive but I also feel in charge crucially. I've cut out the middle man.
Before my bath I take a brief listen to Stiff Little Fingers Nobody's Hero which is another one on my lists for today. Stiff Little Fingers is not something I'd normally choose to listen to before seven at my age. Maybe when it came out and I was 14 in 1980.
I take my rablets while Jake Burns rants and the guitarists mount the barricades and come on like the Irish Clash. StiffLlittle Fingers were big at my secondary school. The kind of band name that the boys in my year liked to write on their pencil cases. I could write an essay about the hierarchy of cool between boys at secondary school.
Tablets taken and ablutions completed I'm ready for breakfast. Ordinarily I'd wander down to the fitness centre and spend an hour in the sauna, the plunge pool and the pool. There's been a leak of some kind in the building and its closed. Irritating. I don't like my routine broken.
I put XTC's Drums & Wires on my record player while I sort out breakfast. In the bath I'd been ruminating between Squeeze and The Teardrop Explodes but this will do. 'She's up there turning round. Just like a helicopter...' Andy Partridge's manic spectrum Reggaisms. I used to love XTC when I was young and I stand by my 14 year old self. I still like his taste. Well perhaps I didn't need that record by The Fixx.
Drums & Wires fits my mood anyhow. You can't fault a band that wants to be The Kinks one minute. Captain Beefheart's Magic Band the next, But you know at heart that they're really just a bunch of dweeb non-conformists from Swindon. And are just mightily relieved to avoid the 9 to 5 mortgage, unhappy marriage shift. Or else the job in the warehouse or the garage.
At half eight I click on the Teams invitation and Juergen is there. From his flat just North of the Swiss border in Freiburg. Wearing a baggy Techno Festival t shirt. Just after nine. Rico, the other guy in the class shows up. Even though technically he cancelled. It's always a pleasure to see him.
The lesson that proceeds is anarchic though very funny. We laiigh a lot. Neither Rico nor Juergen has much grammar. Their sentences are unmoored and sometimes it's a struggle to hang on to what they are talking about when they describe their work practices. Generally Germans are highly proficient given ten or fifteen years of rigorous schooling in the English tongue.Not these two, They missed out on the schooling for reasons I don't need to go into here.
It's a real riot of a lesson anyhow. I keep circling back to them to the need of preparing using the given tools and apps whenever they have a meeting in English. We discuss Rico's forthcoming holiday with his partner on a North Sea Island. Germans seem always about to embark on a holiday. Sensible.
I'm done by ten and the rest of the day is mine. It's quite nice to have some down time after a few weeks of fairly relentless, online lessons. The day is bright, the heavens are full and I've got the full range of Newcastle's hostelries and restaurants to choose from.
In some ways since breaking away from my nine to five at the beginning f the year, I'm starting to think of the phase I'm going through now as early retirement in some respects. That opens up a lot of choice and that's how I'm approaching my life these days.
I decide to get in touch with Louise. An old school friend. Within a couple of messages we set up a school reunion event on social media. Always a slightly risky manoeuvere digging up the past. Stirring up memories. That's the space I'm in now. And partially will be until the reunion happens in September. 'The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.' J.P. Harttley
But today I'm free. So I visit haunts. Rosie's where a couple of great ladies are setting up a birthday meal in the rooftop restaurant in Chinatown. Freeplay on the jukebox so I put on a Queen and a Rolling Stones on for the pair of them.
Then to RPM Records. Have they got a copy of Eat To The Beat. They have and for eight quid.I love record shops for this kind of moment. I don't hesitate. I have a brief chat with Marek and Ritchie. Record Store banter. About Debbie Harry on this occasion. Blokes love to talk about how Debbie Harry and Kate Bush made them feel when they were young.
Then I'm home and put the record on full blast. Sing along. My younger sister attached herself to Blondie before she was ten. Had every record until The Hunter. Sang their songs at full blast round our family house in Richmond.Younger sisters are generally right. She slipped a few years when she and her friends switched allegiance to Duran Duran a couple of years later. Teenage hormones demand such reckless switches. Eat To The Beat though doesn't date or tarnish. It deserves to be held in the same respect as Parallel Lines. I'm so glad I have a copy.
Blondie was Alison's contribution to our families soundtrack growing up. I countered with the Bunnymen, Simple Minds, Associates, an most importantly R.E.M. when they came into my life. I played Murmur, Reckoning and Fables relentlessly in my room at the top of our house.
I play the first side now. No time for more as I've booked myself at the French Quarter for five. Always sensible to book ahead at TheF rench Quarter. I'd say its the best restaurant in Newcastle.
But I have time for Feeling Gravity's Pull and the rest of Side One of Fables. Never mind Gravity's Pull. That record has a centrifugal tug on me that drags me down the years into the vortex of youth. It's magical what music can do to you. Few recotds like this particular one. There's nothing quite like a record that takes you back to being nineteen as this invariably does for me. Memory and the change, the relentless change that occurs in your teenage years that is unmatched elsewhere in life.
Once Old Man Kensey has had its say I'm off into the sunlight and make my way to The French Quarter where they open the doors for me and take e to my table. French Quarter is classy, The food is fantastic. The waitresses and waiters are smiley and chatty and love their jobs as much as it's possible to love a job. The one I know best rolled me a rollie that takes me from the doors of The French Quarter to the doors of The Bridge Hotel.
I must make my way to The Bridge Hotel at least three times a week. It never lets me down. I don't drink alcohol much anymore but pubs are special places. And The Bridge Hotel understands what most discenrning punters want from a pub. Best you go there and appreciate what I'm getting at for yourself.
I pop in briefly at The Central acroos the High Level Bridge in Gateshead. It's Book Club Night and it always pays to make an appearance. But it's a brief appearance and Bill who's also going to see Baxter make our leave and we're off into the sunlight and head down the slope and through the doors to the Sage.
Just in time for Ernie. And I'm not taking about the fastest Milkcart in The West. I've just settled down in my seat at the back of the fantastic Glasshouse Venue and they're on. A sensitive local fourpiece just starting on their way. They've got a great sound somewhere between Elbow and Travis. No that's not wet. They have heart..Ones to watch,
A non alcoholic beer in the foyer. A chance to appreciate light and space again. Then back for the main event . Baxter, The Man.
Baxter is Ian Dury's son. There's no disguising the fact, He doesn't bother to hide it himself. He's the son of The Guvnor. Both Ian and Baxter remind me of the things I cannot stand about London. The cheap, fake machismo of being a Cockney lad. The stuff that Ray Winston and Michael Caine before him built their personas upon. Fagin's mantra. 'You gotta pick a pocket or two.' Jack, the Lad.
Baxter projects it. The aggressive, phoney ugly aggression. The constant threat of violence. The vast aching loneliness inside. Baxter's not taken in for a moment. he can 'talk the talk' but has no interest in Walking the Walk. No interest in becoming a 'total cunt' in the words of Oi, one of his defining songs, which he plays and is a set highlight tonight.
He stays in persona, Its only right. I love persona. It's a lost art. Bowie, Ferry and Ayers specialised in this in the early Seventies. Ian himself. Never let the mask slip.
We get our money's worth. Then after a brief pause, the encore. Baxter lets his hair down. After a disciplined performance of throwing shapes. he let's us know he loves us. There's some manic almost Acid Techno. The audience gets to its feet like only a Newcastle audience can and the venue is alive. 'I love you.,' he shouts and its clear that he means it. 'I hate London. I love it here.'
It's what I want to hear I grew up in London adn despite many things it has going for it, I reject much of it too, It's a facade that's not for me. I'm happy here, Newcastle's my home now., It's been a great night. A great day. I make my way across the serene Newcastle streets and home. Play the second side of Fables in my darkened flat. You have to respect the narrative of a great record. Then hit the sack.
