The Sound of Being Human - How Music Shapes Our Lives # 3 Adam Ant

 

Hero worhip. The author falling in love with Wham ! and  Adam Ant as a young girl having lost her father and the fantasies she projects around them.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 141 The Wedding Present - George Best

 

At a certain point in 1987, virtually every third record John Peel ever played on his nighttime show was by the Wedding Present. The other two records were more than likely by The Smiths or The Fall. Every once in a while he'd throw in a Bhundu Boys song to break things up a bit.

I'm sure it was never actually quite like this, but it certainly felt a bit like it at the time. Peel was known for his eclecticism of course but his shows could tend towards the relentless and grim. This might be why they're remembered, (or misremembered), so fondly by so many all these years later Just like the Eighties in the UK might be falsely encapsulated by a Charles & Diana memorial plate, a VHS video cassette, an episode of Neighbours, a photograph of Maggie and Ronnie getting together at one of their summits. The birthmark on Mikhail Gorbachev's head, which of course always remained the same shape. Even though it seemed to morph, mutate and contort, like oil in water then, like some kind of cosmic barometer of the times.

The Wedding Present were the band from the C-86 movement that actually made it without changing. That strange scene of scruffy and almost willfully inept guitar bands that had their brief moment just after Live Aid and before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I didn't buy their records at the time. I was in love and WP seemed as dour and inappropriate to any form of actual romance as taking your girlfriend for a weekend in a two star hotel in Leeds when she wanted to go to Paris.

They came from Leeds actually. And boy did they sound like it. I had just started university when they emerged and had a couple of important friends from there on the same Literature undergraduate degree course as me. They were different from most of the students on the course. Most of us were from London and The South East and boy could you tell. Set fair for careers in media, journalism, fiction and The BBC. Probably rather full of ourselves.

But Paul and Gavin from Leeds, and Maurice from Sheffield, (the Northerners I remember most strongly from university days) were definitely different. They had the same caustic edge that bands from that part of the world generally did. The Smiths, New Order, The Bunnymen, The Wedding Present. Dave Gedge, lead singer and guiding pilot of The Wedding Present didn't even bother to enunciate properly, you couldn't make out half the words to the songs which were called things like Everyone Thinks He Look Daft and What Did Your Last Servant Die of?

By 1987 Wedding Present were The Smiths you could afford to see, with a set of songs that generally seemed built on the riff of the Velvet Underground's What Goes On sped up to near breaking point and a lyrical narrative that was pretty much a word for word transcription of the story boards and storyline for one of the younger couples in that week's episodes of Coronation Street.

It was a winning formula. I imagine it depends which Wedding Present album coincided with your first year at University or Polytechnic from the late Eighties to the early Nineties in terms of which you consider their best. I have a good friend who's a bit younger than me who swears by Bizarro. But like I said, he's a bit younger than me. George Best will always do the trick for me in terms of taking me back to my university days which were very, very good and then very, very bad in close succession.. I imagine like most people's.

The Wedding Present charted the important dramas of your first important relationships. The highs the lows, the heartaches and betrayals. Curly getting dumped at the end of an episode of Corrie, wearing a dirty pully which was wearing a hole in the elbow that deserved to be ditched just as much as he did. It was brilliantly done and certainly said everything that most singles coming off the Stock, Aitken & Waterhouse hit conveyor belt at the same time, failed to say about either what was important about life or good about music.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,702 Patti Smith Group - Radio Ethiopia

 

R.E.M. brought me to Patti Smith as to so many things. The story about Michael buying Horses when it came out. 'Since then, I never looked back.' Eating a bowl of cherries and eating them while listening all night . Then throwing up.

Radio Ethiopia grows on me with the passing of time. The same sentiments apply to Easter and Wave . The title track isn't always to my tastes. Otherwise this is feral and inspired. 

1985 Singles # 48 Simply Red

 

Simply Red got an enormous amount of flak when they came out. How dare that Ginge get all that attention from women. How dare he rip off Marvin and Curtis. Soul purists shook their fists in rage at Top of the Pops switched off and rushed for their Teddy Pendergrass albums.

Holding Back The Years sounds poignant and classy to ne at this remove. I don't listen to the radio shows where they play it on a daily basis so it sounded fresh as a field of daisies when I gave it a listen just now.  It had to be re-released in 1986 before it got the chart placing it deserved. 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,962 Anadol & Marie Klock

 

La Grand Accumulation by Anadol & Marie Klock the kind of record that is relatively commonplace these days. Very French and mixing in aspects of Lo Fi European synth pop and rambling psychedlic sound design.

Instantly soothing and phenomenally more-ish. Thirty seven minutes to wake up to or drift off into calming slumber. Hauntology frankly. C'est magnifique. Pur et simple. 

The Sound of Being Human - How Music Shapes Our Lives # 2 The Flying Pickets

How a song can have an almost visceral impact. In this case bringing the author back to her early years and the loss of her dearly departed father.

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,703 Nicolas Jaar - Space Is The Only Noise

 

Sometimes the best albums of all are the ones you find entirely by chance. Sich is the case with this. An albym released in 2011. The bedut record by a Prividence, viad Chile via Chile producer. He was 21 when he released this. It is a greater work of art than most of us will produce in a lifetime of striving. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 142 The Go Betweens - Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express

 A great record with a dreadful cover. Here's something I wrote some time back in another context.

A great record in a dreadful sleeve. Here's something I posted a while back in a different context.

Might as well re-post my own review of this exceptional record. In the Melody Maker book that's the focus of this series, Andrew Mueller writes about it. An Australian, like the band itself, he too has gone on to an interesting career in music and travel journalism. He gives an interesting account of probably his favourite record but after all, this is my blog, so !

'It's taken me a while to get to a Go-Betweens album on here, almost three years, given that this blog is named after one of the lines in a song of theirs and that they stand very high among my personal and musical inspirations. They've been a regular and constant source of posts on here  I've gone for this, their third album proper though I could have easily plumped for any number of others. The first thing that needs to be said is that the cover is rotten. In terms of presentation, this is possibly among the very best records ever to be housed in a truly dreadful album sleeve which would not help for one moment to sell it. It's worth stating that despite their many attractions and strengths, visual presentation of their skills and talents wasn't always upper-most in the band's mind which is perhaps at least a partial explanation of why they didn't achieve the recognition that they deserved during their first, great golden spell in the nineteen eighties. This as well as switching record labels for whatever reason, while similar and more successful bands kept going a much more consistent career path.

For myself, and other fellow travelers The Go-Betweens are an almost mystical band in terms of quality, up there with The Smiths and R.E.M. their most obvious contemporaries in terms of their recorded ouput and general achievement. A sensitive, reflective band, going against the grain of a pretty vulgar, recidivist decade. But while the other two bands undoubtedly made their mark, The Go-Betweens, the equals of both in terms of quality, were left, apart from those who fully appreciated them at the time,  to wait for their due appreciation, which has really begun to kick in now, a couple of decades or more along the line.

As I've already indicated, I think this was partially at least their own fault. All three of these bands were defined by shyness, and turning their heads away from the defining culture and the prevailing mood. But The Go-Betweens were distinctive from both R.E.M and The Smiths in a couple of respects in that they had a couple of songwriters and singers with quite different emotional and lyrical perspectives in addition to a female drummer who happened to be going out with one of the front-men and subsequently being resented by the other one. It was a soap opera mix that added to the drama but possibly didn't contribute to a smooth ride and an obvious curve of commercial acclaim.

I don't want to labour the point because I pretty much love all three of these bands equally, but it is worth stating that both Michael Stipe and Morrissey were both obvious pop stars in the making despite their reticence while neither Robert Forster or Grant McLennan ever were. The Go-Betweens were pretty much always a band that aimed beyond the charts until their final album 16 Lovers Lane, when they finally came upon a recipe that might have achieved commercial dividend and by that stage sadly it was all a bit too late.

I can't find immediate links to all of the songs here which is also telling thirty years on. You'll have to hunt down the missing gaps and fill in the spaces for yourself. But it's worth the effort. The Go-Betweens, (appropriately considering they named themselves after a novel), are pretty much the ultimate book-readers band, housed on shelves, gathering in dust and waiting for the appreciative browser to select them, withdraw to a sofa and read at leisure.

In this respect they're incomparable. Sometimes their songs are cast in full sunlight, sometimes in gathering darkness but always somewhere slightly apart. Evasive from immediate physical recognition. Their music is always suggestive, but somehow away from absolute definition.They're utterly consistent, fully living up to their name and the novel they originally chose to call themselves after. 

Most of all their songs sound like considered work. Carefully crafted work, chiselling thoughtfully at the seams and inwards into human experience. An ongoing discussion between the band that results in the most gentle, loving products imaginable.

This might not be their best work. All true Go-Betweens fans have their own favourites. I'd go for this, the album before it, Spring Hill Fair and their last album from their first phase, 16 Lovers Lane as the ones to go for first. Others would choose Before Hollywood, which I personally think, apart from Cattle & Cane, their obvious early masterpiece, to be still a bit too rough at the edges to make it through at one sitting. I think they were transitioning from being a singles and songs project to becoming an albums band. In this respect Liberty Belle hits the spot in every respect as well as showing off a truly joint effort between Forster and McLennan. Neither one's songs are noticeably stronger than the other's on here and they dovetail and complement one another throughout.

In the year that this came out I went to see the band at Kingston Poly, across the Thames but walking distance from my parent's house in Teddington, with a couple of university friends (in the second term of my first year), my sister and a friend of hers. We walked into the hall to see the band doing their sound-check with the room fully lit. It was a strange, but unforgettable moment. A truly great but unappreciated band, at the height of their powers displaying their magic before a handful of people. At the end of the song, Lindy Morrison, their tall, slightly ungainly, but wholly gorgeous drummer, climbed off her stool and stretched her limbs in the unnatural glaring light of the venue. I can't remember particular instances of the gig that followed once they returned in their natural, dimmed setting but will never forget that.

 The Go-Betweens albums, more than anything are a transcript of lost moments. This perhaps more than anything explains why they never sold as many records as they should have done. Thirty years down the line they sound if anything more intangible and impenetrable than they did at the time. 'Like a lip lifted from a lip'. Like trying to recall the pleasures of a kiss. A lost discussion between lovers long since parted. I could itemise the individual joys of this album but as with all great records you're best advised to experience it for yourself. This record is every bit as good as any in your collection although it's still so introspective and considered that it may never be truly recognised as such. This is probably the world's loss. It's certainly not theirs!'

1985 Singles # 49 Lone Justice

 Also a journal of my year in 1985 when I worked in a Swiss Hotel run by the Swiss Council of Churches in Locarno, Ticino. Then in the Autumn went to Univesrity at UEA in Norwich. 

Music was already a fundamental aspect of my psychological make up in 1985. I was constructing my identity. 'Mein Gestatl'. I was nineteen, had just finished my A Levels but I was fundamentally still very innocent as my diaries from those days attest. I'd become an NME disciple during my college days. It was an incredible tool for determining your ideas opinions and direction back in those days

They told you the music to listen to, the records to buy, the films to see. The books to read. The opinions to have. The opinions I wanted and needed. But it took me a few months after I arrived in Switzerland to find a library in Locarno which stocked backdated copies of the NME and Melody Maker for me to pore over  . 

 But I felt I was missing something fundamental to me even as I soaked up this fresh new experience and invested in and got to know the people I was working with. What was happening in the charts? . In the music press? Who were The Triffids and where were they coming from? What was the third R.E.M. album going to sound like.These were things that mattered to me.

Locarno was a dream town on the Northern shore of Lake Maggiore. Looking back I imagine heaven. I wandered up and down the main thoroughfare when my working day was done, past guys on street corners who tried to sell me dope. which didn't remotely interest me at the time. 

 I spent my time in newasgents leafing through Rolling Stone an inferior corporate stopgap for the lack of the NME which told me about Bruce Springsteen's Born In The USA, Madonna and Prince. Also about the return of John Fogerty who I was interested in as I had recently discovered Creedence.

Lone Justice were much trumpeted within its pages. I didn't hear their music until I got back to the UK and it would take me a while to absorb and appreciate them as I wasn't ready for C&W any more than I was ready for Folk or Jazz at that age. I was immediately taken by Maria McKee but there were probably other factors at play rather than pure curiosity about the music.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,961 Maya Hawke

' Lucy wants to write the next great American novel. She can't even read the bottle.' 

Maya Hawke's third album Chaos Angel is a charming, conversational exercise. According to a Spotify bio review 'it's sonically sophisticated and thematically nuanced.' 

In 'real world language' it's a crafted, warm record that sounds as if it was planned and recorded in a bedroom and designed to be listened in one. It's full of smart, perceptive lines that you'll wish you'd written. Admirable. Also lovely

The Sound of Being Human - How Music Shapes Our Lives # 1 ABBA

                A book which asks a lot of pertinent questions and then goes in search of anwers.

 'The Sound of Being Human explores, in detail, why music plays such a deep-rooted role in so many lives, from before we are born to our last days. At its heart is Jude's own story: how songs helped her wrestle with the grief of losing her father at age five; concoct her own sense of self as a lonely adolescent; sky-rocket her relationships, both real and imagined, in the flushes of early womanhood, propel her own journey into working life, adulthood and parenthood, and look to the future.'

What music means to the individual and the human tribe.' Stuart Maconie

A sad book in some ways. But a resonant one. About the healing and restorative and central role of music in evrything we do. 'Let me know who gets to Number One.' An early mesage from a father to his daughter, Jude Rogers the authir of the book  shortly before he dies. The connections we make with people over music or sporting events. The way that football players combine together to score goals and musicians who come together in studios in the service of a song. Songs that carry you through life in expressions of desire, despair, recovery and resolution.' 'Songs that still keep us stimilated, soothe, alert, afloat.' ABBA pin my life have always been very good for that.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 143 Madness - Absolutely

 

'All the teachers in the pub. Passing round the ready rubbed...'

I grew up with Madness. You didn't realise quite how good they were at the time.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,704 Leftfield - Leftfield

 

A record that takes e back like a time machine to a time and place. One where I was not particularly happy perhaps but I was rich in friends. This is still an incredible compelling, hypnotic record. Bring on the trance.

1985 Singles # 50 Felt

 

1985 was one of the most wonderful years of my life. So as the whole world seems to be succumbing into a nostalgic fug of bliss and comfort, to say nothing of delusion I might as well surrender to its spell for a month and a half in this countdown of my favourite 45 moments from a year that is now forty years back.

So what did I do in 1985? First of all I took a train from my parental home in Teddington, London and then took a ferry and then more trains through Swiss Mountains. Until I was in Locarno in Ticino. On the Lago Maggiore in   Switzerland. A bike ride from Italy. Over the next six months I had an incomparable experience and made some of the most wonderful friends I ever made in my life. I fell in love for the first time among other things, an important moment in anybody's life. 

'And I fell...' 'Did you feel low'... 'Huh'. 'Not at all,' I fell, right into the arms of Venus Di Milo.' I already had a Felt album by this time. Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty. Their 1981 bruised and pristine early classic. Felt and Lawrence their guiding (and wilfully deluded) leader had a few years of blissful under achieving under their belts already and had made their way to Creation where Alan McGee did very little to direct them to the charts. With material like this he should hang his head in eternal shame and stop banging on about Oasis immediately and forever 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,960 Storefront Church

 

Welcome to 2025. And we rise for air from the tumbleturn with forty days until we reach our four thousandth consecitive Song of the Day since this particular serues started and really  kick started It Starts With a Birthstone.

There are worse ways to spend the first day of the year in a church. Storefront Church A front for musician Lukas Frank and his latest album Ink & Oil a canvas for projected emotion in vagely orchestral trimmings, prking its tent between The Divine Comedy, Elbow and John Grant.  . 

New Year