Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,647 Paul McCartney - Chaos & Creation in the Backyard

 

Late Macca ?!? We#re not talking Picasso here. Middle of the road chuggers. The man can still hit the high notes when required.

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 84 Pet Shop Boys - Please

 

Not Actually though it looks a bit like it. This is their first and has West End Girls. The pieces are all in place but they developed it further. But their voice is in place from the off. If you want to understand England in the Eighties, listen to The Smiths and then The Pet Shop Boys.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,018 Chris Eckman

                      

                              'Wars are won. By those who quit. And leave dreams undone.'

I often post the covers of Uncut Magazine and Mojo Magazine on social media with some kind of puzzled personal response. I still buy both on a monthly basis, I post puzzled comments because the deeply conservative and repetitive market positioning and approach of Uncut and Mojo strikes me as odd.

What I'm talking about mostly is their cover stars and the photos the respective magazines choose on a monthl  basis. Dad's Rock & Roll Army. Isn't Rock & Roll supposed to be about youth. Not any more apparently.It's for Grannies and Grandpas. Keith Richard with his new teeth again. Macca looking slightly bewildered. Dave Gilmour positively furious. Probably with Roger Waters I imagine. Have they hand another tiff nurse.  Put Mr Gilmour in one corner and Mr Waters in the other. 

I generally don't bother to read the article inside which refers to the cover star(s) of any particular. issue,Hey, I'm a Go Betweens and Pale Saints fan. The cover star is not generally why I buy the magazine. I do so despite it. Paul Weller looking like he's left Woking and become a commanche. Jeff Tweedy with an expression on his face which makes you wonder whether he's mislaid his medication again.

It all seems slightly odd to me. Rock & Roll becomes unfirm and slightly confused. The original generation are the ones that must be venerated. The Sixties people. I guess the magazines know their readership. It makes you wonder for the long term future of both. My social media posts are generally greeted by comments from disillusioned ex-readers who have stopped buying the magazines. The covers are always the same. The magazines are too expensive. There are too many ads. They're boring. 

It's not my experience or perception, .I'm not bothered about splashing out slghtly. I think they're lovingly compiled, beautifully presented and well written. Music remains my main driving passion and I want to be directed towards records that I wouldn't otherwise hear. On a regular basis. I trust Uncut and Mojo's editorial judgement and musical taste and direction. They lead me to stuff. Today they led me to Uncut's February Record of The Month, The Land We Know The Best by Chris Eckman.

The Land We Know The Best is very much the kind of record you expect Uncut to laud and Chris Eckman is the kind of musician you'd expect them to praise. Slow and  sensitive singer songwriting Americana stuff from a well read bloke. Something to listen to while you're making your way through a John Steinbeck or Hemmingway novel and seeing if you can afford to make a roadtrip on Route 66 or a pilgrimage to Memphis next year.

These are not things I'm likely to do. And so I'm not really the kind of music fan that's going to be  sufficiently engaged to find this record quite as thrilling as Uncut staffers do. It's alright, It certainly wiles away an hour with headphones on at on my keyboard on a Thursday night. But appreciative as I am of Uncut's nudge towards this  record it's not really for me long term.There is no Velvet Underground influence here that I could identify. Raymond Carver and Cormac McCarthy are more prominent forefathers to the songs here.. It's a record I admire rather than love though I'm pleased I've heard it. .

 

Labelled With Love - A History of the World in Your Record Collection - # 37 Philadelphia International Records

 

Philadelphia International Records hail from a time when record labels sounded more like an airport or                                                                                hotel chain.

101 Essential Rock Records # 22 Laura Nyro - -More Than a New Discovery

 

                ' for all intents and puposes the singer songwriter transition starts with this record.'

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,648 The White Stripes - The White Stripes

 

The White Stripes were something of a revelation when they first appeared. John Peel proceeded to bear kittens at an inadvisable age and mutter stuff about Jimi Hendrix under his breath.They were so prolific and so difficult to process for a while that it took the world a while to catch up with them. 

Songs About People # 1,412 Gene Hackman

 

Gene Hackman has featured on this series before. But the man has gone and this here's my blog !

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 85 The The - Soul Mining

 

                                  'You pull back the curtains and the sun burns into your eyes.'

Great music can cut through all of the layers of life whuch accumulate over years of lived experience. Take you back to your true self and make you feel how you felt when were ten, seventeen, twenty one. Whatever. This is happening to me now. I've got Soul Mining by The The on the turntable.I'm listening to it before I start my working day.  Ir's a record that meant an enormous amount to me when I was 17.

Matt Johnson had a voice and vision that it felt natural to relate to at that age, A burning unapologetic intensity, I loved Soul Mining because it fitted in with the books I was reading and the films I was seeing,  The Oursider, Nausea, Catcher in the Rye. Mean Streets, Rumblefush, Bladerunner. It was utterly compatible and expressive of the emotions I was feeling and hoping I suspect one day to find the words to express. 

The record still speaks to me. There will always be people turning seventeen. With a need to fasten themselves to rites of passage records like this. These are not emotions to scoff at, To think you can put in a box. But ones to aspire to and try to maintain if we can. An undefined emotional longing that you can't put into words as you prepare yourself unknowingly for each new day. For going out into the world and whatever life might have in store for you. It's nice to still have the physical copy of the record that I bought and listened to then,.Seventeen is an emotional state that you should never lose touch with, Why would you want to. 

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,017 Ian Hawgood

 

How to wind up your mates in a pub. This one's for free. Next time you're in a social situation. And the converstion palls. Try this one. 'Lads have you heard the latest album by Ian Hawgood. It's called Savage Modern Structures and it's ever so good. It plays into the liminal spaces discourse. Hauntology ! Psychogeography !!! Why don't you give it a listen fellas.'. 

I imagine your friends probably know you. They'll just give you a funny look and someone will probably change the subject. Or else they'll just tell you to shut up or something worse. But persevere because the record is  really a very good and impressive and atmospheric one of the kind of lefrfield endeavour that is increasingly grabbing my attention these days.Craven Faults. Lankum. Now Ian Hawgood.

.Savage Modern Structures has a photo of a fogbound deserted set of ruins on the front cover. Listening to the record feels like you're exploring it physically frankly. On a bleak overclouded day in the middle of winter. It's an album of instrumental guitar and mellotron orchestrations that have plenty of mood and little conventional punctuation, I enjoyed it yesterday in the way that you might enjoy a modern art exhibition focusing on something slightly depressing and oppressive but also strangely emotionally upliftung. .Nice to visit but secretly making you feel  rather glad you don't live actually there. 

101 Essential Rock Records # 21 The 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds Of

 

'The Psychedelic Sounds is a roaring, intense, at times frightening record that dies come close to conjuring the rollercoaster run of moods of the drug trip'

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,649 KISS - Destroyer

 

With time you realise that perhaps you should not take everythung so seriously. That The New York Dolls had far too many ideas to ever become massive. That they were too unruly to ever jump through the hoops that the record company demanded of them anyway.

So the record company found Aerosmith and KISS were willing to do what New York Dolls and Modern Lovers would never be able or willing to do for them. This strikes me as hardly the worst album to lose your cherry to in the Mid Seventies in a parking lot in the midwest. Just don't marry the person concerned.The quiet guy in the back row of Geography with the braces and Al Green albums was probably the better bet,  .  

Song(s) of the Day # 4,016 The Altons

 

It's no challenge to find a great new album to listen to every morning. I've got plenty piled up for coming days and know I may not get round to them. Direction on here across the sea of blog changes from day to day according to the prevailing winds. I coud easily start my rundown of album of the year at 300 this year. And I'm fairly sure I wouldn't run dry by Christmas Day,

Today Heartache in Room 14. No, not the Waltons. That was The Blue Ridge Mountains of Vurginia. John Boy, Jim Bob, Mary Anne. Those guys. This is Los Angeles Neo Soul Nostalgia. The kind of thing that Quetin Trantino endorsed and furnished his soundtracks with.

This has something of the hanging beauty of Massive Attack and Delfonics records. The syillness of the night. Switching between English and Spanish on whim. This gets Top Marks and will be beack in a countown whe  I finally get going 

What I Did Last Night - Mattiel at The Cluny

 

It's an interesting moment to be alive. You can't ask for anything else . Look at the news. Have a conversation with someone. Put a record on. Have a cup of tea ! Do some paperwork. Go out. Do Something. Anything, There's never a dull moment . You may not always be exactly happy. But in the words of Big Country, and I'll come back to them, 'Stay Alive !' It's all we can do. It's good to be alive, We shouldn't forget.

I rise early. Between five and six yesterday. Still dark but it gets light earlier. It's almost March. Weekdays are great. As soon as I'm up, I'm off.  I have an early start to my online teaching with Germans and I like that . In some ways it's weekends I struggle a bit more with these days. Which is an odd turn of events as I make my way towards sixty. But I really like my job now. I didn't for fifteen years. But I've quit the office and the arseholes for the environs of my flat and with it embraced an uneasy new freedom. 

Freedom isn't always easy. Ask Sartre or Camus. Life is not supposed to be easy. Ask those guys again. I think of life increasingly as a test and there's always another hurdle approaching. But I'm enjoying the challenge. I sometimes say to myself recently that I couldn't be doing anything more interesting at this moment in history. Talking to German people and giving them a chance to discuss their lives and jobs as the world spins and the world changes. On a seemingly daily basis in 2025.

Macron has just been in Washington. Starmer might be going tomorrow. Zelensky it appears is due there on Friday to talk about rare minerals in exchange for an enormous loan,. Says who ? Says Donald Trump. Who frankly is the last person you would trust. He doesn't even seem to trust himself so why should anyone else. Millions did and do it seems. Yes, Search me too..

Still. 'They say life's a gamble. Hard to win easy lose.  And while sun shines you'd better make hay. So if life is your table and fate is the wheel. Then let the chips fall where they may. In modern times, the modern way.' Cheers Bryan. Thanks lads! Time for my bath. 

Writing is a great routine. This thing. It Starts, This blog. It gives me a compass. To orient myself by. To keep this vessel heading for the open seas. This morning before I bathe I listen to local band Parastatic who've just returned from a long hiatus with a blistering new album Concrete Reborn. It reminds me of Kraftwerk Of Simple Minds. Of Pylon. I listen to it, reading an interview with the band that says they're playing in Saturday at the Star & Shadow Co-operative two miles from me. The icing on the cake. It's only a tenner.

Persuaded I buy a ticket. Check it's on my phone.' In modern times, the modern way.' I put on Gabriel III on my record player.When I get to Side B it's Games Without Frontiers.. A song about It's a Knockout .A popular BBC TV series in the Seventies,  an European venture based on ideals and idealism.  Replacing warfare between European nations with foolish games with contestants dolled up in comedy costumes. Dressed up as budgies or penguins. Sliding along or up or down slippery poles. With comedic rather than murderous intent. 'If looks could kill they probably will. '

I have some breakfast and I'm ready for half eight. Click on my Google Calendar and I'm transported to an office in Dussedorf. Noch einmal ..' In modern times, the modern way.' I never know who's going to be in most of my classes until I turn up except if it's a one to one. My students are busy people They don't always have time to send apologies.

This morning it's just A. I know P and C aren't going to be here. Neither it seems are Ay and J. So it looks like I've got a one to one with A whose English frankly is so good that I wonder if she needs lessons at all. She reassures me that she feels she does because her English was much, much better when she was at university in Bonn. Studying Literature. Shakespeare. Now she's really into David Mitchell. The author not the comic British celebrity.  We have a great chat about his books.

The lessons go fast. I'm an experienced teacher but I relish the challenge of doing this. I plan my lessons. I plan a powerpoint. But sometimes, on the spur off the moment you have to scrub the plan and teach to the students needs and priorities, Exciting. Challenging. 

This is an excellent class. All of my classes at the moment are excellent. My criteria for a good lesson? I learn more than I teach but I teach when I need to and what I need to. A and I talk about the German Election. You have to mention it if you have 90 minutes directly  after it's taken place. .A.says she's not going to hold back when she hears things that she thinks are unacceptable. And she's hearing them all the time. Good for her. 

The subject of complicity comes up . Kazuo Ishiguro who studied Creative Writing at the university I went to and went on to win the Nobel Prize. Deservedly. It's a highly pertinent subject matter. We're all compicit in the crimes of  our times. I won't expand but I really think that. I don't mean to depress you. 

Anyhow. The lesson is done. I put on Cockney Rebel. Cut myself a slice of madeira cake, Call mum. 

This is not a blow by blow account of everything that happened to me on 26th February 2025 you'll be relieved to hear. If that's what you're after I refer you to Ulysees or AI. Have you heard of it. It's the latest thing.

 Anyhow I'll spare you my texts exchange with my sister about the Go Betweens Robert Forster who's playing in London in May. Relax. I'm reading today. It's Sold Out already. 

Also my thoughts about Mattiel who I'm seeing tonight. So obviously they're somewhere in my mind all day. Alison thinks I'll like them..My thoughts on the Gene Pitney Greatest Hits I manage to shoehorn in. Trust me. You don't need to know. Snippets of the books I manage to read and write about on here. A quick phone call to mum. Trust me I don't think my every waking thought warrants documenting on here. Besides there are far too many typos for my liking.

Anyway There's time for Big Country's The Crossing before my 13.00 with S &M. Those are their initials I promise you but Germans are keen on their data protection. So that's all you're getting.Anyway they're invariably great company. The only lesson during the week that I don't plan. Not because I'm lazy but because that's the best thing to do with these guys.

M as it turns out is sick and not here. S. meanwhile has a meeting in an hour. So we curtail the lesson after an hour of discussion about Crisis Management, Carnival, where S's daughter is playing the princess, German Electoral Results where the former East Germans have decided they don't like immigrants. Or indeed anything. Ingrates.

 Having lived in Czechoslovakia in 1990 I wonder how anybody can be nostalgic for flats full of cockroaches and without fridges or telephones. S. counters with memories of a holiday in Havana where a whole  hotel patio had plastic glasses dancing because each one trapped the biggest cockroach you had ever seen.I struggle with the jacket potato I've just had for lunch for a moment. The lessons with these guys are always fantastic. 

Anyway S. seems to think things in Germany will be alright. A bit of unemployment is not a bad thing. I trust S.'s judgement and look forward to telling mum. At two we're done. I've noted during the day that there's an interesting looking film playing at the Tyneside at three which I can see for free as I get three complementary tickets when I renewed my pass in January. So I dot 'i's and cross 't' 's for an hour. Then I'm off into Newcastle. It's Spring. 

At the Tyneside I get my ticket and take the lift to the fourth floor to the  Electra Cinema. I get myself a bottle of coke and a tub of salt and sugared popcorn. Is there a demand for salt and sugared popcorn? Not from me. I make my way to my seat.

 Sometimes I get reminders that I'm getting older. The Electra Cinema is in pitch darkness. The film is about to start, I'm not going to respect my seat booking which is a few rows from the back. I can't evern see which row is which in the utter blackness. I go straight to the back row and plant myself in the middle of the row as the fim credits start. 

I like the film I've chosen immediately. I'm Still Here a Brazilian movie directed by Walter Salles. Anyone who has  City Station and The Motorcycle Diaries in his portfolio is worth following and investing in popcorn and coke for.  So it proves with I'm Still Here, A drama about how a happy family have their lives upended by military dictatirship in Brazil in the 1970's.

It's full of bright sunlight and parties. Dancing on beaches. Wonderful music and attention to detail. Sinister lorries full of armed soldiers speeding past the Copacabana. Darkened prison corridors. A man who disappears. Is tortured and murdered. But not on camera. How after thirty years and committed pressure from family and friends evidence comes to the light and memories are laid to rest. I'd give it an Oscar. But it's not up to me.   

It's a long film. Afterwards I mention its length to the usher outside. He says the art of the 90 minute movie has been lost. But sometimes a film needs to be long to tell a story properly. Anyway I'm out. Just in time to catch the last of the daylight and head down Newcastle's glorious Grey Street to The Crown Posada.

Lance is sat at the bar nursing a pint. Lance as it turns out is my only point of contact with someone I know face to face today. I don't mind. A and S will more than do. Anyway , I like the solitary life. Listening to music. Reading. Writing on here.

I don't need to talk to Lance. He's in his cups. He comments that I've bought a non alcoholic beer. It's true. I don't touch alcohol much. I was warned off it a couple of years ago. Coincidentally by a friend I used to come down to The Crown Posada with down the years. I'm grateful to him for his advice,

My phone is running down. I'm not happy. It's one of my quirks these days. I want my phone at 100 % charged if possible. At all times. It's not a criminal offence. I prefer things that way. I ask the burly, bearded barman and he plugs it in for me behind the bar. Which leaves me with a dilemma. I haven't got my phone and the light is too dim in the Crown Posada for me to read Breakfast At Tiffany's. So I have to go old school. Listen to the records on The Crown Posada's Sound system. Fleetwood Mac's The Chain. George Harrison's My Sweet Lord. . Phone retrieved and call of nature satisfied. I'm off. Out into the night.

The Quayside is dark and glossy. It's generally great from this point of the year on. A treat to walk down on the way to The Royal Free and then back to the Ouseburn Valley and on from there to The Cobalt Studios or The Black Tanners. My favourite circuit these days as Spring comes to Toon.

I have a non alcoholic cider and the chance to recharge my smartphone again in The Free Trade. This time by plugging in at the wall by my table. Yipee ! That will keep me happy for the rest of the evening. It's bright enough for  couple of pages with Holly Golightly here. And now I'm at The Cluny. I won't trouble you with the walk. It's pretty much the same as my walk every time I come here. Good for my heart. Good for my morale. 

I get myslf a plate of chips and a glass of tapwater to line my stomach in The Cluny and eat up the time until support Cosmic Crooner are due. I turn into the venue, make my was down the stairs and park myself at the lip of the stage. The Cluny is only half full but that's still a reasonable turn out and those who have turned out are respectful and intent on having a cool school night out

Cosmic Crooner is just the warm up man required. A Post Modern cabaret smoothy from Amsterdam in a ridiculous, flashy white suit and shades. Old school reel to reel recording as the backdrop.. 'A retro inspired act but a thoroughly modern sound'. according to the blurb.  My eye. This is pure old school ham. Within a song Cosmic Crooner has spotted me because I'm the only person actually anywhere adjacent to the stage. So he's come up to me and is staring at me through his shades holdimg my hand. I'm waiting for him ro ask me what I'm doing after the show. But hey we've all seen this act before..

When he finishes his song he's at me again. He knows a straight man when he sees one 'Who are you texting man...' like some peevish lover. 'My family' I reply. I don't wish to spoil his patter. 'Ah family ....' Family are important' he says.' He takes off his shades for the next song. It's a relief for one and all that he's not Russell Grant as I'd been beginning to wonder..

Now he's broken into Jacques Brel's Jackie. Pretty much the Scott Walker version but with his own clever clever touches, It's great entertainment. At the end I think OK, I'll give him  a response.' Call out for Amsterdam. A Brel reference and he's from Amsterdam. 'I don't know that one' he fires back. Straight as a die. You've got to hand it to the guy. . 

I'm back at the bar for a bottle of non alcoholic beer and a plastic glass, mercifully free of massive cockroaches for Mattiel. I get my place at the side of the stage. As I say this isn't as busy as it should be. Don't the masses know and appreciate Mattiel ?.

They should do. They're on shortly. A taller than average frontwoman Mattiel Brown, a cool guitarist. They do a suave and sophisticated set. Mattiel inhabits the songs, cool Post Modern. That word again. Everything is Post Post Modern nowadays. We're all just a bit too smart. Or think we are.Too sharp for our own good. And everyone elses.

Byt Mattiel are so good at this. Post Modern C& W . Post Modern Country Soul. Joe Tex meets Bobbie Gentry, At the crossroads. But she inhabits these songs. The delivery is ironic but the emotion is real. Immaculately done.I;m tired though, My energy levels are dropping. Much as I'm enjoying the show, I've had my moneys worth and a great night out. Hey Wednesday's a school day too.  

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 86 Steely Dan - Gaucho

 

I had a friend who got strangely obsessed by Steely Dan. I can't account for it. I like Steely Dan. But this wouldn't be the album of theirs I'd go to first, Probably Best Of Steely Dan. I'm often drawn to Bests of these days,

Labelled With Love - A History of the World in Your Record Collection - # 36 Parlophone

 

Yeah ! The Beatles.

101 Essential Rock Records # 20 The Kinks - Face To Face

 

 

Over the course of three long player, Ray Davies sonwritingenabled the band to not only hammer out a signature instrumental style but to discover a distinctly Kinks-ian point of vuew that could be applies to virtually any song subject.

When Does The Mind-Bending Start ? - The Life & Times of The World of Twist # 4 Clock DVA

 

The Seventies become the Eighties and Gordon King waits on the fringes of the Sheffield music scene waiting for his and World Of Twists moment. He catalogues his dealings with the great and good. Marc Almod, ABC. Clock DVA while living it up on the dole. Listening to Orange Juice, and generally biding his time.

 

Edwyn Collins

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,650 BB King - Live At The Regal

 

I never really enjoy BB King. It's one of those things you're reluctant to admit. But I don't like the way his guitar sounds I'm afraid. Permanent banishment from the School of Cool !

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 83 Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel III

 

A great way to start my Tuesday. An older brother's album I'm glad to have. Peter Gabriel appeals more and mor to me withrge  passing years This is where he really starts clicking in with the zertgeist of the times. This sounds like Bowie, Eno, Fripp, Talking Heads but is still distinctly Gabriel. Paranoia, melancholy Games Without Frontiers. And Biko. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,015 Parastatic

 Kraftwerk still sounds fresh. State of the Art. A sleek Intercity..Speeding across countryside and into urban spaces.  Station to Station. Listening to the new Parastatic album Concrete Reborn it's an exciting experience. Like listening to Kraftwerk or Neu ! in 1975. They're a local band. They're playing The Star & Shadow co-operative a couple of mles from me on Saturday. I'll look into going to see them. More excitement.

This is a return. Their first record for ten years. It's worked around a basic concept. A paean to Brutalism. And there's plenty of that around Newcastle. Function and form. Utiitarian beauty.Inspired by Brasilia and Berlin. Ideas. Discourse.

It's a fabulous concept and a wonderful record.Parastatic are working with vocalist Laura also of Late Girl.. Concrete Reborn  is quite stunning frankly. Accessible leftfield. Layered melodic guitars and vocals that offer up reminders of Pylon and Life Without Buildings. It's an album that feels like a Golden Dawn. Magnificent. 

101 Essential Rock Records # 19 Jefferson Airplane -Takes Off

 

Psychedelic music. A jet age sound.

Roberta Flack 1937 -2025

 

When Does The Mind-Bending Start ? - The Life & Times of The World of Twist # 3 Bauhaus

 

Gordon King reluctantly goes from Manchester to Norhampton with his parents where they move. So witnesses Bauhaus as they emerge at the end of the Seventies. Gigs in London prove the main diversion. Jot Divusuin and the greatest gig he ever sees. The Human League.

Then he heads off to Sheffield to take advantage of life on the dole under David Blunkett and World of Twist begin to gestate in earnest under the influence of the League, Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA.

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,651 Roxy Music - Stranded

 

Any of the first five Roxy Music albums are alright by me. There are some argument among purists thereafter. I just love the band..

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 88 Tears For Fears - Songs From The Big Chair

 

Tears For Fears were the first band I ever saw. The Hurting appealed to my seventeen year old state. Intense emotions strugging for intensity and depth. I didn't have the life experience. Fortunately that came later.

But tI din't relate to the songs from Songs From The Big Chair. Even as Kurt and Roland conquered the world. They seemed empty by comparison with Mad World, Pale Shelter and the rest. What did I know? They spoke to stadiums. I've always felt most at home in small venues. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,014 Roxy Music

               

          

                                     'the history book on the shelf. Is always repeating itself...'*

The best music will always sound ahead of its time. Then and now, Such is the case with the best music. I'm thinking now particularly of Bowie and Roxy. But actually the same applies to any number of bands, artists and records and indeed books and films which came out in the Seventies. Glam, Folk, Soul, Funk, Reggae, where Ska went next. Krautrock, New York Punk, London Punk, the places where both headed off to. Disco, New Wave, Post Punk from there. Into the Eighties. Onwards until today. That was the decade that I grew up in.

We constantly hark back to the Sixties as a culture to idealise. I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps with an idea that it was some utopian dawn. Man got to the moon. To this day, some don't believe it. But to say it was a Golden Age would be an astonishingly naive conclusion to draw.. Look at the violence of the Sixties,. The assassinations. The widespread murder. The injustice. It's always the way actually. This is the world we live in. Take solace in the culture. The Music. The Books. The Films. But try to learn from them. Don't just put them on your shelves and walls. That's decoration. Not appreciation.

Great Culture generally comes from the Left. Advocating Change and Freedom. The Right is not a good place to look to for great culture.Look at Hitler's paintings.  The Right doesn't trust Culture. Never mind produce it or appreciate it. .Galleries are something to loot for personal profit. Books are things to burn. Ideas are things to denigrate. Artists are people to persecute 'Federico Lorca's dead and gone.'  So for that matter are Shostakovich. Berthold Brecht. Thomas Mann. Authoritarians of any stripe try to appropriate culture for personal gain and profit.. If you ask David Cameron which music he likes he will reach for an Ian McEwan paperback because someone's advised him to. A Smiths record. But he doesn't understand either. All that man understands is his bank account. Meanhwile look at his legacy..

The Seventies is the place where the Sixties got really interesting. And going. The realisation set in that we'd never get back to the garden. So where to to go next. Roxy Music and David Bowie had any number of ideas. And they both set off with the same instinct as to where their ultimate destination should be. The stars. I started Sunday Morning thinking about a Polling Day taking place in Germany. Millions of people going to vote. Many of them with a sense of dread. This is not a period of great hope let's face it. Though it's important not to forget. It's great to be alive. With life comes responsibility.

Many of the people going out to vote are my students. Clients. I really like them..I actually begin to think of them as friends. Though I know first and foremost that I need to help them. To do what they want to do better.The last thing they need to fret about is their English on top of everything else. 

 I will meet them online during the coming week. Meanwhile I've been thinking about the Weimar Republic. Listening to Roxy Music. Greatest Hits. Always a good place to start with any band. Ask Alan Partridge. When asked for his favourite Beatles album he always responded Best Of the Beatles. Qute right Alan ! Quite right !

A lot of the people I talk to these days says they can't face watching the news. That they're seeking solace elsewhere. But there's no escaping the news. Just watch it accumulate over the coming year.There'll be no stopping it..There's no escaping change. I'd say it's best to embrace it. To challenge it if necessary. Not to hide from it. This is our basic responsibilty as human beings. To learn from the past and think about how best to face the Present. Do our bit to change the Future. You could do worse than listening to Roxy Music. Now there was a band that knew how to live in the present and not to stand still. To head into the unknown. Some take a pop at Bryan Ferry. They shouldn't. He led this great band. Sensationally.

Start with Virginia Plain. A song without a chorus. That wasn't on an album. Until it was appended on one as an afterthought. What more could you ask from a single. Or for that matter a Top of the Pops appearance. Eno left after a couple of years to chase and realise his own destiny. Roxy meanwhile didn't pause..Listening to this abum you couldm't really tell which tracks had Eno on and which didn't. Unless you're a musician. Or a pedant. What does it matter. Every song on here is extraordinary

Roxy have toured. Fairly recently. But I'm not interested in seeing them. The records are more than enough. A permanent statement.. Of cool. Of style. Of grace. Ambition. Achievement. You couldn't ask for anything more. Of artists. How much does this record warrant? Fourteen out of ten. 

* Yes I know this is not a Roxy Music line.

Bill Fay 1948 -2025

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,652 Uriah Heep - Demons & Wizards

When I graduated in 1990 I started my teaching career in Komarno, a small border town on the Danube. Between Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The town had previously been a Hungarian one. But it had been divided into two by the Treaty of Triannon following the First World War when the former Austro Hungarian empire was sliced into slightly arbitrary new lines on a map and in actuality, 

Territories of people that never particularly liked each other, and still probably don't were thrown together in the new Czechoslovakia. I arrived in September 1990 with little idea of how to teach but a whole set of classes to try to do my best with. Czechoslovakia as it turned out had not got long to go.

There were some great students and great teachers at the Hungarian Gymnasium. I met some wonderful people and was made to feel very welcome. It wasn't a very exciting place at the time and I was something of a celebrity. Somebody told me my name was sprayed on a wall. Like I said, there wasn't much to do. It was an incredible experience. I'm very grateful for it and would love to go back. 

I remember Laszlo and Endre particularly. Teachers at The Hungarian Gymnasium. You can see me here at the front doors with the favourite class I taught that year. Endre was particularly proud of his record collection. Mostly Early Seventies Hard Rock. Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep. Deep Purple. That kind of thing. It was the music that seemed most highly rated in Komarno among the people that I mixed with during my year there. I went to see The Scorpions and Deep Purple play in Budapest during my year there. They were both great. 

It wasn't the kind of stuff I really went for. Then or now. I'm struggling as I speak to get through Demons & Wizards Uriah Heep's best known album. The lead singer David Byron seems to be fighting a losing battle with the tightness of his trousers. The others are racing through long keyboard and guitar and bass duals with wild abandon.  I'm sorry. I try to be open minded but I'm finding listening to this a slightly traumatic experience and it's a work day tomorrow.Time for a paracetamol and a lie down on my sofa I suspect.

But it does make me think about Laszlo and Endre and wonder how they're doing. They valued their record collections so much because they were so hard won. Records from the West weren't easy to get. They were such nice guys. Coming from the West I probably take ownership of the records I have for granted. They didn't seem to   

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 89 The Raincoats - Odyshape

 

If you are after posuer points. And let's face it we re all after poseur points. 'Poseur points make the world go tound. That clinking clanking sound' Here's the way to go. Don't say you prefer The Raincoats to The Slits. That's playground stuff.Child's play. Here's what you need to do.

First. Say you prefer Au Pairs or Delta Five to Raincoats. That will confuse and infuriate your friends around the pub table incredibly. Or you could just go for the jackpot. Say, 'well Raincoats are alright I suppose. But Odyshape is miles, miles, better than their debut.' And then go put the whole album on the jukebox. And probably empty the pub. I love empty pubs ! some would say that's largely because I smell. Excuse me. I don't !

Song(s) of the Day # 4,013 Park Jiha

 

South Korean artist Park Jiha has a magical sound. The kind of thing you pay through the nose for. Then go to comfortable theatrical venues with plush, velvet armchaired seating. State of the art acoustics. Dressed up audience,  To sink back in your chair and wallow in music that functions as a warm luxuriant massage of folds and receptors you didn't know you had.

Put on her latest album All Living Things now. Set the process in motion. It's a smooth silky ride, as if you've found yourself in a train sliding round corners with a blanket thrown over your shoulders. Gathering momentum on a fogbound railway track making its way miraculously up a Himilayan mountain track. This is an evocative, transporting record.

Park uses traditional Korean instruments like the Yannggeum, a hammered dulcimer and the mouth organ and the wooden oboe to weave a spell that's pure bliss frankly. The music takes you to a place that's wherever you want it to be. An enchanting experience. 

Television

 

101 Essential Rock Records # 18 The Beatles - Revolver

 

The velocity with which pop music moved in the sixties now seems hard to comprehend, when bands releases are likely to be announced with advertisements that tout 'their first new recording in seven years' Revolver is the sound of a band trying out new things.'

Songs Heard on the Radio # 444 Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes

 

Seventies Soul Priduction values on Huey Newton's 6 Music Saturday Morning show. 

When Does The Mind-Bending Start ? - The Life & Times of The World of Twist # 2 Ultravox !

 

 A hobby I keep working in is reading books like this. Rites of passage portraits of the music artist as a young man. Bildungsroman. There are no end of books like this Julian Cope, Bobby Gillespie. Will Sergeant. Paul Simpson. Cataloguing  the Punk Years and the records the main players bought. The gigs they went to. The clothes they wore. Their searches for a girlfriend,

Gordon King's book is good. He can write. He doesn't take hiself remotely serious. Like Gillespie for example. I found Tenement Kid emotionally dictored. The official account. King by contrast comes across as likeable and honest. What makes his own book wprthwhile is that like Segeant he documents his reluctance to let go of the Prog records which are his furst love even as he falls for the Post Punk bands that most take his fancy. In King's case Utravox! and Joy Division. Pages 25-50 of When Does The Mind-Bending Start ? sees the future members of World Of Twist coming together. It's all well plotted.

. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,653 Nirvana - Incesticide

 

When I think of Nirvana and Grunge I always think of a friend and his wonderful flat in Dortmund where I used to go on a Friday afternoon. To listen to records and smoke dope and talk crap until darkness fell.

My friend Matt,( now no longer here), used to play Nirvana a lot. One afternoon we watched MTV in shock as the announcement of Kurt's death came through. Incredibly slowly. Painfully. It was horrible. An experience I'll never forgive. I was glad to be with my friend looking back. I still miss him and it upsets me to dwell on him.Some people and memories are irreplaceable. Nirvana always helps.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 90 The Cure - Seventeen Seconds

Reposted from a few years back. 

It's almost October. The weather's turning and the light's failing. At this point you start to feel the dampness gather all about you, whether you're at home or on the street the air around you telling you that Winter and darkness are closing in and you're going to have to brace yourself for the long weeks ahead. Five months before the Sun starts its recovery. All things considered, perhaps not the best time to listen to The Cure's 17 Seconds on repeat, in a darkened flat, on your own and try to write something worth saying about it. Particularly when you've got worries and concerns of your own.  It seems like the kind of masochism that human beings become prone to once they find themselves away from work. Yet, somehow, 17 Seconds is worth it. It's a particular record.

This is the best Cure album. Unless Head on the Door is. This claim is not made from a position of authority or knowledge. I haven't heard an LP of theirs from beginning to end since Head on a Door was released. Since they became hairy spiders in pullovers that looked set to unravel if you gave a loose end a tug. And donned pancake mix make up and set forth to conquer The States in the late eighties.

 

So I'm no dyed in the wool fanatic., My interest stopped around 1985 when they decided they preferred  New Order to themselves, just before they chanced upon their own winning formula. It all became a bit Alice in Wonderland for the masses for me. I thought they were more honest and interesting here. This was the sound of the place where they came from. The London hinterlands. They surely soundtracked them better than anyone else, before or since. Smith wrote the songs in 1979 and 1980 in his parents' house in Crawley. The band then recorded the album in 7 days, apparently without demos over daily 16 hour studio sessions to minimise production costs on a tight budget. This, regardless of what anyone else might tell you was the sound of the suburbs.

 

 

The opening song is an instrumental. Always a brave move. Called Reflections, it's the sound of very little happening very atmospherically. It sets the tone for what's to come. It's aptly named. Much of the album sounds like it's observed from behind glass, by vaguely disaffected  teenagers who despite their mutterings will still come downstairs to table when called and eat supper when it's ready. Just another  rainy, overcast day in the suburbs, deep into Autumn.

 

17 Seconds sounds different depending on the time of the day you listen to it. In the afternoon it's all dripping taps and ticking clocks and rain on the window pane. Time refusing to pass. In the morning it's more sparky, the irony and skilled songwriting comes through more clearly. For me today, at the end of a long hard day at my desk, it didn't work. It seemed petulant when I needed something adult. It's an album of mood and frankly you have to be in the right one. Of course it helps if it's raining.

  Play For Today is next and it shows how far The Cure have travelled and how many literary books and artistic films have been devoured. since Boys Don't Cry. Play For Today was a BBC programme of the 70s, one off  heightened melodramas of the kind Robert Smith, (always The Cure's mouthpiece and puppeteer), indulges in here. It's a display of petty, unpleasantness to make a statement of who he is. 'I take what I require...' the Punk refusal to be nice, drawing a line in the sand to demark them from the Hippies. No love out here in the suburbs.

Secrets may as well be another instrumental, as what lyrics there are Smith mutters deep in the mix. It all adds to the sense of this being a soundtrack without a film. In Your House keeps the pace up, though in this case it's quite consciously that of a metronome ticking on the shelf. Uncommunicative teenagers gather in gloomy rooms to pass time together. Slowly.

 

'I play at night in your house
I live another life
Pretending to swim
In your house
I change the time in your house
The hours I take
Go so slow ...'

And then Three, another instrumental to close off the side. If I'm making the record sound humdrum I'm not doing it justice because I think it's a minor masterpiece. It describes a certain outlook, perspective and response to existence perfectly. It's Harold's life before he meets Maud. Terry's before he met June.

'The girl was never there. It's always the same. We're running towards nothing. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again...'

 

Flip the record and  after yet another brief instrumental  A Final Sound  which I never realised existed until just now, A Forest kicks the second side into gear. It's an absolute landmark moment for the band and somehow should jar in some way. A great song among very good ones. But it slots in perfectly here as it's cut from the same cloth as everything around it. Existential gloom. The vague sense that something awful might be about to happen but also the possibility that it equally well may not. That you just have to wait. Smith himself has been resistant when asked about the song's content. Having originally indicated that it was inspired by a childhood dream he later changed his tune and said it was a song about a forest. Personally I don't blame him. It stopped people asking the question. If it's an albatross for him it's one he wears lightly. A Forest has been played live by the band an estimated 800 times.

Listening to 17 Seconds at 48 when you first heard it at 16 is rather similar to looking back at Hamlet if you first read that at the same age. You understand the subject matter a lot more than you did at the time but are still struggling to work out what either are really talking about because you never really will. They're both deliberately, hanging question marks. Which is better?  Received wisdom tells us Hamlet and I'd probably agree, (I'm being ironic here but refuse to type a winking face),  but A Forest  focuses on similar themes. Quite consciously talking about what it feels like to be young but feel old, to be alive but unsure of whether we actually are, to wonder whether it's worth remaining so and ponder on the nature of unknowable. All the big themes kids! Listen to it. It really does all these things. It didn't make such a big splash just because it has a good tune. It reached Number 31 in the UK Singles Chart in 1980. It should have been Number 1.It made its mark nevertheless.

 People are now writing PhDs about The Cure and getting taken perfectly seriously so I'd better stop here. I won't encroach on their territory. All I'll say is if you've ever had a dream and felt it was real and it's disturbed you by what it intimates about yourself and life, go listen to A Forest. It describes the uncanny as well as any song I know.

From A Forest to M, another quite masterful and beautiful, strummed gloom-fest pop song. 'You'll fall in love with somebody else again tonight...' Smith is very good at conveying the powerless of us all within the scheme of things and the way we all go along with life's dictates. He's read his Modernists.

'Take a step
You move in time
But it's always back ...
The reasons are clear
Your face is drawn
And ready for the next attack.'

'At night.  I hear the darkness breathe. I sense the quiet despair
Listen to the silence . At night'

 

The album's winding down. At Night which follows is almost generic, so well have the band established their sound by now. It points forward to the more portentous sound of Faith an album which is played out almost in darkness while 17 Seconds is all fading light and all the better for it. It's probably the weakest of the fully developed songs on the record but frankly the standard is not dropping much.

'Time slips away. And the light fades away. And everything is quiet now.'

 

And so to the final track 17 Seconds itself . In many ways its three minutes  encapsulates the record itself. A completely clean, assured and identifiable sound, quite distinguished by now from the early influences Wire, Magazine, Buzzcocks, Banshees and the like. They've made suburbia their own. Light fades away on the quiet tree lined avenues and there they are, behind glass, watching the shadows gather, musing on whether any of all this really matters. 

 

As I said earlier, a minor masterpiece. Having had it on repeat play for the last few days I'm happy to stack it midway back on one of my racks for a while and let it sink back into its gloom But it's a record with very much its own statement and mood and I'll come back to it.

 

 From here the band descended into depression and then full on, certifiable mania with Faith and Pornography  Others prefer these. I'd plump for this instead. Partly for nostalgic reasons and partly because I think it stands up better now. A constant reminder for me of when I was seventeen, sitting in my attic room in my parents house, listening to my gradually growing record collection, making my way through Penguin classics, thinking about girls and trying to make head or tail of where I was going and what it was all about. Like countless others. Still not quite there yet.

'Seventeen seconds, a measure of life.'