I haven't listened to as much Stevie Wonder as much as I should have done. OK unprecedented genius of course. But there's some proper treacke to wade through. I'm now listening to Talking Book. It starts with You Are The Sunshine of My Life. Marvellous as this is, I wouldn't actually chose to listen to it.
After that the plot immediately thickens and you frankly can't believe your ears how complex, funky, conscious and wicked this all is.It's a masterpiece of course.
This is a grown up record which came out when I was still a child who knew very little about the world. Guarded by parents who were slightly innocent themselves, but smart and keen enough to protect their offspring from the worst the world had to offer.
City To City is a wordly album bir one that sounds as if it's seeking respite. Baker Street is not unnaturally its centerpiece. A song that is still a towering narrative of struggle that became an immediate fixture of daytime AOR. Embedded itself into the narrative of British Pop and cultural history, Pushing down a busy urban town high street into a strong gale. 'give up the booze and the one night stands.' I didn't have the slightest notion of what it was about when I heard it when I was thirteen.
Everything else is beautifully written and played. A great record to listen to as the sky darkens outside my window and I make my way towards shut eye,
I wouldn't claim to be very knowledgeable about Jazz. I often don't know so much as what instruments the masters played. Or what the key combos were or what the great innovations are. But Jazz has become an increasingly central part of my life in the last seventeen years since I've been living in Newcastle.
The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady is a record I've bought only comparatively recently and I play it as much as I can. It's heady and slightly woozy and casts a slightly hypnotic spell. I'm glad I don't really drink much anymore. This is a record which always makes me feel slightly drunk.
The one thing I seem to have right now is time. Time and rather a lot of records in my possession. I'm coming towards sixty later in the year so why not celebrate both. With an entirely arbitrary serious of records that I own, counting down to the Number One at the end of September. No order really. Just one record per artist.
Perhaps I'll have a Top Fifty. I've got some catching up to do, (having only thought of this today) so I'll be doing a few of these a day for a while. I'll also take breaks while I'm away from my flat as I want to listen to each record as I write about it.Listening to music as it was supposed to be listened to. Spinning on my table.
We start with Blue Orchids. Martin Bramah. A singular talent. And this is a spectacular, vivid album. Fuelled by maguc mushrooms, fantastic bookshelves and Northern vision. The album was an early Indie classic and chugs along with singular grit, melody and lyricism.
Something of a curiosity almost forty years. Matt Johnson was very cutting edge in terms of his sound and perspectives. . Infected was one hell of a listen at the time but rather depressing and unrelenting in terms of its vision. Now it sounds rather of its time though uts message is a relevant as ever.
Fabulous. Sun risen in the heavens. Mug of hot tea in front of me on my desk and another tip from Darren Jones to navigate me from half six to seven when my bath awaits.
And this is immediately a good one. Rock & Roll, guitars and earnest insecure vocals. Semi Truck's Georgia Overdrive. Opener Flower is immediately one of the best songs I've heard. This year. Any year.
Adolescent ennui and mideirected angst never dates or ages. 'Mom threw me out 'til I get some pants that fit...' David Thomas, is dead and gone. Peter Laughner. But their spirits roam the planet forever. Sonic Youth. R.E.M. Dinosaur Jr. Dream Syndicate. Teenage Fanclub. The right people will always need this. Thanks Darren. This is a good one !!!
Though Kick OutThe Jams sometimes comes off as loose and unstructured, there's no denying its heavy horsepower and heaping dose of attutude.
Don't tell Fibs. All right I won't. Fib are Fab. The latest morsel brought to the Captain's Table on It Starts by Darren Jones, AKA First Mate Starbuck . Fib strut their stuff on latest record Heavy Lifting, and very bracing it all is too.
Out of Portland, Oregon, never a bad start. Very dare I say it Pop Post Punk . Not a million miles from the base station Omni operate out of Portland, Oregon. Never a bad thing. It's often a sign of angular, quizzical enquiry.
That's certainly the case here. Each track is a new area of investigation. Heavy Lifting is easy listening for the Indie inclined. Thanks again Darren !
' 'I've lost just what it takes. To be honest,,,'
I'm off on a roadtrip in a couple of days. Down South. Well, I live in Newcastle. Roadtrips generally entail going South for me. Seeing a number of important friends and catching up. Culminating in a short stay in a Cornish village with an interesting guy I haven't seem in almost forty years. The guy who lived in the room opposite mine in the corridor. First year at university. September 1985 to June 1986.
My first year at university is an interesting one. I've long thought of it is as the great unwritten novel of the Eighties. What happened then and what happened next. I'm not brave enough or foolish enough to write it. I don't have time or energy. Or drive to do so. Maybe I'll leave it to James the fellow I'm going to visit. He's a great writer. Or Rod. Or Ben. The other guys who had the rooms next to ours. A long way back in the mists of time. A corridor like no other in my memory banks.
The four of us. Rod, Ben, James and I bonded in that incredible, unrepeatable way you only do when you're young. Rushing into life with your arms wide apart. Making mistakes wherever you go. Speaking too loud. Searching for love. That search never ends .Nor should it.
We went to lectures. Sized up girls in our different ways. Tried to impress them though really we weren't too impressive. Spoke too loud. Drank too much. Then at the end of most days we returned to Rod's room. He boiled his silver kettle and dispensed tea and coffee.
An indelible image in my memory banks. That kettle. Vapour rising from its spout. And we listened to records together and babbled. We tried to impress each other. But I wonder if really we were hoping to impress and convince ourselves first and foremost.And we listened to and talked about records. About life.
The Velvet Underground, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, The Smiths. Lloyd Cole. Crystal Gale. The Undertones. Talking Heads. The records call back to me. Across mists of time. Incredible thing memories. Magical! Like something from a film.
And then there was Prefab Sprout. Steve McQueen. It was good, different, and people recognised that it stood apart somehow. It came out that year and made an impression. It feels like a central record to that golden span of months.My first months at university. Going out into the world.
I'm listening to Steve McQueen now. It's a record that grows in my consciousness and imagination over the years. I confess I found it a bit wet at the time. What did I know. Someone asked me recently 'Spotify, what more do you need?' No you need the records. I insist.
Spotify has no soul. Records have compressed soul. Compressed lived experience. The memory of your former selves. The time you spent with others in the different chapters of your life. . The people you listened to music with. Sometimes kissed while listening to a particular song. Lay down with in sheets and blankets. And drifted into blissful sleep in one another's arms as the music played. This stuff matters. And we should venerate it.
Steve McQueen is a marvellous record which asks the questions that matter . The ones we can never answer, no matter how hard we try. The ones about Love. I've been listening to the record while I've been writing this. Sometimes there is no substitute for this experience. The best way to listen to a record is to give it your undivided attention. This specifically applies to the albims that are most central and fundamental to you. Allowing your imagination and memories to roam.
A remarkable record. Not quite like any other in my record in my collection. Which is all you can really ask for in an album. You never learn this record, But it surprises and enthrals you every time.
My alarm has rung, I'm rudely awakened and sat at my desk. A song is sent to a Polish lady, a new and surprising but welcome ritual in my life. My lesson is planned, my bath is run. I find myself wuth time. Time ro listen to Ubiquitous Meh !
Plymouth's finest ! We can't all be The Beatles ,Jacquel Brel. Best not to try,Ubiquitous Meh ! Do';t even try. They'd be happy with a session with Mark Ratcliffe. Or Marc Riley.
I'm sure it would great ! And I'd certainly listen to it. Certainly judging by their latest release. Oddville. Seven songs but it hardly qualifies as an album. Given that it's fourteen minutes long.
Parped organ, massed chanting. Cheerful engaged vocals. Positive sentiments. Nothing more complicated thn it needs to be . The spirit of John Peel. W're off. Into the coming dawn.
Hell. A restless soul. Parts company with Hearbreakers and finally sets up his own gig. Tracks down Bob Quine, his foil, and the man who dragged the Viodoids out of the ordinary. There's a touching several page portrait of the irascible man, and despite Hell's darker insticts, it's clearly fuelled with love for the man.
'Me I go from one extreme to another.'
A man with a pretty girl in his arms. Swooning. In a suit. Firing a gun. Fry ! Martin Fry. 1982. Those were the days. I was in my last year at Secondary School. My best subject was always English. I had the best teacher. Dai Pring. A Welshman with red hair and a cool moustache. Funny. He made our lessons an event. But he taught us too. Got us to read the books..Encouraged us to think. Not all teachers do.
I sat next to my best friend. Then and now. Philip. I'm going to see him on Thursday..Behind us were Nicky Purslow and David O'Connor. Banter. Innocence. We thought we knew it all but we knew nothing. Nicky loved The Beatles. Kept his thoughts to himself ., But always funny.
David was a Scouser. Almost unintelligible to our South London Middle Class ears. I seem to recall him saying his dad had been a friend of Lennon's . He was a clown. But loveable. A good heart.
Everybody watched Top of the Pops. Every week. Then talked about it in class the day afterwards. It was the days before a thousand channels but nothing on. ABC seemed to be on every other week. Ridiculous, orchestrated dance routines. Martin's slick patter into the camera.
David did the routine to a tee on a Friday morning. Curled his hair up into a quiff and did Martin's rap in English class on Friday afternoon.. You didn't think in terms of weekend in those days. Life was one continuous blur. 'Who broke my heart... you did, you did... Shoot that poison arrow...'
ART ROCK !!! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR !!! Well plenty frankly. And David Thomas is a pretty good place to start. . He was lead singer of Pere Ubu. The Cleveland noise assault. Who made and released their debut album The Modern Dance in 1978. One of the albums that genuinely changed me.When I came upon it a few years later. When I needed change. And direction.
On Friday, hearing the news of Thomas' passing I listened to it. Now I'm going to listen to it again. Not the kind of record I generally go for first thing. But I suspect it's going to energise me. Here we go. 'I'm gonna make a deal with you girl !!!'
Thomas or Crocus Behemoth was hardly a conventional Rock & Roll figure. Quite the opposite . If he turned up at the door brandishing a bunch of flowers, any right minded girl would surely have slammed the door in his face. But the interesting girls, the ones worth romancing are actually searching for guys like Thomas. The ones worth holding out for.. And pledging your emblem to. Planting your flag in their sand.
Pere Ubu and Television were bands that changed me. Tom Verlaine. Richard Hell. Richard Lloyd. Thomas, Allen Ravenstein. Lonely Planet Boys. And Peter Laughner. Just as Hell is the ghost that haunts Marquee Moon, so the restless spirit of Laughner stalks the restless urban wasteland of The Modern Dance. And makes it somehow different from anything they produced thereafter. You only produce one debut album of course. And Marquee Moon and The Modern Dance are as indelible statements as Rock & Roll has or will produce.They stand apart.
Thomas is a remarkable figure. Perhaps the outstanding figure in Rock history who bridges the great Rock & Roll impulses. To rock and to make a lasting statement. His message, like Television's is a simple one. Be yourself ! And some said they weren't Punk.
For an artist who later had to defend himself against charges of plgiarism, John Fogerty was anything but a trend follower.Bayou Country is the one that broke Creedence.
At this remove it's quite impossible to extract this record and its driving artist from it's cultural, sexual and abusive context, That doesn't stop it being any less extraordinary. Michael Jackson like Prince and all the great artists understand what we wanted from our Pop Artists. An experience and sound that took us to another universe.
The sun is up. I've had a lie in amd my bath. Nothing pressing today apart from a little paperwork. There's time to listen to Noble & Godlike in Ruin.
Thus us a band that have certainly carved out their own niche down the years. Active since 1997. San Francisci via Tokyo, there's is a truly playful, delightful sound. 'Mixing vibrant melodies noise and an experimental spirit into utterly distinctive music.'
Noble & Godlike in Ruin is dizzying. Like the reference point that race through my head while listening to. Can, Sonic Youth, any number of fantastic Japanese bands. Stereolab, Dee Lite, The Velvet Underground. Take your pick. They're all here in spades.
Prince was everywhere when I went to university. Quite right too. He's undeniable. I've gone through periods when I listen to him less. Whever I listen to him I find myself slightly lost in awe. The impression the man cleary wanted to make. He understands the funtamental quality of the truly great Pop artist. That they should sound as if they're from a dofferent galaxy.
'Hey Baby , I like your lips...'
Almost ten years ago. It feels like a different lifetime. Life is like that. Anyhow, 2016. I got heavily into Sunflower Bean for a couple of seasons. Saw them playing a small club nearby to me and listened to their debut album Human Ceremony. A lot !
Ten years later Sunflower Bean are on the circuit. Still the same line up . A threepiece. A Grunge drummer. Some distant nephew of Dave Grohl. A guitarist with a Dylan Wild Mercury Sound rug cut. A glam punky lady in fishnets taking most of the vocal duties. A not disimilar sound. Perhaps a bit more mainstream. Less Sonic Youth. Closer to a fuzzy Fleetwood Mac. Everyone seems to move a bit Fleetwood Mac with time.It's the Millennial Shift.
New album Mortal Primetime is decorative. Without being startling, in the way Human Ceremony seemed to me at the time. It's often the way. We grow up and that means the tug of the suburbs. I give this 7.8. Hey... Pitchfork !!!
Sunday. 1961. This sounds like the place to be.
The Most Familiar Star by Domino Kirke An alluring record that I discovered yesterday evening and have been playing since as we work our way into Donnerstag and towards the end of April. Domino is UK born and New York based and is apparently singer, songwriter, producer and doula.
Yes I have no idea what doula means either frankly. In any case this is a rather lovely and arresting album. Otherworldly , Provocative. I like records with character and mystery that encourage interaction and engagement, response from the listener and this certainly did that for me on my last day in Canterbury for a while before heading back to Newcastle this evening.
'Being a rock and roll musician was like being a pimp.It was about making youmg girls want to pay money to be near you.'
Hell goes out with Roberta Bayley the Rock photographer. She has pretty breasts apparently Verlaine paints him out of the Televisionn picture once and for all. Hell leavesthe band and teams up with Johnny Thunders, Walter Lure and Jerry Nolean to form the Heartbreakers. A heroin collective.'Catch them while they're still alive.'
Hell is still doing junk fairly often. He teams up with Dee Dee Ramone and they write Chinese Rocks the ultimate junk anthem. He teams up with Sabel Starr. He's living the life. He digresses for a few pages about the famous women he slept with. Hell insists he doesn't believe in love. Rather chemistry.
One of the interesting things about doing a blog like this. Getting my Song(s) of the Day from different sources. Is comparing what is getting recognition generally to what I come across purely by chance and takes my fancy. And how so often I prefer the latter.
Cumulus We've Got It All. is a case in point. It operates in the same groind as boygenius. Sensitive strummed reflection on the state of play in midern existence. But while much of that leaves me cold, and often slightly irritated. I find this instantly preferable to mych of what Lucy, Phoebe and Julien come up with.
This is a genre, a trope of music that flirts at times with the bland. But generally I warmed to We've Got It All. It's sincere and crafted, and carried me from six to seven on my way to my lessons in pleasant reflection. Sometimes that's what you want and require.
The Neon Boys become Television. Hell documents their ascent. They discover and play CBGB's and it soon becomes the place to be for the demimonde of conoisseurs. Hell and Verlaine's friendship withers s Verlaine's ego balloons. But for a year they are the finest band in the world and their legend endures 50 years on. The CGBS legend blossoms.
We're living in an age of cut and past, Everything is available. First exhibit for the prosecution MIEN.and their eponymous album. An exercise in Psychedelic exploration in the manner of Stereolan, Broadcadst, Krautrock, Pram and Vanishing Twin.
MIEN rattles along on familiar but bracing rails like a commuter train carrying a set of workers from the lungs of the city into the urban centre before belching them out to scurry off towards their offices and workspaces. Their places of study..
This draws on established tropes but I know what I like . This music always speaks to me. I'm happy to endirse its values and efforts. Easter is over. Back to the treadmill.
This I'd say is the essential 25 pages of the book and more than that. 25 pages that are essential for anyone with a feeling for and taste for Rock & Roll. Hell outlines how his and Verlaine's friendship worked and how they recast themselves and collaborated. Shaped their identities and personas. Their unfluences. The way they wrote. Together and separately. The New York music and literary scenes. The other players. The Dolls. Patti Smith. Terry Ork. The way the they coalesced and directed themselves. Towards CBGB's and the New York Punk scene that we know they are hurtling toward. It's seamless, inspired writing.
Woke up. It was an Easter Monday and the first thing that I listened to... was a record that made me think of Can, and Vitmain C in particular. That weird fuggy Kosmische fug. Woven in the early Seventies, but some spells last. You know the story of Sleeping Beauty.
Little Barrie and Malcolm Catto's Electric War, draws unahamedly on the mythic narratives of Rock & Roll. Mass hypnosis. The two sport insectoid wraparound Suicide shades. The music is by turns languid and wired. Funky and Soulful. You know where this comes from. You know what they say. If it ain'tbroke, why fix it...
Virtue is a patience, Julian Cablancas moonlughts. :Likeable.
Graham Johnson is drawn to the comforts of melody and noise . 'How the two conspire in tension tonally and atonally. Stirring up in memory and mood.' Quickly quickly's Bandcamp page continues in this slightly preposterous vein. For several paragraphs.
What you get with I Heard a Noise us a slightly cutesy emotional Indie album. In the Sufjan Stevens family tree. Portland, Oregon chapter. Perfectly amical listen but not enough to move from ordinary to extraordinary.. From winsome whine to sublime. Still, I'd certainly recommend this if you're looking to soundtrack your preparation for afternoon tea. It grows. And enchants.
Easter Saturday and I'm sitting in the living room at my sister's in Becenham. A cup of tea in front of me. Headphones on. I'm going into London in a couple of hours to meet a very special person from my past. Meet her daughter or the first time and go and eat tea and cake wuth them. Life is a celebration and demands to be feasted upon.
I'm listening to Beirut's new record, A Study Of Losses. It sounds like other Beirut records but you wouldn't really want it otherwise. Zach Condon, the driving motor at the engine room of thus band has a special understanding of poignancy and gentility. A feeling for Folk Traditionals. Eternal emotions and rituals.. Fragility, Poignance, Culture. It's another beautuful record. Adhere to your values.
Listening to The Head On The Door in Beckenham. It feels apt. Bowie, Siouxsie, The Bromley Contingent ald hailed from the same part of the country. The part I'm suttin in now. The East London Garden Suburbs. Fresh Air and Space. Gloomy Avenues.
At the time The Head On The Door and The Cure and I no longer seemed meant for each other. This is where we parted country. I was coming into my twenties and felt grown up. The Cure felt like youner sister music. How little I knew. I'm staying with my younger sister now, About to head into London where all these people headed. The alternative was getting stuck.
Now The Head On The Door makes sense. Macabre but efforless Pop Mastery. A band emerging from darkness into the light of Daytime Radio. Top of the Pops and magazine covers. Where they belonged. Into the pantheon.
New York Bohemianism as the Sixties become the Seventies and Hell and Verlaune shift towards the heart of the culture. Hell drops names but does so with justification and authority.. He was there.
Rather mannered and saccharine for my tastes at the time though NME not unnaturally fell hard. Now Ifind it easier to repect than really like.
'the age of tenderness nd rage...'
A recommendation for Friday from a dear relative. And a fantastic one. Fabelhaft. Three Black Boltz, the latest album from TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe. Full of his old band's frantic, kinetic energy. Consciousness. A really great start to my Good Friday. Thanks Kate !
By turns spiritual, tender. Then engaged. It's a ,ultifaceted record than energises me as I prepare myself for adventure . Art the begunning of a four day break from work before heading towards Summer
I'm n London where I grew up. Staying at my sister's in Beckenham. On my way to Richmond. This is pitting a spring in my heels. You're grateful for it when you get to my age. Up and at 'em...
Get up. Get up. Get out of our lazy bed. No they won't. They're Bedridden. And latest album Moths Strapped To Each Other's Backs is a wonderful exercise in Smashing Pumpkins meets Dinosaur Jr at the crossroads for rifferama hamming and howling at the moon for the sake of it.
Hell is unapologetic about his persona. An essential disdain for humanity. Another electric and wired passage of prose. He is completely unapologetic about his essential disdain for humanity. He is scornful of the summer of love, Sgt Pepper. He manages to dodge the draft . He refuses to partake in the rituals of human race and verlaine comes to join him and they enact a poetic partnership.
