This is Funktastic !!!
Thursday, July 31, 2025
Song(s) of the Day # 4,159 Folk Bitch Trio
Folk Bitch Trio. Nicer thatn they sound. In fact Now Would Be a Good Time theur latest album is rather sensational Sensitive trio with acoustuc guitars and a poetic line with lyrucs. Watch them fly,
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 163 The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
In 2004 I moved to Riga, Latvia and stayed and worked there for four years before relocating to England once more and working in earnest on my mortgage. I had a good time there. Living abroad is an incredible experience and if you have the opportinity you shoul just do it. It develops resources and skills you will be able to draw on later in times of adversity I'm assured.
The locals, both Russian and Latvian were friendly. I worked wuth any nymber of the best teachers I've ever wirked with over 36 years wirking as a teacher. But you didn't particularly get invitations out to visit people as happened when I was in Sicily every weekend for example. So although Riga was a beautuful and vibrant city, it also felt like a slightly guarded one in some respects. It had a history and the history needs to be respected and understood.
About a month in I was invited along with colleagues for an evening with a meal and to watch a video by a Russian teacher with her husband. This didn't happen again in the remaining four years for some reason and I took the easy route and went for the expat existence. Rugby matches, white russians, evening beers and banter and watching on slack jawed with species shame every weekend at the ugly spectacle of Brutush Stag Do behaviour.
The evening wuth Jana and her husband, whose name I recall was Andreej was a memorable one. After supper we retreated into the living room and watched Garden State together, I'd never hearsd of it so watched completely blind. And I was impressed.
It's a great coming of age fulm for Generation Whatever types. Great soundtrack. Nick Drake, Sumon & Garfunkel, Iron & Wine and most of all The Shins. James Mercer's particular, febrile writung skills underpin the whole emotional experience and lift it out of the ordinary.
Most of all Odd Slang, the song that dragged the band out of the marguns and made them contenders. It's not on Wincing The Night Away but it mught easily be on any record because it exemplifies. their classic, haunting and enduring touch.
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 153 Matt Berninger - Get Sunk
The National are a strange one. Slightly depressed sountracks for suburban couples. Middle managers. Matt Berninger continues the Sisyphus motions on latest album Get Sunk.
I've found it a strangely winning soundtrack for the past couple of days. Joy Division managing the rigours of nine to five as a face at the back of the open plan. Berninger has a way with words, the emotionless face in the corner desk of the open plan at work.Stimach churning. Counting the days down to a holiday in a caravan and tent park. Om a beach.
The songs make their way up gradual slopes and set off with soft vaguely dusfunctional explosions.. It's functional and strangley removed, almost neuteured. Like an afternoon in an IKEA showroom. I liked it.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 436 Four Tet - Rounds
I quite like a but of Four Tet once in a while. Then I think, no I've had enough of that, I think I'll listen to something else.
101 Essential Rock Records # 95 Talking Heads - 77
77 doesn't seem like the finished article to me. Jerry Harrison had only just joined the band and the unit seems to be bedding in here. David Byrne is trying on different voices and occassionally drops into a place which is uncomfortably between The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz and, PeeWee Heman. Plenty of great song but you can undesrtand why they annoyed the Punk Magazine set in CBGB' so much at this point.There's a lot of attention seeaking and a lack of clear direction here. Despite some great songs. Psycho Killer stands out a mile. Compare and contrast wuth the first albums from Television, Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Pere Ubu and Suicide. They improved fast after this
Song(s) of the Day # 4,158 Tina Charles
'
Tina Charles for a few weeks in 1976 was on Top of the Pops pretty much every bloody week singing I Love to Love (But my Baby Just Loves to Dance). You simply couldn't get away from this monstrous ditty every time you turned either the TV or switched on the radio. Particularly if it was Simon Bates Show I imagine.
Everywhere you looked there was Tina Charles bopping around on Thursday night as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth and she was the cat who had stolen and then eaten the cream.I've just listened again. OMG. It's all coming back ! Like a rash.
That woman was relentless and neither Top of the Pops or the UK Top 30 stood a chance. We had no idea that Punk was coming round the corner in the house I grew up in. spitting distance of- if you were a good spitter, (which none of us were, we were well brought up ), from Richmond Station. We thought it was just going to be Elton John, Queen and, Jethro Tull and lots more Tuna. Tuna blooming Charles smashes banging on about her baby, spinning like a top, and getting her way. For ever and ever it seemed. It was clear the woman had to be stopped.
Wikipedia tells me that Tina was from Whitechaple, had a brother called Warren appeared on The Two Ronnies before she hit the motherlode and infamy of the kind that the likes of Johnny Rotten were secretly craving too wuth I Love To Love. Good luck to her. Who needs Tuna Turner. But I'm not listening again. Oh alright! It does have a slightly hypnotic quality. Mesmeric !!!. Go Tuna Go !!!
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 164 The Eurythmics - In The Garden
I have a late start this morning. I feel like listening to and writing about The Eurythmics. I have put theur first album In The Garden on to help me focus. Eurthymics came out of the ashes of the little mourned Tourusts. This kind of thing happened a lot at this point in Pop Music. Kevin Rowland chose to redirect his anger from Punk to Soul. Mick Hucknell from Punk to Pap.
Annie and Dave meanwhile made their way from Aberdeen and Sunderland respectively and set their sights on the stars. In The Garden was their firty Eurythmics gambit and it's slinky and intricate. Experimental. Not destined for daytime Radio One but all the better for it. Like Lab Scientists watching the behaviour of drugged rates. This is a clinical and sparky record drawing from Bowie, Prog, Krautrck and all that Seventies chart action.
Sweet Dreams of course was the song where it all fell in to place for Annie and Dave and they paid off their mortgages and realised they'd be spending a lot more time in America rubbung shoulders wuth Dave, George and Tom from now on. I like those recirds too. A lot of them are just thrilling. Singles and albums.
Eurythmics were one of the few contenders from tht whole wave that actually remained Good.Well done Annie. Well done Dave. It's not easily done. The Eighties is a Foreign Country. They did things differently then.
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 437 Gorky's Zygotic Mynci -- Sleep Holiday
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci provided charming Welsh pastoral for much of the Nineties . You knew after a while what you were getting as with other bands' Teenage Fanclub, Pavement, Buffalo Tom. But it was a warmer andmore winning firmula than many bandswho sold more records. They had a himeliness in common.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 154 Rip Van Winkle - Blasphemy
To sleep perchance to dream.;' Robert Pollard is back. Well let's face it he doesn't go awy. As always, he's firing on all cyclinders. Rip Van Winkle Blasphemy. Get out of your lazy bed ! Get to work you idle waster.
Neil Young is the guiding star here Not Pete Townshend this time. Ragged Glory. Dissonance. Static on the radio. Heading into a blizzard. The best kind of frazzled derangement, We're off. Set the controls for the heart of the prairie.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,157 Andy Bell
Ride . For me much mire unterestung operators than Oasis, though that's not what the history books on the shelf will record. They've reformed in recent years. I saw them over ten years back and it was one of the most powerful gigs I;ve ebver seen frankly. You don't expect that to happen frankly, but it does happen occasionally.
Andy Bell, lead guitarist and co viiclist of Ride, put out a great record a few months back in Pinball Wanderer. It plies on Rides tools of trade. Joy Division if they'd been from the Hime Countues and preferred The Byrds to The Doors.
This is a funky, diverse record which spreads its cnvas wide. preferred The questing guitars.. Shoegaze haze whuch has frankly grown into a scene and ambience of its own since Ride furst trod the boards. Excellent work.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 165 Bonzo Dog Band - The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse.
'Betty and I went to Biyrnemouth on Saturday'
Forty five minutes befoie my last lesson.Time For Bonzo Dog. 'We are Normal and We Want Our Freedom'. Plus Ca Change. Plus La Meme Chose. Many bands would like to rival the anrchic edge and impulses of this band. But they lack the courage. And the gentleness. Both key components. This is very end of the pier stuff. Very English. To be English and make great Pop Music requires endeavour. And care.
With The Beatles if you care about them you will prefer John, or Paul. Or possibly Geirge. Or maybe even Ringo though it's not common. With Bonzos I'm actually a Neil Innes advocate though Stansall is clearly a powerphouse and frankly they're a band that come at you from all fronts like the Dutch Total Football 1974 World Cip team.The listening experience is akin to watching Withnail & I. again. For the hundredth time. It's the only kind of patriotism I'm prone to. .
Monday, July 28, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 155 Wife Patrol - NOPLACE
I listened through to Wife Patrol's NOPLACE half heartedly as I was making my way yesterday towards my half eleven online class with insurance people un Dussledorf. They're a challenging crowd this group. Know each other very well. Have done this for years. But don't really crack a smile and certaily don't laugh out loud too readily. I don't like to generalise about nationalities. There's too much of that and we all know where that leads. Particulary the Germans.
Anyway, I took to NOPLACE and niw I'm listening to it again as I make my way to my half seven woth meducal people Auf Freitag. This is a cool noise. Out of Indianapolis. It shifts time, register and mide with every track. That's the indulgence the internet allows. One moment they're Crazy Hirse. Next they're heading towards the Portlang Oregon Indie oasis. Cool, coool, really cool! As Teddy Duchamp ranted in Stand By Me !
101 Essential Rock Records # 94 The Clash - The Clash
'I won't open letter bombs for you....'
I've just listened to The Librtines debut album and I'm now listening to The Clash while lying on the sofa as my Monday comes to a close.It's ragged and jagged, driven and there's a certain amount of detectable opportunusm but the whole UK Punk wave was rife with opportunism. Most of the records I like most came later . Including any number by The Clash. This was designed largely to blast the doors down. Make a statement and get a lot of attention. Which it did. But they were already spreading their wings and you can here that everywhere on here. Where they were going next. This feels like a document of a moment of history and a demand and engine for change as much as anything. ,
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 438 The Libertines - Up The Bracket
The Libertines and Pete Doherty are a band whose myth and narrative have somehow overtaken their actual music. This was probably their intentuin as they never lacked ambotion in the classic Johnny Thunders, Pogues and Only Ones heritage. Bohemian, alcohol sodden youth Never known for their sobriety.
Up The Bracket is all over the shop in many respects. Once again this is entirely intentional. Personally I'd prune it a bit. Shuffle the pack and del agin. But they were a band that always resited pruning. Warts and all. I prick my ears up during the moments whuch always pricked my ears up..
Song(s) of the Day # 4,156 Alex G
The new Alex G album Headlights is rather winning. It feels like you're sat around a campfire and guitars are being strummed and a folk spell is being cast. Elliott Smith with a more positive vibe and direction twist.
It's a meandering record and one to return to. Songs To Learn and Sing. A ringing, spinning vibe and all rather loose but coherent. One to return to.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 166 Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain
Two lessons down, one coming up at two . A saucepan warming up for pasta. Sketches of Spain on the radui. My window wide ipen. The Newcastle streets calm and still. Niw I've eaten my pasta and Sketches is still spinning. My flat is filled wuth light and space.
Miles partuclarly can do this. . He has an immediately recognisably pitch and delivery.Impeccable Taste in who he chooses to work with and which stars he want to take aim at. With Sketches you can't but think of the Bullring. Juliet Greco. Scorchung midday sun. Hotter than July and madness in the air. The days when you used to smoke at the table where you were sat rather than being ushered outside to stand on a corner. In the corner.
It's best to read the sleeve notes of albums like these because it sets the mood. Takes you back to a time when rhthms and attitudes were different from ours and perhaps dare I say it, a trifle more gallant. Though I'm not sure Miles would have thought so. I've got the version of the album which isn't the classic version pictured above. wuth a sleeve where he's crouched in the phito looking warily to one side. A cigarette, (it looks like it must be Gitanes) clutched between his knuckles. Everything umpossubly moody. Suspended.
Sunday, July 27, 2025
101 Essential Rock Records # 93 The Damned- The Damned
Energy. Rock & Roll, Sime great songs. The momentum of a dark train speeding through a tinnel. With The Damned I've always just been a pizzled abou thowlittle they say to me. Not a record I own or need to ow. A neat update on Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. Punk? I think Punk needs to make a statement.Flour and speed. Misdirection. .
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 156 Watchhouse - Rituals
Mellow. They called Donovan mellow yellow. Quite right too. Mellow is a good path to choose. In life and love. North Carolina's Watchhouse choose the mellow path on latest album Rituals. It puts its feet up on the porch as the Hickory Wind. It'sa lovely recird frnkly a reminder of a firgitten world. Tht's what mysuc dies best
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 167 Dwight Twilley Band - Twilley Don't Mind
The remaindered record. of my lifetime, Dwight Twilley Band's frankly magnificent mid Seventies Powerpop record was clearly underappreciated in Richmond's Our Price Records in the Late Seventies. There were handfuls of copies in the racks there. Why I'm not sure. Because it shimmers and sways as vividly and tellingly as any Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers album from the same period. It did much better inThe States than it did here.
It's an album that aches and glitters. If you like Cheap Trick or Big Star or Teenage Fanclub this is the next one you need. It's like a memory of your first kiss and just as sweet. It captures moments that you feared you'd firgotten
Song(s) of the Day # 4,155 Bicep
It's Sunday. How are you feeling, Need cheering up. It's that kund of wiirld. We all might do a bit at the moment, You could do wirse than pittung on the latest Bicep album TAKKUUK.
It's a funky world dancefloor concoction. An update in some wats if the Leftfueld formula in the late Nineties.And why not. There's always an internatuinal hunger for these kind of ingreduents. Very delicious as my Chinese students used to say.!
Saturday, July 26, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 157 Wishbone Zoe - Blue Distances
The sun's rising in the Newcastle sky. It's a Saturday morning and I have a playlist of songs, of albumss to listen to. All seems right with the world. But first I have Blue Distances by Wishbone Zoe to listen to.
Zosia Kochanski, for Wishbone Zoe is she, is a multimedia artistant. Blue Distances sees her mind and muse wander where it needs to go. It's a gentle place where 'Reclusive' rhymes with 'Massachusetts'
Anither fishy for a captain's dishy from Starbuck's AKA Darren Jones. Best fruend of It Starts With a Birthstone/ Another good one Darren.
101 Essential Rock Records # 92 Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
An observation; a number of times whem I've got into a conversation with an, erm 'young person' being a natural curious type I've asked what kind of music do you like. It's an umpossible question but the answer more often than anything has been 'Well, Fleetwood Mac !' Love was in the Air back in the day but now it seems its Fleetwood Mac. It's everywhere. And when people say they like Fleetwood Mac they never mean the Peter Green version.
Why so often Fleetwood Mac is one of the great imponderables. Bruce Springsteen is another one. Why so often Bruce Springsteen. Why not The Police to grab a name out of the blue. What has happened to U2. Search me. I'd need to do some reserch and think a bit harder than I'm willing to do to answer any of these..
It's almost impossible to listen to Rumors and be surprised by anything in the record at all actially now. It's si ubiqiutous. So much a part of the familiar landscape. Modern furniture. When Go Your Own Way came on my ears pricked up, it still chimes, every time. Then it's back to the familiar twusts and turns. Like the skin of your own body. Of tcourse there's nothing at all wring wuth the skin of your own body, In fact ti's rather comforting.
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250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 168 The Doors - The Doors
When I was seventeen my parents moved from a cramped house near to Richmond Station to a large house in Teddingtom. A house with a big garden. Opposite the National Physical Laboratory where Mr Jones the nice man who lived next door worked. Three floors and lots of room and space. Near to Bushy Park. A half hour walk across to Hampton Court..
My older three siblings had pretty much moved out of home when we got there so it was really just mum, dad, my young sister Alison and me. Oh and Pandora, the family cat. The most neurotic, middle class and absolutely wonderful black cat that ever walked the earth. She didn't like many people and found it tough to stand her ground in the back garden with the neighbourhood roughs and tabbies. But she loved Alison and I and we both still miss her.
Alison and I had similar taste in music, She introduced me to stuff down the years. Big Star, Nancy Sinatra, The Triffids and other things. I think I was onto Television first. Go Betweens ? And R.E.M. it's difficult to trace the lines sometimes. It's a long time ago.
I was at Richmond College. It was a good time for me and I was growing in confidence. Constructung my self wuthout realising that's what I was doing. Buying books, decorating my room with postcards and photos Jean Cocteau and Caillebotte. William Blake. A youthful shot at Joe Orton's pad. I didn't know where I was going but I was pretty happy with the journey. Making friends. Being young.
My record collection was my big statement and it began in earnest in these years, I got myself a job in Teddington High Street. At Tescos in the Home and Wear department on the first floor. I didn't like the job but it paid enough for my purposes which were mainly to buy the kind of records that the NME told me to. So Patti Smith. Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen and the like.It felt like a trail.
I piled my records up up on the narrow shelf above my bed in three rows. My room was green and white. A Habitat duvet. Matching curtauns.It felt like a golden time in retrospect. The calm before a particular family storm which can wait for another post. This is a pure and happy one.
I had wire rimmed John Lennon specs which were a defunite upgrade from the geeky NHS ones I'd worn at secondary school.I started writing a diary which I still have. Mostly listing which girl I liked today and shallow momemtary considerations.. People I was moving away from. Places I was moving toward.
And I listened to The Doors. I listened to the Doors a lot. They were important to The Bunnymen, Joy Division The Banshees and The Cure bands I was listening to as well. That's the kind of stuff that appeals to you at that age. But I'd stand by them all.
We went to Paris the four of us and Alison and I made a pilgrimage out to Pere Lachaise to visit Jim's grave. There was a hippie with a cassette recorder there. Playing Doors songs. I probably imagine the black cat.
I bought all six Doors albums within a three month period. I didn't know really what they were about but the tunes were seductuve and approachable. Krieger, Manzarek and Densmore were slick and could shift from Folk to Blues to Psychelia to Jazz. Pop or Rock. They were crisp and versatile and honed.You got the sense that they talked.The lyrics hinted at darkness certainly but I also found them seductuve and polished. The band were crisp and versatile and honed. Jim was a frontman.Not to everyone's taste but he stood centre stage.Put on a show .
I still like The Doors and still play all six of the albums I bought when I was 17. Once a week I'd say. The Doors encourage you to explore. They map out reading lists and invite you to branch out and learn. William Blake, Huxley, Artaud, Rimbaud, Celine. I could go on. You should go on.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,154 Editrix
Hold the front page ! It's the Big E, The new album from Editrix . And it sounds like Minutemen fronted by the Cate Blanchett fairy queen in Lord of the Rings. What do you mean are you sure that's a good thing. We're only alive once.
And the Big E makes you realise pretty immediately that being alive is a great thing. We forget sometimes. The record is frequently pure lunacy. Prog meets Punk un a Kenwood iuxer. I enjoyed this a lot.
Friday, July 25, 2025
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 168 Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters
The Foo Fighters always reminds me entirely of the unhappiest relationship of my life. 'So hard luck pal, drain your glass and I'll buy the next round. You've got to hear this one. What d'you mean you don't feel like being depressed. Oh drink up.. '
In love in Warsaw in 1995 with a beautufil and intelligent woman. Very funny. Two months of romantic and forgive me reasonably erotic bliss.though we were never the whole romantic dream as a couple.We made the mistake of going to Prague together where any idea that our names were entwined in the stars and we were meant to be. crashed and burned fairly instantly..
If we ever had much compatability at all it soon vanished into the Prague fog.We didn't use the city as we should have done for romanve. Our timetables were too prohibitive Looking back I suspect it's just a phase some need to go through in their youth.
She told me she was a nihilist. I suspected she was just slightly depressive and critical. Looking back it wasn't a love match. Both of us just smoked all the time and drank a fair bit. of it too. I had a rather grim flat far from the city centre where I wanted to be..Hers wasn't much better. She bought herself some appalling plastic green coasters which still break me out in a cold sweat to even think of.
My main memory of my flat is the vile cream antimacassars on the settee whuch my landlord used to come in during the day when I was out at work and replace on the sofas because I didn't like them and kept taking them off.It was like some West End farce. With vile cream antimacassars as a controlling plot component
I was listening to Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie which I eventually realised was rather morose and depressing and not nearly as good as Siamese Dream. It certainly wasn't a helpful sountrack if you're feeling slightly blue. .
'Emptiness is loneliness and loneliness is cleaniness and cleanliness is godliness and god is empty just like me. ' Gee thanks Bill Corgan. Could you pass the salt? 1979 was alright I suppose. But the nine minute tracks. Most of it was just showing off I eventually decided. I tried really hard because Siamese Dream had been so astonishing. But I realise now that it wasn't really a good album to be listening to when I was feeling so miserable. There weren't any jokes. Or certainly nothing to make me smile.And some of the songs were just too bloody long.
One morning my beloved burst into tears at the breakfast table given the exploitative and exhausting nature of the split shifts we were being asked to teach. The school was really pretty horrid the director of studies who had to inject herself daily for a severe diabetic condition didn't seem sane and I didn't particularly connect wuth my colleagues or students.
In short reader, I was really unhappy !!!! I imagine I was not much fun to be with. No wonder my loved one concluded, 'I think I've had enough of this one.' And began plotting her escape.
Anyway if I was miserable and she was miserable and Billy Corgan was miserable at least Foo Fighters were around. I'd bought their eponymous debut as a cassette on the bootleg stalls outside Empik in Marszalkowska befire we'd left Warsaw.
I imagine Dave Grohl wasn't feeling much more chipper than Billy or me at the time. Given the Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love stuff he was gradually extracting himself from, but at least he gave it a go. Foo Fighters was an absolutely fantastic record and it wasn't even particularly glum or self pitying anyway. Come on Dave. Make an effort. That stuff sells.
And the band played in Prague while I was there and my relationship was petering out like Benjamin Braddock's car at the end of The Graduate. I went to see them with a Canadian bloke called Ken who was going out wuth a nice girl from the Home Counties called Barbara. Yes err. 'Ken and ******'
Foo Fughters were fantastic live. It was loud and fun and rather marvellous. I even bought a beanie with Foo Fighters written on it. It was a good acquisition given the Prague winter we were in the middle of. It was a positively celebratory everning. Dave was clearly not trading on the Nirvana angst ticket. He wanted to be happy I probably did too
. Anyway. Enough of Foo Fughters and back to my own personal misery. No, of course I haven'r forgotten my thread. Do you want another? Our love dried up jolly quickly, by November I'd say and it wasn't really very nice even to be in Prague. I remember it as cold and dark. My flat was horrid and our relationship was pretty awful We agreed it wasn't really working and that it might be an idea if I went back to Warsaw.
My amour pretty quickly got involved with someone else and came over to see me in Warsaw to tell me it was off. Without telling me about the someone else. What a ****** . Don't fret. I'm over it. I slumped at the time even though it was clearly not meant to be and went to Batcelona for a small jaunt which frankly did the trick While I was in Barcelona I moved on from Foo Fighters to the Super Furry Animals. Love is cruel. You know it's true.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 158 Chris Stamey - Anything Is Possible
Chris Stamey of the dBs has an album out. It's called Anything Is Possible . It's nice timing on the recent loss of Brian Wilson because the Beach Boys are a key presence on here These are well crafted tuneful pop songs in the tradution if dBs, XTC, Split Enz and The Beatles.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,153 The Reds, Pinks & Purples
The world doesn't need another band. How true. But still they keep coming. and so do the The Reds, Pinks & Purples albums. Every six months or so. This time The Past Is a Garden I Never Feed. And they're eseentially the same thing. Not really in the way that Smiths, Belle & Sebastian or Felt ones are. Variatuins on a theme with some forward momentum.
No, these are the same. Gloomy, rather self pitying C-86 tunes. Wanly strummed without any real chorus. Sing titles which Mirrissey ir David Gedge would be happy with. I like them. I like this. But it's a slight mystery as to whether even Eruc Donaldson, who essentially is The Reds, Pinks & Purples can be slightly sure whether he's put out this record before I imagine.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 169 Kevin Coyne - Millionaires and Teddy Bears
I spent a couple of years in Germany thirty years ago at the start of the Nineties. In Dortmund, a city I really liked even though at the time and still possibly it didn't have the best reputation among Germans. Possibly because of its industrial past. But I liked it. Memories of my couple of years there can still warm me up and carry me off.
I worked as a language teacher in a slightly variable language school run by a dubious Italian middle aged businessman. He fancied himself as a ladies man even though he wasn't remotely attractive but he would kick in to action whever a pretty woman entered the school and it was a sight to behold. Fawlty Towers with a dubous language learning aproach tacked on as an afterthought.
It had an S Bahn. A U bahn. Excellent and affordable transport system. It was clise to Bochum, Essen, Wuppertal, Dortmund, Essen and Cologne. All excellent cities with different ambiences and qualities. A very relaxed place to live. I'd love to go back..
Dortmund also had an excellent football club Borussia who I went to see on a number of occasions. Whever I could. The atmosphere was rousing and exciting and Borussia generally won, sending us all home happy. In lurid yellow.The city had bars, restaurants and cafes. Parks. Also culture. An Opera House. Though of course I never went there. We had an opera singer, Michael an American who got variable work there and moonlighted with us. He wouldn't sing for us. Despite entreaties. .
It also was affordable. I was a freelancer and we were paid late sometimes so it could be a bit variable money wise but I was young and in great company. I saw any number of wonderful bands during my time there. Soundgarden in Dortmund. Smashing Pumpkins and The Verve in Cologne. Buffalo Tom. P.J. Harvey. The atmosphere at gigs was civil and reaoinably calm in contrast to the boisterousness I knew from England. It was a great place to live. I liked the Germans and liked Germany. I was coming through a bad time and beomg there helped. .
But the best thing of all was the people I worked with and socialised with. My colleagues and their broader circle. Vivid, lively and sociable people. From Germany , England, Ireland, France, Belgium, Denmark, Australia, America and elsewhere. We were young and acted like it. We drank and smoked all the time. Between lessons during the week and all through the weekends.It was the best of times.
On one of the first Saturdays after I arrived I was taken by my colleagues Sinead, Rachael, Kathryn and Helen to Marche after our lessons. There was a young man waiting outside smoking a cigarette. He was handsome. projected instant character and I liked him immediately. He was talking almost as much to himself as to anyone else. About Tim Buckley. His name was Matt..
We went inside and met Pam, Matt's girlfiend. A pretty, confident woman with remarkable straight red hair. We sat and chattered. Gradually I found myself brought into the group. Everybody was friendly, hospitable and kind. Open. It was a tough knit group of people and I made some important friendships. With Rachael who remains my best female friend over thirty years later. And importantly with Matt.
After a few weeks it became obvious that we had stuff in common. It's always nice when this happens with men. We had similar music taste.Most importantly music. We had similar and generally complementary taste in cuture in general. He had a taste for 'sick' horror which I never really shared.
After a few weeks Matt started inviting me round to his Friday afternoon dos.He'd roll fat joints and we'd pass them round and discuss the world, our colleagues,MTV, the world and life in general. Sometimes in the company of others. Sometumes just the two of us.
He had the best flat. Full of great finds from Saturday Antiques markets. Poufs. Odd babies heads. A dartboard. Plantpots. Ashtrays. It reminded me of the Seventies ITV sitcom Robin's Nest. Richard O'Sullivan was not unlike Matt in many respects.
He had a fantastic sense of humour which the dope only sharpened. One Friday afternoon he raised a yellow gummi bear to the light and brandished it at me. 'Imagine smoking that!'. It's great when you can recall a moment vividly 31 years later. I made him laugh too. It was an important friendhip we realised with time. The kind of friendship that only comes along a few times in a lifetume. Rare. It wasn't just Matt. I look back at the assotyment of people and my heart warms. It's the best way to spend a youth. Those who voted BREXIT should be ashamed. .
The music we listened to varied. We both liked The Beatles, Led Zep and R.E.M. Matt didn't have an enormous amount of black music in hus collection. I can't ever really remember listening to Jazz. But we were young. I got into the Brit Pop bands when they emerged. He was less impressed.
.He occasionally put a Derek & Clive record on and we laughed. Sometumes easily, sometimes slightly uneasily. He and Pam introduced me to Alan Partridge and his radio shows which we listened to on repeat. .
Grunge was the music of the times. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and the associated scrum. One afternoon I went round and there was a news story on MTV unfolding. Something had happened in Kurt Cobain relatively modest place in Seattle.There was all kunds of speculation but it took a couple of hours for things to be clarified. The narratuve to unravel.
The joints we passed between us didn't help. It was one of the most genuinely upsetting afternoons I can remember. Actually in my whole life. A body was eventually spotted and zoomed in on on the TV screen. It was confirmed it was Cobain and that he was dead. It was a very, very unpleasant coupleoif hours and it affected a few of us for quite a while. He was clearly an irreplaceable figure. A one off. .
Other weeks Matt would play singer songwriters a specualuty of his. The cornerstone of his collection. Van Morrison, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley and Cat Stevens. Also more obscure curiosities, Al Stewart and particularly Kevin Coyne. An oddball maverick figure who appealed to Matt;s own idiosyncratic tendency. Apparently when Jim Morrison died Coyne was tentaively muted as his replacement. It's a strange image a mishappen Midland nutter struggling into Lizard King leathers.
Matt died about ten years back.Cancer ate him up.over a couple if years in Leiden, Holland where he'd settled with the eventual love of his life. He and Pam had gone their separate ways and a guy like Matt was never going to be changed as she wanted. Straighten up for career purposes. He was handsome and was seldom alone durung the tume I knew him, if ever thinking back. Always in a relatuinship. Wuth a succession of beautufuk women. Over the years he went on to sail through a number of apparently happy relationships which all went rocky sooner or later until he found his plateau wuth a Dutch woman with a young daughter from a previous marriage.
I'm still upset about it really. Do you ever stop being upset about important people who die. . I had a picture of him on my office desk but eventually decided to park it in a drawer becuase it would make me cry after a couple of beers. It's not a good idea to make yourself cry. Probably a better idea to put on a Kevin Coyne record in this case.
.
Thursday, July 24, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 159 Gina Birch - Trouble
'In a school when I was two PiD that afternoon.'
If in doubt namedrop Gina Birch and Ana de Santos and bang on about Raincoats and how long you've been into them. Ask Horsegirl. Ask anyone who's working in any Rough Trade Shop ever. Listen to Gina Birch's new album Trouble.It's great. You'll be watching Sammu & Rosie Get Laid again. Make you feel like you're 17 again.
I Thought I'd Live Forever, the opening track sets the whole thing up perfectly. It's the world as observed from an angle of alterno cool. The late seventies and early Eughties alternative DiY perspective writ large.
Then Causing Trouble is the whole refusenik manufesto in frdge magnet form. And that's no slur. It's like a cult rainbow.. 'I'm a girl and I shall not conform, in fact I'll smudge my eye shadow if I bloomin' well want to.' And then a checklist of the cool squad. Yoko One, Delia Derbyshire, Joan Fontaine. Kathleen Hanna, Nina Simone. .Are you writing all these down.
It's the world. If it decided to spin the other way from the way it's cureently spinning and threatened to click off its axis. Goodness knows it mightn't be the worst idea the way things are going. It all has a splendid dubby slightly haunted air. Fabulous frankly.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 442 Neil Young - Silver & Gold
We know what Neil Young sounds like. This was his first of the new millenium. It has a sure tread and a nostalgic tone.I'm not enturely sure if I would rather lusten to it than Harvest or Last Of The Gold Rush but for devotees it does the job.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,152 Chris Stamey
Chris Stamey of the dBs has an album out. It's called Anything Is Possible . It's nice timing on the recent loss of Brian Wilson because the Beach Boys are a key presence on here These are well crafted tuneful pop songs in the tradution if dBs, XTC, Split Enz and The Beatles. .
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 160 Vinyl Williams. - Portasymphony
Vinyl Williams.New album Portasymphony.Starts off sounding like lift music. There are worse things. Second track the vocals kick in. . We're carried off into the Californian ether. It's a bit bland sometimes. Bit there are words things than that too.
As the tracks move the mood kucks in . The beats are tight and funky. The drummer is wicked. You feel you're on a beach. Possibly the one under the pavement. Wiles away a funky fifty minutes.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,151 Autocamper
If in doubt find yourself a Slumberland album. Autocamper's latest What You Do All Day is the latest contender.' Not Anorak, not Twee, Not Lucky Just Pop. ' I don't wish to be picky. But What You Do All Day seems like all four to me. And all the better for it.
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 170 Split Enz - True Colours
For me the period between 1978 and 1982 in terms of my musical and personal journey was a question of fiding my taste. And Split Enz were a part of that journey. I think I was looking for intelligence, wit, melody and a certain resilience and idiosyncratic perspective and they played a strong hand on all fronts.
True Colours performed in different markets and is probably the bands best known album. It was quirky but Poppy;It has a cover that resembles the kind of painting that you might find yourself staring at one Saturday afternoon in a Modern Art Gallery and wander off eventually none the wiser.
The lyrics told stories about genuine life dilemmas. The guy in the corner of the office who no-one really likes and doesn't actually much like himself really. Why people stick together. Partially through fear. . The grief of parting when you're young. It has a certain Existential edge which is always a clincher for me. It comes from an angle as so many records did in those days. It stands up getting on to fifty years on. I wish it had a lyric sheet.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 161 Fieldress - It's a Lot
It's good to have some things you can rely on. Our course seems set. A clear week of sailing ahead on It Starts With a Birthstone. If in doubt Ahab has found, give Starbuck a turn at the wheel and Captain Ahab (that's me, me hearties), can slink off to the hammock on the deck, hang up me false leg and allow his first mate to set the course and the soundtrack.
A couple of days ago Starbuck (AKA Darren Jones, as good a friend as a Blog Captain ever had), came on deck with a fresh list of suggestions and I'm gratefully ticking them off as we head towards Mid July and a family wedding celebration.
This morning oire from Oakland, California's .excellent scene. Fieldress, an eclectic bunch, and their latest album It's a Lot. On first listen I'd say it's a lot of charm and beauty. A heady brew of Jazz, Folk, playfulness at every turn. Melody, mystery and no little harmony. In short just what the captain ordered. Fix yourself a measure of grog Starbuck. Steady as she goes. Altogether, splendid stuff !
Song(s) of the Day # 4,150 Walter Mitty & His Unknown Orchestra
Man overboard !!! Temporarily locked out of my account.Humph. In the meantine while I wait for my new password to arrive I write out my reviews on a Word Document, Old school if you like and way for normal serice. Hmph. The ways of the midern world bemuse me somewhat.
Never mind I have the splendidly named Walter Mitty & His Unknown Orchestra’s Yikes Almighty to bide,me over. Old school alternative American whimsy of the best sort. Hold the line me hearties. Plain sailing up ahead.
P.S. Ordinary service reviewed ahead of schedule. Land Ho !
Monday, July 21, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 162 Preoccupations - Ill At Ease
Canadians Preoccupations kicked off in 2015 as Viet Cong. A name change was deemed sensible, so as not to offend the sensibilities of of the politically sensitive / controlling. Almost a decade later on they're back with a new album Ill at Ease and it covers a lot of ground.
Post Punk is a term that comes to mind. It's been an unavoidable catch all umbrella term for too long now. Preoccupations have a Pop sensibility as much as a Rock one and this vacillate between Joy Division and OMD at times. Intensity is nothing to be scared if it seems.
I'm not sure how often I'll listen to this. Last iught as I listened as the sun set I felt it lacked some of the rigour of the likes of Protomartyr , Big Thief or Ought, but it's a polished sound which will appeal to young professional couples opting for a night in and some quality time over a bottle of wine and the latest HBO binge fest. There's much here that glistens. Give it time. Towards the close I found it began to glow..
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 171 Lou Reed & John Cale - Songs For Drella
'
'This is a Rock group called the Velvet Underground.'
Lou Reed was not a sentimental man. Neither was John Cale. There's no room for sentiment in art. Life is tough. It's a war out there. They knew they slotted together well. There is a famous photograph of them sitting tigether under a Christmas Trees in the Seventies with faces that curdle the lens. You never get the impression that they liked each other very much . But they knew what the other brought to the table.
1990' Songs For Drella written for Andy Warhol has an elegaic, poignant edge,You can feel the regret. The anger. The artistic respect. It's an exercise in paying dues.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,149 Billy Marten
You get the sense that the record company folk couldn't believe their luck when Billy Marten. It's a box ticker of what I imagine they're looking for in the modern artist. Sensitive, sturdy , hidden depth, bruef ecoes if Joni Mitchell, and all that early Laurel Canyon vibe .
Only trouble with new album Dog Eared. It never breaks for cover. Or threatens to. It's astonishingly risk averse. Constructed from the kind of components that would generally slot together with potent vigour. That's lacking here. It's bland I;m afraid.
Sunday, July 20, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 163 Petite Amie - Hay Vaces
Petite Amie ! Little Friend !. Hey my French is pretty basic but I have my moments. Petite Amie c'est es mon nouveau meilleur amie. They're triff !
Latest album Hay Vaces is a zinger ! Gallic esprit, Verve. Glass overflowing souffle light melodies. Out of Mexico City but switching between Spanish and French at will and frequently charming the birds from the trees.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 444 Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther
Some kind of Folk Masterpiece. Not a millin miles away from Getty Rafferty. Meets John Grant. Thoas Hardy meets Ursuka le Guin. And all the better for it.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,148 Roy Harper
I'm in Canterbury at the family home of my beloved parents. They're ninety years old and have seen and experienced an incredible amount. Multitudes. They are at church at the moment. They will return soon and we will eat together and then later in the afternoon I will pack my bags and catch a train to Canterbury West. Get off the train at St Pancras and cross a road to Kings Cross and catch another train and return to Newcastle to my flat and hit the sack pretty immediately.
Tomorrow my alarm will ring.I will rise early. Send a song to someone special. Run my bath , fix breakfast and start again. An online lesson will start at 8.15 with insurance people in Dussledorf. We'll laugh and learn. .We all must all walk this way. Living life a day at a time, Putting bread on the table..Learning. What do they say 'lifelong learning'. The first thing you need to recognise is that life is a mystery essentially. And that change is inevitable.And go from there. .
Yesterday there was a wedding ceremony down the road from my parents where my marvellous. Spanish sister in law lives in a large house with her family. It was a wonderful celebration of life and love.And endurance. Immaculate creation and existance. I've just popped down the road to see her and her daughter and her husband who were rising to clear up and get started on the new day.To thank them and bid them farewell. Until the next time we're together .
Big fat raindrops are dropping outside in Canterbury. After seeing my sister in law I nipped back and bought my mother some croissants and a pint of semi skimmed milk. What my mother wants my mother gets. My parents have just arrived home . My mother has rushed to the TV set and tried to get a pictire. The Sky set has failed due to irregular weather. I said 'Why don't we talk to each ohter?' I fear this has fallen on deaf ears.
So I'm back upstairs listening to Roy Harper's Stormcock on headphones in my small box bedroom at the front of the house while my mother prepares Sunday lunch. Roy Harper always reminds me of a dearly departed friend. Thirty years ago when I was so much younger, much younger than today I used to visit him on Friday afternoons in his flat in Dortmund when the working week was mostly done.
Matt would roll fat joints and we'd pass them back and forth beween the two of us while Nick Drake, Roy Harper and Kevin Coyne records played on his stereo, Then we'd switch to Grunge, Led Zep or The Beatles or R.E.M. He'd pick out his acoustic guitar and play a passable version of So.Central Rain while the shadows darkened before we were called out into the night to catch a tram into town to commune with fruends in some German hostelry. Those were the days.
But there's no point dwelling on the past because time marches on. The one thing we must all realise is that time has a remoresless tread and will sweep all befoer it. Stormcock, which Matt always used to insist was the Roy Harper album, sounds pretty good to me.
There's an interview with Roy Harper in the current edition of Uncut. I read it on the train down to Canterbury on Friday night. When asked about his legacy, the legacy of his artistic spirit he said
;' That's a kind thought. But I don't think any of us can afford to think about anything like that. There are hige changes coming along in any case. Legacy as a concept might be incredibly irrelevant. It might be possible that within fifty years we might be looking at this age n the way we now see Cicero or the Jurrasic era. AI is one thing but certainly the changes that are coming are are going to carry us into a very different place than the one we occupy at present . So thinking of me and my legacy is pure rainbow.'
This post is done. My mother has found a documentary on silverback gorillas to watch. It's time for lunch.
Saturday, July 19, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 164 Suzanne Vega - Flying With Angels
It's difficult to distance music appreciation from personal experience.That's inevutably what we wrap oir tastes and judgements aroind. It's virtually impossible to disentangle perseptions and associations and why would we even want to. Suzanne Vega reminds me of a girlfriend I went through university with who really liked Marlene on the Wall when we started going out and so I have an association of her and that song in particular. which is related unextricably to the time when we were falling in love. I love that first album still.I could make a reasonable argument as to why I rate it but to what degree is my appreciation related to rose tinted spectacles of an incredibly special moment in my life ?
We went to see Vega when she played the university we were at in the second year. It's a slightly darker memory for a number of reasons. Vega was touring her second album Solitude Standing and it wasn't a particularly memorable gig or pleasant evening for reasons I won't trouble you with.. As a result I find it difficult to play the second album now without my memory banks clouding the experience although there's nothing wrong with Solitude Standing. But I just can't view it objectively. It has bad associations so I'd rather play the first.
Never mind all that. Suzanne's back and she has new ware to flog Flying With Angels. .It's her tenth album and by now you know pretty much what it's going to sound like. She found her groove right from the off and has stuck to her path. She was once a waif like poetic sould with a bit of an edge who made you want to move to Greenwich Village and find a similar type to move into a loft with.
She's still a craftswoman, an artisan. Some songs here work better than others. When she starts to rock out on Witch I felt she could rein it in a little, At times the rhymes are slightly glib. The songs where she appreciates the moment and goes in with the surgeon's knife there are some gentle affecting flashes of inspiration,, Chambermaid was a particularly affecting twist on Dylan's I Want You, Last Train From Mariupol is an indication that romance will never be dead. I had a nice forty minutes with this last nighr. It's an accomplished and dignified record worthy of her name, Her name is Suzanne...
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 165 The Nightingales - The Awful Truth
Robert Lloyd is not your average Rock & Roll figure to put it mildly. They are forbears and paralells. Most obviously Captain Beefheart and Pere Ubu's David Thomas. Never mind Gargantua and Pantagruel if you're looking to impress your mates. Have you seen them live. You really should? But really he's earned his moment given his committed willingness to step up to the plate and swing for all he's worth for countless years.
Latest album The Awful Truth is a rompathon and no mistake. A mix and match. By turns Glam, Punk, Rockabilly and everything in between. It's damned good fun for the whole Rock & Roll family. The likes of Marc Riley and Steward Lee will be dressing up in their finery to strut their stuff and embarass younger relatives. It's not what you'd describe a coherent listen. But that's never been what you go to The Nightingales for.. Excellent stuff !
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 445 Coldplay - Viva Le Vida
Here come Coldplay. 'Oh good' I hearr you cry. I luke the second album because it wil always remind me of someone who us fundamental. That doesn't mean I have to have their babies. Diminishing returns for the most part.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,147 Vinyl Williams
Vinyl Williams.New album Portasymphony.Starts off sounding like lift music. There are worse things. Second track the vocals kick in. . We're carried off into the Californian ether. It's a bit bland sometimes. Bit there are words things than that too.
As the tracks move the mood kucks in . The beats are tight and funky. The drummer is wicked. You feel you're on a beach. Possibly the one under the pavement. Wiles away a funky fifty minutes.
Friday, July 18, 2025
Song(s) of the Day # 4,146 Mike Poliizze
Mike Polizze of Hurling Piss has a new album out. It is called Around Sound. It is wistful and aching. The kind of thing you would expect from J Mascis or Kurt Vile.
It has an acoustic, pained edge at times but mostly it goes with the elements and finds its way to a smoth landing place. It's rather lovely actually. .
Thursday, July 17, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 166 Jimmie Kilpatrick - Jimmie
The Sound of American Failure. It's a trope. A broad slope. Genrally heavily unfluenced by Pavement these days. But why should I car. I like Pavement.
Jimmie Kilpatrick is the latest slacker loser . On his latest and presumably debut album Jimmie he's dressed for success. But what do you know. Success it never comes.
This is a well worn road by now. Let's face it. Originality is hard to come by these days. And why bother . If you've got a handful of Replacements, Pavement and Sebadohrecords and not enough inclination to lay down a new path across the Rock & Roll woods. Innocent fun! Actually a very fine record within given permaters.
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