Friday, October 31, 2025
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 349 Ben Fold - Rockin' The Suburbs
Ben Folds I've never gravitated to particularly. But his sound has a certain gormless purity, Reminds me of Radio 2 in the Seventies. The sense that things would never change.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 62 Carson McHone
I'm just back from Dublin. My bath is running. My stereo has packed in and I'm listening to Carson McHone's Pentimento on headphones . It's Uncut Album of the Month which gives you the sense before you start listening that it'll be a slice of Ameruca wistfulness. So it proves.
We get a series of melodic, heartfelt Pop songs with a country songs from Austin, Texas, now removed to Ontario, Canada..Inerspersed with poetic, instrumental reflections in the state of existence. That stirs my tea nicely. Homely.!
Song(s) of the Day # 4246 Belair Lip Bombs
Insouciante. Ragged but tight freewheeling sound. Belair Lip Bombs second record; Again. Start again. Attitude and carefree ways. New wave ties. New wave ways.
Belair Lip Bombs are clearly going for it by the sounds of their interviews and the cut of their jib here. It's fabulous swagger. Makes me want to put on my Pretenders and Only Ones change. Some things change. Some things always remain the same.
Australia clearly has the wind in its sails. As ever. Rolling Blackouts, Courtney Barnett. The Triffids, The Go Betweens. Land Ahoy
Thursday, October 30, 2025
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,520 The Chemical Brothers - Surrender
The period when DJs briefly became Pop Stars was an odd one for me. There was an essential facelessness about it which didn't feed all of my sense and needs. Plenty of the music appealed but I was never a clubber and always responded to emotions and lyrics to a greater degree than beats and rhythms. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy a record like Surrender.
Quite the opposite. There's a blissed out element to the listening experience which is now best experienced for me with headphones as the sun sets. Comfortably Numb as the man says
Song(s) of the Day # 4245 Sparks
Sparks have a new album out. It's called MAD ! It's immediately recognisable as a Sparks album. It couldn't be anything else. It's their 26th album since they formed in Los Angeles in 1971. When I was 5 years old and still in Zimbabwe where I was born. My family came back to England where my parents were from the following year.
I've grown up left home. Taught for 36 years n ten different countries. Lived and loved. Wined and dined. Drank and smoked a lot. Generally tried to live life to the full. .Lived in Newcastle for the best part of twenty years and am now doing what I hope will be my last working position. Teaching business people online.
All that time Sparks have been being Sparks. Putting out records, touring, giving interviews. Their body of work is always diverse but has certain characteristics, They're celebratory, cerebral, pleased with themselves. Acerbic. Droll. Quality product.
MAD ! Isn't bad. Lush, cinematic informed. They're super trouper. I love a lot of their records.. Have never disliked any that I've ever heard. They're frenetic but lack the irritating qualities of those who have run our of things to say because they clearly never will. I wouldn't like to listen to them all the time but they're up there. As someone who writes a blog on a daily basis I'm hardly entitled to have a pop at them. In fact they are precisely the kind of artists I started the blog to write about. God bless them !
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 350 Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans
The one thing you have to give to the current century is that it's been interesting. Defied expectations. Put on a show. Sufjan Stevens records are an interesting thing to listen to while pondering its twists and turns as any I know.. He sings songs of faith and devotion. Of conflict and self doubt. He has an incredible appreciation of beauty,.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 63 Model / Actriz
I'm one day away from 60, though I've come to realise as that day closes in that it's nothing but another label. I looked at my voicemails and text messages from yesterday as I woke this morning and realised how far I move on emotionally within twenty four hours. Every passing day. Even the strongest emotions can be completely fleeting.
I don't pretend to understand people thirty or forty years younger than me. Gender, identity or persona related issues leave me unsure and quizzical. I grew up in a world which seemed simpler. Ways of looking at the world seemed less complex. I grew up in an era where things were bountiful in many respects and over the six decades I've been alive this fantastic gift and legacy has been frittered and ravaged..This leaves us at each other's throats
But I write this blog on a daily basis still. It focuses on music but this is really a front to talking about the mysteries of the universe. That's the struggle we're all engaged in. Whether we like it or not. I listen to music and try to say something about it. A different angle to the same fundamental approach.
Today Model/ Actriz would you believe. It's pretension but you're only alive once. You might as well try to make a splash. Pirouette is hardly the Last Splash but it is not just another Drop In the Ocean. OK that's enough alternative inside gags.
Anyway. I like it. It's intense and full blooded. It's reckless. Melodic, melodramatic, artistic, overwrought and nonsensical by turns. Is it Post Post Punk ? I haven't the foggiest It's still Rock & Roll to me
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 91 Bill Callahan - Dream River
'Looking at the carpets and the chairs.' I continue with the recent philosophical exercise I've applied to my days of late. Listening to the same record as I make my way through the teaching day. Getting to the end of each online lesson. Going to the record player. Turning it over. Making some toast. Boiling an egg. Perhaps some pasta or noodles. More cereal. Onward.
Today I make my way through the day with Bill Callahan and his journey round the sun. Bill's as philosophical as they get. Dry. Flinty. But he touches frequently on ideas that make you consider your place in the overall scheme. Being a speck. Part of something bigger than yourself. To imagine yourself as a bird on the wing. To find yourself at the place where the river splits to meet the sea. And be happy to be alive. Grateful.
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,521 Rush - Signals
Some people really, really like Rush. I don't. I guess they have to hit you at the right age. I wonder when that is? I like the cover here of a dalmation sniffing a fire hydrant. The record itself puzzled me.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 92 Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
'I'm not afraid anymore... I keep my eyes on the door. But I remember when we were young...'
Regrets. I have a few... Actually not. I've never really been one for regrets. It strikes me as a slightly pointless emotion. But I do wish I'd recorded what I felt about records like these when I bought and first listened to them. In this case I imagine at nineteen .I would have thought the way I felt when I first heard it its markedly different from what I feel now. I'll never know.
Listening through to the record now at sixty (for the second time in twenty four hours - err that's a good name for a song) , I don't feel sad or god forbid suicidal. That's nothing but the immediate historical context of the record. It's just phenomenally powerful. Streamlined. Inspired.
The members of Joy Division reportedly didn't like the way the record sounded when they heard it. It wasn't the sound that they had playing inside their heads. But the overall sound of the record conveys the sense it me of a group of musicians guided by something, driven by forces they didn't understand and could barely Control. Erm. Good name for a film.
The production and the packaging are quite remarkable. The name of the album inspired. The flirtation with powerful and elemental forces slightly unwise perhaps in retrospect but worthy of the deepest respect. , Guided. Guided by voices
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 351 Dan Deacon - Spiderman Of The Rings
Schizophrenic. Obsessed with modern noise. Cacophony. Fairly soon I got irritated and went elsewhere..
Song(s) of the Day # 4244 Gwennifer Raymond
The early Seventies. A near mythical place. Long beards. Hair length. Guitar solos. The long trek to It seems this occupies a similar space in the imagination of musicians. Listen to Gwennifer Raymond's latest Last Night I Heard The Dark Star Bark.
You can virtually visualise the fur forming on the kitchen kettle. The wooden chairs round a wooden table. Time slows to a pre Internet Tick Tock. Peel some spuds. Warm up the hearth There's an open fire for you to mount a pyre of wood and coal. 'Let's go home. The sky's beginning to bruise. We shall be forced to camp.'
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 65 Sagittaire - Coventry Suite Pt 1 is Collision Music
Off the beaten track. Starbuck at the wheel . Darren Jones who introduced me to Sagittaire's fabulous 2023 album Lucian & Caroline by LA visionary maverick Ivan Mairess.
That was a Trip Hopish exploration about the affair between Lucian Freud and Lady Caroline Blackwood. This new record Coventry Suite Pt 1 is Collisoion Music, the vein of experimentation associated with Bull Laswell accoding to its bandcamp page.
Cinematic and layered like the best dreams. Help yourself to Grog Starbuck . More splendid stuff. Fill your boots..
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,522 Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
When I started listening to this my first thought was that the title of the record was likely to be rather better than the record. I was unkind. I don't mind Kasabian. They have a yobbish flair, I found myself thinking of Zigger Zagger,,
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 352 Dungen - Tio Bitar
Are you not au fait with the back catalogue of Swedish Psych Rockers. They make a right blooming racket. You might like to start here. Or somewhere else. They've made plenty of records. This one sounded alright.when I started listening. I continued and found myself deeply spellbound. A deft and textured album with a genuine and profound feeling for the psychedelic mindset.
Song(s) of the Day # 4243 Chuck D
In my last year at university I saw Do The Right Thing when it came out, Bought Fear of a Black Planet came back and played it full volume in my student flat. Felt very pleased with myself and my good tasteA white liberal playing a platter that mattered. It was righteous. I was doing the right thing ,
Now I'm listening to Chuck D's Chuck D Presents Enemy Radio Radio Armageddon, It's fired by the same furiousm informed flames. Razor sharp wit and intellect. Ahead of the pack. Regardless of what some might have you believe there is some news that can't be faked .
Tuning in to a radio is a dying art, But some things never change, This doesn't skip a beat. Straight from the heart. Stealing a base. Into the charts, That matter,
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 66 Caroline - Caroline 2
Ambition. It's no bad thing somethimes. They're an eight piece London based collective called Caroline. Their second album is called Caroline 2. Sometimes it probably pays to keep things simple. I've been listening to it on my as I dressed and had my breakfast before going off on a working holiday.
The first thung I had to do was turn down the volume slightly. First track Total Euphoria was slightly clamorous.It's all rather odd. But it's diverse. Their mission statement is clearly to stretch themselves and their audience. I liked some tracks more than others. Speed things up and slow things down. They don't seem a million miles from The Brixton Windmill Post Punk collectives.
It quietens its pace rather after Total Euphoria and becomes really quite alluring and soothing for the most part from thereon. As I completed my packing and realised I was ready to go I fely calm. It reminded me rather of Robert Wyatt and that's quite a comforting association I find. I'll revisit this.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 94 Black Uhuru - Chill Out
Reggae was a thick and impenetrable jungle in the early Eighties. A great thing to come of age to. Exotic and erotic and infused with energy and soul. Blood and fire. A greenhouse of orchids. I can almost taste and smell the spliffs that were passed round the common room of my tertiary college that my school friends gravitated to to an excessive and unwise degree. Youth someone said is wasted on the young.
In the locus shift we all made after leaving Secondary School in the early Eighties, Reggae was the essential backbone The lead instrument was Robby Shakespeare's bass. Our spine was his bassline. As we moved unknowingly from adolescence to our late teenage years. towards our twenties. From Petersham to Richmond College for O Level Retakes, vocational training or A Level pathways.
Richmond College was confusingly located in Twickenham. A Phil Bennett drop kick from the rugby union stadium. Black Uhuru supported The Rolling Stones and J.Geils band there around about that time. My parents moved from Richmond to Teddington , my elder siblings had left home leaving me and my sister in the nest with mum and dad and a neurotic middle class cat called Pandora..
I had the top floor of the house. .Privileged status at last. I got John Lennon / Leon Trotsky rimmed spectacles and my confidence grew. I learned to ride a bike in Bushy Park. Dad had never taught me. A family joke. I was unsteady but willing and practised puncture repair and made my way shakily to college, I never felt secure on the back of a bike. I don't cycle now. Have never learned to drive. .
I rationed my visits to the common room in my A Level years. I wanted to go to university and was discovering the abiding loves of my life. Literature and Music. Constructing my identity around records and books. Echo & The Bunnymen and Aswad. Scott Fitzgerald and Graham Greene. Albert Camus and William Shakespeare. Agatha Christie. Left Wing politics. Girls.
I focused to a greater degree on my studies though I didn't actually fully manage this until the final year of my university studies. I was taking. Literature, History and Politics A Levels. Resitting Latin O Levels, with lessons with the college principle who was trying to tighten down both our understanding of the gerund form and the preposterous dope smoking fixation of rootless teens. The common room, in a separate annex at the end of the cafeteria corridor was mostly a blokes enclave and was shrouded in a rising mushroom cloud fug of sensimilia..
Listening to Black Uhuru before my morning bath takes me back forty years and more. Reggae was a fundamental strand of that teenage experience. Growing up in South West London. A short train ride from Brixton. My dad worked there encouraging the world to dole out christian aid. Black Uhuru were on Island Records. They had the tightest rhythm section on the planet. Sly and Robbie anchoring and martialing the beat. You could virtually smell Jamaica, Right Stuff is right. Chill out. That's an order !
Monday, October 27, 2025
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,523 Todd Rundgren - A Wizard A True Star
Astonishingly ambitious and diverse. Within single songs. Like the best records this creates a whole world.
Song(s) of the Day # 4242 Tennis
Anyone for tennis. It was a game I used to play. After a day at secondary school I'd go down with friends to the tennis courts on Richmond. Near the swimming baths. Not far from the station. Down the road from Kew Gardens. 1p to get in.
Concrete and grass. Concrete was the best idea if you wanted to actually have some rallies. The ball bounced. Wooden rackets. Someone had a metal one. Like Jimmy Connors. Garth, Andreas, Philip, Ben. Someone I will not name and shame. It's all forgotten now. Who always cheated. Shouted out when the ball was clearly in . 'I do not believe it!' You have to get ahead. However you can.
I always felt it was a matter of getting your serve going. Some forward momentum. That dispiriting splat when the ball sank into the net. Double faults were the ultimate deflater. But once the ball powered over the net you had some forward momentum. You were onto something.
If they managed to get the ball back somehow you could meet their return a volley at the net. Punch it into the open court. Imagine you were Borg.Guillermo Vilas. Vitas Gerulaitis. Raul Ramirez
Tennis, the airbrushed American alternative duo, trade in nostalgia on their latest album Face Down In The Garden. The kind of MOR radio my parents listened to throughout the seventies. Captain & Tennille .'Love will Keep us Together'. That man was never a captain. Holidaying on yachts the beautiful people . Having perfect teeth !
I'm not sure why this kind of nostalgia is still so prevalent. But I can get down to Face Down In The Garden, It offers escape and escape is always tempting . We will always need escape. Under the crazy paving pavement. Lies the beach !
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 67 Jeff Tweedy - Twilight Overdrive
It's not a huge surprise to find that Jeff Tweedy's new album Twilight Overdrive sounds a bit like Wilco. Slightly wistful reflective songs about the condition of life.
Life doesn't get any easier. Tweedy is aware of this.. But the sun keeps coming out and will continue to do so when we're no longer here. There's plenty of stoical spring in Tweedy's step here. Plenty of lyrical twists and turns
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 95 Van Morrison - St Dominic's Preview
When I was 27 i worked in Dortmund as a freelance teacher at a language school. I was in love with one of my female colleagues an Irishwoman. She's now married with two kids. I had an early morning lesson with an important manager at an electrical company, I would breakfast, leave my flat walk to the U Bahn. Catch the underground, Walk into the electrical company. Sign in. Take the lift. Go and see the manager. teach my lesson. Go. He was a nice guy.
Now I'm in love with a Polish woman living in Germany. She's divorced. She has two kids. In an hour I'm going to teach an online lesson with an important manager in Dussledorf. A short train ride from Dortmund. He's a nice guy. An actuary. He has two young kids,
We've agreed to discuss a BBC article about Facebook and Instagram refusing to flag content . We'll also talk about the football. We always do. On Saturday Borussia Dortmund beat Cologne one nil with a goal scored six minutes into extra time My cousin James was there. He sent me a picture of a beer he drank on the magnificent BVB standing terrace, I used to stand there myself. Every chance I got.
I'm glad I'm waking up to the sound of Van Morrison instead of the sound of kids. On my own. I can listen to St Dominic's Preview a couple of times while I wait to teach. Van can be a bit prosaic occasionally but he can hear the flowers. Can you?
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,524 The Cure - Three Imaginary Boys
This is generally seen as something of an outlier in terms of the way The Cure are generally perceived. Robert Smith's voice doesn't appear to have broken and they seem intent on impressing with they're Existentialist Bookshelf as anything else, They're also a Dark New Wave Pop band something they move away from for a few years before shifting back big time for Love Cats . Some utterly brilliant songs which drip with atmosphere. Their potential and originality are stunningly apparent
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 353 N- Dubz - Uncle B
Seemed energetic and vibrant. But forgive me, I didn't last long.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 96 The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground
'Candy says. I've come to hate my body...'
It's all there on the Velvet Underground . It was made and released in 1968. But it describes the modern condition. It came out when I was two. I bought it when I was twenty. I'm listening to it now I'm 60. I'm only really beginning to appreciate it now. It has Doo Wop. It does Rock & Roll. There's energy. Poetry. Sin. Soul. Confusion. You might like it. I do.
I bought this in the Christmas break in my first year at university. They seemed like significant purchases then and they still feel like that now. Planting flags in the turf. The Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. Television's second album Adventure. The Velvet Underground's third album. This. Candy Says, Pale Blue Eyes, Jesus, Beginning To See The Light. God knows, all of it.
It's not a record you would want to play to your mother. But strangely when I played it this morning it seemed to glow in a gas blue spiritual phosphorescence. I felt religious. Uncanny. Lou knows. Sterling , Doug, Lou and Mo understand..
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 97 Buffalo Tom - Let It All Come Down
Records make you think of people. In this case a friend I miss and will always miss. Listening to this makes me feel as if he's in the room with me. Listening to this with me. We went to see Buffalo Tom together in Cologne, I was heartbroken at the time. Just as later I was heartbroken when my friend passed. The heart heals. It's a remarkable organ. I used to go for the bassists songs rather than the guitarists sometimes. They were unashamedly soppy.. Now I've learned not to have favourites.
Records can be short stories. .If constructed artfully they fuse to become unified novels of coherent expression. As Bakhtin says novels express a multitude of voices struggling for attention and clarity. Let It All Come Down is lonely occasionally. But rises to and with the sun ultimately.
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 68 Tuung - Love You All Over Again
It's not particularly difficult to find records to write and talk about on here. We've only just turned the corner into February and I've already had ten or more excellent albums to document, catalogue, talk and write about here. Music remains wonderful distraction and refuge from the madness of the world.
For Thursday we have Tuung. 'Pagan Folktronica' , if you will. The collective's eighth album Love You All Over Again is cottage industry craftsmanship. Textured old school Art. Words and rhythms weaving together magically to form fascinating labyrinths of sound.
The instrumentation here is astonishingly inventive. Unconventional collages are fabricated utilising seashells, voices and collective endeavour. 'Disquisitions on nature, mythology and the human condition.'
This is an intriguing old school creation. A joyful discovery. Almost like an Oliver Postgate soundtrack to Noggin the Nog, The Clangers or Bagpuss. Love You All Over Again is a thing of intricate but mysterious beauty which insinuates iteslf under the skin and burrows its way gently and lovingly into the soul. In short, I like it.
Song(s) of the Day # 4242 Madison Cunningham
'I walked right in to that great tailspin.'
Ace by Madison Cunningham. An incredibly assured old school record reminiscent of Carly Simon, Carole King, Helen Redding. Enjoyed late on Saturday evening. Once again on Sunday morning with the clocks back and the sun bright in the heavens,.
This is a rich break- feast. As with Weyes Blood. Looking backwards to forge forward, The modern condition. Sunday morning is the best. It makes you wish for the Sunday supplements. To savor this at leisure. In pleasure. Lyrical twists, melodic flourishes. A realisation that life is good. Post a reminder to self. Listen to Randy Newman or Joni later today..
Do I want to watch the Political Digest. Would that spoil my still mood. In any respect I'll keep listening to this. Stretch out my good feeling, Madison the best possible company Old school. Generations change. Expression of fundamental emotions doesn't . This is classy.
'Sometimes I hate you so I want you back.'.
Saturday, October 25, 2025
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 98 Television - Double Exposure
The only Demo record to my knowledge in my collection . Television still have a particular grip on my imagination. They do everything that I want music and art to do. They're a marriage of Symbolist Poetry, Arthir Ayler Fender Guitars and Urban Romance. Being young and reckless. Fearing the worst but living to the full regardless.
My sister and one of my best friends bought Double Exposure for me in Dortmund in 1993 when they came out to see me one intensely dramatic weekend in 1993 that epitomises to me what being young is supposed to be all about.. Listening to it now brings the intensity and pure feeling of life lived at its most spirited and free. .
Here is another review I wrote about this incarnation of the band:
'What's really fun is to write under different names.'
Tom Verlaine
'When you're young, you don't especially think of yourself as being young. You're just alive and everything's interesting and you don't think of things in terms of age because you're not conscious of it.'
Richard Hell
'Prove it. Just the facts,'
Prove It
'I mean some people climb Mount Everest, are they less nuts? People die on Mount Everest - they get frostbite, they come out with no hands, no toes, dead, they get crushed by avalanches. Other people get shot to the moon and blown up in a space shuttle. For what? To float in weightlessness and look back on earth?
So I took things that made you do that without going anywhere. Yes, people died, but was it any more insane than the pursuits that are put on pedestals by ordinary human beings?'
Richard Lloyd, talking to Legs McNeil about choosing drugs in Please Kill Me
Some time in 1973 Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell cut their hair in New York. Shortly afterwards a lot of other people begin to do the same. Even as far away as in London. Then, at some point in 1976 Punk happens. And nothing has ever been quite the same again since. An oversimplification of course. But there's some germ of truth to it, if you're looking to find out the genesis of Punk, both in the States and in the UK. This makes a change from the standard stories about Malcolm McLaren and Johnny Rotten and Iggy & The Stooges playing The Scala in 1972.
Verlaine and Hell, then Miller and Meyers, met in High School in Delaware in the Mid-Sixties. They detected similar urges and drives in each other to break free from everything that was mapped out for them, walked out of the school gates one day, and had a much mythologised adventure together over the following days. Hitch hiking across a number of states towards the Florida border, taunted by rednecks along the way, they worked each other up into a giddy state one night in a remote field in Alabama, started a fire in a fit of youthful rebellion, and got picked up by the local cops, (not the police in the case of Television, definitely 'cops'), and taken back to Delaware. The incident formed a lasting bond between the two, and inspired first Meyers then Miller to relocate to New York in the mid to late Sixties, and plot a future for themselves as outsider poets and then musicians, while keeping themselves going with a series of jobs in bookstores and the like.
Heavily influenced by Nineteenth century French literary aestheticism, which led them to change their surnames in tribute to Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, music began to take precedence over writing as a more natural path towards making the splash and getting the attention they both craved. Verlaine was an able and original guitarist, who gigged occasionally in local venues where Hell attended and supported him as much a stylist and kindred spirit as a friend in the conventional sense.
Theirs was certainly a Love / Hate affair given their contrasting personalities. Hell, a full, on upfront, prototype Punk, Verlaine a much more reserved, reflective character with an aloof demeanor and slightly haughty manner. Both seemed to complement each other though, filling in for each others failings and complementing each other's strengths. For a few years at least they were rarely seen apart and must have made an immediate impression on New York's alternative scene. In Hell's words: 'We would go to Max's and be like spies. We were inseparable.' It's worth noting that Verlaine was also actually born a twin, his brother died when he was in his mid thirties, a part of his history that has never fully been explored.
Round about this point, Verlaine taught Hell the basic rudiments of playing bass guitar. Eventually the two became sufficiently organised to lay down some tracks together as The Neon Boys, roping in Billy Ficca a drummer Verlaine had known in Delaware. The tracks, Love Comes In Spurts (a title Hell would use again with the Voidoids), and That's All I Know Right Now, sound like nothing so much as Punk, well before Punk. Trebly, ragged and incredibly uptight, they're clearly not the finished article, but gave a very good idea of what both men would become both musically and in terms of the sensibility they would come to project. Also they give a strong indication of what early Television might have sounded like on record, had they continued to maintain an equally democratically distributed mode of attack and Verlaine not seized almost complete control and ultimately ejected Hell from the band altogether.
'It used to be that artists thought of nature as their environment. Now media is our environment. It has been for the past 50, 70 years. It's what you see on TV, on the computer, what is in the magazines and newspapers.'
Richard Hell
'Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell were very calculating , grownup, determined people. Everyone else was just kind of blundering into everything, but they were different. I thought they were beatniks.'
Dee Dee Ramone
From there they proceeded to plan a more long term project by auditioning guitarists as a foil for Verlaine in a proper band. Chris Stein, (later of Blondie), and Dee Ramone were tried out apparently and found wanting. By chance another guitarist, Richard Lloyd, who' had recently arrived in town, saw Verlaine play a solo gig at the recommendation of Terry Ork, who went on to manage the band. He watched Hell, (who of course was along in support), tear a hole in Verlaine's shirt to improve his look. Once he started, Lloyd recognised that his style would complement what Verlaine was doing. Pretty soon afterwards he signed up. along with Ficca, Television was chosen as a name representative of the age and the cast was set.
'I was up on a ladder in front of the club, fixing the awning in place, when I looked down to notice three scruffy dudes in torn jeans and T shirts looking up at me inquisitively.'
Hilly Kristal .
Effectively this is the myth of origin for CBGB's and much of American Punk Rock. The three inquisitive guys were Verlaine, Hell and Lloyd. Other accounts say it was just Verlaine and Lloyd. It doesn't really matter. What does is that they started playing on Sunday nights at the club shortly afterwards, opening the door for others like The Ramones, Blondie and The Patti Smith Group . The scene gathered pretty rapid word of mouth momentum and growing audiences, and spread to other venues over the coming weeks and months while the bands, many of them complete novices when they first hit the stage, started attracting good reviews and record company interest.
Television by all accounts were ramshackle and amateurish when they first started playing CBGBs. Certainly according to Hilly, who never really had many nice things to say to say about about them. But they certainly had charisma:
'Onstage Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine looked like they could blow up at any minute - like they were just trying to keep the peace. Sometimes they'd have a fight onstage. It would be like a Sunday night, there'd only be like fifteen people there, and someone would play something wrong, and Tom Verlaine would start yelling at Richard. 'Ah, fuck you.' And Richard would yell back, 'Don't take it so seriously asshole.'
Duncan Hannah, Please Kill Me
'I thought Television was fabulous. The arms of Richard Hell and the neck of Tom Verlaine were so entrancing that I needed no more, art, music, life, love or poetry to make me happy after that. They were the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen. The skin between the two of them... they had the most perfect skin in the world. Tom Verlaine's skin and Richard Hell's skin were in a class like 'God made that and then threw away the skin formula. Then there was Richard Lloyd. Who I fucked.'
Danny Fields, Please Kill Me
The Hell / Verlaine Television are much documented. In print and on bootlegs where there are many, many songs that were never recorded and are well worth hearing. To my knowledge they were only captured on film once. Rehearsing in Ork's loft in their earliest days, a document that remained unavailable for many years. They had a ragged, Garage sound where you could detect elements of The Yardbirds, The Who, The 13th Floor Elevators, (they do a great cover of their Fire Engine on here), other Nuggets bands and the Psychedelic San Francisco guitar scene. A lot less streamlined and orchestrated than the later Television sound. They weren't polished at all which you could say they eventually became. They were probably a lot more immediately exciting. Certainly more recognisably Punk.
I'd say today's recording puts to sleep the myth that Television weren't Punk. Perhaps the argument is not so clear from the point at which Marquee Moon came out. From that point onwards they are playing well, in a way that few of their contemporaries can. They trade in long, extended guitar solos . Not the kind you might expect from The Allman Brothers or The Grateful Dead, but long guitar solos nevertheless. That's not very Punk according to British punks of the time, certainly not those who really like UK Subs and Sham 69. But the Television when Hell was in them have a claim to not only being the first Punk band but also one of the very best as well as one of the most influential and significant. The tension between Hell, Verlaine and also Lloyd that informs their music throughout and makes some of it so very special, is also very, very Punk.
I find this early period of CBGB's so fascinating, at a time when it really had very few punters when it was still deep, deep underground. This was largely because it was in a part of New York, in the Bowery on the Lower East Side that you really didn't want to find yourself in late at night, because it was so run down and frankly downright dangerous, although many of the people there were hobos and homeless and so out of their minds and strung out that you could probably get in and out safely most evenings if you kept your wits about you. New York as a whole was a pretty dangerous place wherever you were in those days. I'm sure you've seen Taxi Driver. Early Television capture a lot of that thrill even though theirs is generally a fictionalised, stylised, almost cartoon version of Manhattan. But they do express that danger. The sense that you're never quite sure what's going to happen next.
There's very little filmed documentation of CBGB's between '74 and '76 so for the most part you're reliant on word of mouth accounts, magazine and newspaper articles and bootlegs, before the bands and artists put out their first records. But it seems like the most incredible place to be that you could possibly imagine. Of living completely and utterly in the 'now'. And having been to New York a few times myself I'd say there's nowhere in the world better suited for quite that kind of utter hedonism.
I could write a lot about that whole thing, but I wasn't there, so you're best referred to the ultimate oral account from those who were - Please Kill Me, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McNeill who interview and get down the front line reportage from those who were. It's my favourite music book by a long way and nails wonderfully exactly how exciting these days would have been if that was the kind of thing that excites you. I found it a visceral experience to read and go back to it every few years. The abiding moral message appears to be, just don't take too many drugs if you want to get through the whole experience intact. Plenty don't. Both Lloyd and Hell embraced the whole drug experience with great relish while Verlaine apparently was always wary of losing control of his senses altogether, though he's been a lifelong nicotine addict, a chain smoker, apparently to this day.
Anyway, back to the main plot. Apparently, what drove a wedge between Hell and Verlaine was firstly musicianship. Hell barely rehearsed and never got much more proficient. Verlaine was harbouring ambitions of something more sophisticated and complex. But there were other factors too. Hell's distractions. increasing junk habit and string of flings with CBGB's scene people. The way he insisted on jumping and goofing around onstage when Verlaine just wanted him to stand still and try to play properly. Lloyd diving into drugs with wild abandon himself. And by all accounts Verlaine's ballooning egotism and difficulty to work with once he started going out with Patti Smith who was immediately entranced by the band, and him in particular. The two groups played together on a regular basis over the next couple of years like sister and brother bands. They had similar preoccupations and literary obsessions and were stylistically complementary. And Patti and Tom fancied each other rotten.
'Patti Smith just came up to me and said,' I want him. I want Tom Verlaine. He has such an Egon Schiele look.' She just told me, 'You gotta get that boy for me.'
It was pretty cut and dry. So I told Tom. He was pretty enamored with Patti as a poet and scenemaker. I guess he knew that she was gonna get signed to a record deal.. Plus, I guess he liked her physically. I mean they had the same kind of body structure.'
Terry Ork, Television manager, Please Kill Me
Television were soon ready to join a record label themselves, although they took a while to actually sign to one. David Bowie, Lou Reed and Bryan Ferry all came down to see them play and were highly impressed, which led to some paranoia on Verlaine's part that the sharks were gathering to steal his sound. One night they had to confiscate a tape recorder Reed had brought into CBGB's with him to record their set. Eventually there was enough interest from Island for them to agree to record with Brian Eno producing, which we're going to listen to today. Some of the songs here ended up on their first two albums, but by no means all of them.
In theory Eno and Television should have been a marriage made in heaven. Producing a record or at least demos to rival those produced by John Cale for The Modern Lovers which only came out years after they'd been recorded and immediately gathered cult status for themselves. I certainly think they're good enough in terms of quality to have merited some kind of release. But it seems Brian and Tom didn't really get on and it certainly wasn't what Tom wanted anyhow and personally I'm glad that he kept Venus, Friction, Marquee Moon and Prove It until he was completely happy with them.
'In the beginning Verlaine was quiet, nervy and a little overawed by Brian's enthusiasm. On the second night he began to assert himself. I realised that he knew exactly what he wanted... On the last night Verlaine pulled me aside. He was unhappy about the way it had gone. He wanted the band to sound professional.'
Richard Williams From The Velvets to the Voidoids
As for me, I like it. In many ways just as much as I like the later Television studio albums. As a devotee I'm happy to hear as many versions of Venus and Friction as I can. These are obviously demo versions but I wouldn't say I prefer the later recorded versions to these. They're products of different bands and in many ways you can hear the seeds of the British Indie sound here. Buzzcocks, Magazine, Subway Sect, Orange Juice. Also an early version of Marquee Moon. They just have a sound and sensibility that I love, pure and simple. Also there are some songs here that were never officially recorded and I can't for the life of me understand why not. Hard on Love for example. That's just fabulous. As for Double Exposure. How catchy and immediate is that. Like the early Who transported from London to the Lower East Side. Astonishing that this wasn't their debut single and Verlaine chose Little Johnny Jewel instead. Lloyd left for a short while over that decision and in some ways he was right to. I love Little Johnny Jewel but Television could have been a more commercial proposition than Verlaine always allowed them to be.
'Tom Verlaine was very priggish; he didn't smoke marijuana, inject heroin and he didn't even drink that much. I think Verlaine was scared of any derangement of the senseless and Hell was just the opposite. He would just luxuriate in it.
Tom Verlaine was a very bright boy, very learned, but there was some tightness within him. He was just so tightly wound. He was always concerned about men coming onto him. I mean he was pretty, but I think he didn't really know what life was about. He had accrued experience books - it was all read and not lived. He was very naive in a lot of ways. As opposed to Richard Hell who had both feet in the ooze.
Hell was definitely the one thinking in subversive terms. Hell was always the one who had the most awareness of what the text was trying to denote. Hell was a boulevard surrealist, groping for the breakthrough, the one grasping for liberation.'
Terry Ork,
I don't think Lloyd brought many songs to Television over the years. I get the feeling he was too busy doing drugs and enjoying the whole experience as much as he could to get round to it. But he certainly brought something to every song, and his contribution was often not fully credited by Verlaine, something that Lloyd resented increasingly over the years. Anyway, he was certainly as much responsible for what was glorious about Television as Verlaine, and Tom was never as good without him. Or Ficca, Hell and Fred Smith for that matter. Tom and his Richeys! Who lived the life that perhaps he'd have loved to live himself, but was either not brave enough or too smart to depending on how you choose to look at it. His Billy. His Fred. He actually considered kicking Ficca out of the band for a while and held auditions with that aim in mind. Much as I love him, he's a strange, contrary and paranoid man. He would have been an idiot to sack Ficca because Billy is just the drummer that Television need. All five of Television's members are semi-miraculously still with us I'm pleased to say. But they're highly unlikely to be inducted into the Hall of Fame any time soon. Even though they deserve to be. They more than likely wouldn't all show up anyway.
Another interesting point. I've been to New York three times so far and always had the most incredibly exciting time there. Much more so than London, where I was raised and spent much of my life. New York is completely charged, everything seems to be at stake and fluid. Especially sexuality. Television is one of the band's where that dialogue is clearly alive. I've never really read anything about that aspect of the band but it's seemed clear to me that there's something going on in that respect. The incredible tension in the band's music. Prove It. I can't prove it Something to think about anyhow. Another pathway to explore for this most fascinating of bands. That subtext is also certainly all over Patti Smith's Horses too. Particularly on tracks like Redondo Beach and Land. Never mind the cover.
What is evident from the song selection of these demos though is that Hell's days in the band are numbered. The alliance that he and Verlaine had formed back in Delaware in High School all those years ago was about to be severed and frankly it was going to be ugly. At the start of the band, he and Verlaine had divided songwriting responsibilities pretty equally. Once Hell's signature tune Blank Generation was dropped too shortly after this , there was nowhere for him to go but out of the band. Onwards from there to The Heartbreakers, The Voidoids and Television Mk II.
Note: The recorded version of the Little Johnny Jewel signature is on the end of this. I'll post this again tomorrow, when we come to talk about that.
Extras:
The Neon Boys: Love Comes in Spurts & That's All I Know Right Now
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7ITZ5gTDN30qQaVxGTh5Cq?si=28pGat1ASPyCJyPTWovSfA
Patti Smith writes about early Television for Soho weekly: http://www.thewonder.co.uk/psmith.htm
The Terry Ork Loft Tapes: To my knowledge the only recorded visual documentation of Television when Hell was playing with them. Rehearsing in manager Terry Ork's loft sometime in 1974. I found the text underneath the recording very interesting. The playing is very screechy, at times almost unlistenable and Hell is a very, very poor player. But it's an incredible document. It was kept off YouTube for many years for some reason. Watch in its entirety if you're very brave. I'd suggest dipping in and out to get the general idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srn98FdXI4E&t=272s
Television: The Blank Generation What Richard Hell brought to the table. The anthem of New York Punk, and title track of Hell and The Voidoids 1977 debut album. Much easier to draw a straight line to UK Punk than anything Verlaine came up with. Verlaine was in many ways an aesthete and there was very little of what happened in London between 1975 and 1977 that was really about aesthetics, (early on maybe). :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqsDXmmaEAk
Based on this 50's spoof single which helps you get why Dee Dee Ramone called Hell and Verlaine beatniks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5-HlUAOjGE .
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 69 Lonnie Holley - Tonkie
Not easy listening. Life is not easy living. Get used to it. But Lonnie Holley is a thrilling ride. Sometimes it's necessary to see the crimes on every fork. Lonnie Holley's Tonkie doesn't flinch. One to take an hour off life and ride the rollercoaster of human experience and what we're all capable of. ,
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 354 My Morning Jacket - Z
I've been listening to an album by This Morning Jacket on my television set while I have my morning bath and now take my morning breakfast before probably putting on my own morning jacket and going out to greet the day. What a strange world we live in. It felt less strange when I was young. But erm,.... I was young.
Z has it's moments but feels caught between the old and the new. It's best moments seem to be when It's not afraid to feel. It makes lirrle overall impression on me today. Time to get dressed.
Song(s) of the Day # 4241 The Besnard Lakes
Talking about yourself in the third person. A literary trope. The unreliable narrator. We are all estranged from our own experience. We fasten on to others in an attempt to establish cohesion and pattern for a passage of time which is essentially meaningless and absurd. Discuss. While you're doing so watch the sun rise outside your window.
I'm doing exactly that, while my kettle boils and bath runs.The Besnard Lakes ' The Besnard Lakes are the Ghost Nation' is playing on headphones. It rises in audio splendour rather majestically like light - above a mythical lake appropriately. One you will likely never witness personally but can probably visualise from muscle memory and imagination. From the knowledge in your bones.
It's a smart and resonant record though I suspect its arrived too late in the year to need to be shoehorned into It Starts With a Birthstone's albums of the year. Hey life's a competition Besmard Lakes. Get in line and release your next album in Spring. I can't start getting confused with November on the horizon, the goose getting fat and shopping to do. Nevertheless I dig and appreciate your vibes and sentiments..
.
Friday, October 24, 2025
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 99 Funkadelic - Cosmic Slop
The high tones. The low tones. The Bass. The Funk. The Cosmic Slop. The Cosmic Space. The final frontier.The next dimension. I was texting to a school friend the other day. He said apropos of nothing 'live in the moment.' I concur. But which moment. This is a record with a lot of moments. And a lot of space.
This friend is a musician . He opted out, though you can't opt out entirely. This is a record that encourages the idea that you can. Sixty, which I've just turned as has he does something to you. Or at least it has to me. Time stretches and you appreciate that happening. Memories get triggered by the smallest things. Records like this are the most potent stimuli..
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 355 Foals - Antidotes
Foals now are muscular. Stallions. With Stallions they were unsteady on their pegs. Jerky. But infused with autistic energy. Their name was apt. They formed at Abingdon School in Oxford and seem to have seeped up some of the same energy as Thom's earnest gang from the school desks or the school hall walls. 'They're a Freak !'
I'm not sure Antidotes really contributes much to the cure of anything. It's bracing mind. It comes on like a jerky work out in the gym with a demented sports instructor with an inadvisable moustache with Fear of Music blaring out over the sound system. Playing at the wrong speed. It has a rhythmic, demented trajectory. School's out forever,
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 100 Pentangle - Basket Of Light
I listened to Basket Of Light before the sun came up and I was preparing for my 7:30 online which as it transpired was cancelled. Now I'm listening again and deciding what to do with my day. Eat more breakfast probably.
Pentangle casts a particular spell. It's an enduring sound. Ivor the Engine, Bagpuss. Morgan Le Fay. Dappled morning sunlight on Welsh rooftops. Dew on the grass. Ancient wisdom. Runes Experimentation. Flight,
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 70 Lone Striker - Lone Striker
Playing goalkeeper has long been supposed to be the philosopher's position on the football pitch. Albert Camus famously played between the sticks. As did Vladimir Nabokov. But being a lone striker can't be the easiest task a manager can give a fellow either frankly. A lot of weight on your shoulders. And the moment of existential dread when you're played in by your inside left. The goal nets gaping in front of you with ten minutes left in a scoreless cup tie. Ten minutes left on the clock. Keeper to beat.
Lone Striker, (for this is they), pick up the theme. A project for an Englishman called Tom Brown on York's Safe Suburban label. Their eponymous album is lonesome Americana ennui. Taking it's lead from the likes of Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev and Silver Jews and giving them a wryful English twist of doomed literary romanticism. Like Badly Drawn Boy. Lost on the American highway.
This is an exceptional record which deserves Album of the Month plaudits from the likes of Uncut Magazine and Mojo. It's highly unlikely to gather these garlands so its up to the likes of It Starts to sing its praises instead. I'd be delighted to. This is exceptional misery. With sleeve credits to the likes of Niall Quinn, Tony Cascarino and Niklas Bendtner. Past masters of being slightly crap in front of goal. This is a record which makes failure seem like the sensible option.
Song(s) of the Day # 4240 The Lemonheads
Listen to the wind blow. It echies through the trees.'
A treat to wake up on a Friday morning to a new Lemonheads album Love Chant with a child's scrawl cover and eleven songs and thirty six minutes of Lemonhead songs that coudn't be anything else. Bytda, meet Gram meet Big Star slacker mindset meet folk in their sixties.
Evan Dando's voice has deepened through almost forty years of neglect and abuse. He now has cellphone blues as well as brass buttons. But his songwriting class has dimmed little and his aim on everything here is true,
He still has the ability to make you think hos songs aren't altogether finished and that's exactly as it should be. All you can want in life is an unmistakable voice and a good heart. Such is the case here. A good start to the day.
Thursday, October 23, 2025
Bob Stanley Presents Chip Shop Pop # 1 Stormy Petrel
Thinking about the late seventies feels like an incredible act of nostalgia now. So much has changed in the last ten years, Bob Stanley as always to the rescue. Essentially as much of a cultural commentator as anything else,. Here come fifteen pop pearls you probably won't have heard before
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 101 The Undertones
The Undertones tried to cut deeper with The Sin Of Pride but it was their last hurrah and they splintered shortly afterwards, I still love this record although received opinion may not agree with me. Its full of minor gems ,The Love Parade (not least of them) was too sophisticated for Daytime radio play. It sounds to me like Derry meets Motown. A twist on Lexicon of Love. But the public didn't bite
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 356 Graham Coxon -Happiness in Magazines
Graham Coxon clearly didn't always get on with Damon Albarn and would have preferred to be earthier and more bohemian. And probably sold less records. What this meant in practice is exemplified here. It's essentially a record that might have come out in 1979 with added Folk and late sixties trimmings but actually waited for 2004 to come out to play. .Rather magnificent in its scope, shifting moods and humour
It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 71 Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke - Tall Tales
Thom Yorke's records are best heard late at night these days. As darkness encloses all around I'm listening to Tall Tales his latest release. A collaboration with Mark Pritchard. Another nervous and skittery album undepinned by sturdy electro pulses and melodies. With Yorke voice soaring occasionally in the centre of the mix like a strident Cassandra. The role he's inhabited in varuois guises for over thirty years now.
I'm not a completist Yorke or Radiohead follower by any means. I just find whenever I catch any record that he's involved in these days I think ummediately that his work is sheer quality. Authoritative without ever being authoritarian. A voice in the wilderness.
A kneejerk counter response might be that his work is depressing but I don't think that applies.The world is depressing and haunting and scary in many, many respects. Especially these days. It's increasingly difficult to avert your eyes from the absolute carnage that meets the eye almost everywhere you look.
But I never find Yorke's work exploitative of misery. Quite the contrary. This is support. Succour. This is more great work.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)