Song(s) of the Day # 4,486 Westside Cowboy

 'What Goes On in your mind ?' One of the eternal mysteries . What indeed . This piece will not even attempt to answer that one. It's just intended as a lead in to a record review first and foremost. For a very good record by a very good young band called Westside Cowboy . They're on tour this Autumn as the evenings darken daily and we rush towards another Christmas.

 There's always someone heading up a slope pushing a boulder . Ask Sysyphus.You know what generally happens? The boulder you're pushing invariably slides down the other slope just as soon as you get there.  Just relax and listentothe music and go where it takes you is the best advice I can offer.  You could do worse than listening to this one next. 

Forty years ago I was at university, On the way up my own slope of life. In the throes of my first important relationship and forming fundamental friendships . I was working on music. I always find i'm working on music. Begining to appreciate The Velvet Underground who I'd initially found 'difficult'  while also harking the lessons of Andy's Babies. It was a B Side by Lloyd Cole & the Commotions. About The Velvet Underground and their relentless, pervasive and slightly wearying influence on so much that was going on on the alternative side of culture. Lloyd knew. When Lou Reed died he said that without him he would probably have become a dentist

In 1986 I was also listening and finding out more about Andy's Babies; Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith, Pere Ubu,  R.E.M. The Smiths, Aztec Camera, The Triffids, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions, Echo & The Bunnymen. The Go Betweens, The Jesus & Mary Chain. David Bowie, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop and the rest. Have you got all day? Records that keep on blooming on a daily basis decades later.

But I realise now it all goes back essentially to The Velvet Underground more than anyone else. They ultimately, are probably the band that means the most to me if I think about wanting to play in a Rock & Roll band. Rock & Roll bands are important to me. It's an important spirit. An important idea that relates most fundamentally to me with the idea of freedom which Is an elusive thing but I'd say an important idea to try to keep an eye and ideals and pronciples set  on.

The next best thing I realised to being in a Rock & Roll band is to listen to them ,. And I thought about it while I was at university. Plotted it. Tried it briefly with another important friend I met in the first year. Andy. The Velvet Underground were very important to him. But it was an idea I gave up on pretty quickly. We could never be as good as our heroes so I pursued other roads.I'm still pursuing them. Teaching is the best road for me I'd say. It's the best way I know to really learn. 

I've never lost hold of the idea though.I like Rock & Roll bands. It seems a much more descriptive term than Indie which I find preposterous. The important matter I'd say is to discovered them listen to them, find out about them and go and see them The source for all this for me generally comes down to The Velvet Underground and The Beatles.

What goes on in your mind?!? It goes on. It's not over yet. Forty years on and more on for me. Sixty years and more on if you're talking about the big picture. Westside Cowboy are a band from Manchester. A city that knows of the centrality of the Velvets. Ask Joy Division. New Order. Happy Mondays. They were all weaned on Lou, John and Co. Bought their first guitars. Plugged in. Wrote their first songs. Struck their first record deals. Went out onto that great road. Joy Division after all signed to. Err Factory Records.  

I'm listening to Westside Cowboy's debut. It's called It Goes On. On its sleeve there is a picture of a Manchester tenement building with a horse on the grassy slopes around it. You know 'Westside' 'Cowboys'. They seem a band aware of their heritage. Lonesome Cowboy Bills ! Riding the rodeo.

My nephew Oskar is at university. At the University of Sussex where I might have gone forty years ago. He listens to a lot of Hip Hop but he's heard the buzz about Westside Cowboy and we were chatting about them last time we met up. I might have gone to Sussex  But everyone I knew was going to Brighton so I went to Norwich instead. I'm damned glad I did for any number of reasons. I went to UEA and lived my dreams. Fell in love with a wonderful woman. Learned a lot which I've been processing and building upon ever since.Lived in a room next to someone who played me Live '69 in my first term. 

The four of us in that corridor Rod, James, Ben and I sat around late evenings, clasping our steaming cups of coffee those first two terms after filling our bellies with Snakebite and Black at the bar on the other side of the fields between the our former RAF Blocks where we slept. We talked and talked.. Talked and talked about girls and records and politics, literature and dreams.Talked about ourselves.  Just writing these lines and listening to this record brings back the dreams and the talk. I'm pleased to find my fervour hasn't dimmed all these years down the line. I'm glad to have these memories.. 

University is for living dreams and chasing them. But we kid ourselves too. None of us really ever leave school. It Goes On is the latest piece of the puzzle. The puzzle will never be completed. Catch this bus. It might take you where you want to go. Or withdraw your outstretched arm and let it sail past you. There will be another one along in a minute......