101 Essential Rock Records # 64 The Stooges - The Stooges

 

'four insolent looking post teens. a cache of monosyllabic song title and just over half an hour's worth of stripped down rock 'n' roll.' 

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 5 Thin Lizzy

 

Television weren't the only band sporting a remarkable twin guitar attack strategy in 1975.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 227 XTC - Drums & Wires

 

In some ways I must be like an elephant. I never seem to forget. Memory is one of the primary driving factors that inspire me to and keep me writing this blog. It's an incredibly interesting thing to me memory. I used to have a byline on the top of this page from Nick Cave; 'memory is what we are. Your very soul and your reason to believe are tied up in memory.' I've taken it down now but I still stand by the principle.

XTC's Black Sea was one of the first albums I bought.. I still have and still play it, the memory factor being a contributing  driver. It's also just a wonderful record. Over the years since I've bought most of the band's early albums. Including Drums & Wires their third. This came out in 1979 when I was 14 and it was the record when they first came to my attention. They were quirky and oddball, but becoming poppy and approachable. They were getting the tunes. Beefheart and Zappa down in the mix. Beatles and Kinks up.

Making Plans For Nigel was their breakthrough single. It was everywhere for months and my schoolmates were starting to notice them. Just as I was. 'I like that Ecstasy' I said at one point. This innocent comment in a class one day was greeted by a cruel snigger from a classmate who I grew to dislike and others who I went to school with have expressed their disdain for since. 

Snide, unkind sort. A refugee from the Lord of the Flies pack of hunters. Roger, who levers the rock onto Piggy at the end of the novel. This guy's since become an artist of some repute but I'll not publish his name here. It's all a long, long time ago. But like I say I don't forget.

As for Drums & Wires, it marks a transitional phase for the band;I'm listening to it now. Off hand and arty but moving towards the sleeker pop sound that they realised so well with Black Sea. Not quite there yet, the primary instinct is still angular but they're ironing out some crumples. There's also clearly a competitive dynamic building. A twin attack. Partridge and Moulding.

Twin attacks were the order of the day in British football in the Seventies. Latchford and Francis. McDonald and Tudor. Keegan and Toshack. There was also another contributing twin attack behind the mixing desk with producer Steve Lillywhite and engineer Hugh Padgham. Frankly the record sounds incredible. There's a definite Dub quality to proceedings which is haunting. Extraordinary. 

Drums & Wires saw XTC cut in from the wing like Trevor Francis hurdling the legs of the last defender and zeroing in on goal with a minute to play. Brushing hemselves down in readiness for Top of The Pops and Magazine covers.   

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 9 Micky Billingham - Plan B

 

Keyboardist in Dexys MK 2 & 3. Outlines the regulations and the demand to be totally committed and to sign up for the whole Dexys intense experience. He has no regrets. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 228 Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue

 

Sometimes it makes sense to listen to the drummer's album. Dennis Wilson. Beach Boys heart throb Friend of laughing Charlie Manson. Almost a character out of the Big Lebowski. The Dude's Surfer Cousin.

 Pacific Ocean Blue is some record. Before Dennis took his fateful late night swim and sank to the ocean bed. A fitting way for the man to go. This is a companion piece to the great Beach Boy records. It might as well be a Beach Boy record. 

They had fun, fun, fun, and then it wasn't so much fun anymore. The beer and drugs settled in their bellies. It became heavier, and wistful. But the sun kept coming up. And the waves kept rolling in. Lapping against the boats prow. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,576 Queen - The Works

 

Queen I will always think of as an older brother band as my older brother had Queen, Led Zep and Black Sabbath albums. I now have his Led Zep and Black Sabbath records and I'm grateful. I don't have his Queen records and I'm not bothered. They're OK. They have their moments. But if I was choosing to listen to one of their albums, it wouldn't be the one that kicked off with Radio Ga Ga. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 8 My Bloody Valentine - Isn't Anything

 

I've sold my copy of Loveless. I realised it had always made me feel sick and I wouldn't miss it . I have no plans to sell my copy of - Isn't Anything. That was a gamechanger when it was needed. That's what it felt like at the time. I went to see the band at round about this time wuth a good friend. It was a special experience, not quite like any gig I've been to before or since, You felt like you were in a sea of blissed out noise.I've seen them since. But it's a great and enduring feeling seeing a band at the time when you know they should be seen.   

Song(s) of the Day # 4,092 Jeffrey Lewis

 

Jeffrey Lewis, New York's Anti Folk Poet rolls on with The Even More Free Wheelin Jeffrey Lewis another referential and sly album of stream of consciousness strum.

It's comforting listening. The comparisons with Dylan are forwarded by the artist himself with the cover and elsehwere. He is happy to see himself in a line , a tradition. Let's face it we all are. This is rather a nice way to kick off my Thursday morning,

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 229 The Four Tops - The Best of the Four Tops

 

I have the Best of The Four Tops on my record player. It's half past seven in the morning. I suspect I'll keep listening to it until nine o'clock when I have a lesson. I might just keep listening to it. I'll do what I want to. The one thing I have at the moment is time. 

Every good record collection is made up of Greatest Hits. Best Ofs. Compilations. I find music comparisons and lists of music increasingly spurious although I'm obliged to fall back on them and find myself using the language I'm trying to get away from myself unwittingly. I like writing. We all need basic organising principles or the world would fall apart. My fridge would decombust and I would have no milk to pour on my corn flakes.

But increasingly I despair of the human need to do this. It's the competitive urge I'd say and very much a male thing. I much prefer talking to women than men about music these days.Would you want to compare The Four Tops, The Temptations or The Miracles? Or compare them to The Supremes or The Vandellas. What would be the point. Why not just listen to music without turning to these ridiculous kneejerk comparisons. Try listening with your ears. It's fun. 

So to expand the argument, why compare Tom Waits and The Smiths. .Chart positions are an interesting thing to think about but ultimately it's the song you return to. Golden Brown reached Number Two but it sounds like a Number One to me. Vienna reached Number Two as well. I didn't buy it. It means nothing to me. 

The Four Tops is still spinning. We're still on Side One. This band was on Motown but I have the K-Tel Best Of. I also have a Motown Best Of. It has a better cover but this has more songs. Which one would you play? A great book could be written about the emotions and the cultural experience that these songs concern themselves with.. The struggle. The strife. The love. The quest. A good start to the day.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 230 Oscar Peterson - exclusively for my friends

 

I just had a rather golden forty five minutes with this album. My work was done by lunchtime and the day was mine.  I've just reconnected with someone who is incredibly important to me and my life has taken.on a magical quality It's a glorious day in Newcastle. I'm feeling. happy and calm. It almost feels as if my heart is filling like a tank of an engine being pumped with warm blood 

So I've put on one of the series of  exclusively for my friends the set of album recorded by The Oscar Peterson Trio, thrown open the windows of my flat to allow the thin and balmy air to fill my flat and the music is filling my senses.

Recorded between 1963 and 1968 these records are inspired exercises in time and space. They communicate a sense of stillness and calm that I can't derive from anything else and allow the listener to connect to the moment in an indescribably rich and consuming manner. Surely the whole purpose of being alive. .

101 Essential Rock Records # 63 Jethro Tull - Stand Up

 

'where Jethro Tull grew into one of the 70s most popular groups...'

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 8 Seb Shelton - Let's Make this Precious

Shelton, a driving factor in Mark II Dexys came from Secret Affair and fitted snugly into their ranks as an abstainer from drink and drugs. He left the band after conflicts with Rowland and resisted entreaties from Tassell to discuss his experiences.

 

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 4 Nazareth

 

Nazareth seemed like Tartan marauders to an unschooled, no nothing pup like me. In front of afternoon kid's TV shows. . 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 9 Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden

 

I saw Talk Talk walking across Leicester Square in the mid Eighties. It's a nice and very special memory. I've put Spirit Of Eden on and it will take me to my lessons. Nobody made music like they did.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,091 Suzanne Vega

 

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...

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,577 Grace Jones - Nightclubbing

 

Sleek. State of the Art. The musical equivalent of Total Football. Teamwork.

 

101 Essential Rock Records # 62 Blind Faith - Blind Faith

 

                                                      Great record. Highly unfortinate cover.

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 4 Slade

 

Slade do the gentle romantic smut that served them so well.

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 7 Andrew 'Stoker' Growcott - Respect

 

The youngest of the early Dexys, their drummer,  and the last man recruited. Formed a tight rhythm section and firm lifelong friendship with Pete Williams Since Dexys he's kepy moving forward and worked with General Public, Sting , Aretha and decamped to Fresno, California. 'I appreciate what the gods of Rock & Roll have given me.'

 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 231 Kiwi Jr. - Cooler Returns

 

'There's no proof that Woodstick ever, hppened in the first place!'

What can you get for twelve quid these days. Well you could get a sealed copy of Cooler Runners,  Kiwi Jr's carefree and ebullient and inspired 2021. It Start's With a Birthstone's 55th favourite album of that year Pop Pickers. I'm kind of surprised I found 54 records I preffered. Back in the day Pavement had starlings of the slipstream. Now they'll find Kiwi Jr. coming up on the rails.  

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,578 Alice Cooper - Killer

 

                       You say Alice Cooper! I say thanks, but I'm quite happy with The New York Dolls !

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 10 The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow

 

This is a joy.  People don't realise. What it felt like to hear these songs as they came out. But listening to this as I prepare for my working day I realise that these are among the most quotable and enduring sing along anthems of my entire life. The insecurities and dark but reilient recesses of the human imagination.The human soul. Frailty and resolve. Self pity sure. But self pity as armour. Pride.Oh and they're funny ! The Smiths changed the game. As with Bowie, their influence and effect was indelible.Argue about their best record if you really need to. But lusten to them all.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,090 pencil

 

London quintet pencil's six track EP Bohemian Clutter's is conclusive evidence if it is needed that forming a band is one of the most creative and attractive options available to youth, Purely and simply because it offers you a blank canvas to create your own universe. Few respond to the challenge as compellingly as they do here.  

Labels are fatuous. Imagine is the key factor. This reminded me of Tapir ! who are covering similar territory. There is a freshness and youthful vigour that brought to mind the Go Betweens and the ground they covered in the early Eighties. There's lead in these pencils.

101 Essential Rock Records # 61 Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica

 

Don Van Vliet homed in on a single genre - Delata derived Chicago blues - which he remade and remodelled extensively.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,579 The Good The Bad & The Ugly

 

Evocative. It just feels intensely hot.Oblique and inspired. 

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 6 Andy Leek - Breaking Down The Walls of Heartache

 

Keyboardist who replaced Pete Saunders when he left Dexy's to go to university. Not lacking in confidence. Leek worked with George Martin and had a Number One in Lebanon. Also sadly conducted Parkinsons.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 232 The Passions - Michael & Miranda

 

Last night I came in from  long day in the hit sun and listened to Suede's Suede before having my supper and turning in. Today I find myself enjoying Shepherd's Bush' finest The Passions Michael & Miranda . I must be having a funny turn.

Suede and The Passions are not disimilar in terms of sensibility and temperament. Gothy, highly wrought ashen types who had too much to dream last night and want to tell the world about it . I imagine the members of both wrote feverish poetry while they shoud have been contributing to Literature or History seminars at sixth form college.

 Michael & Miranda is a neglected classic of New Wave Cold War angst. Angular, jerky Alternative Pop that made me feel like I was eighteen again just now.  

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 3 Stealer's Wheel

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 11 R.E.M. - Murmur

 The first record I reviewed when I started this blog back in 2013 wben I began this journey unto the unknown.

      'The first thing you notice in looking at the sleeve and taking the record out to play is the attention to detail. These people really thought about what they wanted things to look like. The name of the album, the lettering, the tangled kudzu grass on the cover, the song titles, the photos of the band. A lot of thought had been put into this. This was an assured and confident group of people.

R.E.M had played scores of dates before this came out. They'd emerged out of the Athens, Georgia college scene which also produced such notables as The B52's, Pylon and Love Tractor amongst others. They'd worked in record shops, played in college bands, done cover versions and worked on half-baked underdeveloped originals while they developed their style and absorbed music and  culture to the point where they knew what they wanted to do and how to deliver.

They'd released a mini-album called Chronic Town with some cracking songs but an unrealised vision. Murmur meanwhile is incredibly sure-footed from the off. It kicks off with Radio Free Europe which is a statement of intent. It's pretty close to some Who stuff in terms of dynamics but offers something never heard before and builds and builds 'til the killer punch on the final chorus. Something's afoot.

Pilgrimage continues in pretty much the same vein. It's not clear what Michael Stipe is singing about. This is a consistent feature throughout and one of the main reasons I really fell in love with this album. Somebody suggested that Mumble might be a better album title than Murmur.The band responded that you wouldn't get the script of the film you were going to see when you went to the cinema so why should you be spoonfed here. The lyrics that are discernable - 'rest assured this will not last,' 'the pilgrimage has gained momentum' are about movement, change and growth. Just the stuff to appeal to pale, literate, teenage boys. The vocals from drummer Bill Berry and bassist Mike Mills here are extraordinary and to my mind unprecedented.

Laughing draws on Greek myth and Talk About the Passion talks about poverty. In a way it's the most conventional thing on here chiming like a post punk Byrds. Moral Kiosk is more urgent. Both of these songs are political but in an oblique way. R.E.M emerged at pretty much the same time as Reaganomics. They became more explicit on later albums in terms of their critique of what was going on. I'm not really sure if they became more effective.

Perfect Circle is often mentioned as one of the band's favourite songs. Quite rightly so. It's supposedly  inspired by Stipe watching a group of kids playing baseball. I imagine it also may be about being in a great band with a group of friends

Catapult starts the second side and may be the weakest song on the album but was once considered the potential break-out single and New Order's producer Stephen Hague was brought in for an ill-judged remix. Sitting Still which is up next is indescribably good. I think I almost cried on hearing it first. You'll do well to hear a whole line of coherent lyrics here. It's all emotion and youth.

9-9 is the least conventional song and it took me a while to come to terms with it. Again there are Who dynamics there and it's reputed to have a Gang of Four influence though I've never really heard it myself. Shaking Through is marginally the longest song on the album and one of the best. Like much of the album it's driven by a beat generation inspired optimism and fervour. Great use of piano here.

We Walk is truly Southern. The album draws on Southern fiction throughout. Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner are all there. We Walk is pure Harper Lee, pretty much hokum but the band is so assured that they pull it off. Even their jokey song is pretty much streets ahead of the competition. The Smiths were the only guitar band firing on this level for me at this point.

This leaves us with West of the Fields. A song that to all intents and purposes is about death, with more Greek myth in the mix. But despite the theme they gallop back for one more chorus to bring the album home.

I love this LP pretty much more than any other. It never tires or dates for me and if you're not familiar I suggest you give it a go. I used to listen to it time after time at the top of the house in Teddington. It cast a spell on me! I would listen through to it differently every time alternatively the vocals, the production, Peter Buck's guitar work, the bass or the backing vocals and hear something new every time. R.E.M produced several great albums and I'll write about them on here at some point but for now I'll just commend this album.

I've no idea how often I've listened to this record or how much I'll listen to it. I'm immersed in it. It's part of me. Everybody should have a record that means this much to them. When I put it on to listen to it today part of me wanted to go back to that time and space I listened to it first as an eighteen year old on the top floor of my parent's house in Teddington. But I can't go back there Nor do I want to. I'm in a different time and space and happy to be here. But I will always love and listen to that album. I will age while it won't.  Perhaps it's my Picture of Dorian Grey.'

Song(s) of the Day # 4,089 Saz'iso

 

'For the best part of the last century,  Albania was isolated in a brutal communist dictatorship. When Communism fell in 1990  people started to discover the country's unique iso-polyphonic style of folk mysuc, saze. One of these people happened to be legendary producer Joe Boyd who in 2016 assembled Saz'iso a saze sypergroup of virtuoso musicians and singers. Recorded in three days at the Marybi Film Academy in Turana, their albim, At Least Wave Your Handkerchief at me, is a work that is haunting, ancient, otherorldly and yet so human.

Going beyond kanguage, the music captures a universal understanding of joy and sorrow, love and loss, heroism and tragedy with an extraordinary mix of drones, polyphonic harmonies, and traditional instruments, such as the fuell brezi - an Albanian shepherd's flute. Masterfully produced and recorded, this is a beautiful preservation and celebration of Albanian folk music.'

Melanie Xulu Idler

The Yardbirds

 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 233 Nina Simone - Forbidden Fruit

Nina is mandatory. I've just had a hot, hot bath and put a Nina on to keep me company . As the steam rose and the sweat gathered I resolved to put it on again and listen properly when I was at my desk with a tumbler of iced water.Listen to ut properly.

The album doesn't matter much . A compilation or a studion album. Something bought in a charity shop. Something new. Nina's a genre unto herself. Blues, meets Jazz. Meets Folk meets Bach. Meets Pop meets Black consciousness. Rage meet Grief meets Love Meets War. Sorrow Meets Grace. Meets Nina.It's wonderful to be in the company of such strength and resolve. It gives you faith in yourself. Inspirational.  . 

 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 234 Van Morrison - Moondance

 

                   'Half an hour from the county fair and the rain came pouring down...'

I know some who prefer Moondance to Astral Weeks. Fair enough. It's pretty immaculate. Pop compression in contrast wide eyed cosmic dreaming. Van sounds content. Poetry in the charts. Rare. 

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 2 Fox

 

Mid Seventies daytime Radio One sensuality.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,580 The Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas

 

'Fourteen songs about seven people, ywo houses a motorcycle and a locked treatment facility for damaged boys...'

Saill town America dreaming. The Mountain Goats have adhered to their mission statement. This is from near the beginning of their journey in 2002. Punch the air or at least clench your fist stuff. Springsteen for Indie kids. 

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 5 Steve Spooner - Keep It

 

Along with Geoff and Jimmy, the third part of Dexys lead instrument. The brass section. More the willing amateur than the other two pros. Spooner tells the story about the intensity of the gang. The eight months of rehearsal. Early gigs supported by UB40 and Joy Division.

He eventially relocates to Cornwall, steady employment, homelesssness, then management and fatherhood. Also a reunion with Post Millennium Dexys. And Geoff  Blythe his old foil.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 12 The Cure - Disintegration

 

I like a bit of Cure. This one came at the time I'd drifted away from that sound and mood but I've found myself drifting back over the years . There's something magnificent,,monumental about Robert Smith's vision. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,088 Preoccupations

 

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..  

101 Essential Rock Records # 60 The Who - Tommy

 

'dramatically raised the bar..'

Whether this is a good thing or not is in the ears of the beholder.

Lazy Days - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1975 # 1 Bad Company

 

The history book on the shelf. Is always being rewritten by the winners. Or something like that. 1975 is now generally viewed as the calm before the storm. The righteous fire of Punk. But I lived through that year. My parents moved down with the five of us from Nottingham to Richmond and we began to think of ourselves as Londoners. 

It feels an innocent world looking back. But it's important to be real with yourselves. The world was never innocent. Cherry Red Records as so often to the rescue. Back to a half remembered world for me. A 3CD compilation. We listened to Radio Two much more than we did to Radio One.   

We start with Bad Company. And the truth's in the name. This would have gone down well with the kids in Dazed & Confused. But youth is sometimes wasted on the young. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 235 Modern Lovers - Rock & Roll With The Modern Lovers

 

Some of the mist interesting artists are throwback ones. Those who go back to the source. Skip the Sixties and tap into the Roots of Rock & Roll. Where the air seems clean and the vibe fresh. John Fogerty, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed. Jonathan Richman. Space allowed between tracks so Jonathan can extemporise beat poetry about peanut butter and ice cream men. A reminder of essence.

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 236 Misty In Roots -Live At The Eurovision 1979

 

Roots Reggae was a fundamental part of my musical up bringing. A fundamentsl part of the musical fabric of the UK in the seventies and eighties. Bob Marley & The Wailers of course. Black Uhuru. Steel Pulse. Althea & Donna. Lee Perry. Toots & The Maytals. Misty In Roots.

Over the course of my lifetime I've probably seen Misty more than any other band. Starting in a hastily constructed wooden shed in St Margarets in my college days which I remember chiefly for the throb of the bass, the atmosphere of genial blissed good will of the place, the graceless sack of potatoes dancing of one of the schoolmates I  went with.

Misty's -Live At The Eurovision 1979 was championed by John Peel ceaselessly and is generallyheld up  as the record you need to hear to understand where they're coming from. They're utterly uncompromising. Biblical. Old Testament in their severity and dread. Judgement is coming. In the meantime. 

250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 237 Pylon - Gyrate

 

'It's time that the tale were told.'  

You had to work hard in the Eighties. If music was your main obsession and you were hunting for deleted or unavailable records. Scour record shops. Record Exchanges on Camden High Street were the best option. Girlfriends could be another.

I wanted Pylon product because R.E.M.had insisted they were better than them. My beloved girlfriend went on a BUNAC summer camp in Pennsylvania in 1987. She had a wail of a time. She met  a mouthy Black American co-worker who mouthed on about hot beef injections and such stuff. How vulgar ! We wrote regularly and she called whenever she could. I was terriby ill, carrying out tests on an illness that was eventually diagnosed and the recue mission was mounted. Almost forty years on, I bear no scars.

I asked my love to buy me Gyrate while she was in The States. She did so and brought it back to me in her return. It's an enduring act of love which I still feel grateful for. Which is why I'm writing about it here.

Gyrate itself is is of course a timeless record. It spins, pivots. Arcs in the spotlight.  It's a model lesson that great art and Rock & Roll is the product, not of great technical skill necessarily but ideas and guile and applying your skills in a directed and inspired manner first and foremost.

Album Reviews # 117 Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish

 

I was told recently. By an excellent friend I have known since I was 15 that I have an excellent memory. He put it in stronger terms than that but as he probably has the worst memory of anybody I've ever known in my entire life, So I won't take the compliment terribly seriously and allow it to go to my head.

But my memory is pretty good. I have no idea why that is but I've discovered it's pretty remarkable. It can take me to places. So I might as well try to make the most of it. here.  One emotion I can access and unpack relatively easily is the act of coveting something. In a shop window or a market stall. Should I buy it? I've decided with time that I should. Because otherwise it will nag at me until I do. . . 

This isn't an emotion I feel about anything but records really. I'm lucky in that respect. I have an itch I can scratch. I don't yearn for sports cars or country houses or Rolex watches or designer label clothing or settees to impress the neighbours. I'm relatively content and so can live within my means.

Dortmund, Germany. 1993 I'm working as a freelance job as an EFL teacher at a school just off the Westenhellweg a long thoroughfare that bisects the city centre a five minute vertical stroll from the main train station. I'm looking at the cover of Blur's second album Modern Life Is Rubbish . It's got an old school image of  a steam train on it. That will do me. I want it!

My governing emotion?  I'm coveting it. I get the sense that Blur are getting interesting. Establishing an identity after starting off a couple of years earlier as mouthy but melodic chancers from Colchester, attaching themselves to any scene going. Shoegazing, Madchester, Whatever, if there are drinks and cheap drugs on the rider.

Anyway. I don't buy it. I should have. I own a vinyl copy now. I respect the coveting emotion these days. But back then vinyl copies had to be hauled around. I still bought records occasionally Parklife, Suede. Gram Parsons Siamese Dream. But the clock was ticking on me as with the rest of humanity in the early Nineties. . Vinyl is closing. CDs the practical but emotionally void corporate vacuum is here. For another decade and half. Until the world sees sense.

Modern Life Is Rubbish  today is probably best understood by seeing it as Blur planting a flag. Marking out the territory. That Blur were still contenders. Parklife would be their moment. Where they wedded themselves to their artistic destiny and birth rights. Paid off the mortgage to the House in the Country. Before Damon and Graham guided them back to where they should be heading. Sounding a bit like Pavement and reheated Grunge meets Bowie. 

Modern Life Is Rubbish isn't rubbish. It's pretty good. It ticks off the Damon / Justine plan for world domination. There are no end of  lifts, stroke steals from XTC, Teardrop Explodes, Wire, Specials, Gang of Four et al. Then it  tails off perilously towards the end. A couple of tracks could be pruned and wouldn't really be missed.. All of the band's signature elements are present and correct. Oi Oi Knees up Mather Bran. Next stop enormodome arenas. 

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 4 Geoff Blythe

 

Tenor Sax of the Young Siul Rebels. Learned his chops with the Geno Washington Band. The guiding musical spirit of the early Dexys horn section. Decamped with most of the band after the album was released to form The Bureay. Then spent decades as a jobbing musician in New York. Now retured to Cornwall and composing but still gets his sax out occasionally.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 13 Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

 

I listened to a Sonic Youth record yesterday and it reminded me how deftly they can crack open the visible and the unknown worlds and venture into unknown territory.  So Daydream Nation this morning, An exhortation of spirit desire. Literary, dissonant, urban and desperate. Desperate at all moments to be cutting edge. And often hitting direct bullseyes. They tune their guitars to the sound of the New York Metro ! Sometimes it can be slightly irritating how hard they try. 

I don't play this record very often but this morning I put it on at quarter to five and found it immediately compelling and stayed for the full four side trip. Sometimes, in fact always these days, this is what I tend to do with records. Listen through them in their entirity, as they were intended. 

Like much of the best music, they don't spell much out for you, sometimes not at all, but there's so much here. This is an invitaion into mystery and experience. A beckoning figure drawing you first into the darkness, to the edge of the abyss and then leading you back, slowly towards the light, They make you want to find out more. And they Rock relentlessly.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,581 The Slits - Cut

 

The Slits were unprecedented and opened up a new mineshaft. Incredibly brave but also playful and sinuous. This was an exmple of women using what they had to get just 

what they want.

Song(s) of the Day # 4,087 Blondshell

 

If You Asked For a Picture, Blondshells' second album. Dreamy 90s Indebted Art-Rock. Sabrina Teitlebaum interrogates mid -20's heartache and complex family relatuisnhips with bluntness and guarded optimism.'

Well that's Pitchdfork's label on Blondshell's tin for you. But what do those guys know. It's a gently yearning carefully crafted album that diesn't demand much from the listen and repays unvestment as we head into the weekend.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,582 Sonic Youth - Washing Machine

 

Sonic Youth are a band that established an attitude, approach and sound early, reached their own summits in the mid eighties and maintined them to the start if the Nineties, continuing to put out excellent records thereafter until the painful split between Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon demanded that the band went their seoarate ways too . 

Washing Machine  is an album from 1996 with plenty of the bands characteristic vim. They never lack drive, fire or inspiration. Some of the dark romance of the great Sixties girl groups clicks in on Little Trouble Girl. At their sharpest they could jump between worlds. The known and unknown. They had a sense of the uncanny that wasaand is still rare. 

Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners # 3 Pete Saunders - I Coudn't Help It If I Tried.

 Keyboardist in the initial line up. Spent his late teenage years in Dexys before opting for a Literature degree at UEA.He was a bit of an odd one out from his totally committed and combative bandmates. He did some time in The Damned. Who were sexm drugs and Rock & Roll by comparison to the driven and abstinent Dexys. He ;ools nack on his time in the band as on the road with' eight sociopaths'