Richard Ramirez is one of the most deeply unpleasant and disturbing serial killers on record. I won't go into what he did. If you choose you can read about it for yourself. There's plenty on record.This track is from Sun Kil Moon's uncomfortable and intense album that came out this year and the song speaks of plenty else amongst Mark Kozelek's concerns, all deeply dark. He's onto something and his record is a very, very good one that I won't choose to revisit too often. Nevertheless, hats off to him for getting this down.
Nearly there. I realised that this chart will come to an end t best part of a month before my much anticipated box set arrives. Anyway, here's the Top 10.
10. The Clarke Sisters (Robert)
'They had problems with their father's law. They sleep in the back of a feminist bookstore. The Clarke sisters. The elder sister keeps a midnight vigil. The middle sister she's not spiritual.'
Another magnificent Gothic song of Robert's from the Talullah period.
9.Streets of Your Town (Grant)
'Watch the butcher shine his knife. And this town is full of battered wives.'
The nearest thing the band ever had to a hit. Classic open riff. A love song of sorts to the band's hometown of Brisbane.
8. Dive For Your Memory (Grant)
'I'd dive for you. Like a bird I'd descend. Deep down I'm lonely. And I miss my friend.'
One of the band's most utterly beautiful songs.
7. Five Words (Grant & Robert)
'It starts with a birthstone. And ends with a tombstone. That's right. Cathedrals in London. Cathedrals in Rome. All stone.'
Back to the namer of this blog. Both sing a verse in this one so I suspect it's a joint composition though mostly Grant. From the magnificent Spring Hill Fair album which is where I first fell in love with the band. Quite a lot of Grant's compositions seem to focus on death in some way which is another reason amongst many why it's so sad that he himself succumbed to an early one.
6. Bye Bye Pride (Grant)
'A white moon appears Like a hole in the sky, The mangroves go quiet. In la Brisa de la Palma A teenage Rasputin Takes the sting from her gin,
When a woman learns to walk She's not dependent anymore A line front her letter May twenty-four And out on the bay The current is strong A boat can go lost.
But I didn't know someone Could be so lonesome Didn't know a heart Could be tied up And held for ransom. Until you take your shoes And go outside, stride over stride. Walk to that tide because The door is open wide.
Turned the fan off And went for a walk By the lights down on Shield Street. The birds in the trees Open their wings He goes home again.
He dreams resistance, They talk commitment, Things change over long distance. Took the shirt off his back The eyes from his head And left him for dead.
But I didn't know someone Could be so lonesome Didn't know a heart Could be tied up And held for ransom. Until you take your shoes And go outside, stride over stride, Walk to that tide because The door is open wide.
Little lies, they'll take your pride. Until you take your shoes And go outside, stride over stride, Walk to that tide because The door is open wide. Stride over stride Walk to that tide. Bye bye pride. Because the door is open wide. The door is always open wide. The door is always open wide.'
This whole thing needs quoting. Another hit that never was. Back to Tallulah and on towards the Top 5.
A mythical album cover for a 1991 record that became with time a landmark. And it's also a great, if uncomfortable album which deserves its status. I'm listening to now. Here's the background story. And here are a few of the main players revisiting the quarry, which I don't think has been ever definitively located, twenty years or more later.
An affectionate, I think, tribute to Michael Stipe's singing style and nonsense early lyrics. Also seems to make a pretty good approximation of R.E.M's key changes and melodic hook. fIREHOSE were formed by Mike Watt and George Hurley from the ashes of Minutemen.
'Well the only words I said today are ' Beer' and 'Thank you'.
One of my discoveries of this year has been the discovery of Bill Callahan's great 2013 album Dream River. It's a meditation on life and it's wonderful.
After Sun Kil Moon I needed something cheerier and Woods, a Brooklyn folk-ish band supply it. This comes from their album of early this year With Light and Love. Their singer Jeremy Earl has a neat, clipped way of delivery. Good band.
I have some kind of history with Mark Kozelek, the artist behind Sun Kil Moon. I bought his previous band Red House Painter's first full album, a double, over 20 years ago in 1993 when I was living in Dortmund, Germany. I didn't have a record player so would listen to it at a friend's when I went round on Friday for a smoke. The record was languorous, resigned but vaguely romantic. And also pretty good though not life shattering. It felt quite young and perhaps overly obsessively introverted. I still have that record. It's the only album in my collection that is completely warped. It's utterly unplayable, as if the obsessive emotions it contained curdled it in on themselves.
I lost touch with Kozelek. I noticed him again a few years later when he played the bassist in fictional early Seventies Rock band Stillwater in Cameron Crowe's watchable but rather sentimental film Almost Famous. Kozelek's main part in this seemed to be as the guy on the bus who breaks into Elton John's Tiny Dancer leading the resulting sing along. After that nothing until this year.
Sun Kil Moon, Kozelek's current alter-ego released their latest album this year. It attracted an enormous amount of popular acclaim but I didn't actually listen to it until this morning. It's almost immediately apparent how it gathered so much attention. It's brilliant, in a very dark way. It's difficult to think of another album so relentlessly obsessed with mortality and death and so honest in its gaze on it. It's distinctly middle aged and focusses on the concerns of those of us undergoing it. It's also very literary. These could be short stories from Carver or Cheever.
Here's its second track and for someone like me who loves his mother as much if not more than anything in the universe it's enormously affecting. It's alright, she doesn't read this blog and would have no desire to listen to the song whatsoever. She once made the mistake of listening to a song from my collection while hoovering my room and is highly unlikely to make the same mistake again. This is only one of eleven tracks on the record and every single one of them is equally honest and mercilessly relentless. This makes Kozelek a great artist in my eyes. But not one, that I personally want to spend too much time with. I'd find it rather difficult to go about my life from day to day if his stuff was on repeat rotation in the background. I wonder rather how he himself copes. He's notoriously curmudgeonly so perhaps he's built up a system of defence mechanisms to protect himself.
Nevertheless, I direct you to this album, Benji. It's undoubtedly a great record. Perhaps you're made of stronger stuff than me!
Any excuse to post that voice again. John Grant's band before he became John Grant, solo artist. I listened through to their Best Of the other day and these struck me as the songs that stood up to his solo output. Still reeling from seeing him in concert a couple of weeks back.
I heard today that Cindy Birdsong, one of the finest named people in all of Soul, was 75. She replaced Florence Ballard in the original Supremes after a number of years in Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles. I was amazed to hear that in the latter years of this incarnation of the band neither she nor Mary Wilson was allowed to sing on many of their records. This was remedied when Dana Ross left for a solo career and Jean Terrell replaced her and The Supremes made many of their very best singles. Like this one! Happy Birthday!
I suspect that quite a lot of Julian's 'madness' at this point was slightly feigned. A subconscious attempt to be 'Fried' like his heroes, Lee, Saxon, Morrison, Barrett and Erikson. Nevertheless, it's a very good sleeve and album.
Not a million miles away from A Salty Dog. By Michael Head who was also in The Pale Fountains and Shack. Again a nautical theme and a contemplative start to my last working week before the Christmas break. From a 1997 album called The Magical World of The Strands which is now out of print and fetches astronomical prices on the net. It is a very good record. Of course, like all of Head's work it's most informed by Arthur Lee and Love but in a good way.
'The songs have titles that read like paperback novels... Gary Brooker is extremely fond of descending chord structures and slow tempos and an atmosphere of resignation, and sadness, combined with a certain strength pervades their work. Melody Maker July 1969
I must be getting on. With the passing of time I've found myself becoming amenable in turn to Jazz, Folk, Country and now it seems I'm dipping my toe in Prog which this record and band seem to be generally labelled as. Originally I wanted this album primarily for its cover which is a wonderful example of the artistic power of the medium. It also took me back to my childhood where it had caught my attention on carefree afternoons leafing through a book of album sleeves as a ten year old in Richmond Junior Library. However, a couple of plays on headphones at work recently while I debated ordering it warmed me to it and now I have it, it goes on every couple of weeks and always works its spell.
The band itself of course will always be chiefly known for their debut single A Whiter Shade of Pale, a high water mark for Psychedelia which is with Sgt. Pepper pretty much the definitive sound of The Summer of Love. It arrived at Number One in the UK in June 1967 and stayed there for the course of that summer.
'Famous in the pop world for taking portentious meaningless to rococo lengths (a fact which did not prevent it justly delighting the British public enough to keep it at Number 1 for six weeks).'
For most people Procol Harum's story began and ended with that record. They only had one more Top Ten single, follow up Homburg. They did however, proceed to a relatively successful career as an albums band, their natural medium going on to record ten albums and limp on to 1977 when lack of interest finally led them to split. This, their third, is generally considered their best. I think it's a beautiful album,. A concept of sorts on the theme of sea-faring as the cover suggests a theme they happily keep returning to though many of the tracks barely fit within that remit.
It is consistent though in terms of a general sense of nostalgia, regret and melancholy, and most of all deeply ingrained Britishness. It draws on Folk and Blues, Rock and Classical music and remains diverse and spirited throughout. It features marimbas, recorders, tablas and bosun's whistles. Three songwriters contribute so the mood and tempo shifts. Robin Trower, Gary Brooker and Matthew Fisher divide the tracks between them fairly democratically and the resultant diversity keeps the record buoyant. There are moments, particularly on Brooker's songs where the Prog label makes some kind of sense but I think as a whole it's too good a record to reduce to that term.
And I think it's a very good record. Anchored in solid songwriting and thoughtful lyrics by non-band member Keith Reid who supplied them with their words throughout the band's career. It verges on pretentious at times sure, but never ceases to have warm lifeblood flowing through it and is nothing in comparison with the pretension that lay ahead proceeding to run amok in the early Seventies when the mantle of Prog settled on the band from which they never quite recovered. They're almost forgotten now but it's telling that Nick Kent mentions them in his NME review of Marquee Moon, in 1977 of all years.
‘Guiding Light’ is reflective, stridently poetic – a hymn for aesthetes – which, complete with piano, reminds me slightly of Procol Harum in excelsis.'
The band have lost any cultural weight they might have had since then. Perhaps they made their greatest mistake by refusing a slot at Woodstock because it clashed with Brooker's summer holiday plans. In any case in the intervening years they've sloped off to the margins of rock history. Nevertheless for me at least this statement endures.
There's an innate songwriting talent running through each of the ten songs to keep the listener engaged. The longest track here just breaks the five minute mark. There's also a beauty in it that remains and stands the test of nearly half a century. At the beginning of Side 2 with Juicy John Pink they wander off into the blues as every British band of the period tended to at some point but generally the mood is a great deal more pastoral, resigned, less urgent.
Part of the appeal of the record to me is that it conveys it's time so effortlessly. A time that's clearly gone. Over the introductory credits of landmark eighties film Withnail and I, the I character smokes a joint and stares into space sound tracked by King Curtis's version of A Whiter Shade. It puts us straight away into an unmistakeable place, time and mood.It's a film that focuses amongst many other things on the turn of the decades from the Sixties to the Seventies and everything that will be lost in that moment of turning. There's a moment towards the end of The Wreck of The Hesperus where the guitarist breaks in to a solo that's eerily reminiscent of the ones Brian May went on to plague the Seventies with during his time with Queen. This being a band that leaves me utterly cold, it's my least favourite moment of the whole album. It's a sign of what's to come. The empty pomp and grandeur of so much Rock music during the Seventies. But then it's overtaken by the sound effect of an enormous ship breaking through waves and the record's back on course.
Procol Harum, as much as any band I can think of are preserved in aspic in the time when they made their first and defining records. They themselves were looking back even in their early days. The record cover is a pastiche of the Players Navy Cigarette pack, the lyrics hark back continually to Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century shipwrecks. The band name translates approximately from Latin as "of these far off things". Their songs are drenched throughout with innate nostalgia.
There's a moment in penultimate track Crucifiction Lane where Robin Trower slips into minor key melancholia that Eric Clapton and George Harrison would have approved of. Generally the mood is more introspective and resigned. Perhaps the band didn't really have the stomach for the fight with the era's major players. Fisher's instantly recognisable organ sound continually drifts into the mix reminding the listener that their defining moment is already almost a couple of years behind them.
For the last couple of months I've set myself a target of writing up one of these album reviews on Sunday morning giving myself a twelve o'clock deadline. I'm running out of time on this one. I struggled with it, probably wrestling with the word Prog, a genre of music I'll always be wary of. How could I like such a record so much. Where were my NME Eighties generated boundaries? I shouldn't have worried as the album I've focussed on defies such narrow categorisation. It's a record that has more than sufficient songwriting craft, warmth, emotion, melody and lyricism for me to be able to recommend it wholeheartedly. Procol Harum, you Flower Power Hippies, you Salty Dogs! I salute you!
From the list below. The one I didn't know so I took a listen and this sounded pretty good though as I moved across the album I liked it slightly less. From Kilsyth in Scotland.
Midway through December and they're everywhere. This year there seems little consensus on an overall Number One though War on Drugs and St.Vincent did quite well.. Here's a cross selection.
1. St. Vincent - St. Vincent
The Guardian, The NME
2. Beck - Morning Phase
Mojo
3. The War On Drugs - Lost in the Dream
Uncut, Q
4. La Roux - Trouble in Paradise
Time Out
5. Gazelle Twin - Unfleshed
The Quietus
6. Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 2
Stereogum
7. Aphex Twin - Syro
The Wire
8. Swans - To Be Kind
Best Ever Albums
9. The Twilight Sad - Nobody Wants to be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave
'Told to equate, achievement with pain. I stole their top prize, And paid them back with rain.'
One of a series of plaintive, reflective songs that Robert wrote for 16 Lovers Lane.
And here's the two of them doing a version of it shortly before Grant died at The Tivoli Theatre in hometown Brisbane in 2005.
14. Spring Rain (Robert)
'Standing on the lawn with cousins and child brides. Caught for the camera on their best sides. Being caught forewarned their best sides. When will change come just like spring rain.'
Top 20 single that never was. The opening song from Liberty Belle & the Black Diamond Express.
13. You Can't Say No Forever (Robert)
'In December as the trees lined the drive. I'm sure your family remembers me by your side.Night, as your clothes discard he asks, 'Was your day hard,' you can barely answer. "Yes my world's tumbling down. Stone by stone to the ground". Please take out the garbage.You can't say no.In December a piano played by a child's hand. Drifts over the verandah and I'm your man.'
16 Lovers Lane again. Jilted, wishful thinking. Always impossible to understand the attraction of 'the other man.'
12. Love Goes On (Grant)
'There's a cat in the alleyway. Dreaming of birds that are blue. Sometimes girl when I'm lonely This is how I think about you.'
To Grant. From the same record A surprisingly dark love song given the brightness of the tune. Here they are at The Tivoli again.
11. A Bad Debt Follows You (Grant)
'I fell in your eyes. I fell for your eyes. Pull back the curtains. Let in the dark. I'll lie and watch. While your hair sparks.'
To the band's first classic album, Before Hollywood and one of their first great song titles. They're not always thought of as a great 'Rock' band. But this album should be considered in that respect.
Veering into Literature. But the best passage in fiction that I know about music and the impact it can have. From McCullers' first novel which was published in 1940 when she was just 23. Mick, a fourteen year old girl, in many ways the novel's central character and certainly the one with the largest portion of McCullers DNA in her is sat outside a neighbouring house in a small town in the Deep South because she wants to hear some music. Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) is the piece of music she listens to.
'When Mick came to the house she waited to be sure no person could see. Then she went through the side yard.
The radio was on as usual. For a second she stood by the window and watched the people inside. The bald-headed man and the gray-haired lady were playing cards at a table. Mick sat on the ground. This was a very fine and secret place. Close around were thick cedars so that she was completely hidden by herself. The radio was no good tonight --- somebody sang popular songs that all ended in the same way. It was like she was empty. She reached in her pockets and felt around with her fingers. There were raisins and a buckeye and a string of beads --- one cigarette with matches. She lighted the cigarette and put her arms around her knees. It was like she was so empty there wasn't even a feeling or thought in her.
One program came on after another, and all of them were punk. She didn't especially care. She smoked and picked a little bunch of grass blades. After a while a new announcer started talking. He mentioned Beethoven. She had read in the library about that musician --- his name was pronounced with an a and spelled with double e. He was a German fellow like Mozart. When he was living he spoke in a foreign language and lived in a foreign place --- like she wanted to do. The announcer said they were going to play his third symphony. She only halfway listened because she wanted to walk some more and she didn't care much what they played. Then the music started. Mick raised her head and her fist went up to her throat.
How did it come? For a minute the opening balanced from one side to the other. Like a walk or march. Like God strutting in the night. The outside of her was suddenly froze and only that first part of the music was hot inside her heart. She could not even hear what sounded after, but she sat there waiting and froze, with her fists tight. After a while the music came again, harder and loud. It didn't have anything to do with God. This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings. This music was her --- the real plain her.
She could not listen good enough to hear it all. The music boiled inside her. Which? To hang on to certain wonderful parts and think them over so that later she would not forget --- or should she let go and listen to each part that came without thinking or trying to remember? Golly! The whole world was this music and she could not listen hard enough. Then at last the opening music came again, with all the different instruments bunched together for each note like a hard, tight fist that socked at her heart. And the first part was over.
This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-colored --- a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before. One of those horn kind of instruments played a sad and silver tune. Then the music rose up angry and with excitement underneath. And finally the black march again.
But maybe the last part of the symphony was the music she loved the best --- glad and like the greatest people in the world running and springing up in a hard, free way. Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.
It was over, and she sat very stiff with her arms around her knees. Another program came on the radio and she put her fingers in her ears. The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.
The radio and the lights in the house were turned off. The night was very dark. Suddenly Mick began hitting her thigh with her fists. She pounded the same muscle with all her strength until the tears came down her face. But she could not feel this hard enough. The rocks under the bush were sharp. She grabbed a handful of them and began scraping them up and down on the same spot until her hand was bloody. Then she fell back to the ground and lay looking up at the night. With the fiery hurt in her leg she felt better. She was limp on the wet grass, and after a while her breath came slow and easy again.
Why hadn't the explorers known by looking at the sky that the world was round? The sky was curved, like the inside of a huge glass ball, very dark blue with the sprinkles of bright stars. The night was quiet. There was the smell of warm cedars. She was not trying to think of the music at all when it came back to her. The first part happened in her mind just as it had been played. She listened in a quiet, slow way and thought the notes out like a problem in geometry so she would remember. She could see the shape of the sounds very clear and she would not forget them. Now she felt good. She whispered some words out loud: Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth not what I do. Why did she think of that? Everybody in the past few years knew there wasn't any real God. When she thought of what she used to imagine was God she could only see Mister Singer with a long, white sheet around him. God was silent --- maybe that was why she was reminded. She said the words again, just as she would speak them to Mister Singer:
Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth not what I do.
This part of the music was beautiful and clear. She could sing it now whenever she wanted to. Maybe later on, when she had just waked up some morning, more of the music would come back to her. If ever she heard the symphony again there would be other parts to add to what was already in her mind. And maybe if she could hear it four more times, just four more times, she would know it all. Maybe.
Once again she listened to this opening part of the music. Then the notes grew slower and soft and it was like she was sinking down slowly into the dark ground.
Mick awoke with a jerk. The air had turned chilly, and as she was coming up out of the sleep she dreamed old Etta Kelly was taking all the cover. Gimme some blanket --- she tried to say. Then she opened her eyes. The sky was very black and all the stars were gone. The grass was wet. She got up in a hurry because her Dad would be worried. Then she remembered the music. She couldn't tell whether the time was midnight or three in the morning, so she started beating it for home in a rush. The air had a smell in it like autumn. The music was loud and quick in her mind, and she ran faster and faster on the sidewalks leading to the home block.'
Onwards towards 365. The best times for me with music are last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Towards sleep and from it. Particularly Friday nights and Saturday mornings with work behind me.I owe this discovery again to a man called Stagger Lee who directed me towards it. He knows his stuff. This goes six years back. I think this band has a body of work worthy of further investigation which I plan to do.
I listened to the Kings of Leon debut album for the first time in years yesterday afternoon. It's an absolutely storming record. Such a shame that they turned into such a generic stadium rock band. Remember them this way!
Seeing The Bunnymen tonight with a complimentary ticket. Hope they make it this time. The gig was cancelled a few months back. This record was one of my first big ones. Here's a very odd, alternative version of The Cutter with Shankar's arrangement. They were probably right to go with the version they went with.
