The Last Day's Of Bleecker Bob's

A short film about one of the legendary record shops which closed in 2012, just before the uptown in interest in vinyl which might have saved it. Be warned it's a rather sad watch. A salutary tale of what could happen if you choose to work your whole life in a record shop.

B Sides # 8 George Harrison

A seven minute b-side to 1970's Number One single My Sweet Lord.

Songs About People # 99 Henry VIII

As English as you can get. The Smiths, Madness and The Libertines came from this. Harry Champion recorded it in 1911. Herman's Hermits took the same song into the charts fifty years later but you're not getting that!

Song of the Day # 522 Manic Street Preachers

This came out at a point in time when Brit Pop was on its last legs. The Manic Street Preachers were coming back from their own personal tragedy and I was on the ropes myself following a particularly bad personal break up. Hearing this takes me back to that particular moment in time. I survived of course as you always do. So did they, going on to sell more records than they ever had before.The 'libraries gave us power. Then work came and make us free,' opening gambit resonates as a pair of lines, angry, somewhat resigned, but also defiant as a comment about the lives that people had made for themselves as a result of and also despite the machinations of British political decisions. It reached Number 2 in the UK but should have been Number 1.

Songs Heard on the Radio # 60 Ezra Furman

Still dipping my feet in the water with Ezra Furman, about whom there seems to be such an unholy buzz at the minute. Still, this sounds alright.

Vinyl Purchases # 21 Manfred Mann

Wednesday 24th June. £5.00. RPM Records, Newcastle

I didn't wake up this morning thinking I'd end the day with a Manfred Mann record. Well you don't, do you? The whole of my mouth numb from a dentist's filling I wandered down the hill to RPM at midday, one of four record shops in Newcastle and possibly the best. This was playing on one of the great antique players at the back of the shop. Sounded great, I exchanged a few words with the owner and now I have it.

Manfred Mann to me generally epitomise the slightly drippy, side of the beat band sixties scene but I can see I've slightly misjudged them. They're a tight band, quite thoughtful at points here and I imagine would have played a good set in a dark, sweaty night club. 

They play a number of covers here, Since I Don't Have You, The Way You Do The Things You Do, Stormy Monday,You Don't Know Me some great instrumentals and some originals, spread across the band, particularly L.S.D. (pounds, shillings and pence, not hallucinogenics), from guitarist Tom McGuiness, the best thing on here, along with You're For Me where they really let rip. L.S.D. was the track playing as I came in and it persuaded me to buy the record. Worth having a copy with McGuiness's extensive sleeve notes explaining the making of the record.

It's a neat record. Perhaps that's a dated description but it seems to fit here. It's also tasteful. There's some poppy stuff, but no Doo Wah Diddy, or Pink Flamingo to spoil the mood. I like it! I like it! Oh no, not one of theirs.

Mark E. Smith on Industrial Estate

'Songs like 'Industrial State' -that was the second or third song that I wrote the music for, but the lyrics came first it's a sort of poem: a hard poem. You can tell it was written at work. It's about working on the docks, on a container base. o of course I presented it to the group and they wanted to know what it's all about. They would prefer me to write about velvet shiny leather, the moon and all that kind of thing, like Television or The Velvets. As a compromise I wrote the chorus - 'Yeah, yeah industrial estate' - to make it a bit more American rocky. And I wrote this sub-Stooges music to go with it, Stooges without the third chord. At the time people thought it was terrible, because it wasn't the way it should be, it wasn't 'in tune'. But I never wanted The Fall to be like one of those groups I didn't care.

That's what grabbed me about The Stooges. You can't imagine how difficult it was to get hold of Stooge records in those days. I'd harass every record shop in town when I was nineteen to get The Stooges. I'd keep going in every week, take a day off work, post for i - anything. I used to get all this shit from Virgin Records: 'No we haven't got any Stooges LPs but why don't you try this,Tubular Bells, it's on special offer. But it was worth it when I got it. There was nothing like The Stooges in the 70s. They weren't hippy-drippy. I'm not a guitarist but I can play their songs - I like that. That's what's great about them. And the fact that they wrote the first album in a night is fantastic. They only knew about three chords and had to get it down. Not enough bands work like that nowadays. They're too precious. It's the Stone Roses syndrome: five years to record an album. Just get in there and fucking do it. That's your job'

From Renegade: The Lives & Tales of Mark E. Smith . Go and get it! Just got mine from an HMV shop for £3.99.

Song of the Day # 521 Donna Summer

This weekend, for my Mother's eightieth birthday celebrations I put this on the Spotify Playlist that acted as a backdrop to proceedings. Not for the song itself as a memory but for 1965, the year I was born in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia,  when the country declared UDI from the British Emipre. Not a good event in itself, but worth remembering. The song meanwhile is just great. A 1982 cover of the Jon & Vangelis song and a wonderful version worth posting just for itself.  

Songs Heard on the Radio # 59 The Go Betweens

Just heard the tail end of this as I came in with my shopping. Kid Jensen session from 1983. This lot were among the best two or three bands in the world at that point. So it goes on here. Bachelor Kisses was the song I heard the tail end of but you get the whole session.

Things I've Found on My Local's Jukebox # 72 Public Enemy

Back in Newcastle after a week away and spent a couple of hours at Rosie's while it was quiet this afternoon putting on songs old and new. This was the best thing I heard. Only knew it before through the Tricky cover version but it's clear that the original wipes it out from this point on. At least to my mind.

B Sides # 7 The La's

'The rain is falling. The wind is talking. The road is calling. And we're on our way.'

A very good friend of mine, who sadly I fell out with about a year ago, used to bring his singles collection round to my flat here in Newcastle sometimes and we'd sit and listen to music together, playing three choices of his then three of mine while chugging beer. Brian was all late seventies and early eighties punk and new wave. He'd often say 'oh I'll play the b-side', then regret it halfway through. Living proof that the b-side is not always better.

  

Here's a case in point. I can't totally endorse everything I post on here. This for instance! It's a five out of ten at best. Sometimes songs are b-sides with good reason. This is full of the kind of quasi-mystical, spliff inspired, dole sponsored gobbledygook that got several British Northern guitar bands through entire careers in the mid to late nineties. The La's had more talent than most but not as much as some claimed for them as this song ably demonstrates. B-side to Timeless Melody. Timeless Melody rips it apart. I've posted it above too, to demonstrate this point. The opening of Over meanwhile is oddly reminiscent of something from Camberwick Wick, a children's programme for anyone brought up in the UK in the sixties and seventies.

I'll post this for Brian, wherever he is. You can come back round and play your dodgy b-sides whenever you like. I'll get the beers in.

Record Sleeves # 36 Rage Against The Machine

'Thích Quảng Đức^[1] (1897 – 11 June 1963, born Lâm Văn Túc), was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on 11 June 1963.^[2] Quang Duc was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government led by Ngô Đình Diệm. Photographs of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm government. John F. Kennedy said in reference to a photograph of Duc on fire, "No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one."^[3] Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of the monk's death.'

From Wikipedia of course. As is this:

'America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.'  

Tom Morello, Rage Against The Machine

Song of the Day # 520 Rage Against The Machine

Bullet In The Head. How I love you! The first Rage Against The Machine song I ever heard, round about the time of their first album, with a great studio clip of them doing it live for MTV which I watched on a sofa in Dortmund next to a dope fiend who was probably rolling a spliff at the time. Still their best song and the only one you'll ever need, although they did plenty of variants on it over the years. They only have one really don't they? But then again why would they need another?

The British weekly music paper, Melody Maker, now defunct, got a lot of mileage in the early nineties making fun of Rage Against The Machine most obviously for their name. It sums up all the irony of this stuff. Loud, angry music about conformity and mind control to allow like minded souls to leap around and lose themselves in an act of mind control and conformity before going back to their humdrum nine to fives to be controlled and to conform. Wonderful!

As I said Bullet In Your Head is their best. Better even than Killing In The Name Of, where for me the 'fuck you, I won't do what you tell me,' line tips the whole thing over the top into the arena of the teenage tantrum. Oh, and no you can't have the car.

Bullet In The Head meanwhile is lean and quite beautiful and it points outwards, not in. It has all the sleek energy, grace and murderous power of a lion in its prime, tracking, chasing and taking down a gazelle. Builds for five minutes and then detonates. What more could you want from a rock song! Tom Morello's guitar effects take it somewhere none of their competitors could ever go. And as for Zak De La Rocha. 'You've got a bullet in your fucking head!' No offence meant out there!

I bought the first album yesterday from a record stall owner in an indoor market in Canterbury who has a neat line in patter and who I always enjoy talking to and always gets me to buy the record. He knows what he's doing. Really I had to have the vinyl for the cover alone, that great, classic image of a Vietnamese monk setting himself aflame. I bought it the day after buying the Left Banke album. It makes a great companion piece. The lead singers may not have shared a desk if they'd have gone to school together. Oh and the vinyl of the Rage Against The Machine record is red. What more could you want! Have a nice day!

   

'This time the bullet cold rocked ya
A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika
Nothin' proper about ya propaganda
Fools follow rules when the set commands ya
Said it was blue
When ya blood was read
That's how ya got a bullet blasted through ya head

Blasted through ya head
Blasted through ya head

I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched as the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You were mesmerised
Cellular phones soundin' a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn ya to stone before ya realise
They load the clip in omnicolour
Said they pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds

Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high

Run it!

Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high

Checka, checka, check it out
They load the clip in omnicolour
Said they pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds

No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya
Buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya
They say jump and ya say how high
Ya brain-dead
Ya gotta fuckin' bullet in ya head

Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high

Uggh! Yeah! Yea!

Ya standin' in line
Believin' the lies
Ya bowin' down to the flag
Ya gotta bullet in ya head

Ya standin' in line
Believin' the lies
Ya bowin' down to the flag
Ya gotta bullet in ya head

A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
A bullet in ya head!
Ya gotta bullet in ya fuckin' head!

Yeah!

Yeah! '

Renee Fladen-Kamm

The muse behind not one, but three of the songs on The Left Banke album written about in a post below. She became a vocal teacher and singer in the Bay Area:

'Violinist Harry Lookofsky owned a small storefront recording studio in New York City that he called World United Studios. In 1965, he gave a set of keys to his 16-year-old son, Mike Brown [real name: Mike Lookofsky], who helped out by cleaning up and occasionally sitting in as a session pianist. Mike began bringing in his teenage friends who tinkered with drums, guitars, amplifiers, the Steinway piano, and anything else they might find. Except for Mike, who had a background in classical piano, none of them were top musicians. But they could sing, especially one guy named Steve Martin.

By 1966 they started to call themselves the Left Banke. In addition to Mike and Steve, they included Rick Brand on lead guitar, Tom Finn on bass, and drummer George Cameron. Finn brought his girlfriend to the studio one day when the group had assembled for a practice session. She was a 5' 6" teenager with platinum blond hair. Mike Brown was infatuated with her the instant he saw her. Her name was Renee Fladen.

The group had begun recording songs, and Harry was particularly impressed with Steve Martin's voice. Mike wrote a song about Renee. Although there was never anything between the two, Mike was fascinated by her and pictured himself standing at the corner of Hampton and Falmouth Avenues in Brooklyn with Renee, beneath the "One Way" sign. In his fantasy, he was telling her to walk away.
...

As for Renee, she moved to Boston with her family shortly after the Left Banke recorded Walk Away Renee, and no one in the group ever saw her again.'

'And when I see the sign that points one way

The lot we used to pass by every day

Just walk away, Renée

You won't see me follow you back home

The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same

You're not to blame

From deep inside the tears

I'm forced to cry

From deep inside the pain

That I chose to hide

Just walk away, Renée

You won't see me follow you back home

Now as the rain burns down upon my weary eyes

For me it cries

Just walk away, Renée

You won't see me follow you back home

Now as the rain burns down upon my weary eyes

For me it cries

Your name and mine inside

A heart on a wall

Still finds a way to haunt me

Though they're so small

Just walk away, Renée

You won't see me follow you back home

The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same

You're not to blame.' 

B Sides # 6 The Rolling Stones

Dark with sexual and class menace. Such a motif at the time if you watch films like The Servant and If. Understandable, watching this, how frightening they must have been to parents. B-side to The Last Time.

Song of the Day # 519 The Tokens

As I commented in the Left Banke post below, I was part of the celebrations for my mum's eightieth birthday party this weekend. My small part in these celebrations, apart from just being here, was to provide a Spotify soundtrack with songs and memories for proceedings. As my parents spent the fifteen years following their marriage in Africa, (South Africa and Zimbabwe), a lot of the things I chose centred on our time there. This was pointed out as an obvious omission. Great song too. American Number One in 1961. Made particularly wonderful to my ears by the almost ludicrous, soaring female backing falsetto. And for those of my generation, no I wasn't tempted to post the eighties remake by Tight Fit which topped the British Singles Chart in 1982. It's crap! Find it yourself if you're so inclined.

Songs About People # 98 Chris Isaak

Chris Isaak, as one of the more appealing throwback artists of the eighties and nineties somehow deserves a record named after him. And here it is, a suitably plaintive and windswept tribute from a true old school singer of New Country.

Vinyl Purchases # 20 The Left Banke

Immersed as I am in this Twee book, I'll use the opportunity to re-post this review from last June of one of the ultimate Twee albums, The Left Banke's first album, a major source of Stuart Murdoch and Belle & Sebastian's founding inspiration.

'This is a vinyl purchaser's story. I'm down south for a family get together this week as my mother has had a celebration for her eightieth birthday. The party for this took place yesterday in Canterbury. A good time was had by all though I don't imagine that you're taking notes. All in all a fairly special experience in the best sense of the word the kind that triggers memory and emotional duct blood-flow in all kinds of ways you never quite expect. Today, a good part of the clan gathered again for lunch and a walk around Whitstable, fifteen minutes drive down the road on the coast where my brother's family who live in Miami have a holiday house.

After lunch, we wandered down the beach. A beautiful, sunlit day. Of course, being the person that I am, which this blog attests to, half my mind was wondering if we were likely to chance upon a record shop as we ambled across pebbles and took ice creams. On the way back we made our way past Whitstable's  impressive selection of second hand and gift shops. The place has gentrified in a good way over the past fifteen years as it's been soaked into the overflow of London and the south east's ever accumulating wealth and reach.

A stone's throw away from home I saw what I'd been looking for. A collector's shop with the right kind of  records on display in the window. Those who might read this, who care about this kind of thing, will know what I mean. Having eventually found the entrance to the place, in a side door, my oldest American nephew Ben, (who is fast-developing his own interest in such things), and I had a look through the well organised racks of records there.

There was plenty of good stuff. Reasonably priced. But nothing that really grabbed me. And then halfway down the second rack I came upon this album. I kind of stopped in my tracks because I'm well enough versed in stuff like this to know when I chance upon something pretty unusual. What appeared to be an original version of the first Left Banke record. The one named after their two best known songs, Pretty Ballerina and Walk Away Renee, both tracks placed not insignificantly on track one of Side 1 and Side 2 respectively as well as sharing the title of the record itself. The one that taught Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian a great deal of what he needed to know when first he decided to embark upon a career in music.

I took it to the record shop owner who was perched behind the counter, to make the basic inquiries. The album had a couple of small stickers on it. 'Original Issue! Plays Fine!'. and '£29.99'. My initial feeling was that if the first statement was correct then the price was by no means unreasonable. The brief conversation we had was enough for me. Like all proper record shop people he was first and foremost a music fan.

He shared my surprise at the fact that he even had the album. This kind of psychedelic wave cultish stuff barely made it to British shores in the late sixties, never mind landing up on a shelf for sale in decent condition almost fifty years later. He mentioned Love, the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Chocolate Watchband as particular favourites of his. All of this stuff strangely seals a deal. It was clear that a trip to the nearest cash-point was required and proper.

It's difficult to describe the strange sense of anxiety I felt when going to get the money needed, returning to exchange it for the record and how I've been in the couple of hours since before getting round to writing this. This might be something quite peculiar to record buyers although perhaps it's a fluttery sensation that might also be understood by those who amass antiques or classic cars, or mechanical engines, or first edition books .There's a slight twinge of guilt involved but also a realisation that you actually had little choice in the matter. That the object and you were supposed to be together.

Anyway, it's mine, and I should imagine and hope always will be. The album itself is not quite a masterpiece, no matter what anyone tells you, perhaps a minor one and certainly a grower. What makes it most noticeable, is the songwriting of main man Michael Brown, who died just recently, and the unquestionably baroque and crafted arrangement of the songs. Also of course its influence. Most notably Belle & Sebastian, Badly Drawn Boy and a whole generation of sensitive strummers with fringes, from the eighties onwards. It sounds strangely like one of the first indie records now. Time changes albums into something they never were when first released.

Peculiarly also, both the album's best known tracks were almost love letters from Brown to the remarkably named Renee Fladen-Kamm, who at that point was the girlfriend of bassist Tom Finn. She's described on the pages of Wikipedia as a free spirited blond.There's something of this unrequited loneliness, heartbreak and longing in the sound of the record and also a lack of true closeness in the playing of the musicians themselves, (they disbanded shortly after these recordings were made and were replaced by backing musicians) that actually seems to haunt the record itself. It's a 'nearly' record. But at the same time one of the great ones.

Elsewhere, it's the ghost of The Beatles influence that casts as great a shadow as Bach on things that provides the album's most obvious flaws. Things get better the further away it moves from them but occasionally the unmistakable combination of the arrangement of harmonies and the hoarse full-throated howl of Martin Caro on certain tracks gives you the uncanny sensation that Lennon has barged his way through to the mic and McCartney and Harrison have gathered behind him in support.Check out last track Lazy Day, if you don't believe me. 

Still, I'm by know means complaining. Have I said before that it's mine? My precious! It'll undoubtedly be a record I return to and bond with over time and Walk Away Renee, in particular is an exquisite, pocket masterpiece of compressed emotion. Much else here falls not far short of that. The delicacy and sensitivity of the songs, the compact, simplicity of the arrangements and the knowledge that I'm in possession of an original object  of such simple beauty all mean that today was a good day. And not of course just because I bought the record but equally because of the memories, company, scenery and emotions that accompanied my purchase of it. Listening to it over future months and years will no doubt send me spiraling back through time and space to that point. To the weekend of my mother's eightieth birthday party. And no, I don't think I'm being fanciful. This is the way these things actually work!'

B Sides # 5 The Smiths

Among the very best b-sides of them all. The other side of 1983's This Charming Man, with a truly wonderful cover shot of Jean Marais, taken from Cocteau's 1950 film Orphee. Don't knock The Smiths!

Songs About People # 97 Bob Dylan

And the second song posted below took me here. To David Peel & the Lower East Side who somehow managed to get themselves a deal with Elektra Records in the late sixties, partly thanks to great punk mover and shaker Danny Fields, and sell the best part of a million records or more of this kind of decidedly low-fi stuff. A real forerunner of Punk and of course what Lewis himself does now. Here's Peel's tribute to Bob from his 1972 album The Pope Smokes Dope.

Song(s) of the Day # 518 Jeffrey Lewis

Psst! It's Sunday morning. Would you like a musical, rhymed, potted history lesson of the fall of the Soviet Union from a New York based indie singer-songwriter? Accompanied by his own comic illustrations? Hope so, because here it is. If you care for this you may also find interest in Lewis's history of Rough Trade Records and Complete History of Punk Rock on the Lower East Side 1950-1975.  In fact, I'll make it easier for you. Here's the latter...

Hank Williams

B Sides # 4 Prefab Sprout

About that Diana.' It's about the deification of a girl' remarked Paddy McAloon in 1984 of his song about the tabloid press' fawning elevation of their then-favourite  Royal, and erm, the fact that she 'smells of apple strudel.' B-side to When Love Breaks Down and like everything McAloon was putting out round about then, quite distinctively theirs.

Song(s) of the Day # 517 Judy Henkse

I think I've had one of those great Charity Shop related finds! £2.99 in Oxfam, Canterbury. 5p for the bag. Judy Henske. Queen of the Beatniks. Released on Elektra Records in the early sixties. Always a good sign. The liner notes read:

 'Judy Henske is a Christian artist and a bitchin' singer...she must be six feet tall...a 'neat' performer...a snorting, long-legged, foot-stopping improvisation...Three years ago, or so, Judy Henske sat on the keyboard of a player piano in the espresso darkness of the Unicorn...L.A.Hollywood, Sunset Strip, Calif...sandal feet propped on a cane-backed chair...long dark tresses swinging and dangling as her head nodded with the rhythm...she belted out Twelve Gates To The City in a voice that tromboned a destiny soon to be fulfilled...You hold in your hands the first thin wafer taste of what life will develop into the gratifying and enduring feast of Judy Henske...'

The rest of the notes are worth reading too. Three dots separate each over-excited statement. I'll leave that to your record shopping. As for the record itself, possibly the best £3.04 I've ever spent. If I had a chance to live in another age and time, a question I suppose we all ask ourselves at some point, New York in the early sixties would be right up there. Beatnik bohemian bars, Don Draper on an adjoining table barely concealing his disdain, Judy Henske type on the low stage. Something coming to an end. Something just about to begin.

Covers # 11 Tir Na Nog

And on the subject of Nick Drake and Pink Moon, here's a cover of one of the songs off it by an Irish duo from their 1973 album debut. Peter Paphides, who talks about it on a feature on Drake on the John Peel archive website, thinks it's wonderful. I'm not entirely sure myself though I do see the connection he makes with the marauding quality of the early Roxy Music records. 

June 19th 1948 Nick Drake

As was pointed out to me yesterday, this is an awful album cover. Nevertheless, a very good record. 

Songs About People # 96 Meg White

Having taken a slight, sideways swipe at The White Stripes on here just now here's a great love letter to their drummer from Ray LaMontagne.

B Sides # 3 Violent Femmes

Gordon Gano, Jonathan Richman's wayward younger brother. B-Side to Ugly, quite the weakest of their early batch of songs, which came out between their first album and their second. This though is among the very best of them. Biblical. Gano's inability to allow any boundaries to his hormonal raging put him in a category all of his own. No-one else came close. I imagine Dad said no.

Song(s) of the Day # 516 J. Geils Band

Magic Dick - Lord of the Licking Stick!

Writer Nick Hornby was ahead of the curve in some respects when he first starting putting books out two decades back or more although I still have some trouble reading his stuff owing partly to his specific tastes in both football and music and my own personal prejudices in those respects. I'm sure Hornby himself would understand. Still, he was in many ways the big daddy of all us blog ranters, banging on ceaselessly about his pet obsessions without regard for actually being liked by the reader and unapologetic about his tastes and himself.

He also has great, undeniable strengths of course, particularly in terms of his precision, most obviously in his first two books, Fever Pitch and High Fidelity, in nailing certain characteristics of the adult, British male. Maybe the conclusions he came to apply elsewhere too, but I can only speak authoritatively from personal experience for these isles. In particular he hit bulls-eyes in terms of male neediness, our difficulties with the opposite sex, our tendency to make lists, our often illogical and unswerving allegiance to particular sporting clubs, our unshakable sense of certainty that our taste in music is, after all, better than anyone else's. And that's just for starters.

Nevertheless, he gets some things wrong. He supports Arsenal, after all and proceeds to keep banging on about it and them in interminable length and detail throughout the pages of  Fever Pitch as if this in itself makes him by default some kind of deserving object for sympathy or pity from those who might not share his particular object of affection. Arsenal Football club, as those even vaguely in the know will realise, are one of the more enduringly, successful institutions  in English footballing history. Arsenal fans don't need or deserve a shred of either sympathy or empathy from the rest of us. Their team will no doubt win something this season. If not, the next. The rest of us should be so lucky! As for those who don't even like the sport. God only knows what they think!

.

In High Fidelity and most recently in 31 Songs, his written collection of his favourite songs and the memories and emotions they evoke, he did us male music lovers an even greater disservice. He saddled us, by association, with a mainstream, contented and slightly self-satisfied perspective on life and music. There's more to life than Badly Drawn Boy, Teenage Fanclub and Aimee Mann Nick! Jackson Browne puh-lease!

He does pick some good stuff too of course. The book's well worth a read despite this caveat and there are of some notable sections of excellent writing. For example this passage about his first trip to The States as a teenager and how he fell in love with all things American, including the J.Geils Band:

'My father's friend had a son called Danny, who was older than me , maybe twenty or twenty-one and he had long hair and a moustache; he looked exactly like Danny Crudup in Almost Famous. Danny loved his music, and the music I was listening to when I went round to his house for the first time was the live J.Geils Band album Full House. I'd never heard of them, and I'd never heard anything like them: in those days, before they had a big pop hit with 'Centrefold',they played white boy R&B, like The Stones in 1965, but much louder and much faster, with a beserk irreverence and an occasionally terrifying intensity. On the live album, Peter Wolf, the lead singer, shouted out funny, weird or incomprehensible things in between songs: 'On the licking stick Mr Magic Dick!' 'This used to be called "Take Out Your False Teeth Mama.......I Want To Sssssuck On Your Gums" and something that sounds like 'areyougonnagettitmoodogetitgoomoogetitmoodoogoomooomoogetitalldowngetitallrig htgetitoutofsightandgetitdownbaby?' The first thing you hear on the record is a solid slab of crown noise, whistles and cheers and screams, and then a shouted and very un-English introduction from an MC 'Are you ready to get down? I said are you ready for some rock and roll? Let's hear it for the J.Geils Band!'

Nick Hornby - 31 Songs

The J.Geils Band at their peak was a pleasure that was largely denied to British audiences. As Hornby mentions above they only really struck it big here ten years later when they had a couple of Top 20 hits in the early eighties with Centrefold and Freezeframe and toured with The Stones. They were past their best then, Centrefold is a particular embarrassment to listen to now, but Hornby is right in that they were clearly a force to be reckoned with in the early Seventies. On one occasion, the legendary rock critic Lester Bangs played typewriter onstage with them during an encore proceeding to smash it to bits at the end of the song. He wouldn't have done that with just anyone. Possibly, reading Bang's stuff again this week he might have done, so rampant was his ego.

In any case, I've posted a selection from their fine first two studio albums here as well as one of the tracks from the Full House live album that Hornby alludes to above, which interestingly also gets a name-check in the Big Star review I put up a couple of days back and clearly was a staple for American record collectors in the early seventies and the band themselves, something of an institution.

Covers # 10 The Black Keys

After a great hour listening to The Black Keys talking about their inspirations yesterday, (see post below), I tried to track down something of interest among their own recordings but thus far sadly without success. Strangely, for a band striving for the sound they're after, as with The White Stripes, what actually comes across to me is their inauthenticity. Still, I'll keep trying. In the meantime, I did like this. More, (partially at least), inspiration. She Said She Said, re-imagined by Hendrix. Nicely done.

Songs Heard on the Radio # 60 Spooky Tooth

I always had a feeling there'd be something by Spooky Tooth I would like. Just chanced upon at least one thing thanks to Marc Riley.

Songs About People # 95 Timothy Leary

American psychologist and advocate of the 'turn on, tune in, drop out', mantra of the west coast in the mid to late Sixties get's an extended, period piece tribute from The Moody Blues in 1968. Leary was later described as 'the most dangerous man in America,' by Richard Nixon if a further testimonial is required.

Playlists # 1 The Black Keys

Always interesting to hear musicians play a load of records they love and talking about it. Not quite got round to The Black Keys yet but their taste is so great I'll have to give them another listen. What they say about the records is also worth hearing. Here's the link. And here's the list:

1. Pavement - Texas Never Whispers

2. Dr. John - Jump Sturdy

3. Galaxie 500 - Strange

4. Rick Nelson - Hello Mary Lou

5. The Beatles - Come Together

6. The Reigning Sound - If You Can't Give Me Everything

7. Television - Elevation

8. Bo Diddley - She's Fine, She's Mine

9. The Feelies - Raised Eyebrows

10. Dale & Grace - I'm Leaving It Up To You

11. Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band - Grow Fins

12. Prince Conley - I'm Coming Home

B Sides # 2 Nirvana

Flip side to Heart Shaped Box and as far as I know the first David Grohl song released. Obviously written in Cobain's enormous shadow but nevertheless a nice start.

Death # 3 - Jan & Dean

I could have put this in the just completed Be My Baby series. It has pretty much the same drum track and indeed the same drummer Hal Blaine and band, the legendary Wrecking Crew team of LA studio musicians. But perhaps it slots more comfortably in the 'death' category. Remarkably cheery given the subject matter. Also geographically quite specific, detailing the route from Sunset Strip to the notorious curve in the road an almost 90 degree turn in the road on Sunset Boulevard just past North Whittier Drive.. Of course the song was given added poignancy and mystique when writer and band leader Jan Berry had his own near fatal accident a couple of years later not far from the very same spot which derailed the duo's career. Racing cars was a real American teenage phenomenon, rites of passage and distraction from boredom, never mind a source of fictional twists in the late Fifties and early Sixties from Rebel Without a Cause  to American Graffiti  to Grease to this that's probably worth a book chapter of its own if it hasn't already been written. And the message is, 'Don't do it kids!'

'I was cruisin' in my Sting Ray late one night

When an xke pulled up on the right
And rolled down the window of his shiny new Jag
And challenged me then and there to a drag
I said, "You're on, buddy, my mill's runnin' fine
Let's come off the line now, at Sunset and Vine
But I'll throw you one better if you've got the nerve
Let's race all the way
To Dead Man's Curve"

Dead Man's Curve, it's no place to play
Dead Man's Curve, you best keep away
Dead Man's Curve, I can hear 'em say
Won't come back from Dead Man's Curve

The street was deserted late Friday night
We were buggin' each other while we sat out the light
We both popped the clutch when the light turned green
You should of heard the whine from my screamin' machine
I flew past Labrea, Schwab's, and Crescent Heights
And all the Jag could see were my six tail lights
He passed me at Doheny then I started to swerve
But I pulled her out and there we were
At Dead Man's Curve

Dead Man's Curve, it's no place to play
Dead Man's Curve

Well, the last thing I remember, Doc, I started to swerve
And then I saw the Jag slide into the curve
I know I'll never forget that horrible sight
I guess I found out for myself that everyone was right
Won't come back from Dead Man's Curve

Dead Man's Curve, it's no place to play
Dead Man's Curve, you best keep away
Dead Man's Curve, I can hear 'em say
Won't come back from Dead Man's Curve'

Song(s) of the Day # 515 World of Twist

Retro futuristic chic from twenty five years back. World of Twist were much rated by critics, deejays and fellow musicians at the time and since but failed to match that acclaim with much real chart success or record sales. Their 1990 Quality Street album is worth hearing, I had the sense to buy it at the time, but really these two singles tell their story as well as anything. As distinct from the pack as Associates had been with Party Fears Two and Club Country almost ten years before and Roxy Music with Virginia Plain and Pyjamarama ten years before that, these should both have been Top Twenty hits. They probably influenced nobody but it's sometimes just easier to copy the obvious stuff.

Waitakere Walks - Velvets

Please find links to a great, late Velvet Underground article from 1970 in Circle Magazine at the Waitakere Walks blog listed on the right-hand margin of this one. Or alternatively, here.

Song(s) of the Day # 514 Brinsley Schwarz

 

Brinsley Schwarz are known for a number of things. Being named after their guitarist. Emerging from the ashes of a Sixties band called Kippington Lodge. An infamous marketing exercise, hatched by Dave Robinson who later went on to form Stiff Records, where a busful of journalists were sent out to New York in April 1970 to watch them play support to Quicksilver Messenger Service and Van Morrison at the Fillmore East in New York City. The plot backfired entirely, the journalists for the most part got stinking drunk on the excursion's rider and proceeded to slate the band in their resulting reviews almost leaving Brinsley Schwarz dead in the water before their career had even really started.

They're also of course known as the platform from which Nick Lowe first started to make his mark as second guitarist and main songwriter. I'd recommend their second album Despite It All, which they recorded and released later in the same year. Vinyl copies of which will fetch you the best part of £30 if you're lucky. Records tend to find their own price. It has the fingerprints of Van, The Flying Burritos and Crosby, Stills & Nash all over it but it's a good listen coming as it seems to do from an altogether slower, more laid-back and contented time.

They went on to become mainstays of the London Pub Rock scene. Lowe ended up on Stiff and became a punk rock producer. Here are four songs from that second record. Nice cover too!