More Sunday morning fare. Fund myself listening to the audio commentary of Withnail & I, where this is played over the opening credit. Paul McGann incorrectly states that King Curtis was shot in the face in the car park shortly after playing this. In fact he was stabbed on the steps of the building where he lived. In any case, a dreadful loss. Here's something else from him for good measure.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Covers # 12 Dillard & Clark
Just right for a Sunday morning. A bit of pedal steel 'geetar' from Sneaky Pete Kleinow with Gene Clark intoning on top. Really realises the Country potential and gentleness not quite realised in the original. The Beatles of course from Abbey Road. This comes from Dillard & Clark's second record.
Song of the Day # 532 Clothilde
For the leftfield and obscurist for the sake of it, this may be an ultimate discovery. A French female singer from the mid-sixties in the Ye Ye style of France Gall who only released a handful of vinyl releases with odd, idiosyncratic arrangements.Groovy! Some of this handful sound a little cloying to my ears, but this is a pretty wonderful three minutes and eleven seconds.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Songs About People # 103 - Woody Allen
A beautifully realised pop record. Named after the regular cries of the old market stall holders directed towards her as lead singer Elizabeth Morris passed them in Soho on her way to work. The band's output over the course of two albums is consistently sweet and tuneful with finely judged lyrics about life and love. Here's a song named after someone who belongs in a category all of their own.
Songs Found on my Local's Jukebox # 75 Hank Williams
You could probably make some case for Hank Williams writing the first modern pop songs. He definitely had an incalculable influence. Inspiringly used in an early scene of The Last Picture Show.
Friday, July 3, 2015
Songs About People # 102 Gina Lollobrigida
From Cinerama, a Dave Gedge offshoot from The Wedding Present . For Gina Lollobrigida and why not? She brightens up the page. There she is again on the clip for the French version below!
Things I've Found on My Local's Jukebox # 74 The Ramones
This went on last night. Intended to shock I imagine and it probably did so when people first heard it. not any more of course now The Ramones are pretty much embedded into the canon.
Song(s) of the Day # 530 The Mystery Trend
The great lost San Francisco band of the mid sixties. Less overtly psychedelic than a lot of their better known contemporaries. Taking their name from the misheard 'mystery tramp' line in Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, they released just one single during their lifetime (posted above), broke up inopportunely in the summer of 1967 and had a collection of their recorded tracks released retrospectively in 1998. The singer's voice is strangely reminiscent of Micky Dolenz. Endlessly inventive arrangements. More here. Oh by the way, it's Friday!
Thursday, July 2, 2015
B Sides # 14 Elton John
It must be an ageing thing but I have more time for Elton John, (well let me qualify that, early Elton John), with every passing year. This was b-side to Crocodile Rock. Also on Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player.
P.S. I take some of that back. I've just listened to the album above and it's a shocker! Elderberry Wine is just about the only track worth listening to on there.
Songs About People # 101 Cecil Beaton
And while we're in the realm of fey eighties indie-ness, here's a song from typical janglers from those times, with a singer who apparently intones in received pronunciation. A paean to the famed twentieth century photographer, fashion designer and socialite. They also wrote a song in honour of no more eighties heroine Emmanuelle Beart but there's no room for that here.
Jane - It's A Fine Day
Well it is a fine day, Something of a heatwave in England at the minute. I'm listening to this and it takes me unerringly back to the eighties as I imagine it will for anyone from the UK of a similar age and an indie disposition. It was omnipresent on the radio at the time. Particularly John Peel. Still not entirely sure what I think of it thirty years but it definitely fits today.
Song of the Day # 529 Super Furry Animals
One of the performances of this year's Glastonbury came, for me, from this lot. Particularly wonderful was Run Christian Run but I couldn't find another version of them playing it live that conveyed the transcendence of Friday night's performance. It's on the BBC i-player if you have access to that. In the meantime, here's one of their other perennials.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Instrumentals # 36 Anton Karas
You could do worse than choose to do what I've just done, moving onto the second half of the afternoon as the sky unaccountably clouds over threatening to curtail the brief heatwave we've been experiencing here. You could get onto Spotify or YouTube and listen to Anton Karas for twenty minutes.
Indelibly associated with the 1949 film The Third Man as it is with his soundtrack for it, a few minutes listening to pretty much anything by him is incredibly therapeutic. The film's success dragged him from relative poverty to international celebrity, which apparently he never really wanted much.
Sure enough the storm has broken. Meanwhile, Anton Karas is playing over my headphones. I don't care. Meanwhile, elsewhere The Third Man is playing at my local cinema and I probably need to get along and see it.
Song(s) of the Day # 528 The Replacements
The Replacements are a strange one. Their reputation is huge but so much of their recorded output was poor. I never saw them live so can't tell the whole story. They were pretty much an American Clash, or an attempt at it, at least I think so, having listened to them a fair bit yesterday, but without a second main lead, whereas The Clash had a couple of other guys in reserve which made them an incomparably better band. Let It Be is The Replacements record. Pretty much perfect in itself. Give it a listen if you haven't heard it.
Their other LPs and earlier releases are poor in comparison, and certainly much more variable. Their songwriting was dubious and on occasion negligible and sloppy. Paul Westerberg was the main guy in this respect. But just the same judgement stands for their general playing. Much of it sounds like missed attempts at AOR hits with the memory of Punk chucked in and the songs, even the bands best known numbers, sound patchy at best. Thrown away on alcohol and lost dreams.
Occasionally, the sun and inspiration shine through. For example on They're Blind, the only song worth a cent on Don't Tell a Soul. Suddenly Westerberg finds his tune, some energy and emotion and pulls off something worth listening to.
The other albums are more consistent, particularly Tim. The ace on this record, last track Here Comes a Regular, is as good a song, pretty much, as any recorded by anyone in the eighties. It's a documentary of life spent in bars, which is always an available lifestyle option, if you choose to travel down that road. Watching life passing by, staring at familiar walls, unchallenged much by anyone and in the company of like-minded souls while the seasons change and your life slides.
My choice from Pleased to Meet Me, would be I Don't Know, one of the few call and responses in The Replacement's canon. It's a joy from start to finish and one of relatively few occasions where the band truly live up to the reputation and trail they've left behind.
I generally bow before the canon. But in terms of The Replacements, I'd have to say they're overrated, and don't entirely deserve the golden terms in which they're spoken of by pretty much everybody. Many of their most reputed songs are half-assed, lazy and thrown away. They barely exist in fellow Minneapolis band Husker Du's shadow apart from Let it Be. I'll add b-side Beer For Breakfast, to this selection, stand by all five songs I've chosen here and direct you back towards Let It Be for further listening satisfaction.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Death # 6 P J Harvey
Death on a slightly larger scale here. From Harvey's genius 2011 record Let England Shake.
June 30th 1979 Anita Ward
Anita Ward is probably known for one thing and it's Ring my Bell. There could be worse fates as it's a pretty good record. It went to Number One this week in 1979 in the States. It also went to Number 1 in the UK.
B Sides # 13 Yazoo
It does you know. Fortunately, it's summer right now. B-side to Don't Go back in...1982 (off the top of my head).
Song of the Day # 527 Girlpool
Look away now if the idea of adults behaving like they're children doesn't float your boat. Great Frere Jacques feature at the end of this first song. Girlpool's schtick is seeing the world from the perspective of a child to a musical backdrop of minimal indie arrangements. Highly alluring for followers of Kimya Dawson and Jonathan Richman, like the sound of nails scraping down a blackboard for those allergic to such stuff. I belong in the former category so here are two songs from their recently released album.
Monday, June 29, 2015
29th June 1957 Robert Forster
Happy Birthday to one of the men behind this blog's name. Appropriately, I must have written more about them than anyone else on here. Here's a song of his from their final studio album. Its end section sounds like no other Go Betweens song that I know.
B Sides # 12 Dean Martin
B-side to 1965's Houston. Uncannily similar at points to Walking In A Winter Wonderland.For someone who hated Rock and Roll, Martin is often very Rock and Roll.
Song of the Day # 526 Lynsey De Paul
Glastonbury is over and I'm back to work so here's something totally unrelated to either. Some of these early seventies pop hits may sound like trash but I actually think they're just good records.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Things I've Found on My Local's Jukebox # 73 The Rolling Stones
Because it's a very funny record. In lots of ways. Sadly The Stones got a lot less funny as they headed towards the seventies. And then, suddenly, they weren't funny at all excluding a rare few tracks. Shame!
Talking Heads
A late addition to my dream list of bands at Glastonbury posted yesterday. Perhaps they'd have to be shunted off to one of the other stages It's funny that when people talk about band reunions that Talking Heads are rarely mentioned. Once In A Lifetime. Pretty much the best pop song I can think of in the last thirty five years to describe the way that we in the west go about life and everything else. Oh, and it has a good tune!
Songs Heard on The Radio # 62 Nina Simone
Never heard this before. Nina's response to The Beatles' song of the same name.
Instrumentals # 35 Manfred Mann
And while we're here. Seems to be irrefutably The Who's weekend on the blog. Well they are headlining the last night of Glastonbury tonight. This works for me but you really don't want to listen to their version of Satisfaction because I've just done it for you and it should be left where it is.
Mose Allison
Apparently one of the sources of inspiration for My Generation. The Who also covered it themselves live towards the end of the sixties and it's on Live in Leeds. Here they do it at The Isle of Wight Festival. Personally, I'd plump for Mose's version but it's worth a watch. Take your pick!
Death # 5 The Shangri-Las
The Shangri-Las did plenty of death of course. This one's about a mother's love and is real tearjerker so grab your hankie!
B Sides # 11 The Monkees
And now for something completely different. B-side to Last Train To Clarksville. Take a giant step outside your mind!
Song of the Day # 525 - Suede
So, to the second night of Glastonbury 2015. I didn't do Kanye West. These things are now on the BBC i-Player and you can catch up with it retrospectively rather than live which is always the best way. I suspect it won't be my trip. Instead I watched an hour of Suede doing their thing as the headliners on the John Peel Stage with beer, the original Far From the Madding Crowd on the box with the sound turned down and the traffic of Newcastle night life parading past my window on the pavements below.
I thought they were blindingly good last night. Brett Anderson in particular as he's always been their main attraction particularly with Bernard Butler, his main foil no longer beside him, although they had a second guitarist who seemed like a bit of a look alike and hid for most of the set behind a fringe making me wonder for a while whether it actually might be him. Probably not. There was no doubt at all that it was Anderson though and he gave the performance his all, stretching his sinews to breaking point, waggling his bottom as if it was still twenty and exhorting the crowd from the top of the speaker stands to deny the passing years had actually passed and we were all still in 1993 living the decadent, bohemian dream in some run down, crummy, London dive.
He had the crowd in the palm of his hand. Pleasingly, they pretty much all seemed really young, far too young to be veterans of the mean streets of Camden in the early nineties. He had whole waves of beautiful people singing 'let's chase the dragon,' back at him, mostly people who wouldn't dream of actually doing so in real life. Such is the beauty of pop music. It gives ourselves the opportunity to dream ourselves into the sea of possibility without having to actually ever get wet and end up choking up a lung full of salt water.
To go back to where it started, Suede seemed like a very good thing in 1993. The British competition was very, very poor at the time which shouldn't be forgotten, but they were a flash of drama and cheap bedsit glamour. In the gutter but looking at the stars with the right set of poses and pouts and with a great set of songs at their service, (seek out the first album as conclusive evidence of this in addition to the songs posted here) . The British music press almost wished them into existence and they can't help but be seen in retrospect, (they actually were at the time), as the John the Baptists for the whole Brit Pop circus which followed shortly behind, snapping on their heels and eventually overtaking them over the next couple of years.
Suede pilfered shamelessly from an almost exclusively English heritage and a very slim set of influences. You got the impression that Anderson had very few records in his collection and even less books. Most obviously the early Bowie albums, Ziggy, Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs, The Smiths and precious little else while I'd also throw in Performance as their defining film, I think Anderson ended up in residence in or near Powis Square where all that decadence took place, living out his own dark romantic dream.
I'd also add to all this the Oliver! soundtrack as the source for their quite peculiar, twisted mockney-isms which always seemed much more of the product of a youth spent in suburbia dreaming of the metropolis than something that someone who had actually been brought up in London itself would ever come out with. Significantly, none of the major bands of that era who were based in London from that period were actually from there in contrast to The Clash and The Pistols or The Kinks,The Who and The Small Faces from previous generational movements. It led to a quite strange vision of existence in the capital that drew on music hall and old pub singalongs as much as rock and roll but it still seemed very exciting at the time.
In the cold light of day I'm perhaps throwing cold water on my enthusiasm for Suede last night. But they were great. As was this record, their first single and its twelve inch b-sides which came out in 1992. I can still remember marveling over its record sleeve with my sister over the Christmas of that year.
So Suede are still standing, and Brett Anderson still living the dream though I imagine he keeps rather better care of himself nowadays. Thanks to them for taking me back and rattling the rafters yesterday night. Now for some breakfast. Kanye can wait!
Saturday, June 27, 2015
My Glastonbury
Midway through the Saturday afternoon on Glastonbury 2015 and I can't help feeling that something is missing. So here's my fantasy set of artists for a Saturday evening. One hour each, from the period each artist was at its height. Quite strict running order, the later artists perhaps get an encore so perhaps things would over run slightly.Ten minutes for the roadies to clear the stage and get the next set of artists on. 5pm til 2.30 am!
1. The Cramps (1981) - 5pm- 6.00
Poison Ivy, Lux Interior. Kid Congo, if he was in the band at that point. They'd do Human Fly, The Way I Walk, Domino and whatever else they fancied. Lux would do the set topless and spend most of the set with the microphone inserted down his leather trousers and get led offstage in a less than dignified James Brown tribute. Some of the crowd would be slightly bewildered by what they'd seen but there'd be plenty of orderlies around to lead them off to the hospitality tent to be revived.
2. R.E.M. (1985) 6.10-7.10
Trust me. They were just great round about this point in time. Michael Stipe with his hair bleached blond and 'dog' written on his forehead in black crayon. Peter Buck, a more restrained Townshend. Halfway between The Who and The Byrds. They'd play a selection from Fables and Reckoning. Throw in Radio Free Europe, Pilgrimage, Gardening At Night and a cover or two. There'd make some conversions in an initially sceptical crowd.
3. The Patti Smith Group (1976)- 7.20 -8.20
Proper Hippie / Punks. Choice cuts from Horses and Radio Ethiopia with some beat poetry thrown in, a bit of shamanism and plenty of rebel rousing about realising your purpose on the planet.
4. Prince & The Revolution (1985) - 8.30-9-30
A mid-evening set, quite capable of stealing the whole show. Purple Rain, When Doves Cry, Kiss, Dirty Mind, Let's Go Crazy, Raspberry Beret and whatever else they wanted to play. Plenty of ludicrous guitar trickery. The crowd at the end of the set not sure to believe what they'd just seen.
5. Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970) - 9.40-10.40
Given a year to bounce back from their Woodstock disappointment but now having to up their game to follow Prince's band. They'd do plenty from Cosmo's Factory to complement their big hits from the earlier couple of years. The band would play a blinder, a tightly oiled unit, would leave the stage with their personal friendships cemented for life and a small unnecessary personal tragedy would be averted.
6. The Clash (1979) 10.50-11.50
It would start raining and they'd come on and play London Calling just like in the video. Plenty more of what you'd expect from the preceding albums and Strummer would connect with the audience to prevent any lull in proceedings as the sun comes out again.
7. Sly & The Family Stone (1969) 12.00-1.00
Prince and Sly would swap tips backstage. The band would slay the crowd with positivity and invention and hit after hit. Quite clearly one of the best bands ever to walk the boards.
8. The Who (1969) 1.10- 2.30
A small concession to Glastonbury in 2015. The band as they originally were and were meant to be. Keith Moon flailing, Daltrey in full costume and Townshend windmilling. The Velvet Underground & Nico, Dexys, Public Enemy, Elvis Costello & the Attractions, The Fela Kuti Band, an early incarnation of Nirvana and The Smiths on the other stages to divert those not pulled in by the main draw. All in all, a night not to be forgotten.
Oh well, back to reality! Perhaps Kanye West will erase all this from my memory banks.
Death # 4 Twinkle
While we're with female singers from the sixties who may have been in Morrissey's singles collection Here's some class early sixties teen-drama. The swirling background organ in particular make the record. The script is the same as The Leader of The Gang. You know the story. Did this ever happen to anybody? Death as the immediate, tragic consequences of dumping someone. If you believed the charts from those days you'd imagine it was one of the major killers of melodramatic teenagers. And let's face it, most of us are melodramatic at that phase in our lives. Twinkle's records still sound great. Sadly she, alias Lynn Annette Ripley, passed away recently.This features Jimmy Page, though he doesn't seem to have an enormous amount to do, and was banned by BBC radio. Different times.
Instrumentals # 34 The Who
And talking of The Who, here's a barnstorming instrumental from the My Generation album named in honour of group bassist John Entwhistle.
Song of the Day # 524 Robb Storme & The Whispers
Spent yesterday away from my local watching the first evening of Glastonbury 2015. Nowadays, the whole thing is an enormous communal, oh yes and corporate, (there's no getting away from it), global spectacle. Much of it passed me by. The headliners mean nothing to me. Hey I'm an almost fifty year old man. I imagine no-one would be able to explain the appeal of Florence & The Machine. After trying and failing to find any entry point for twenty minutes in the emotional bluster of their performance I turned the volume off and listened to Born Sandy Devotional and Fables of the Reconstruction instead which places me well and truly in a particular time and space. Both records came out in 1985. Only thirty years away from the here and now!
I don't imagine tonight's headliner Kanye West will impact on me any more favourably, but hey I'll give it a go. Then there's The Who tomorrow night. Naturally, I've got a lot more time for them. I put Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere and Pinball Wizard on last night as the sun went down and they sounded great. But there are two of them left now and it does matter. Still they're on my mind at the moment as they're featuring on the television a fair bit in expectation of their set and there's an enormous feature on them in this month's Mojo which arrived yesterday. So here's where they stole the bass line for Substitute.Discovered that from Mojo of course.It sounds like it could fill up a Northern Soul dancefloor.The rest of the song's not shabby either.
Friday, June 26, 2015
NME Before Hollywood Review
Thanks to The Original Article page on Facebook for printing this. Please support it. It's a great page. The review does the fine album justice.
Instrumentals # 33 Primal Scream
It's coming to the end of the first night of Glastonbury. It's been a particularly violent day in terms of world news. What on earth is going on? Hoping to find a bit of joy and positivity this seems a good way to end the evening as any though I don't think the band are playing this year. Essentially an instrumental, although Bobby does pop up just before the end. As the man himself would say. 'Woo!!!'
The Stooges, The Who & The Cavern
Dave Alexander and Ron Asheton later of The Stooges see The Who in 1965.
'Dave tells me, "Hey I'm going to England, you wanna go?' So I sold my motorcycle. I had a Honda 305 that I got instead of geting a car, when I got my driver's license. So we sold the bike and flew to England.
We went to see The Who at The Cavern. It was wall to fucking wall of people. We muscled through to about ten feet from the stage, and Townshend started smashing his twelve-string Rickenbacker.
It was my first experience of total pandemonium. It was like a dog pile of people, just trying to grab pieces of Townshend's guitar, and people were scrambling to dive up onstage and he'd swing his guitar at their heads. The audience weren't cheering; it was more like animal noises, howling. The whole room turned really primitive - like a pack of starving animals that hadn't eaten in a week and somebody throws out a piece of meat. I was afraid. For me it wasn't fun, but it was mesmirizing. It was like, "The plane's burning, the ship's sinking, so let's crush each other." Never had I seen people driven so nuts - that music could drive people to such dangerous extremes. That's when I realized. This is definitely what I wanna do.'
Scott Asheton, Please Kill Me
Songs About People # 100 Evelyn Waugh
Made it! One of my babies hits three figures. And to mark the occasion, a song the person it is dedicated to would not surely have been able to stand perhaps more than would have been the case in any other song in this series. I know absolutely nothing about Applicants. This came out on an album called Escape From Kraken Castle which was released five years ago. They also had a song on the same record called Robert Mugabe but having listened to that, you're getting this instead.
Patrck Macnee
Patrick Macnee (1922-2015)
Perhaps not the most stately tribute but it is a fine record.Oh yes it is!
B Sides # 9 Sly & The Family Stone
Sly & The Family Stone had songs to burn. To such an extent that I'm not really sure whether they had b-sides or their singles releases were always intended as double a-sides. Still, this was on the flipside of 1969's Stand.
'When I heard Sly I was spooked. I was supposed to be some big jazz musician, but I couldn't play funk like that. The rhythms, the interplay between the backbeat and the bass, the micro tensions, the syncopations - it was like nothing I'd heard. It took me three or four years to get on top of what Sly was playing.'
Herbie Hancock
Song of the Day # 523 The Cambodian Space Project
Sometimes you hear a new record, (well this particular track goes back a couple of years), and think, this sounds like a punk record to me. Echoes of Plastic Bertrand and X Ray Spex. Particularly if in addition to that it's sung in Khmer. This lot are playing this lunchtime at Glastonbury.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Songs Heard on the Radio # 61 The Human League
From a period at the end of the seventies when the British music scene was awash with inventive, clever and catchy singles many of which got nowhere near the charts themselves. Like this!
Instrumentals # 32 Brotherhood of Breath
Formed around Chris McGregor and a group of South African expats in London in the early seventies. Definite South African feel to this.
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