'The Empire Song caught the mood of my least favourite time of being British perfectly.'
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Electric Eden # 8 The Waterstons
From Davy to The Waterstones and their andmark record Frost & Fire. When you start listening to this it feels odd. After a while you realise it's fundamental.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 194 Bjork - Post
'Restless and recklessly individual.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 202 Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
'Flick-knife and bicycle chain.'
Monday, February 22, 2021
Songs About People # 1,257 John Cheever
Atmospheric piece for one of the most interesting of American writers.
Electric Eden # 7 Davy Graham
From MacColl to Graham as the British Folk scene starts to flourish in the early Sixties.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 193 Pac - Me Against The World
''The interesting thing about Shakur's third and best album is that you can block out the raps, and what you know about the man, and listen to it as an old-school, mellow soul-funk album.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 201 The Associates
'This year belonged more than to anyone else in British pop, to ABC and The Associates - New Pop's last stand.'
Song of the Day # 2,587 Mari Wilson
Listening to The B52's this week for a group I'm with has made me think of other beehives in Rock History. Voice of the Beehive had two of them. Mari Wilson only had only one. But it was a good one. And this was a pretty good kitsch pop hit from 1982.
Sunday, February 21, 2021
Songs About People # 1,256 Louis L'Amour
Not a French poetic type but an American writer of Westerns. He certainly churned them out, and sold over 200 million books of 105 novels in print. Here's a sweet C&W lament in his memory.
Albums of the Year 1970
The Sixties were over. That much is clear just by looking at the Top Ten list on the Best Ever Albums site as voted by its readers. The Beatles were all but gone and The Stones put out a live record. Into the Seventies:
1. Black Sabbath - Paranoid
2. Neil Young - After The Gold Rush
3. Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
4. George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
5. John Lennon - John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band
6. Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
7. Van Morrison - Moondance
8. Led Zeppelin - III
9. The Stooges - Fun House
10. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory
Here is my own list. Not as I always repeat, what I think the best records of 1970 are. Who am I to say? Just a rundown of my own personal favourites, so long as they happen to be in my own record collection. Of course this could change any day:
1. Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
2. The Velvet Underground - Loaded
3. Curtis Mayfield - Curtis
4. Neil Young - After The Gold Rush
5. Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day
6. The Stooges - Fun House
7. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmos Factory
8. Led Zeppelin - III
9. John Lennon - John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band
10. Cat Stevens - Mona Bone Jakon
There are many notable absentees. I wish I could have shoehorned Bridge Over Troubled Water in. But not today. Same goes for Moondance. Also Traffic, The Doors, Joni, Spirit and more.
An indulgence. Here's me, in 1970 I think. I'm the one in the water-wings. With my sister Alison in Zimbabwe.
Electric Eden # 6 Peggy Seeger
Young forges onward. Detailing the American Folk Revival which laid the groundwork for the British one. Then on to Ewen MacColl. Here's probably his most well-known composition. Made globally known later by Roberta Flack of course.
Rosie Carney
From The Bends to erm,The Bends. A repost for a great reinvention of a great album, released last year.
A record that has occupied my listening time quite a lot over the last few days has been an album by a young Irish musician named Rosie Carney caled The Bends which is exactly that, a track by track cover of the classic Radiohead album which came out originally way back in 1995.
A lifetime ago, or at least a half or perhaps more accurately a third of a lifetime. The original was an album that has meant a lot to me, certainly at the time and since, though I probably don't play it every year. This is as good a way as any to re-evaluate it.
The Bends is probably the best set of pure songs that Radiohead have ever put out. It's still many fans favourite of theirs, though it was the next one, OK Computer that guaranteed their seats in Rock and Roll's Mount Olympus, should such a thing exist.
The Bends though probably offers a clearer narrative. It's essentially about a prolonged panic attack or perhaps a protracted nervous breakdown, the musical equivalent of Catcher in the Rye or The Bell Jar transposed to the Nineties.
Not that it was ever a difficult record to listen to because the twelve tracks that make up the album are exquisitely crafted one and all. This is no suicide note, no Closer or In Utero and Thom Yorke was never going the way of Ian or Kurt despite his protestations to the contrary and how dark and bleak the themes he and his band explored appeared on the surface.
And there's the rub. Because there's a reasonable argument to be made that a Radiohead album without Thom Yorke might actually be an improvement on one with him there. For though he lays a strong claim of being one of the two arguable geniuses within the band, (the other being Johnny Greenwood), he is also the prime factor that Radiohead deniers put forward when a discussion about the band's greatness is being had.
Not the case here. Because here you get Thom's fabulous songs without Thom's relentless and draining self pity. Carney does a really, really wonderful job, exploring the nuances and textures of these marvellous creations, teasing out new layers and emotional profundity from songs you didn't realise had any more to offer.
I heard lyrics that I'd never really heard before and felt emotions that the original had never quite provoked, remarkable though it undeniably is. This is the measure of the really well achieved
cover and Carney has delivered a whole suite of them here.
There's plenty to a marvel at still in the original and one of the first things I'll do now is go back to it and compare and contrast. But once I have, I'll definitely come back here, because it teases fresh beauty out of the bones of something that more than occasionally hinted at emotional desolation.
There's greater consolation here. Greater empathy. Greater warmth. Less despair. While taking nothing away from the marvellous anguish Carney injects a basic humanity, which let's face it, was never Yorke's strong card.
Regardless of how much the original means to you, and I hope it does mean something, because it's a quite fantastic album, please give this a try. It's a model lesson in grace and insight and how to go about something which on the surface might come across as a lazy exercise and make it something else entirely.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 192 Radiohead - The Bends
'The Bends is now an acknowledged classic, but was a huge surprise at the time.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 200 Gil Scott Heron
'Scott Heron's voice - a seductive, deep chocolate burr, worthy of Barry White - begins with the obvious. America has elected a right-wing, second-rate movie star who will fuck up the world... B Movie is full of great jokes, but no one was laughing anymore'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,586 SG Lewis
'Only when I'm dancing can I feel this free.'
As I write on here every day, and attempt as much as I can to write about the new, this requires a constant search for things I don't know about leading me to draw on a few key sources. There are the blogs listed down the right side of this page and particularly a helpful few who are embarked on a constant process of discovery which often directs me to a lot of great stuff which I might never chance upon otherwise.
Sometimes I spread the net a bit wider and the music pages of The Guardian are particularly useful in this respect. Every week they choose an album that stands out, usually written about by their lead writer Alex Petridis whose remit is surely to cover a broader range of music than the traditional guitar based stuff that I generally go back to here..
The album he's settled upon this week times by SG Lewis a young mixer and producer, is definitely worthy of exploration. It's a Dance, or possibly what we might have, at one time referred to as a Disco record. This is a euphoric, good times album in the best sense and clearly Lewis is very good at what he has chosen to do.
This is his debut and it's incredibly accomplished and versed. Versed most obviously in Niles Rogers and Chic who did this and in Rogers case still do it, pretty much better than anyone else has done. Rogers actually collaborates and features on one track here which must be a proper treat for Lewis.
I'm not an expert in this particular field but was reminded of other things. It made me want to listen to S Express for example who made some great records, back in the day. By which I mean the day when I might actually have been tempted out onto the dancefloor myself. These days are probably long gone, but times is certainly good enough that I might do a few steps in my living room listening to it. This is what this music is made for anyhow.
The problem for this most democratic form of music, is to maintain your interest right the way through the album form. Chic could do it, so could Earth, Wind & Fire, also Daft Punk, (another essential influence here), but very few others. In this respect times does have its flaws, it does become rather samey after five or six tracks, and you feel you want to sit down, or else change venues altogther. Perhaps true lovers of the form will persevere, I felt like turning in.
It's still a very good record, full of those great hedonistic moments that make you feel you're on a high without the need of drug intake. It's no wonder they open dance clubs called Heaven. Definite thumbs up from me on this one.
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Songs About People # 1,255 Ozymandias
Ozymandias is probably best known from the Percy Shelley poem advising of the folly of grandiose self regard from rulers.Ozymandias is the Greek name for the Egypian pharoah Rameses II. It's also a song from the furious German Post Punk trio Camera. They have a new album out which I should get round to writing about in the next few days.
Tindersticks - Distractions
Prepare yourself for the best part of an hour of ennui and self-pity. Tindersticks, Nottingham's finest bedsit miserabilists are back, with more tales of mental anguish and woe, almost a quarter of a century from where they set off. Latest album Distractions kicks in with an eleven minute track and ends with a nine minute one and I confess, I can't say I put my headphones on with enormous relish.
But I have to say I was surprised. Said eleven minute opener, Man Alone (Can't Stop the Fadin'), is certainly not the tasteful Nick meets Nancy and Lee in a bar downtown at two in the morning routine that we've come to expect from this lot over the years. It appears to be a dance / trance tale of middle aged disintegration. About seven minutes in it starts to rain heavily and thunder rumbles. That old Riders on the Storm pathetic fallacy routine. Meanwhile Stuart Staples is the dancing queen, the drunken uncle embarassing everybody at his niece's wedding. Frankly it's fantastic. One of the best things I've heard all year and one of the best things they've ever done.So, where do they go from here? Down to the lake I fear.
Next track I Imagine You is more contemplative, more what you'd expect. Stuart does a bit of Jarvis spoken vocals. I assume Staples writes the lyrics and he always does a pretty good job. Down in the mouth musings on L Shaped Rooms and thwarted expectations. Of those who have had, to paraphrase from here, 'the stuffing knocked out of them.'
The natural and unmissable antecedent for all this of course is Scott Walker and his suite of quite majestic albums from the late Sixties. He is probably Tindersticks most immediate influence and has been since their early days. They've never achieved his grandeur and breadth for me although I'd direct you most immediately to their eponymous debut double from 1993. It was and still is a considerable achievement.
This is their one essential record and though they've put out plenty of good stuff since in many respects they've continued putting out the same record every couple of years. They have never really reinvented their wheel, and although they are sensitive and adept musicians, they never truly reflect what should surely be the true and real passage of life. As one of change and growth. Take Nick Cave's career curve as a comparison point.
But there is something worthy of note here. I've enjoyed listening to Distractions over the past couple of days. It's artfully crafted and Tindersticks seem a band particularly suited to the strange, abstracted state of Lockdown. The record flows sumptuously and there are a number of well judged and rendered covers, one of the things they've always been particularly skilled in. They are a band that are open to any amount of criticism, but never in respect to their taste.
The covers are at the heart of the album and succeed one another. Firstly, Neil Young's A Man Needs a Maid, then Dory Previn's Lady With a Braid and most remarkably and surprisingly The Television Personalities You'll Have to Scream Louder which is transformed into a Francis Baconesque howl of rage into the current political void.
But the best is saved 'til last. Penultimate track Tue-Moi is a genuinely resonant French language elegy for the victims of the 2015 terrorist attack at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, a venue Tindersticks played regularly. It's genuinely moving, and here for once Staples raises his game to that of his heroes.
Then to final track The Bough Bends which starts with birdsong and floral flute and blossoms into a river of regretful memory. Sparsely orchestrated,with Staples alternating between spoken and sung stream of consciousness. It's not a track that goes anywhere particularly but occupies a particular melancholic isolation and veers on occasion into late Ian Curtis territory. I'd say it works. Then it and Distractions are gone.
I wouldn't say this is a great album but I do think it's a good one and certainly worth a listen. In many ways it walks the line between grace and ridicule that Staples has stumbled along for his entire career. I've always slightly wondered whether he was drunk and he's certainly always seemed happy to give that impression. He's generally been a performer for me that has stumbled between the blackest humour, the bleakest farce and the promise of grace and redemption. It hasn't always worked but it certainly does sometimes. On Distractions he generally hits the right notes and the band behind him provide, as they always have, an immaculately restituted backdrop. I'll come back here.
Electric Eden # 5 Peter Warlock
Charting the road from the likes of Vaughan Williams and Delius to Rock Island Line, Young maps the musical ley lines of the early British Twentieth Century fantastically skillfully, maintaining a tight narrative whilst digressing to all kinds of subjects worthy of detailed investigations in themselves.
He devotes a number of pages to the fascinating Peter Warlock, a fascinating dark maverick, who collected together music in folk and pagan traditions and produced a great many notable works of his own, including this, his arrangement of a fabled carol c1500. Jeff Buckley recorded his own variations of this of course on Grace.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 191 Tricky - Maxinquaye
'Maxinquaye balanced struggle and seduction, bouncing between sophisticated ambience and something that felt like disease and dirty needles, often in the space of a few bars.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 199 ABC
'It was a marriage made in pop heaven when Trevor Horn's crashing, widescreen production met Martin Fry's arch pop vision and everyman croon.'
Song of the Day # 2,585 Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott
I had a good Friday night last night. Reflecting on a great week at work and the forthcoming anniversary of the Lockdown condition. I'm aware of the terrible, terrible nature of much of this, that it's not by any means a natural state but as an essentially solitary sort I've very much appreciated the opportunities it's given me to indulge myself in great films, books and music. Also to thought.
During the evening, I made a Spotify playlist entitled The Jukeboxes of Newcastle Miss Me! which I posted on social media. I'll post it here too later on in the day. An indulgence certainly, but a reminder of what I'd probably be doing otherwise, ploughing countless pound coins into a jukebox in one pub or other surrounded by regulars. I must have saved a fortune in this respect alone over the last twelve months. Never mind the beer.
In response to my post, a good friend from round here replied with this. Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott descibing a drunken night in their local and the definite and invaluable service that a good jukebox plays in all this.The focus on what gets played is cheese and communal memory and pleasure. Getting lost in the moment, with your day of work far behind you.
I'm a little bit more of a prurient muso snob in terms of what I put on generally. Television for example and the likes of Can feature generally to a greater degree than Neil Diamond and Elton John. but ten years in Newcastle has led me to appreciate and relish these moments and instincts. I look forward to being able to experience it again in the not too distant future without fear or restriction. In the meantime, here are Paul and Jacqui. Cheers Norman.Make sure you don't wear that hat to work.
Friday, February 19, 2021
Electric Eden # 4 Gustav Holst
Young is skillfully martially his background between pages 76 and 100 of this marvellous book. Here is one beautiful piece of music that he itemises on those pages.
Covers # 156 Tindersticks
So, this morning, I find myself to my great surprise, greatly enjoying the new album from Tindersticks. More on that later. In the meantime here's one they did a long time ago which eventually led me to the fabulous Townes Van Zandt original.
1981 Singles # 1 The Specials
So to the end of another rundown. 1981 was a pretty remarkable year for singles and music. I'm glad I experienced it when I was between 15 and 16. I think I'll do another for 1982 in 2022 and then stop. From memory things started to go into decline, certainly single-wise from 1983. Politics seemed to interfere somehow.
Ghost Town had to be Number One here. I was gradually developing a political consciousness and this song said it all about the climate in the Summer of 1981. The footage of rioting in British inner-cities was all over the news. This was also a fabulous tune and a video. An incredible way for the original members of the band to say goodbye to each other and to us. It was Number One for weeks I remember.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 190 PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
'What do you get if you cross Grace Jones with the preacher from Charles Laughton's 1955 movie Night of the Hunter ?
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 198 Daryl Hall & John Oates
'I Can't Go For That shows that the American mainstream was gearing up for a change, getting a grip on the dynamics and techniques of these new fangled electro-beats.'
Song of the Day # 2,584 Hadda Be
Old school indie guitar band. Sounds like the kind of thing Steve Lamacq might have liked back in 1993. But it's from the here and now, their name comes from an Allen Ginsberg poem title they're from Brighton, and there's an album in the pipeline.
Thursday, February 18, 2021
The Weather Station - Ignorance
Are you a Joni or a Kate man or woman? Or perhaps neither. You're hardly obliged to be. For me it becomes increasingly easy to park many new female solo albums pretty much in one camp or the other, Camp Joni or Camp Kate. There are albums of this kind which resist this very basic form of categorisation of course, but as a basic rule of thumb it is an argument and approach that does seem to hold some water.
Tamara Lindeman or The Weather Station, if you prefer is definitely Camp Joni. it's not actually too far a leap to imagine this as a Joni album frankly given the ammount of characteristics and concerns that both artists share. Both are also Canadians which I don't think is entirely incidental. That's not to say that Lindeman is apeing Mitchell. But their's is a shared approach and perspective.
The most obviously shared characteristic is restraint. Listening through the latest Weather Station album, Ignorance the first thing you need to say is that it's quite excellent, the second that it's holding something back. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that. Many of the best records ever made share this quality.
Ignorance has an immediate folky, fluent grace. It skirts the borders of cool and the mainstream. There is one moment on Parking Lot for example where the drifting into dream section of Fleetwood Mac's Sara is distinctly recalled. But elswewhere Lindeman is clearly more interested in crafting her masterpiece than churning out AOR hits.
Whether it is her masterpiece or not, I'll leave that for others to judge. It is certainly a massively accomplished record that I often find it easier to admire than love. But I have Pitchfork, Mojo, Uncut Magazine and the world and his wife telling me that this is an important record and I need to listen to it. I have listened to it and its clearly worthy of the attention its getting. I wish Lindeman would let her hair down a little bit more. But that's what I feel about Joni sometimes so perhaps I should be excluded from serious discussions such as these forthwith. Anyhow an album to hear. Oh look, I've done it myself.
Electric Eden # 3 Hubert Parry
From one artistic peak to another. Young, in this part of Electric Eden, in a remarkable feat of cultural and literary anthropology, is excavating and itemising the classical legacy and foundations for Twentieth Century Folk Music. Jerusalem, and its resetting of William Blake's mission statement, a hundred years or more after its original creation is at the heart of this.
This is a much misunderstood and abused poem and anthem. It seems to stand now as a justification for the British class system and its refusal to countenance change and growth. But there is something deeply stirring and inxplicable about Parry's glorious arrangement of it nevertheless. It never, every fails to move me. Deeply.
1981 Singles # 2 Talking Heads
The career of Talking Heads had any number of remarkable, artistic peaks. But in a way they were all working their way to this one. A song about the very essence of what it means to be alive. How we all got here. It sounded incredibly unworldly and magnificent when it first came out. It still does forty years later. You just need to play it on a jukebox or in fact anywhere in a public setting to realise that this still holds true.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 189 TLC - Crazysexycool
'The most cohesive R&B girl group album ever made by the most fractious and doomed of trios.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 197 Rhoda with The Special A.K.A
A great single is something you can play over and over again - that's the main point of a single's existence. This great single is the exception.
Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Songs About People # 1,254 Ian Fleming
A bit of a cad I suspect. Ian Fleming, not Ryler Smith I hasten to add. Still, James Bond and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is not too shabby by anyone's standards.
Electric Eden # 2 Vashti Bunyan
A truly important album. Vashti Bunyan's Another Diamond Day. Its story is told in the first chapter of Electric Eden which is building up spendidly.
1981 Singles # 3 The Human League
1981 was really The Human League's year more than anybody else's. But two truly great songs kept them off Number One here. This was probably the least of their four songs that got massive UK chart action during the year. But it really should be compared with everything else and not to themselves because they were the best Pop band in the world at this point in time.
Fear of Music - The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco # 188 Massive Attack - Protection
'This is an album that grows as it passes, a Massive Attack enendeavoured, in their unprolific way, to encompass as much of what they loved about art-rock as black music.'
This is Uncool - The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk & Disco # 196 Soft Cell
'A bittersweet little New Year's mysteryfrom the '80s own sleaze-fixated Judy Garland.'
Song(s) of the Day # 2,582 Rats on Rafts
I should get round to writing about this. I've been listening to it enough over the last few weeks after all. Rotterdam band Rat's On Rafts fourth Excerpts from Chapter 3; The Mind Runs a Net of Rabbit Paths. The vaulting ambition and also essential obscurity of their obsessions are clearly apparent immediately. If the record that accompanies this grandiose title doesn't exactly clarify matters, it does put it into context.
This is dystopian art. Choose your own favourite; Brave New World, 1984, Farenheit 451, Logan's Run.The record is extremely cinematic in terms of its projection, creating a set of highly heightened dramas in the listeners head. You don't really need to see the promo that go along with this, you can run them in your head. Immediate reference point, The Clash's London Calling.
It's actually quite good fun, if you don't take it all too seriously. This is really the stuff of B Moves. The musical artist I'm most reminded of in this respect is Arcade Fire and all their relentless, claustrophobic intensity. As with The Fire I really think there's more style than substance here, Rat's On Rafts can seem a bit silly if you don't buy into their conceits. Come on guys, take your outfits off, time for tea.
But while the illusion holds The Mind Runs is certainly a diverting illusion. One you might like to come back to, as I've certainly done over the past fortnight. There are also definite hints that there is more and better to come from Rats on Rafts. I'll definitely be watching out for their next. For now this will certainly do.
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Songs About People # 1,253 Lillian Hellman
American Post Punkers get hot under the collar about dramatist.
Electric Eden # 1 Donovan
With a series coming to an end, a good time to get going with another which should take us through to Spring. Electric Eden is pretty much the British Folk Bible. Published in 2011, it's a book I've long wanted to read and one wisely bought for me for Christmas by my oldest nephew and I'm twenty five pages in and riveted already. This should give me incentive to read 25 more page every day and write about a song that appears therein . Starting with Donovan.
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