Tuesday, January 23, 2024
1984 Singles # 29 Strawberry Switchblade
I loved Strawberry Switchblade but not as much as my sister Alison who bought their debut album. They were two astonushing looking Glasgow Gothy lassies. Dressed to the max who looked incredibly sweet but were probably anything but. Since Yesterday seemed to hang around the charts for weeks. Although the production seems dated the tune still hits home.
They didn't trouble the charts again but did make the cover of Smash Hits. An important achievement in those days. It's also worth looking out for their wonderful tune concerning agrophobia called Trees & Flowers for which the description haunting applies. They also recorded a neat version of BOC's Don't Fear The Reaper. A footnote. But one worth investigating for the drift into satanism if nothing else,
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 485 High Rise - Psychedelic Speedfreaks
Not a record I was even aware of until 6 o'clock this morning. I put it on. Frankly an utterly disorientating ride lustening through start to finish at high volume through your headphones.
Distortion at its absolute industrial maximum. Japanese speed freakout merchants. I feel ready for the day having undergone this cleansing full on ride. I don't think I'm not sure I need to experience it again.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,627 Yin Yin
Maastricht's finest. Well perhaps I should be upfront with you. Yin Yin are currently the only Maastricht band I'm aware of but they are mighty fine and encourage further investigation into the scene.
They're certainly an attractive proposition. One you can imagine yourself coming across by chance one evening on a long Air B & B weekend with your hon sampling the Maastricht downtown nightlife thang,
Picture the scene. You walk together down the winding stairwell to a basement club. Step inside and there they are. Yin Yin. Cool as cucumbers. Cool as fuck. Strutting their stuff on the low stage. Maastrict groovers packing the dancefloor in front of them. Afros, flares and platform boots.
Yin Yin take notes from the Thai Rock Psych scene evidently. They've also clearly listened to the occasional Shadows record and there's nowt wrong with that. This is funky way to start a morning pure and simple. Get with the beat Baggy!
Monday, January 22, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 486 Teardrop Explodes - Wilder
Indulging myself in a nostalgia wave at the minute, as indicated by my 1980 series. Also writing about this, as I saw Julian Cope play a week or so ago on Valentine's Day and he was just terrific. So, back to 1981 and 1982 to take a look at Wilder, their second and final album.
Really, 1980 had been the year that The Teardrops, (short-hand always seemed appropriate), had had their moment and genuinely threatened to break big. With Reward and Treason, both big hits and terrific expressions of what the 45 single could do, and Kilimanjaro an exuberant multicoloured wonder of a debut album.The world seemed to be laid out before them.
By the time they got to Wilder their race was almost run. Not that it's not as good as record as Kilimanjaro. I'd say it's just as good, probably better. But things had moved on, they did incredibly quickly back then. The Teardrops had lost their place in the spotlight. Changed too many band members, taken too many drugs, (it's all documented in the fabulous first part of Cope's memoirs, Head On), and band relationships were fraying at the edges.
Wilder is an incredible balancing act between the highest highs and the lowest lows, utter hedonism and the deepest melancholy. An almost perfect documentation of a psychedelic drug trip. If Head On is to be believed, and there's no real reason why it should not be, one long psychedelic drug trip was a pretty good description of exactly what being in Teardrop Explodes between 1981 and 1982 was like.
So from the cover shot of an out of focus picture of a bunch of flowers to the eleven tracks therein, (they are all great, not a weak link), Wilder is a case study of young men draining every drop out of early adulthood, because they can. The tunes are fresh and buoyant, Cope's lyrics and singing are at an absolute peak. Perhaps the slightly dated production values, (a Teardrop's flaw, Bunnymen records sound better in this respect forty years later), are the only thing I can hold against it. It was one of the first albums I ever bought, (in 1982 I think), and my copy still sounds good and plays with nary a crackle, despite goodness knows how many plays, a testament to the remarkable durability of vinyl.
If there is a precursor to Wilder's trip it's probably Love's Forever Changes, a masterpiece I didn't discover until a few years later. Cope was never shy about emphasising their inspiration to his writing processes and his mood here definitely echoes Arthur Lee's on that record although he's probably less murderous. He was more grounded I suppose, he makes no bones about what a happy loving family he was brought up in. In fact he never stops going on about it in interviews and his writing, more so than a musician I can think of. It's probably what saved him ultimately from the fallout he was going through here. Mercifully he's still going strong.
Because Cope's genius, and I do think he's a genius, is rooted in childhood. There are two or three moments on here that encapsulate that blessed state; Culture Bunker, Tiny Children and The Great Dominions. One of his great gifts is to appreciate what a sacred realm it is and to be able to map out its sunlit contours with impeccable accuracy. Just listen to the songs I've just mentioned. It's all there.
Wilder had one real hit single on it. Passionate Friend, the first song on Side Two. It shows how the Teardrops were every bit as much a Sixties band as a late Seventies and early Eighties one. It's a three minute warm bath in glorious melody and ba ba harmonies. Also a melodic quote from As Tears Go By in the fade out that is quite deliberate and utterly respectful. It's a blast! Cope was never ashamed to be happy and express his emotions and he lets rip here, in contrast to the raincoat wearing gloomy types he came up with in Liverpool and Manchester. He was always much more about the sun than the rain.
I find it difficult to choose favourite tracks on Wilder. Every song adds a piece to the puzzle, The record is probably just short of forty minutes long and not a second of it is wasted. The merits of the album were not truly recognised at the time.It was released at the end of 1981, too close to the Christmas rush and though it did sell, making the Top 30 in the British charts and eventually being certified Silver it didn't really chime with its times the way Kilimanjaro certainly had.
Because really it's an account of breakdown which was surely what Cope in particular was going through here. His is clearly the main voice here. The Teardrops were never a band in the way that the Bunnymen were, it was largely a full on fight between the two main egos in the band, Cope and keyboard player David Balfe, with Gary Dwyer, Troy Tate and Alan Gill strong supporting players and a cast of lesser ones.
Perhaps Wilder is more appreciated now than it was at the time. I hope so. It has plenty of light and plenty of shade all kinds of profound insight into the strange nature of existence. Great tunes too. What more could you want from a record. It's the Teardrops Heaven Up Here, their Closer, (surely no coincidence that these were the second albums by all three bands). Cope would re-emerge and produce a staggering set of solo albums over the years. The sessions for their third album were farcical and abortive and though they did produce some decent material, (listen to the Everybody Wants to Shag the Teardrop Explodes album, released after they split), it wasn't really worthy of release and would surely have flopped.This is the Teardrop Explodes epitaph. And what a fine and worthy one it is.
As Cope himself said, what happened to them was surely inevitable. 'The band was never built to last... It was like building a house on scaffolding, on top of a tank moving at three miles an hour. The higher you built it the further removed you are from the reality that it's actually moving and it's going to fall.'
1984 Singles # 30 The Fall
I have stated my position on The Fall many times. Most often it seems over the last twenty four months. I like them and several of their singles and albums. I find their position in the whole scheme of things slightly overstated. I think Mark E. Smith or certainly the later Mark E. Smith is a rather repellent figure. I think the reasons I might dislike him are plain and feel he is given more licence than others who behave in a similar way over the course of several decades. Not saying the guy's not a major talent but still I'd say a lot of stuff is glossed over that maybe shouldn't be. I find other characters who featured in The Fall's story more interesting. Particularly Martin Bramah and Marc Riley.
C.R.E.E.P is one of any number of fine singles they produced over this period. It's just excellent. It reached ninety one -ah! John Peel played it quite a bit I recall.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,626 Mary Halvorson
2024 gathers pace as The January Steeplechase reaches its final furlongs and medal contestants gather at the front of the field. Prominent in the chasing pack is Jazz dark horse, the leggy and bespectacled Mary Halvorson (sorry if that comes across as sexist, I was aiming at descriptive), who commentators discounted as an also ran before the starting pistol was fired.
Not so. Halvorson's latest album Cloudward is muscular and spacey in turn. Mary, who you might assume is Norwegian, but is actually based in Brooklyn, martials her eight piece band masterfully, contributing guitar herself on a set of fabulous improvisatinoal, instumental pieces that made me think of Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane though in terms of Jazz I don't know much, I just know what I like. Like the Rolling Stones' schoolboy although he of course claimed not to be. .
I'm no Jazz specialist, though I listen to lots of Jazz, live and in my living room. This though immediately strikes me as something else and I urge you to put down that Bill Ryder Jones record, good as it is, and cup an ear to this instead. I'll leave the descriptions to critics with a better thesaurus than I own, (I'll direct you here, a fine job is done). Sometimes though words are not enough to describe what is happening on a record. This is a case in point.
Sunday, January 21, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 486 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds -Your Funeral My Trial
Nick Cave during his, to my mind, tiresome early phase, before he became a truly great artist. This was all a bit 'I'm a tortured poet, oh and yes I do take heroin...' for my taste.
1984 Singles # 31 OMD
I always had a soft spot for OMD since I first laid eyes on Andy McCluskey looking distressed and wobbling like an enormous blancmange in Burton threads on Top of the Pops singing or perhaps more accurately warbling Messages. He resembled an over emotional choirboy cracking up at his first communion. There was something ludicrously melodramatic and faintly ridiculous about the band from the off. But I always loved their tunes.
By 1984 they'd shifted off my radar but were still charting with their peculiar obsessions. They ran through a long list of them over their first five years. Technology, the H Bomb, Joan of Arc, Vorticism and here Nikola Tesla. They were heading for American and MTV now and it felt quite pre-meditated, but they followed their own whacky script.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,626 The American Analog Set
A young friend called me 'an old fossil' online yesterday afternoon. Naturally I acted outraged but secretly I think I was actually pleased. There are far worse things to be called. In fact I took it as an backhanded compliment. Whether or not it was actually meant that way or not.
I'm certainly a creature of habit if I'm anything. And that instinct is hardening within me over every passing year. This time of year is generally rather bleak and cold and January 2024 is no exception in that respe,t but this year is different with me at least in that this year I have come up with genuine resolutions for behaviour and attitudes which I am determined to maintain and am genuinely expecting positive outcomes from doing so.
I rise early make myself a cup of tea and maybe something basic to eat and take it to my desk at one of the large Georgian windows that decorate the front of my flat. I put a record I haven't heard or don't know that well on and listen to it and write about it as the sun makes its slow but steady rise in the heavens outside my windows.
This morning I'm listening to What are We Going To Tell Guy the latest record and return to the fray by stalwarts The American Analog Set after a long hiatus. They're not a band I'm hugely familiar with but this record tells you all you need to know. They come across as steady and durable and the kinds of fellows likely to pull their cars to the side of the road if they saw you hitching on a bleak evening and take you as far as was in their way towards your destination and more than likely you'd have a diverting and productive conversation while you drove.
I need to keep going with this blog tomorrow so will be listening to a new record and writing about it then but I'm making another resolution right now; to listen to more American Analog Set this year. Because on the evidence of this they're truly terrific. For the time being they tick boxes that the durable likes of Wrens, Califone and Grandaddy have ticked for me previously. What's more this record came out just now so I can put them on my Albums of the Year playlist. Result!
Saturday, January 20, 2024
The Holdovers OST - # 1 Damien Jurado
Covers of Femme Fatale is done, restless soul that It Starts With a Birthshone is we move on hastily to fresh water space. Yesterday afternoon at a loose end, I made my way to The Tyneside Cinema to watch a movie. My sister Alison, and she's important to what happens on here as a constant cultural inspiration, guide and support.
Last Christmas Alison gave me the most thoughtful and timely gift. A year's membership to the Tyneside Cinema, cultural beacon to Newcastle and the surrounding area.
Me. At five. In the family garden in Salisbury (now Harare). In Rhodesia, (now and then Zimbabwe).
As part of the card I get free entry to three films. My first choice, The Holdovers, directed by the masterful Alexander Payne and starring Paul Giammati, guiding inspiration to us average Joe's and let's face it, we are almost all average Joe's under our brash exteriors. That stuff's for show for the most part. Beneath lies insecurity and endeavour.
The Holdovers was beyond description wonderful in every way. Quite the best time I've spent nothing in exchange for something quite extraordinary in the longest, longest time. I left the cinema in a thrilled glow. It's a film that's truly about many, many things. About being young. About getting old. About the vital support we give each other in times of need. About how we respond to encouragement and support and exceed all expectation.
So I'm running through the soundtrack now and for the best part of the next month. It will keep the film alive in my head. I've just been listening to the soundtrack as I cooked my breakfast. It comes from the early Seventies, where so many of the best films ever made came out and so much of the best music too. Photographs of me when I was young and the breakfast I've just devoured, accompany this post. Go see the film I urge you.
Sleater Kinney- Little Rope
If there's one thing that Corin Tuckey and Carrie Brownstein the remaining pillars of Sleater- Kinney are, it's survivors. For that alone they deserve respect.
Not everybody cares for what they do and have done for the best part of thirty or more years now. What they do best is The Shriek! The female equivalent of Munch's Scream. Riot Girl lives on through them more than any other band and thrillingly they stick to their Riot Girl apprenticeship and script. They should be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame immediately, If that august institution has the remotest understanding or appreciation for actual Rock & Roll and particularly Punk Rock instead of the vaguest actual dread of it..
New album Little Rope stands tall and proud. If you didn't like Sleater Kinney previously this is unlikely to be the record to convert you to the cause. They're pretty consistent frankly.They stick to the script they formulated way back when. It's always been one that does the job.
When Bill Berry finally had his fill and vacated the drumstool of R.E.M. the band responded that 'a three legged dog was still a dog'. Fans soon discovered that it might still be a odg, but it was clearly 'a dog of a different colour' and in no way as the dog they'd loved so much forcoming up to twenty years. Sleater Kinney devotees have been coping with a similar scenario for a few years now since the departure of Janet Weiss from the SK fold which she'd been a part of since 1996.
Weiss departed after reported 'musical differences.' What they might involve in detail is open to speculation for those who care. If SK seem slightly less SK than they once were for those who care about the ideal of 'the band'. everything here is consistent with the principles that they have always aligned themselves to.
For those who dislike their shrill and slightly discordant quality, that it must be said is exctly what they aspire to. It's what they consciously set out to achieve every time they set foot in a studio. To find fault with that seems akin to having a pop at Cindy Wilson an Kate Pierson for not always singing in tune. Another excellent Sleater Kinney record for those that like that kind of thing. I certainly count myself among that number.
Cover Versions of Femme Fatale # 15 Nico & Blue Orchids
'Everybody knows...'
It's been a great couple of weeks but every idea has its time and sell by date and it's time to put this one to sleep and move on to pastures new.
Let's leave the last word to the lady herself. No, I don'tmean Edie Sedgwick. If Edie ever did a version of this herself I cannot find the evidence.
No I mean Nico. Not quite what she was but still rather magnificent. Fronting the wonderful Blue Orchids in the early Eighties. I think they do a version that might have met Lou's approval. Even if, knowing the appalling old curmudgeon, he might not have admitted it.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 487 They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants
I'm sorry but this is spectacularly annoying. I listened to about four tracks but then decided I could stand no more and left it to people who enjoy being tied up in straitjackets and locked up in padded rooms.
1984 Singles # 32 Depeche Mode
'It's a lot....it's a lot.... it's a lot....it's alot..... like life1'
Ooh Depeche Mode. Kinky boots! I didn't really know what kinky boots were in 1984 and had little interest in finding out. I think I was just too old to get into that band.. These things happen. They were a younger brother or sister band. If I'd have bought an album by them it would have been 1983'a Construction Time Again when they started to realise and mine the commercial potential of the Stalinist Stakhanovite look just as started falling for it big time myself. I'd started donning a pair of steel rimmed spectacles and fancying myself as Leon Trotsky reborn as a middle class suburbanite. I certainly coveted the record for a while and almost bought it. It had a fabulous sleeve image of a shirtless worker swinging a jackhmmer on an ice capped mountain top and robust dance tunes like Love, In Itself.
Then they lost me. 1985's Some Great Reward had a couple of daft singles which put me off them entirely. People Are People and Blasphemous Rumours. What utter twaddle. Master & Servant was slightly better but seemed to be about kinky S&M which I had no knowledge of at seventeen nor the remotest interest in finding out about. The rest of Some Great Reward turned out to be considerably better but my attention had moved elsewhere.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,625 Birds in the Brickwork
Reminder to self. Make a point of looking at Stewart Lee's monthly music column in The Idler and tracking down the records he reccomends immediately. Stewart knows. About comedy. about politics. About life itself I imagine. Certainly about music.
Birds in the Brickwork's album from last year A Strange Peace is among Stew's latest recommendations. It's like many records that are drawing me in right now, a marginal, instrumental record that trades primarily in atmosphere.
According to the makers.it displays ' an affection for the marginal and liminal.; rippled images in puddle, half drawn curtains. A catch of weeds.' Yep. Search me too. But I direct you immediately to the music and this explanation of it. A Strange Peace is an enchanting, restful listen which might lead you to skip this week's mindfulness session.
While you're tracking down Birds in the Brickwork I 'll get back to Stew's recommendations. He knows y'know.
Friday, January 19, 2024
Cover Versions of Femme Fatale # 14 Genevieve Waite
Genevieve Waite was an interesting one. Muse for photographer Richard Avedon who took several shoots for her which were published in the pages of Vogue in the early Seventies. Waite moved on from Avedon to John Phillips ex of the Mamas & Papas. They were married by a one legged bhuddist priest at a restaurant in LA's Chinatown. Waite recorded and released her only record under Phillip's tutelage in 1974.
The cover of Femme Fatale attempted here is dumb. The song if Betty Boop had had a go at it. Waite pours a big bag of sugar into a large glass. It's not very good really. But this is a song with a big heart. Big enough for even this interpretation.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 488 Bryan Ferry - Boys & Girls
I have always, always liked Bryan Ferry and what he does. Even when he drops slightly below his own high standards. Even when you suspect he's probably just a ghastly old Tory. Boys & Girls is self conscious consumerism. Glossy product to leave lying around on a coffee table as the vacuous but tastefully packaged record plays on yout classy system in your designer flat at a dinner party. I didn't play this all the way through. You get the idea early on. But it's Bryan Ferry isn't it, He's the guy you secretly wish you' been born.
1984 Singles # 33 Van Halen
'Can't you see me standing here I've got my back against the record machine...'
When you're young you have friends who you look back later and think, 'Why was I friends with that person? I never liked him. We never had anything in common?' Ir's just a phase. My best friend Philip and I had a friend who had a car and would drive us on breathless runs from Kew into the heart of the city to films and venues where he would try not to stop at the lights. You would peel your fingers from the back of the front seats on arrival. He was a dreadful person really. But he had a car.
There was a guy at college in my History and Politics A Levels groups who I spent a lot of time with over a couple of years without ever caring for at all. I went on a college trip to the Soviet Union in December of my second year which was a turning point of my life in some ways. I fell for a girl on the trip on a drunken evening of revellry on the first night in the hotel bar. She ended up with him before the end of the trip. Bitter. You bet I was. Barbara's biggest mistake! Paul had better teeth. I had a personality.
Paul was was a big Van Halen fan. He'd catalogued his entire record collection for some reason in a well kept file which he showed me one time I went round to his. Not many of the records listed appealed to me tr all. It was a ghastly AOR vision of mediocrity, I realise I'm being mean. Paul ended up becoming a policeman. I had no idea why anyone would do that. Why would you want to have your life organised for you when you could make your own choices? . In my defence I did give him my copy of Murmur when I felt I'd worn it down after a couple of years of heavy rotational play and needed another copy. I felt it might be of more use to him than all that Van Halen.
Van Halen were everywhere in 1984. Particularly Jump. Particularly its video. David Lee Roth. His smug expression. They seemed like the kind of guys who woud have made your lives misery at High School. I was glad to get to University and begin to find my people. None of them seemed to like Van Halen much.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,624 Marmoset
Not for the first tine on here I have found myself a new favourite band. Not for the first time they appear to have been traumatised at an early age by The Velvet Underground and split up several decades ago. Oh well. You can't win them all.
I enjoy Spotify playlists or the songs that they run onto of their own volition once the record you are listening to has run its course. I insist once more that I support jobbing musicians whenever I can before you blacklist me for political unworthiness .
I found myself looking up at my television set a couple of days ago when this adjustment was happening and found I was in love again. With a band called Marmoset. Let's face it, it's not hard to fall in love with a band called Marmoset.
I chose their 2001 album Record in Red at random. I imagine any of the six albums they put out between 1995 and 2009 would be worth a plunge.
Their songs are snug, inimate and conveyed in half whispered vocals. Like many of the best bands they don't make the effort to try too hard. That would not be cool. You need to make an effort yourself. Meet them halfway.
I assure you it's worth the effort. Wikipedia mentions Feelies, Mission of Burma, Television Personalities, Wire, Sebadoh. Good things. Good times.
Thursday, January 18, 2024
Cover Versions of Femme Fatale # 13 Tone Norum
Tone Norum. No. Me neither. Plays it fairly straight though she can't really hold a tune any better than Nico could. It doesn't matter with this song. It has sad, wistful humour among it's multifarious sgifts.
1984 Singles # 34 Frank Chickens
Frank Chickens were pure delight from a time when the Japanese were sometimes brutally and crudely parodied in the Western media and Japanese artist frequently played up and reinforced.the parody.
Nevertheless Frank Chickens were a pleasure and Blue Canary a touching narrative that flirted with the actual charts due to genrous evening Radio One airplay.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 489 Brilliant Corners - Joy Ride
Not a band I was famiiar with at the time. Or now really. Naming themselelves after a Thelonius Monk record though this is deceptive because they are far closer to the sporit of Edwyn Collins than Monk. Joy Ride is for the most part a passable jangling Indie record but it would be difficult to make a credible case that it is a lost masterpiece. There are several quite wonderful moments though and the constant and inventive bursts of trumpet and excursions into the more experimental amd daring made them a cut above most contemporary C-86 bands.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,623 The Aislers Set
It takes a while. It always takes a while. For a new year to shake off its torpor and find its feet. For the new releases to start flowing with any regularity and vigour down the pike.
There have certainly been a handful of new releases that have excited me thus far in 2024 and I've tried to express that enthusiasm here in the last couple of weeks. But while we're waiting for the drip drip to become a steady flow, lets look back at another hidden gem and forgotten band from yesteryear.
Today's dogged underdog strugglers are Bay Area indie fumblers The Aislers Set and their 2000 record The Last Match. Really 'struggle' is the wrong word here because listening to the record it's immediately clear that this is actually an expression of the purest youthful joy and true fanzine vision. The record is certainly a joy to listen to.
Looking at photos of the band onstage it's clear that along with Belle & Sebastian, the C-86 set, Jesus & Mary Chain, Shop Assistants and the like, the guiding inspiration for what's going on here as so often with bands like these is the Girl Group sound of the mid Sixties and The Velvet Underground.
A photo of The Aislers Set onstage at work reminds you of no one so much as the early Velvets. Perhaps they don't have Gerard Malanga and Mary Woronin in black, brandishing whips and doing dances your mother wouldn't think much of but the essential spirit and attitude is in place. Fringes hanging over faces. Everyone staring intently at their instuments. Not looking at the audience unless they really need to.
Most of the band's songs are written and sung by Amy Linton and they seem enchanted by The Shop Assistants as well as their immediate forbears, The Ramones and The VU. But occasionally Amy's lieutenant Wyatt Cusack is allowed a turn at the mic and steers proceedings towards Belle & Sebastian. The record is flawed but you get the impression that many of the flaws are by design. Pitchfork give it 7.5 . But they're unreasonably harsh. Lacking in the generosity evident in the record they're reviewing. Like a Primary School teacher who doesn't understand the criteria they've been given for the upcoming OFSTED inspection. We're forced to wonder who exactly needs to resit the test concerned. I'd give it 8.5.
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Revolutionary Spirit - Paul Simpson - # 6 Tom Waits
Simpson leaves The Teardrop Explodes. Wisely. Before they sell out and tarnish his own cool. He goe on a double date with Ian McCulloch and pulls, while Mac strikes out and plays a support slot to The Bunnymen with a hastily assembled band with Bill Drummond in a support slot with The Bunnymen and a band called Danger Quentin.
Cover Versions of Femme Fatale # 12 Dramarama
Dramarama were a New Jersey based Power Pop band in the Eighties who I have been entirely unaware of, until... just now. Just on the basis of this, a very laidback and very, very New Yoik take on Femme Fatale, I should really investigate further.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 490 Fun Boy Three - Fun Boy Three
Waiting is the one you need but this is a pleasing if slightly mishappen starter. Ot does contain the band's wonderful first single The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum though. One of the defining political statements of the Eighties. Released at a time when things were taking a particularly grim shift.
1984 Singles # 35 March Violets
I'm glad I missed out on certain phases that are often considered mandatory or at least advisable in a young man's ourney towards musical maturity and general education. My Gothy phase was largely confined to an enduring Cure and Siouxsie & the Banshees fixation developed at 15 and which hovered over me for a couple of years and which I'm not remotely ashamed all these years later. I still think both are fine bands and I still play their records, particularly the first five studio Cure albums.
Apart from this I veered off that particular road before Goth phase two and Sisters of Mercy and later The Mission and the likes of Balaam & the Angel trotted over the horizon rattling their chains, furrowing their brows and combing back their widow's peaks.There were Goth episodes and moments. I a bought a Bauhaus Singles record, a Danse Society album I'n sorrt I mislaid and this March Violets single. I thought the latter was alright and still find tolerable evern if its grim intent has paled slightly over forty years.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,622 Quickspace
Whatever happens to the band at the bottom of the bill. The eternal support slot band. The kind of philosophical quandry that bothers absolutely nobody but the likes of me. Hey I have a blog to write. These things do actually vex me. I have geek DNA.
Yesterday evening I chanced upon a flyer for one of the great Indie bills from the nineties; Sebadoh, Stereolab and Yo La Tengo playing at the Shepherds Empire. 1995 as it happens, should you care. One event I certainly wish I'd been at.
The fourth band on the bill that night were the less feted and certainly less fondly remembered, Quickspace Supersport. Never heard of them. Have many? But my curiosity was certainly picqued by their name and I delved deeper. I'm glad I did.
I found myself listening to the band's final studio album The Death of Quickspace from 2000, and finding it blindingly and astonishingly magnificent. Something of a forgotten if shapeless masterpiece.A vision of Indie yesteryear.
Hey, I'm perfectly aware that I do this, or something like this, every other day. Shouting to the heavens abour some great record I've been listening to. But if I have a job as a Blog Writer, and I would argue perhaps I actually do, then getting excited about records I like and trying to persuade others to listen to them, is probably it.
This is a fine, enigmatic, weaving and sinuous guitar and synth album. Born from the ashes of Camden Scene band Th' Faith Healers, Quickspace, (they sensibly shortened their name), fashioned a deft amd fluent and freewheeling Krautrock sound that embraced Neu! and Outsider Folk-ish influences equally enthusiastically. They use these to craft a wonderful signing off statement here. There's a fabulous giddy theremin zigzagging across several tracks on The Death of Quickspace which embodies its marginal essence and spirit.
The record's a joy to listen to frankly, Here's a set of musicians for whom the experience is more important than the pay cheque. That matters. More than that it's really exactly how it should be.
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Coming Up # 29 The Smile
Of course being in Thom Yorke's company is being with someone in a slightly depressed state. The Smile have an album out in a couple of weeks. It should be worth sitting up for.
Cover Versions of Femme Fatale # 11 Ty Segall
The song is unrecognmisable except for the lyrics. But despite sayig little or noting about the narrative undertow that akes the original such a trult great one I don't mind it and everyone seems yo be having a wonderful time.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 491 Def Leppard - Hysteria
I tried to listen to this last night. It made me very glad that I wasn't born in the Midwest. I was worn out and frankly slain halfway through third track Animal. So I took rhe bloody thing off.
1984 Singles # 36 Hoodoo Gurus
There was a moment in my life that I might as well define as one of the truly happiest of my life. I was in my room at Fifer's Lane, university residences at UEA, Second Term first year, The Fifer's Lane residential blocks, also called the UEA village had been there, a short minibus ride from the main campus since the University opened in 1965. Prior to that I think they were RAF accomodation blocks to the best of my knowledge. Sue me if I'm wrong. I am often wrong.It was closed in 1994
At the beginnng of my second term my father drove ne my record player and collection up to university as I recall. I was sat there in my room one afternoon in the Spring Term with Ben and James, sitting opposite me. James and Ben were the blokes across the coridoor from me and my best friends that year and therefore two of the best friends I've ever had in my life. Rod the fourth member of our gang was away for some reason and wasn't there that day. He was chasing after some woman Rod and I suspect all these years later. Sally? He wasn't with us anyhow,
We were listening to The Hoodoo Gurus, Stoneage Romeos which I'd borrowed from one of the girls upstairs, Fifers Lane blocks were sensibly segregated by gender though there was nothing to stop you visiting each others rooms and getting up to all sorts given consent and inclination. Actually often we preferred each other's company.
As I recall we were in N Block which was at the far end of the field of blocks. It had trees and thickish woodland outside the windows at the back of my small room.They were sparsely furnished. A desk, a wardrobe, a couple of chairs, a bed. Very fewof us bothered with TVs. They didn't seem as important as something to ply your music on somehow. This being before the days well before The Internet and smartphones we used to sit around talking to one another. Kids, this actually happened and we didn't feel deprived.
The light was streaming through the windows and we were talking shite no doubt as Stoneage Romeos played.. The record was and still is fantastic. A melting pot of teenage obsessions. Rock & Roll, heartbreak, cool riffs, Flinstone imagery. Fun. The kind of stuff that doesn't and never will go out of fashion.
The second song, the standout and still probably the best thing the band ever laid down on plastic, I Want You Back came on. It still does it for me that tune.. Ben and James both joined in lustily with the chorus. I can see them still before me in my mind's eye. It was such a defining moment. Youth in all its ragged, foolish, valiant glory. Bottled.
I'll never forget the moment. Our year at Fifer's Lane ended too soon. I'd virtually moved out already in the Summer Term to my new girlfriend Min's room on the campus.Sorry guys. She was cute. James headed off at around the same tume to hang out with the Sloanes for reasons you'd really need to ask James about. The four of our friendhip was never quite the same again. These things are not always meant to last. Forty years later the reasons and details don't matter at all. All that matters are the memories,.
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