Today would have been John Pyle’s 40th birthday.

I owe him an awful lot and I wish he was still around. The link is to a zip file of songs that always remind me of John in one way or another. Whether you knew him or not, it's still a groovy little playlist.

01 - Dave Brubeck Quartet - Unsquare Dance
(This was played every week at The Dial when we'd go out on a Friday night, sit on the steps and drink Holsten Pils)
02 - BOB - Esmerelda Brooklyn
(We went to see BOB in Leicester and John shouted for this track incessantly until they played it..slightly reluctantly)
03 - The The – Uncertain Smile [12’’ Version]
(I bought this from Selectadisc for his birthday one year not realising it was different to the LP version. “listen to the sax solo!”)
04 - Elvis Costello – Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head
(“Here comes Mr Misery”)
05 - Iggy Pop – Shades
(vivid memory of me saying I didn’t know the song and him trying to sing the chorus to me)
06 - New Order – Lonesome Tonight
(hard to pick one New Order song, but this was a favourite b-side from his pile of 12’’s)
07 - OMD – 4 Neu
(Stoz told me years later that this was John’s favourite OMD song)
08 - Happy Mondays – Freaky Dancin’
(this one reminds me of drinking Taboo and fighting in a caravan somewhere in Yorkshire)
09 - The Jesus & Mary Chain - Tast Of Cindy [Acoustic]
(We played the Some Candy Talking 12" to death and this was on the b-side)
10 - Orange Juice – My Dying Day
(“i hear your bugle playing”)
11 - The Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want
(I remember John being insistent that I listen to this Stones track. Even though we weren't Stones fans he said it was amazing and he knew I'd love it. He was right.)
12 - The Wedding Present – Nothing Comes Easy
(one of the first CD singles I bought – he had this track on repeat for 2 hours at least)
13 - Tom Waits - Small Change (Got Rained On With His Own .38)
(The theme tune to Alex Cox's Moviedrome series of cult films on BBC2. Essential viewing)
14 - The Weather Prophets – Naked As The Day You Were Born
(John was quite fanatical about The Weather Prophets despite their leather trousers)
15 - Natalie Merchant – I May Know The Word
(no dry eyes)

John Pyle Mix

A Morrissey & Marr-y Christmas

Having been a bit mean about Morrissey only a few days ago, I thought I'd redeem myself by posting this one up.

I don't normally share entire albums, but I'll make an exception for this one as it's a bootleg, so I don't feel so bad about making it available for free

Smiths bootlegs have always massively disappointed me, aside from the odd decent gig they usually tend to be really poor quality and have nothing of note to offer. At the end of the day, the band were only together for a few years and just didn't write and record THAT many songs.

After reading Simon Goddard's excellent trainspotters guide to The Smiths - Songs That Saved Your Life - it was obvious that, despite almost zero original songs remaining unreleased, there were actually a substantial amount of studio
sessions that were unheard.

I din't think I'd ever get to hear them either, as Morrissey and Marr continue to seem ambivalent towards any sort of rarities or reissue program.

However, yesterday I was sent a link to this new bootleg which contains a large proportion of the songs in question. Even better than that, the quality is pretty much A1 throughout!

I won't go into great detail as the tracklisting is pretty self-explanatory. Just believe me when I tell you it's best christmas present you could wish for


01 The Hand That Rocks The Cradle [John Porter Monitor Mix]

02 Reel Around The Fountain [Final Troy Tate Mix]

03 Rusholme Ruffians [Electric Demo Version July 84]

04 The Queen Is Dead [Full Length Version]

05 Sheila Take A Bow [John Porter Sitar Version January 1987]

06 This Night Has Opened My Eyes [Studio Version June 1984]

07 I Misses You [Marr Instrumental- Excerpt]

08 Ask [Original Pre-Remix Version]

09 There Is A Light That Never Goes Out [Monitor Mix - Alternate Vocal]

10 Is It Really So Strange? [June 1986 'Single' Version]

11 Frankly, Mr. Shankly [Trumpet Version November 1985]

12 Shoplifters Of The World Unite [Instrumental Version]

13 Girlfriend In A Coma [Monitor Mix - Alternate Vocal March 1987]

14 Death Of A Disco Dancer [Monitor Mix - Alternate Vocal March 1987]

15 Paint A Vulgar Picture [Monitor Mix - Alternate Vocal March 1987]

16 Heavy Track [Marr Instrumental - Excerpt]

The Smiths - Unreleased Demos & Instrumentals

Happy christmas.
Uncle Frankie
x

Captain Beefheart. RIP

It seems like the whole world has had something to say about Captain Beefheart since his death last week, so I almost didn’t bother to add my tribute. Apparently the Amazon charts had Trout Mask Replica outselling the Beatles and Pink Floyd at the weekend. Unbelievable stuff. I can only be thankful that I’ve not seen Bono being wheeled out to say a few words.

But anyway, now the eulogy tsunami is tailing off a little bit, here we go..

From the day I first heard Abba Zaba in my housemate’s room in 1989 as an impressionable youth, through my subsequent years as a Beefheart obsessive, to the day I walked out the house last Friday and bumped into a friend who broke the news of his demise - I could never really find the words to explain why I liked his music quite as much as I did. It just seemed to make perfect sense. Even the senseless depths of Decals and Trout Mask sounded normal to me. The most frustrating thing for me was just not being able to understand why other people (whom I would normally consider to have similar tastes) couldn’t hear what I could hear. I was mocked quite openly in certain quarters and still am!

The obsessive streak has long since subsided. Back in the pre-internet early 90’s I would write real letters to other fans and swap cassette after cassette of badly dubbed rehearsal bootlegs and live shows. I collected books, fanzines and owned all the albums on vinyl AND CD (in my defence that compulsiveness paid off a few years ago when I sold most of my collection for the best part of £500 leaving me sensibly with just the CD’s)

I can’t get too upset over the death of someone who has been a recluse for more than 25 years. To all intents and purposes Captain Beefheart has been dead a long time. I just hope that the friends of Don Van Vliet are doing OK without him. For the rest of us his music will never die.

This is a repost from a couple of years back.

Captain Beeheart - Well [Remix]

No hecklers in heaven.

I Know It's Over

Phew – I’m glad that’s all over. Now I can get on with the rest of my life.

Morrissey - It's Not Your Birthday Anymore

Like most massive childhood Smiths fans, I look upon Morrissey these days as a pantomime dame. A (porky middle-aged) caricature of himself. I’ve long since given up hope that he will ever release a good record again, and why would he (or how could he)?

That said, I still do listen to his new stuff just in case. This track was by far my favourite from the last album. The singles I found a bit painful but this one seemed to have been grown from the stem cells of Moz rather than just xeroxed.

Ruby Thursday

Happy happy birthday to me.

This song seems appropriate given the particular anniversary of my shooting forth from my mother’s birth canal.

For some reason this Boss Hog song is way, way better than anything else I ever heard by them. In fact it’s an astonishingly good song.

I’m generally not a fan of my birthday – tonight I’m being taken for a meal. No doubt the christmas menu (again).

Boss Hog - Ruby

My thoughts are mainly with those friends who never made it this far.

Best Gig I Ever Done See #7 - FISH

Fish - Derby University
December 13th 2010

I briefly mentioned my childhood love of Marillion once before on this blog (item 6 in this post) and on Monday night I fulfilled a dream that has been 25 years in the making.

The intervening years were spent in denial that I was ever really that big a fan. In fact I didn't actually hear any of Fish's solo albums until about 3 years ago when I finally started to reach that age where I genuinely didn't give a shit what people thought any more.

So when he announced a low-key acoustic tour and that he was coming to Derby I bought a ticket. As a mark of how far I've come - I didn't even press-gang anyone into coming with me. I went on my own and had a great time.

The support act weren't up to much, the drummer was doing that sitting on a box and thumping it thing and the singer looked like a lion and played some fairly ordinary folk blues stuff. I hit the bar.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Fish's set, never having seen him before, but knowing that it was just him, a guitar player and a keyboard player. If you'd said to me beforehand that they could carry off playing over 2 hours of his back catalog without any amount of backing tape trickery I'd have laughed, but that's exactly what they did. In fact the guitarist played the whole lot on a 3/4 size spanish acoustic. Even the solos.

It was amazing stuff. Fish was funny and engaged with the crowd like it was a room full of friends, and the format really did work. He gave it 100% and was totally into it, despite the lack of a rhythm section he still bopped round the stage like he was hearing one anyway. I think most of the crowd were too.

He talked about football, relationships, war, politics and..erm...filming your own porn..amongst other things - always setting the context for the songs - which he sang in great voice (as a huge Sinatra fan, I'm not speaking lightly when I say that his phrasing is up there with Frankie's)

The greatest thing for me was the way the stripped down format allowed you to absorb the lyrics and hear things you wouldn't normally pick up on. Let's be honest the showboat nature of Prog Rock seems to inadvertently do all it can to divert the listeners attention from the vocals. That's probably why so many Prog bands have such cheesey lyrics about goblins and shit. No one cares (apart from people who like goblins maybe, and to be honest I think there were probably a few in this crowd who would have been happy either way).

It seemed like no time at all before 2 hours of this had passed, and for an encore they did a Kayleigh / Lavender medley. In fact it was lovely to hear him be so humble about those "hits". He's a bloke who knows what those songs mean to people and what they mean to HIM in terms of how his life would have been if they hadn't been such globally successful singles.

I think my highlight was the song he did with just the piano behind him.

Fish - A Gentleman's Excuse Me

This is a live version from a few years ago, but you get the general vibe. It seems lazy to call it spine-tingling but it really was exactly that.

I've not enjoyed a gig so much in ages, and on the way home I had one of the strangest spiritual experiences of my life. Completely unrelated to the gig, as far as I can tell, but one more reason why I'll never forget Monday night.

In fact I must have been in a bit of an altered state by the end of the gig as I filled all my gaps in the CD rack when I saw that they were knocking out most of his solo albums for a fiver on the merchandise stand (and it seems via
his own website shop)

He may never be cool but I'm 40 tomorrow and I don't give a fuck. He's my hero.

The Later Works Of...Tim Buckley

My intention when I posted this about the later works of Lou Reed, was that I would follow it up with more examples of artists with hidden gems buried in the sand after they had been generally agreed to have jumped the shark. It's only taken me 3 and a half years to get here..

The perceived wisdom amongst music snobs is that Tim Buckley had 4 distinct creative phases - the hippy-drippy folky, the jazz-folky, the avant-garde nutter and then the sweaty funk pig.

Only the first three of his phases are ever discussed in the context of his legend, and the fourth is often dismissed as being an embarassing footnote, but I'm here to tell you that the last three "funk pig" albums do actually have their moments.

In fact these days, the only Tim Buckley I can actually listen to in any great quantity is the late-period stuff.

Buckley had honed his voice to perfection, and as a white soul singer I don't believe there has been anyone better. He surrounded himself with superior funk musicians and their playing was solid gold.

Sadly those albums did suffer from overly-polished production which took the edge from some of the performances but when the original session tapes were discovered and released in 2001 on the Dream Belongs To Me compilation, it became immediately apparent that this was hard-edged and crucially funky. In fact the 1973 sessions totally blow the 1968 Happy Sad out-takes out of the water on this CD.

Quite honestly two of the finest Tim Buckley performances in existence here:-

Tim Buckley - Because Of You
Tim Buckley - Falling Timber

Black Lab

On the same tape as the Joe Henry album I talked about here were a couple of other artists I didn't know and one of them was Black Lab.

Just this one song - which I come back to quite frequently as I love it so much. (sad to say that when I checked out the rest of the album it wasn't so hot)

It's another one of those reminiscing about lost love songs and my interpretation is that it's about a bloke who sees an ex-girlfriend at the airport, looking happy as she heads off on her travels, and coming to the conclusion that "she is much better without me".

My favourite line is

"some people change, others hang on 'til they can't anymore"

The one thing that makes the track stand out beyond all others though is the fantastic one-note guitar solo at around the 3 minute mark. There aren't many one-note guitar solos, in fact not enough, but this one really excels as it tortures the life out of that single note (OK it's probably got more than one note in it but not many more). I had it in my head that this was played by Greg Lisher of Camper Van Beethoven but I can't find any evidence on the internet to back that up. I'm probably wrong then.

Black Lab - Gates Of The Country

Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo are one of those bands that have been around for years and years and consistently released good records, yet never seem to have risen to the hallowed ranks of indie royalty like, say, Sonic Youth. A real shame I'd say as YLT albums seem to have more songs (and less dicking about) than Thurston's mob manage per decade.

Maybe the variety they display makes it harder to pin them down (let's face it Sonic Youth have been making the same album over and over for nearly 20 years) and some people just like to know what to expect.

Here we have two of my favourite Yo La Tengo songs, and they bear absolutely no resemblance to each other. Could be different bands if you didn't know better.

Yo La Tengo - Mr Tough
Yo La Tengo - Our Way to Fall

Moss Poles

In 1987 a new record shop opened in Derby called BPM owned by the chap who had previously run R.E.Cords on Sadler Gate (the first record shop I ever went in and bizarrely now the unit in which the re-activated BPM Records lives). As part of the opening special offer there seemed to be a huge rack of indie records at insanely cheap prices.

A lot of these were by bands that we'd never heard of and because we were all skint but desperate to hear new music we'd quite often just take a punt on the one with the best sleeve.

My sister bought the single "One Summer" by The Moss Poles and it was an immediate indiepop classic. Fast buzz-saw guitars, twee harmonies and a catchy chorus. It sounds quite dated now but it's still a great pop song.

BPM also had the follow-up single ("Underground") and then the album ("Shorn") for cheap but neither were up to the standard of this

Moss Poles - One Summer

Morphine

Further fall-out from the Music Avalanche, this time Morphine who I think we must have seen on Later With Jools Holland playing their low jazz-rock music with the unusual sax/bass/drums line-up.

Sax in rock can be a bit hit-and-miss in my opinion but this lot nailed it, and Cure For Pain is a great song.

I also loved those pale-green Rykodisc CD jewel cases..aaah why should that have even mattered? I don't know. It just did.

Morphine - Cure For Pain

Band Of Holy Joy

Over the years I seem to have made an accidental habit of ending up at gigs I had no interest in attending, and whilst most of these have been miserable affairs (yes I'm talking about you Fields Of The Nephilim) every now and again I have ended up thoroughly enjoying myself.

The Band Of Holy Joy was one such occasion, dragged along by someone (probably Woody) because there was literally nothing better to do - I had heard a couple of their singles and not been hugely impressed, but live they totally blew me away.

Often lazily described as an English Pogues, they did indeed play more traditional folk instruments but they were a lot more esoteric in their song-writing. It was a far cry from the indie guitar bands of the time, in fact probably the only band I saw at The Duchess Of York that didn't have a guitar player

The singer was an intense young chap and the last song they played was delivered with such emotion that it was hard not to love it.

I'd always assumed this was about Marilyn Monroe but is apparently about a Monroe impersonator who mirrored her idol so closley that she even died the same way and at the same age. Quite a sad song then. But a good one..

Band Of Holy Joy - Bitten Lips

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Here's a lovely bit of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan especially for the Pastor Terry Jones and his misguided followers (all 50 of them) in Gainesville, Florida.

Let's all just love each other yeah?

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Mustt Mustt

Zumpano

Another one of those records that dates back to the Music Avalanche - I don't actually remember why I bought the Zumpano album "Look What The Rookie Did", as I'm pretty sure I'd not heard them. So a blind (or should that be deaf?) purchase with only the Sup Pop label as any promise of quality, meaning I was expecting something heavy and thus disappointed.

It quickly grew on me though, a sort of baroque pop album not a million miles from Ben Folds. This record has some serious bounce. They did one more album and then split up.

I didn't realise until recently that the singer was AC Newman from The New Pornographers, but I maintain that this album is better than any of those from the Pitchfork Pant-Wetter's favourites.

Zumpano - I Dig You
Zumpano - Rosecrans Boulevard

Breed

Yet another darkly brooding guitar band with a deep-voiced front man. Is this getting boring yet?

Breed were constantly raved about by John Peel and they recorded more sessions than most for his program, yet they never seemed to be quite as successful as they could have been - or indeed SHOULD have been.

Their second album "Violent Sentimental" is amazing and I recently traded in my tattered vinyl copy for a CD issue (I didn't even know it had been released on CD) via the magic of ebay

The singer Simon still seems to be doing stuff and one of the others (probably Ken..) was later in Placebo.

I also just noticed that I already plugged them once in an earlier post about Barbel but I have no memory of ever being aware that he was in Barbel - what is happening to me? Was he in Barbel? Who knows (or indeed cares)

Listen and enjoy this beauty..

Breed - Faithless, Broke and Powerless

Dumb

I saw Dub Sex play a few times back in the day and they were always excellent and very intense. The singer was probably the first person I saw wearing jogging bottoms on stage.

"Swerve" was arguably their finest hour (although the follow-up "Time Of Life" is also really good) and to this day I still can't work out what he's singing at the start (please add your guess in the comments)



I only became aware of their second incarnation as Dumb some years after the fact, and they have an annoyingly un-Google-able name, so
most of what I know comes from this Myspace.

I've managed to track down a couple of 7" singles and one album but I'm still missing the "Thirsty" album.

They didn't stray too far from the original Dub Sex vibe but this single was particularly upbeat and should have been much more widely heard I reckon.

This one is also dedicated to everyones favourite scouser Wayne Rooney. He seems such an intelligent lad as well..

Dumb - Always Liverpool

Mark Lanegan

1994 was a particularly bountiful year for me when it came to buying records, due in no small part to the fact I was sharing a flat with the manager of the local independent record shop Way Ahead (now the boss off successful folk-tastic record label Reveal Records)

It wasn't purely his commercial instincts encouraging me to buy stuff (and to be fair he did *give* me quite a lot of freebies) but we were two young blokes who loved our music, and I was like a child in a sweet shop for the most part.

One of the records that always takes me back to that flat is the solo album by Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees

I already owned a copy of "Buzz Factory" by Screaming Trees (on blue vinyl I think it was), which was an impulse buy on the wave of grunge that swept the nation a couple of years previously, and to be perfectly honest I didn't much like it and I sold it years ago. It ticked all the right boxes, minimalist sleeve, produced by Jack Endino, Seattle band, on SST but sadly it did nothing for me (as was the case with pretty much every grunge band outside of Nirvana and Mudhoney)

So I wasn't expecting big things from his solo album but was chuffed to find that it was actually amazing. I dug it out last week and can confirm that it stands up as still a great record today.

Mark Lanegan - House a Home

Will probably post a few more things from that golden summer of music avalanche over the next few weeks (Stina Nordenstam and Morphine spring to mind)

James Taylor Quartet

The James Taylor Quartet started out doing covers of 1960's film themes, and their second album "The Money Spyder" was the soundtrack to an imaginary film (yes...it's up there with Kiss "Music From The Elder").

Later on they went a bit acid jazz, which I wasn't so keen on, but by all accounts they are still going and have reverted back to their original style. I should check out the new stuff and stop living in the past shouldn't I?

I also have a distant memory (circa 1989) of frugging my socks off at a club in Bradford called "Dig That Hammond!" that played this sort of stuff all night. It was down some steps and in a very sweaty basement. No further details exist at this point in time, but if you can't tap your toes to this tune then you don't deserve toes.

James Taylor Quartet - One Way Street

This also reminds me that I need to blog something by The Prisoners at some point soon..

Peel Session Week #7: - Ivor Cutler 15th June 1987

Hard to belive it's well over 4 years since Ivor Cutler passed away

This session was the first time I ever heard him and after the initial confusion I quickly came to realise I was listening to a genius.

All of the stories told in this session are superb and featured in the book Fremsley but it's Cutler's delivery that really makes them come alive. I remember my sister coming into my room wondering why on earth I had an ageing Scottish man with me. It didn't take long before she was hooked too.

Ivor Cutler - Peel Session 15th June 1987

01 The Shapely Balloon
02 The Clever Night Doctor
03 The Aggressive Onion-Vendor
04 Me And My Kid Brother
05 The Perambulating Scottish Collander
06 A Wag At The Flicks

Peel Session Week #6: The Shamen - 12th April 1988

In retrospect The Shamen are possibly the unhippest thing I could post. Images of Mr C bobbing around off his tits on e's and whizz come to mind, but back in 1988 (ie pre-ecstasy culture) I thought they were a great band.

This session includes my favourite single "Knature Of A Girl" which was typical of the industrial psychedelic pop they peddled in the early days.

"War Prayer" and "Misinformation" are two sample-heavy tracks that featured on the album "In Gorbachev We Trust" - the record which heavily sign-posted their imminent change of direction

The 3rd track "Nothing" is otherwise unreleased as far as I can tell

The Shamen - Peel Session 12th April 1988

01 Knature Of A Girl
02 War Prayer
03 Nothing
04 Misinformation