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)
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:-
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.
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.
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
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.
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..
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.
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.
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
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)
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..
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.
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.
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.
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
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
I was always going to like a band with a name like Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet and this session highlights their guitar instrumental chops quite nicely.
I was never sure whether the Shadowy bit was a reference to The Shadows, because they have that Hank Marvin twang which bears more than a passing resemblance at times.
The last track is a corker - essentially being a medley of brief riff-snippets (riffets?) from cliched encore songs. Can you spot them all?
This session from Scratch Perverts caught me by surpise as I didn't expect it to be that interesting. How wrong I was. A relentless 30 minute lesson in A+ scratching. Astonishing stuff.
I thought this session from Foreheads In A Fishtank was a killer when I first taped it and promptly bought the Happy Shopper single (which reached Number 21 in the 1991 Festive Fifty). As Peel quite rightly pointed out, the singer "managed to sound like Noddy Holder & Morrissey within the same song" and the style of music was totally at odds to the burgeoning grunge movement that was taking shape.
The album "Buttocks" was a bit of a disappointment and I don't think they reached these heights again (although they did release a completely bizarre cover version of Haircut 100's "Favourite Shirts" as a single a few years later that was quite entertaining)
Another session that I taped without knowing anything about the band, but The Hepburns had a good name (not to be confused with the later all-girl pop-rock monstrosity Hepburn) so I took a punt.
Excellent it was too, but their records seemed devlishly hard to find - in fact I don’t think any of these session tracks were ever officially released apart from "Where You Belong" which turned up on a fanzine flexi.
The band hold a special place in my heart because on my first day at University in Leeds I discovered Jumbo Records and was astounded to find one their records ("Electrified 12") which I snapped up and took back to my room. I listened to it non-stop and even now I can smell Jasmine joss sticks when I hear those songs. Aaah! Isn't it amazing the things a simple piece of music can do?
The band seemed to have been rejuvenated at the turn of the century and have released quite a lot of stuff since then - check it all out here
Benny Profane were a band that I saw play many times in the late eighties/early nineties and they never failed to impress. I remember one particularly strange gig seeing them support Echo & The Bunnymen (the debut gig of the Mac-less Echoes Of The Bunnymen line-up) in Bootle, surrounded by a who's who of the Liverpool music scene. I thought Benny Profane stole the show that night as they played a storming set with the air of a band who knew they had nothing to lose
This Peel Session came just after I first saw the video for their single "Rob A Bank" on the late night ITV indie music program (the name of which escapes me but was consistently excellent). The single was scheduled to come out on Ediesta Records but disappeared, along with so many other releases when the Red Rhino distribution network collapsed.
The band then released two albums in quick succession (both featured new versions of two tracks each from this session) and boom..split up.
I love all four songs on this session but Dave Jackson's lyrics on track 4 slay me every time..a true unsung indie hero
When he grabbed the microphone
He knocked his front teeth right out
And that was the last time
He sang without dentures
No mp3 today as I'm taking the eldest to Leeds Festival to see his heroes Guns 'N Roses, which of course I won't enjoy in the slightest..hem hem..
So instead I'll pay homage with a link to one of my favourite cheesy rock videos of ALL TIME.
In all seriousness I love this video so much, all 9 minutes of it and you have to really watch it all a few times to appreciate each and every nuance. Every viewing brings something new to the experience. Beneath the video are my revision notes that will help you pass your GCSE in Hair Metal Video..
00:01 So here we have Axl going to bed (alone) because he's got a headache. Stubs out his fag & chugs a couple of nurofen. Shh! Axl tired!
00:20 Axl begins to dream that he is doing a special gig with an orchestra. Of course this would never happen because he's not a pussy.
00:40 Or is he REALLY alone in a tiny empty wooden church with just a baby grand piano for company? Lay off the cheese before bed Axl!
01:00 Oh no! The tiny wooden church has disintegrated!
01:20 Ooh dear it IS a bad dream. Even jesus is crying..Axl tosses anxiously
01:40 Now it's a proper big church and is that Axl's bride or a slutty kissogram walking down the aisle?
02:20 Axl is dreaming about marrying a woman a good foot taller than him
02:40 Now they're all smoking tabs in the backroom of The Rainbow. That would be totally illegal today of course!
02:50 Axl has a little snog
03:05 Meanwhile back in the big church..oh shit! Slash has only gone and lost the ring!
03:10 Fear not - Duff McKagan has a spare one on his be-gloved left pinky. Phew!
03:25 Axl performs a wedding faux-pas by over-shadowing the bride's ring with his own enormous and flamboyant eagle claw ring. Oops!
03:30 "You may kiss the bride" Axl has a MASSIVE snog. I found it more than a little innapproriate as you can clearly see him aggressively tongueing her. Please..there are children watching!
03:40 Now his bit is done Slash decides he's had enough and stomps off down the aisle in a moody sulk
04:00 But suddenly 3 absolute miracles happen! Slash loses his hat, Slash gains a guitar and the big church shrinks to the size of a tiny shed in the middle of the desert!
04:05 Oh hang on miracle #4 Slash has also lost his shirt!
04:10 Miracle #5 Slash is now smoking a cigarette that not only appeared from nowhere but how did he light it in that wind without burning his hair?
04:25 Massively emotional guitar solo. But where is your amp Slash? No amps in the desert Slash!
05:00 The solo is still going on and no one has dared tell Slash he's not plugged in yet
05:05 Meanwhile back at the real church, Axl and his slutty bride get pelted with confetti. They like it!
05:30 Slash is STILL going
05:40 Is that Axl we see in the darkness leaving a gun shop? What have you got planned Axl you naughty boy!
06:00 Here we are now at the reception and Mr & Mrs Axl have changed. She now looks like she's going to a funeral. Axl looks like..actually fuck knows what Axl thinks he looks like. A flouncy bluecoat at Butlins maybe?
06:10 They cut the cake and Axl makes her lick the knife. Lick it! Health and Safty fail.
06:20 The lads have a toast to Axl and his new wife. Slash looks a bit miffed. He's still not forgotten about the futile solo in the desert incident.
06:45 Everyone's having a lovely time (excpet Slash) but..bloody typical - it's started raining! Like in that song November Rain geddit? Who gets married in November? It always rains in November. Quick hide under the tables.
07:00 My 100% favourite bit of the whole video - for absolutely NO REASON Izzy Stradlin jumps into the wedding cake.
07:10 What now Axl's wife is DEAD? Nooooo!
07:15 Slash checks that he's definitely plugged in this time and decides to show Axl whose boss by playing the next solo stood on top of Axl's grand piano.
07:20 Hmm - suspiciously less people at Mrs Axl's funeral than were at her wedding. Axl is probably meant to look like he's crying but he just looks like he's got a sweaty face.
07:22 Close-up of the coffin and she is half-obscured by a mirror - suggesting something particularly unpleasant must have happened to the left side of her head. What did you do to her Axl you monster!
07:50 Slash is still stood on that piano
08:10 Sombre burial sequence
08:22 Oh bloody bollocks! It's only started raining AGAIN. People have umbrellas this time.
08:30 I love this bit - Axl is stroking his piano to an orgasmic frenzy. Two-handed technique..nice
08:35 Someone has clearly just said "sod this..pub anyone?"
08:40 Axl wakes from his dream (this time he really is sweaty) as his wife throws the bouquet. The petals turn from white to red and it lands on her coffin
09:00 The cold november rain washes the red dye from the petals and Axl cries. They weren't even real red flowers!
09:05 The end. What can it all mean?
=============
To get slightly back on topic after this little diversion, next week will be officially Peel Session week, where I'll bring you seven of my favourite (unreleased) John Peel Sessions. Watch this space
It's been quite a while since I added to the Best Gigs I Ever Done See list, suggesting that I've probably not seen that many good gigs. On the contrary, I just have a terrible memory. In fact one of the reasons I do this blog is because I suspect one day I won't even remember my own name.
My ailing memory embarasses me already because I can't remember the specific details of this particular gig. I had it in my head that Bettie Serveert supported Buffalo Tom on this occasion, but some rudimentary googling shows that gig must have been the following year, so the best I can come up with is that they must have been supporting Belly?
That would make sense as they had just released their album "Palomine" on the short-lived 4AD off-shoot label Guernica and Belly were 4AD darlings of the UK music press at the time.
This was one of those special gigs where everyone in the audience was stunned by how good the previously unknown support band was. When they ambled on stage they couldn't have looked more Dutch - terrible hair, terrible clothes, terribly unfashionable guitars (it was almost unthinkable in 1992 that an indie band should have a Gibson Les Paul not a Fender Jaguar) and the singer wasn't even that good-looking. Yet they played their hearts out and you could see people in the crowd turning to each other exchanging nods of appreciation as they gradually won everyone over.
There was a real rush on their album at Way Ahead Records the next day and although there isn't a bad track on there this is still my favourite song of theirs.
I absolutely loved this song by The Cygnet Ring when it came out and fully expected it to be a huge hit. The label were flogging copies cheap in the major chain record stores and it was getting plenty of radio play, but the chart smash I predicted never materialised. I was actively mocked by at least one friend for thinking this was a great pop song but I still stand by it today. The single version at least..
Going back to my earlier post about my penchant for 12" remixes, there was a textbook example of an extended remix gone bad for this single.
It seems like they ripped the heart out of the song and replaced it with a hip and trendy baggy beat. It's not that bad (you'd have to be going some to ruin a tune like this) but it just seemed a bit half-arsed. According to the credits this was the early work of Guy Fixsen who worked with almost every shoe-gazing band of note and went on to be part of the excellent Laika so can be forgiven for this remix folly.
NB - yes I know I've labelled this post as 80's 12" Mixes and this came out in the early 90's but it's all the same to me.
I was only ever a casual fan of BMX Bandits, but when a friend played me singer, Duglas Stewart's solo album "Frankenstein" in 1997 it struck a chord that endeared it to me forever.
Although it's largely made up of cover versions, the concept of the album is based around the break-up with the mother of his child and the conflicts, self-doubt and general feelings of worthlessness that single fathers can feel. Like I say, it struck a chord.
Opening with a cover of Benmont Tench's "Unbreakable Heart" (one of the saddest songs ever - and one I might blog at a later date. Maybe when I get round to Country & Western Week), the emotional tone is set from the out.
But it's Duglas' own song "Stupid" that really forms the centrepiece of the album. I guess it has a similar kind of feel to Sinatra's "I Would Be In Love Anyway" as mentioned in my Watertown blog entry. That feeling that no matter how wrong things have gone, there is still a part of you that would do it all again - just to have the good times. How can you regret any relationship that bears a child without letting down that child?
Another nostalgic moment - this time the early summer of 1994. I was on a fortnight-long UNIX course in Darley Dale and travelling every day on the Derby to Matlock train through the beautiful Derbyshire countryside. I'd just picked up a cassette copy of the new album by a band called Eggs so that I could listen to something new on the old tape Walkman and it soundtracked my journey brilliantly.
By coincidence, Darley Dale is also the village where both my Parents grew up and my Grandparents still lived there. My Grandad was pretty poorly and in the Whitworth Hospital at the time which was right opposite the offices where I was doing the course, so I had a routine going. Train-Eggs-Course-Hospital at lunchtime-Course-Train-Eggs. There's not been enough trombone players in the indie genre..Eggs, Bridewell Taxis..any more?
I'm sure I must have listened to more than just this one album but I don't remember anything else. My Grandad died later that summer, and I was glad to have spent a bit of time with him when I did, cos he was a great bloke (aren't most Grandads?). I hope to be one too some day.
So this is also for my son Evan who was born 3 months ago.
Ask me who the greatest singer was to ever come out of Derby and without a doubt my answer would be Kevin Coyne. An amazing blues singer but his talent went far and beyond that. Much loved by John Peel, he still seemed to languish in relative obscurity right up until his death a few years back. Even then there didn't seem to be quite the posthumous wave of interest that seems to wash over most artists when they pass away. I still find it hard to believe that we were born in the same city and grew up walking the same streets.
My favourite Coyne song by far was later covered by Bonnie Prince Billy on an obscure Spanish label (not a bad version but not a patch on the original) and is one of the most beautifully optimistic lyrics ever. It never fails to cheer me up.
Said, now smile everybody, don't you see it's gone
I'm surrounded by good spirits day and night time long
And when I walk, I walk like I've just been born
All because the lord let the sun shine down on me
Another favourite, this one is much more obscure being self-released in 1984, lost amidst the mid-eighties musical landscape where singing cryptic songs about cycling were never going to hit the spot.
Yesterday I promised something a bit less tame so here it is.
Warfare were a punk metal band from Newcastle that I must have first heard on Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show in the early 1980's (did I previously explain my pre-teen flirtation with all things ROCK?).
Frankie Goes To Hollywood were Top Of The Pops and dominated playground conversations with the cool kids, so I instantly took delight in hearing Warfare destroy a Frankie song in such an uncompromising manner. In fact I think I can trace my love affair with cover versions in general back to this one record. I played this very loudly out of my bedroom window for as long as my parents would tolerate. I suggest you do the same.
Note that this isn't a remix - the (Metal Noise Mix) tag is probably just a joke aimed at the various different remixes of Two Tribes that Frankie were endlessly churning out at the time.
The b-sides (both originals) were also great hunking slabs of Motorhead-esque metal, as was the first album, but I was surprised to see when I looked them up recently that a Best Of CD came out a few years back Metal Anarchy which didn't include this cover version for some inexplicable reason, despite it being their most widely-known single. Oh and they had a singing drummer.
Sometimes people appear in your life from nowhere, work little miracles and then disappear just as quickly as they arrived. 1999 was one of those years and there are a handful of records which never fail to take me back there. One of the strangest years of my life, where everything felt hopelessly out of focus but progressed towards a sort of crash-zoom right at the end and suddenly everything made sense again.
Erm..where was I? What I'm trying to say is that today's piece of music came from one particular little miracle worker that one particular year.
I'd never even heard of Joe Henry when I received a copy of "Fuse" as a gift (it's still the only album of his I know but looking at his CV the follow-up "Scar" seems to be worth a punt. Featuring Marc Ribot and Ornette Coleman you say? How did I miss that!) and he's still as relatively unknown in the UK now as he was back then. So it was one of those records that you go into not really caring too much about whether it's going to be any good or not. It was a present, I've never heard of him, here goes nothing..a nice surprise when it turned out to be great.
Hints of alt.country (before alt.country even existed as a bandwagon to circle?) and rhythms that were just...sexy. No two ways about it. Not in your face sexy, but laid back and relaxed sexy. Plus another deep-voice for me to swoon over. I don't really know what he's singing about half the time either but who cares. Sexy AND mysterious. (I read a description of Joe Henry as Tom Waits without the comedy voice, and I can sort of see what they mean..just)
I was never too sure about the cover though - a slightly camp-looking bloke with a monkey on his shoulder. Flashbacks to Skegness pier in the 1970's maybe?
I fully realise that my love of this album may be due to the circumstances in which it appeared in my life - and some may think it is a bit tame, but fear not I will redress the balance tomorrow. Promise.
So today is my 2nd wedding anniversary and therefore I'm in a romantic mood and feeling very lucky with the way life has panned out.
For a while back there I had myself convinced that I would die alone and that it wasn't going to be anywhere near as cool as Morrissey had promised me when I was 16.
So hooray for me. This post is dedicated to the missus. She has many fantastic and lovely attributes but by far the most important one is that she seems capable of putting up with me. Long may she continue..
We both love a bit of Al Green and our eyes sometimes get a little damp when Let's Stay Together comes on, but that's a bit too obvious to post here. Instead we have three of, what I consider to be, his finest love songs.
First up is L.O.V.E (Love) - a cover of which was the A-side of the first Orange Juice single that I bought, and I didn't hear the original until quite a few years later.
Apparently Al Green was a big fan of the Orange Juice version!
Next we have Simply Beautiful - quite possibly one of the most heartfelt vocal deliveries ever. The way he holds it back, like his heart is a balloon full of love and he's letting the air out as slowly as possible..just so he can savour every moment. Stunning.
And finally - because I'm incapable of an honest declaration of love without shoe-horning football into the equation, this is a love song to the other great love of my life. Here's to a better season this time around..
Another gem I discovered whilst transferring the batch of 1979 John Peel Show tapes (as mentioned previously).
This time it's a Dutch band called Ze Popes and it got quite a few plays. My immediate reaction was that this could have been a Flight Of The Conchords song.
A totally daft and very literal celebration of the singer's sexy pjyamas, it's one of those songs that really seems to benefit from the fact the lyrics aren't being written in the authors first language. There really isn't much more to say...
Sexy pyjamas
They come out at night
They tickle my tummy
They're making me feel alright
The Perfect Disaster are one of those bands that seemed better known for their position in the great rock family tree than for their recorded output.
Singer Phil Parfitt went on to work with Jason Pierce from Spiritualized whilst bassist Josephine Wiggs joined The Breeders. So generally you would find their singles (usually cheap) at Record Fairs in the "Spacemen 3 and Related" or the "Pixies and Related" sections.
They were a strange band who seemed to operate in two song modes - out-and-out garage rockers and brooding ballads. As a listener I never really got on with the former but I've always been sucker for a deep voice singing a slow song and so I had a good compilation tape of the ones I liked and didn't bother with the fast ones. It was a REALLY good tape.
The three songs provided here represent this quiet side of the band perfectly and are all ripped from vinyl so excuse the crackles.
Oddly a cover version of TV (Girl On Fire) appeared as a bonus track on the reissue of Spacemen 3's "Playing With Fire" as just plain "Girl On Fire" and seems to be mainly Josephine Wiggs playing the cello riff over and over. Very strange.
Let's take another trip back in time to Leeds 1990 when the eternal support act seemed to be an odd bunch that went by the name of Ket Kolomper. For a while it seemed like whoever you saw play at The Duchess Of York - they would be first on the bill.
I suspect that most people will remember them purely for the fact that the "bass" player had an instrument that he'd made himself from a cricket bat, a single bass string and a hand-gripped pulley system.
It sounds like a piece of design genius and in a way it almost was. Worn like a guitar, he would pluck the string with a plectrum in his right hand and with the pulley in his left hand he would change the tension in the string to form different notes. I'm surprised it never caught on but it may have had something to do with the fact that, for the most part, it sounded bloody awful.
As far as I know (and let's face it they have a name just MADE for Google) this was their only official appearance on vinyl and luckily for me was the song I liked best from their set. A jolly sing-a-long recounting a drink-drive experience gone wrong.
We saw them play a few years later and were disappointed to see that the cricket bat bass was long gone and the singer was quite dismissive of the old gimmick when we asked him about it. Maybe if he'd kept it they could have been huge..(but probably not)
Yet scary as I find him, there is something oddly compelling about his songs. This is one of his more instructional numbers, as he teaches you how to be a successful musician. Simon Cowell (who scares me only marginally less) should be taking notes.
If you like that then check out the videos if you're feeling brave (including his bizarre appearance on Wogan as a member of Tears For Fears..)
He apparently has released a new CD recently called And A Panda but I'm not sure if I dare listen to it. Someone tell me if it's any good.
As a bonus - and because I've not mentioned anything Ted Chippington-related for a long while, here is Ted's only marginally unnerving cover version of Barton's "Z-Bend"
It's hard to imagine that 12 years ago when we started our DIY record label AAS that we had a specific instruction on the web page that under NO circumstances were bands to send us mp3's via email. Not because we were technophobes but because we were on 56k dial-up modems and it could take up to an hour to download a single music file (which would be doubly annoying when it turned out to be a dreadful Italian soft rock ballad).
So it came to pass that we shared a PO Box with one of our up-and-coming bands Stumble (who evolved into the soon to be global Rock Gods LostAlone) and encouraged any like-minded fiercely-independent bands to send us their demos for consideration.
It didn't take long before the CD's started flooding in, but weirdly at least 90% of them seemed to be from bands/acts that clearly had absolutely no idea who we were or what kind of label we were trying to run.
Mat had a theory that we had made it into some sort of International Record Label Yellow Pages and being called AAS meant we were second in the list (after Aardvark Records presumably) when it came to bands looking for places to send their demos.
Every few weeks the drummer from Therapy? (Stumble's manager at the time) would drop off a big bag of CD's at my house and I would embark on Demo Night. Evetually Demo Night became a prominent fixture in the social calendar, as the opportunity to read excruciating biogs, look at horrific promotional photos, all soundtracked by some quite embarassing music was too good to miss.
Amazingly we did pick up two bands and release their albums via this process* but for me the most memorable highlight remains the glorious Crystal Leigh.
I would normally dispose of each batch of demos by passing them onto Mark & Mat to "enjoy" but Crystal Leigh was special. I kept the CDR and it still warms my heart to this day.
As you can see from the picture, Crystal is a cuddly blonde of a certain age, and the music is pure Europop. The tone of the lyrics suggested that Crystal was very much on-the market (possibly a recent divorcee?) and no stranger to internet dating. This is the killer track and the words are work of a genius as Crystal basically implores her man to send her a mucky email.
The other noteable thing about Crystal's demo was that her contact details were through her Manager "Susan Silver". I always assumed that Susan Silver was fictional character and/or Crystal's alter-ego, but if you look up "Susan Silver Management" on Google it tells you that she DOES exist and spent the 1990's managing Soundgarden. She doesn't mention poor Crystal at all - pah!
don't call or ring my mobile phone
just kiss me with your commas
click on me for fantasy
just e-me
dot the i's and cross the t's
fill my life with ecstasy
i'm your format love.com
just e-me
In dredging ny old mailbox for other stuff I actually came across the original email from Crystal herself, and it was lovely. One of my biggets regrets is that we didn't release her single! Date 6th October 2001, I wonder what she's up to these days...?
One of the great era-defining pop marketing innovations of the 1980's for me is the 12" Mix
Now in the digital age - it's amazing how many of these extended mixes have been forgotten and remain hidden away on a slab of dusty vinyl somewhere. Artistically they usually held very little merit - as the artists themselves were rarely involved and most considered them a vulgar bastardisation of their original art. Which means that when albums get reissued in their deluxe 21st Century editions, the lost 12" mixes sometimes don't get a look in.
But artistic preciousness aside, as a listener I absolutely loved them, and surely that was the point?
This chap has an amazing blog which concentrates almost exclusively on high quality vinyl rips of 80's 12" mixes and is a veritable treasure trove
http://burningthegrounddjpault.wordpress.com
However - be warned there is a LOT of Sheena Easton and Olivia Newton John involved over there so steel yourself.
But I digress - I know that Lloyd Cole is planning a companion volume to the Clearing Out The Ashtrays boxset
http://shop.lloydcole.com/products/cleaning-out-the-ashtrays
that concentrates on the Commotions period, but I bet he doesn't include the 12" mixes of the Easy Pieces singles.
It'd be a real shame as Brand New Friend and Lost Weekend both have great extended versions. Up until a few months back I didn't even know there was an extended version of the "flop" third single Cut Me Down, as I only owned the Double 7" edition, but I picked this up on 12" at a record fair for a couple of quid and lo - there it is!
It's a text book example. Instruments dropped out on the extended intro, then the main part of the song, followed by a dubby interlude (just put some delay on the drums - that'll do..) and then a longer outro.
Despite the fact it didn't fare too well in the charts, I adore this song and Cole still plays it live in his "Folk Singer" Set (if you've not seen him play live in the past few years then I can't recommend the following CD more. It's excellent)
http://shop.lloydcole.com/products/the-whelan
I had to laugh when I saw him in Buxton last year as he explained that the beauty of doing acoustic versions of the old songs is that he can leave out the crap middle 8 if he sees fit and no one says anything. Hence you could say the version he plays these days is the artistically enhanced shortened mix..
Unfashionable as it may be to admit it, but I prefer the Polydor-era Orange Juice work to the Postcard-era.
Most likely because I discovered them through Top Of The Pops and Smash Hits in '83/84, and not via John Peel and some badly photocopied fanzine article in their earlier days. By that point they were already trying to live the fizzy-pop over-produced 80's dream and had abandoned the ramshackle lo-fi approach. The turning point, it seemed to me, was the employment of a fantastically funky and talented drummer by the name of Zeke Manyika who seemed to give Edwyn's pop songs a bouncing soulful sheen. (NB I fully intend to dedicate an entire future post to the Flesh Of My Flesh single in all it's majesty)
By the time of the last Orange Juice album, the group had simmered down to just the two of them and it's still my favourite of their records.
The urban myth goes that Edwyn was unceremoniously dropped by Polydor after that album and then mortified to find that they kept Zeke on contract enabling him to go on and release a solo album and a couple more of his singles for the label.
The album Call & Response is very much in the same style as the tracks he contributed to the Rip It Up album, infusing African rhythms and melodies with 80's pop stylings, and the second single Heaven Help Us (Try) is probably the stand-out track. Contrary to the aforesaid myth I guess that Edwyn must have been happy enough with the situation because he illustrated the single sleeve with some excellent pencil sketches.
Posting it here also highlights one of my other aural fetishes - the 80's 12" Mix (but more of that later...)
Zeke also got dropped by Polydor after this record but returned a few years later with (the superior) Mastercrime album on Mute (and an NME front cover) before disappearing again. One for the "where are they now?" file i suspect.
Following on from a previous post about Bobby Womack's "Just A Little Bit Salty", this one can go in the pile labelled Daft Soul Songs
I'd not heard this song in 20 years (which in itself is a bit frightening) but it was discovered in my then-girlfriend's parent's record collection. I don't even know why we ended up playing the album as I'm pretty sure neither of us knew who Eddie Holman was (apparently he had a minor hit with a song called "Hey There Lonely Girl") so maybe it was the, frankly ludicrous, front cover showing Eddie in his mac and fedora leaning on a lampost like the king of suave. We were probably just bored.
Eddie's voice was certainly an acquired taste and by far the most impressive track was "Immune To Love"
The first thing that got us was the quality of the lyrics. More Gedge than Gaye or Green
Withdrew the money from our joint bank account
Took the car!
Didn't care if I ate or starved
If that's what love's about...
And then by far the best bit - the howling flatness of the note he (nearly) hits as he concludes:
...Count me ouuuuuut!
Another song etched in my brain forever, this one will be familiar to anyone who received a compilation tape from me at any point in the early 1990's
My housemate Jim used to do me some legendary compilations back then and he had originally found this song in a pile of his grandad's old tapes. Not knowing who it was by, he had actually listed it as "Hot Tea" by "Some Old Grunters" and that was as much as I knew about it.
Years later I managed to track it down as being from a BBC Radio 2 broadcast of a comedy duo from Norfolk called The Kipper Family, which I admit slightly disappointed me because I'd always imagined it was a genuine example of straight-faced English Folk Plainsong. Sadly it does appear to be purposefully comic.
Still - It's one of those songs that you can't forget once you've heard it (no matter how hard you try) and even now I still sing it (thankfully usually internally) whenever someone walks in the room with a cup of tea for me
In a nutshell Fast 'n Bulbous is a US-based jazz septet which performs and arranges the music of Captain Beefheart (as if you couldn't guess that from their name).
Up until now I'd been largely unimpressed by bands that dared to cover the work of Don Van Vliet, and why wouldn't I be? It's so unique that by definition it becomes almost impossible to copy. Imaginary Records released one of their late 80's tribute albums (also coincidentally called Fast 'n Bulbous) and even prestigious names such as Sonic Youth and XTC failed to hit the spot. More recently the Neon Meate Dream tribute achieved what the untrained ear said Beefheart was all along, and made it unlistenable.
Fast 'n Bulbous though, are a completely different kettle of squid. For a start they feature Magic Band guitarist Gary Lucas so they're already at an advantage, but the band itself is the brainchild of alto saxophonist Phillip Johnston whose arrangements pay such attention to detail that it's obvious he truly loves the music he's working with
They have now released two collections of Beefjazz covers and both are excellent. Whilst it's mostly note for note where it counts, the power of the instrumentation takes it way beyond what the original Magic Band achieved. In some ways I imagine that they hit the highs which Van Vliet was trying to get to right from the start. I'd like to think of him sat painting in his trailer by the Pacific Ocean gently nodding along.
Take a listen to Kandy Korn and tell me that the ending isn't immense.
It's all been a bit quiet over here for the last few months as Frankosonic Towers has become buried under a mountain of nappies and tiny teeny clothes. Yup I decided 14 years was quite long enough to wait in between children and decidd it was time to unleash my golden seed once more.
This new arrival seemed to coincide with Google's bright idea of canning FTP support for their Blogger tool, so I was left a bit high and dry anyway - as I had no way of uploading new posts to my server.
My initial reaction was to sack Google off as a bad job. The reasoning behind the change was pretty clear (they want to have control over the content that people are creating using their toolset) and I saw friends and blogs disappearing at a rate of knots under Google-sponsored DCMA takedown orders. Yet having done some digging around and weighed up the options, I decided that I'd stick with Google in spite of all this. Maybe a childish act of defiance? The realisation that probably no one reads this anyway? The distinct lack of tunes posted here courtesy of Mr Big from Big Records? Or just the fact that Google's migration tools worked first time (unlike the WordPress install I tried..)? Well - probably a combination of all these things in truth.
So before the big guns take me out, I thought I better make a proper effort at posting regularly rather than once every other blue moon. If all goes according to plan there should be a post a day for at least a week..um..no going back now.
Starting with a very old song (to me) that I only came across last year, whilst working on a project to transfer a huge box of cassettes of old John Peel shows to digital format. I was given a batch from the spring of 1979 and this track was played every week for about a month.
Peel obviously had a soft spot for it, and you can see why as it's annoyingly catchy and I've had it stuck in my head since I first heard it. Quite why it didn't last the distance like a lot of singles he championed during those post-punk years I'm not sure. Or maybe everyone knows it and I'm just hopelessly out of touch? There is a hint of the Ian Dury to it - but I think they were actually from Ireland.
This is Edwyn on French radio in 1994 promoting the Gorgeous George. I saw him on this tour and the band were on top form.
Tracklisting:
01 North Of Heaven
02 Subsidence
03 Low Expectations
04 In A Broken Dream
05 The Campaign For Real Rock
06 Make Me Feel Again
07 Out Of This World
08 Gorgeous George
09 Bridge
10 A Girl Like You
11 Don't Shilly Shally
The first 4 tracks are Edwyn solo and then the band join him for the remainder, including a storming version of Orange Juice's "Bridge"
The original version I had seemed like the tape was running slow, so I've pitch-corrected it and it sounds much better now.
