Sporting theme today as The Foxes make the play-offs. We're all excited as our brass supremo 'Ping' is the Post Horn man, Wembley here we come.
Can't think of too many good football tunes, that aren't by Half Man Half biscuit or the Fall so here's a basketball one.
Hey I'm not into basketball, those guys are way too tall for this short arse, but this song from the great G Love and Special Sauce, makes me wish I was.
'Good moves baby? I'm the definition'
Patti Smith played at the Summer Sundae a few years ago. I was a bit of a pauper, I actually went to the venue and stood out back in the hope of catching a glimpse so I could bask in her reflected glory. I didn't see her or hear her on stage and shuffled off a bit embarrassed about what I was doing, being a grown man and all.
Malcolm the sound man played this before we went on stage a few weeks ago, it was a eureka moment, it all made sense this is where we came from.
Everyone always talks about Horses as the Patti Smith album. for me Easter is one of the most exciting records I ever heard, I know its the the commercial one and that Springsteen co-wrote Because the Night, but listen to this and you know you're getting the real deal. It might have been the age when I heard it first I don't know, but this is how rock and roll should be. patti smith Rock and Roll Nigger
Hosannas from the Basements of Hell released in 2006, I wasn't expecting anything from this album. Thought these guys would be well passed their best. Probably making pipe and slippers music now I thought. Glad I gave this a punt.
This is an extraordinary track that could equally have been at home in any period in the last 30 years. Killing Joke were always out of step with the Zeitgeist. Often cited cited as influences by gothy industrial metalhead types, but don't hold that against them, this is great.
It not an outrageous statement to say that there is very little new in rock music apart from the application of new and different technology and the marrying together of different styles to create something unforeseen.
What we tend to get is cycles where kid hears parents records, discovers music of own generation, meets other people who introduce them to other types of music, this creates new hybrids, and so on. As with Steve Reich's tape phases, each new cycle will juxtaposition itself with something else, creating something fresh.
This is what's happened with MGMTs Time to Pretend. They know its out of their hands, "Everything must run its course", "Yeah its overwhelming, but what else can we do? "
Can't remember a band making me wish I was 18 again. Time To Pretend
Motorhead at the Queens Hall Leeds, early 80s. My mates went, I chose to see the Stones instead.
Heavy metal started going all poncy about this time. Motorhead were and still are the epitome of no nonsense Rock n Roll.
"The only way to feel the noise is when its good n loud..."
Loved watching Motorhead on Top of the Pops. The TV audiences are just hilarious, this is not great quality, I'll post another if I find one.
Fashion! turn to the left….What goes around comes around. Heard this little ditty as a child, my mum was a fan, Its Cliff, everyone! Singing Carl Perkins’ less famous choon about quality footwear (I’m sure he had a foot fetish).
As a 60s fixated teen I had my own pair and felt very dapper, and wadda ya know pointed toe shoes are back again! Pointed Toes Shoes
Never been blessed with a singing voice. I remember miming hymns at school, or deliberately singing them monotone. Singing can be taught, or the songs of Lloyd Webber wouldn't be infecting my personal space on a regular basis. But on the whole the greatest singers/vocalists are not about being able to sing, they are about being able to communicate something to the listener, whether this is emotion or words or both. No one can deny that Aretha, Elvis, Otis or (insert favourite singer) can hold a tune, but what they do best is emote; you can feel their pain, their joy. For three minutes you can be in their shoes (not always a good place to be), not a wage slave in some dreary office or workplace.
I suppose where I’m going with this is that singing can take on many forms and the mash-up between words and music to create an intellectual, communal, spiritual or physical reaction sometimes needs more than a rhyming couplet.
Allen Ginsberg wasn't just a poet, the delivery of his poems as with his contemporary William Burroughs is just as important as the words. As one of the 'Beat generation' TM, AG has influenced so much of the alternative music scene that sometimes I feel his contribution gets a little lost. He was there with Kerouac; he was around with Burroughs; thats him in the background of the most copied and famous music video of all time, Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues. I can't believe his contribution was just standing around.
I've always been interested in the spoken word element in music, since I first heard the talky bit in Elvis' Are you Lonesome Tonight to modern day Hip-Hop.
Throughout this blog I will be posting tracks and links to music and documentaries that I supposed have moved me in some sort of way - I didn't get Ginsberg until I heard this mash-up with Tom Waits' Closing Time. I've had this track for quite a few years now, but I still don't know who put the two together (anybody feel free to shine a light). There will be a lot more spoken word stuff to come, and lot more from the people Ginsberg influenced in some sort of way. If you listen this it could be about anywhere at anytime, some of the references may need updating but it is essentially about the same world we live in now. America
I've been making music for quite a few years now, more than I care to think about. All the bands I've been involved with have been guitar based, you know drums, bass, guitar and usually keyboards. We have always though incorporated some other element into our music, either electronics or 'classic' such as brass and more recently cello. My wife is is the cellist in our band. I was recently lent Luke Haines' essential book Bad Vibes by SA over at Bagging Area (check it out,) in which the cellist is referred to as the cellist throughout due to his perceived mercenary ways. I have long had a parallel (not the right word, more like the antithesis of..) career with Luke Haines ( him being successful and critically acclaimed and did I mention successful? And me being, er you know not). I have been aware of him since his Auteurs days. I worked with an school friend of his who also knew ousted band mate Glen Collins. I have fond memories of Glen coming to stay at my flat attending a party with him and a bunch of Auteurs groupies!!?? Hey it was the most uninteresting party I've ever been to I wasn't a 'pop star' and arrived too late for the mushrooms, which made it possibly more surreal than if I had been on mushrooms. I attended this party in a marathon party session for me, I lived in Sheffield and managed to go out in Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Perth and Manchester in subsequent nights, I aimed to make it to Nottingham to make a full seven, but the groupie party killed me off really. Obviously the cellist was not on the scene at this time. Anyway I digress with my tales of hedonism and name dropping. however my friends tales of Luke Haines' strange ways, which I actually found compelling and interesting. Whilst reading Bad Vibes I realised I wish I'd known this man he appears to have similar outlook to me and although his music is nothing like mine there is common ground. One day I hope to meet him become his friend and confidant. If he reads this he may start to worry, thats the problem with the internet these strange fixations used to stay private.
Anyway.
Throughout my life I have missed the greatest gigs that ever took place. I wasn't at the 100 club or the Free Trade Hall for the Pistols or Finsbury park for The Clash, or Woodstock or Altamount or in fact any gig before seeing AC/DC at Sheffield City Hall on the Back in Black Tour. But there are many gigs I wished I'd been at that I didn't see for some stupid reason. These occasions are often brought into sharp focus when someone does something stupid likes tops themselves. Mark Linkous RIP.
I didn't see this gig in Leicester because at the time I didn't know who they/he was - but I wish I had, I've been waiting for him to come back..... Perhaps I should have told him.
Didn't know what a Bayou was or a crawfish or New Orleans for that matter, and certainly didn't understand any sexual references or what a metaphor was; but I knew this was cool.
I had only just grown out of Elvis (Gene and Eddie had long since taken his crown for me if I'm honest) when he popped his clogs and Johnny came along. I remember my mum coming into my room to tell me Elvis had died, but he already had to me. Elvis had become all crap films and jump suits not spiky hair and straight Jackets. There was a big fifties revival in the 80s which manifested itself as souped up psychobilly, The Cramps, Stray Cats, Meteors, King Kurt, et al. And later 50's imagery was married with 60s soul for the Levis ads, leading to all sorts of horrors (The Pasendenas/Bros anyone?). As I grew older and further away from the those innocent first forays into Rock and Roll, iIts difficult to to remember when Elvis really was cool (as opposed to delightfully kitsch). But music would never be as pure to me as it was at the moment I first heard this. A side is Trouble and Young Dreams BTW
I was wondering where to go next then the sad news of Malcolm Mclaren's death popped up on the rolling news screen. This could be the time to get out all my Sex Pistol references and how punk changed my life and how we really showed it to the man, but I was only 12 so not in any position to cause any sort of revolution. Punk did change my life but thats another story. There will be many writers and bloggers eulogising about Malcolm Maclaren and he, i'm sure would have loved the attention.
As with Tony Wilson, that other great imressario who passed in the last year, Malcolm's great talent seemed to be that he could spot greatness and where there wasn't greatness he could somehow manufacture greatness.
I loved the double album of the Great Rock and Roll Swindle and hey I even believed Malcolm's "it was all me wot planned it out" shtick for a minute. Yeah I loved it for Sid and Steve, I was too young to have formed opinions with historical perspectives about Nihilism and Situationist stunts, I was with my mates at lemonade parties pogoing to Friggin in the Riggin and Somethin Else (we were punk one day, then suddenly we were all skinny black ties and New Wave the next).
But I have the Great Rock and Roll Swindle to thank for introducing me to a really terrible Sex Pistols demo, which in turn introduced me to Roadrunner by Jonathan Richman. This demo instantly gave license to this future musician to know 'no matter how bad it sounds' its good enough to record as long as you've got the attitude and no matter how simple the riff you can play for as long as you want if only you play with attitude and you mean it.
Jonathan Richman, is a fabulous troubadour and the Modern Lovers a wonderful band producing varied eclectic and intelligent music, I cherish their songs and the influence on later generations. Roadrunner was never a Punk song in the way that the Pistols et al thought of punk, and richman didn't want to trash everything he reverered the old Rock n Roll, this was a song of literally getting in the car and listening to those old tunes with top down and the wind in your hair 'with the radio on' . JR understandably doesn't dwell too much on his associations with punk rock, he grew up like everyone else even that other JR, Johnny Rotten.
footnote
I was amazed to see Jonathan Richman as himself in Something About Mary, a terrible film don't watch it.
Back in the early 80s everyone apparently was messing around with synthesizers. Nobody I knew was- they were all into heavy metal and as such learning to play guitar was a rite of passage. I was never very good at sitting down and learning by heart. Everytime I tried I started going off on flights of fancy and creating new stuff from the old (I'd never heard of post-modernism it was ripping things off). I bought an old reel-reel 4 track recorder from the junk shop hoping to start my recording career ASAP. I got my mates round who were to be the new band. I didn't know much, none of us did. This recorder did in fact have 4 tracks, however you could not hear back 2 of the tracks whilst recording. Obviously I didn't want to lose face in front of my new band mates so we ploughed on with the session recording each track without being able to hear what we'd previously recorded.
When we played back the results everyone understandably fell about laughing, this didn't sound like Led Zeppelin, in fact it didn't sound like anything I'd ever heard before. I started to get excited about the possibilities that this had for making music. Unfortunately none of my new band mates saw the same possibilities and at this time it was more about being in band than producing great art. But I had been bitten by the recording bug. Very soon I had a share in a real 4 track and I started to learn how to do it 'properly wrong'.
I didn't hear about Steve Reich until much much later, or any of the other minimalists for that matter.
This is a bit of a documentary about Reich and his tape phases. When I hear the words "Its Gonna Rain" I am instantly transported into a room full of hairy, patchuli smelling grebos laughing at the most wonderful out of phase guitar solo in the in the history of rock and roll.
You need Schoolin'
Baby I aint foolin
Yesterday's blog Gil Scott-Heron gets a name check in today's entry, but there again so does most of the music from the last forty years or so. James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem highlight the entire problem of thinking too hard about this sort of stuff, "everyone you know is more relevant than everyone I know". As someone who never seems to have been in the right place at the right time, or was but didn't realise it, I have long given up on notions of being "relevant". I suppose much of this blog will eventually reveal me as being slightly out of phase with any musical/pop-culture/art movement that has happened during my time on the planet.
Debate often takes place about the best song/lyric/record and it is usually valid at some moment in time; some people even choose a record and then base all other value judgements around this choice, if I had to do that then this would possibly be my choice (this week anyway).
Murphy deconstructs in three and half minutes notions of musical revolution, issues about age, destroys preconceptions about genre, looks, style and jealousy.
Like Scott-Heron's the Revolution will not be Televised, he has produced a piece of music that demands repeat listening. He wants people to investigate the references, they are not some great secret for him to horde. He gives the listener a sense of belonging through acknowledgement that someone likes what you like and has experienced similar dilemmas (shared values anyone?). Most importantly he shows musicians a way forward without having to ape his style, its ok to be out of sync, keep at it, it s the others not in sync with you.
Ok inspired by SA I'm becoming a blogger. Trouble is where to start.You can't start at the beginning - you'll never get to the end. I'll start with my favourite album of the moment.
After spending too much time in prison Gil Scott-Heron is back with an extraordinary album. I implore you to buy this album. I'm New Here is a real album as well, don't just download the odd track - listen to it all.
Gil Scott-Heron has always been there for me. Simmering away in the background. He was the one who told me the 'Revolution would not be televised', he was right. He was the one who said I'd be living in a 'Bottle'; He knew all along. He is the link between the artists who will appear in this blog, he is the link between the Beats, the rappers, the Ranters and the Ravers. He's the link between the Avant-garde(ers), the Jazzers, the leftfield indie kids, the cut-ups and samplers and the proggers. He links Burroughs to Public Enemy and The Beasties to Beasley Street.
