Horse Overboard

song of the week has moved

2012-02-02T21:31:00.001Z

See my 2012 songs of the week on my newfangled thisismyjam page.

More musings to follow here soon I don't doubt...

song of the week 40: frank sinatra - have yourself a merry little christmas

2011-12-21T22:12:00.000Z

I've heard a few grim old versions of this song in the last week or so.

First up against the wall is My Morning Jacket whose half-soaked wheeze sounds like they didn't even get out of bed to record it. Chris Martin has learnt a couple of new jazzy chords which he can't really shoe-horn into the usual Coldplay oeuvre but which godammit he's going to bang out here even if they don't quite fit in. We wouldn't expect much of Kenny G but his version is perhaps not as bad as it might be. Michael Bublé over-eggs it a bit with those gushing strings but then we never did like him. And Lord save us from Christina Aguilera whose yelpy melismania is almost the polar opposite of the My Morning Jacket version but just as unlistenable.

Why not just content ourselves with this more thoughtful version from a bloke from New Jersey who could carry a tune or two and from a time (1957) when the song's overfamiliarity hadn't yet bred contempt:

(Also recommended: Judy Garland's original version from the 1944 film Meet Me in St Louis.)

Happy Christmas.

gongs

2011-12-10T21:00:00.001Z

Another year over and what have we done?

Well, we've listened to a lot of music. Time well spent? Think so...

Here's a playlist of some decent tracks which have seen the light of day in 2011, courtesy of our favourite music streaming service. It's in no way authoritative, being largely dependent on hastily scribbled post-it notes after 6Music--usually Gideon Coe--has make my ears prick up with something.

And these, in rough order, are my top 20 albums of the year, chosen with slightly more consideration:

Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
High Llamas – Talahomi Way
Hong Kong in the 60s – My Fantoms
Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow
Cornershop – Cornershop and the Double “O” Groove
Leisure Society – Into The Murky Water
King Creosote and Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know
Nick Lowe – The Old Magic
Hollie Cook – Hollie Cook
Low – C’Mon
SBTRKT – SBTRKT
Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys!
Silver Seas – Chateau Revenge
Modular - Sinfonias Para Terricolas
Cecil Sharp Project – Cecil Sharp Project
Gruff Rhys – Hotel Shampoo
James Blake – James Blake
The Unthanks – Last
Jonny – Jonny

Make of that what you will but as always I'd be interested in any comments, politely-phrased alternative suggestions/unbridled outbursts of knuckle-clenched fury...

P.S. The High Llamas record is excluded from my playlist but you can buy it (shock horror) here.

song of the week 39: hong kong in the 60s - footsteps

2011-11-30T22:08:00.001Z

Here's a song from a band on my Best Albums of the Year list (full run-down coming soon, and I don't doubt that a nation waits with bated breath). Just to prove that their excellent 2011 offering My Phantoms isn't just a flash in the pan affair, this is a track from their Willow Pattern Songs EP of a couple of years ago. Very fine it is too.

song of the week 38: kate bush - symphony in blue

2011-11-22T23:11:00.001Z

Here's something from a lady of a certain age who's been in the news lately:

I've been reading such good things about her new 50 Words for Snow record that I've been fair enthused to dig out some of her old stuff--which I'm not that familiar with to be honest--and see what I've been missing.

My brother used to have a copy of the Lionheart album and I reckon I haven't heard it since about 1982. I've just dug it out on Spotify though and it's better than I remember it. I'm afraid I've always found some of her piercing vocal pyrotechnics a bit too much but there are some tracks here which don't offend too much on this score (see above).

She's well known of course for her imaginative subject matter and I do like some of her flights of fancy ("Oh England My Lionheart" and "In the Warm Room" in particular). There doesn't seem to be very much dead wood in terms of lyrical content. Many a perfectly decent pop song can disappoint when you pick through the lyrics but I reckon these words could be read aloud and still tell a pretty good tale.

She tinkles a pleasing ivory or two an' all.

song of the week 37: christine hanson and dave formula - mistaken for a dream

2011-11-12T23:42:00.001Z

Here's a broody slow-burner from erstwhile Magazine keyboarder Mr Dave Formula (possibly a made-up name) and cellist/composer/singer/sound designer Christine Hanson (no relation).

I reckon it's worth five minutes of your time:

More than a hint of a latter-day Joni Mitchell I would say, vocals-wise. And who doesn't like a good flugelhorn solo?

Reminds me a bit of this from a few years ago, although it's not that jazzy and there are no flugelhorns...

song of the week 36: felt - sunlight bathed the golden glow

2011-10-28T23:53:00.001+01:00

Last night I went to the BFI to see Paul Kelly's new documentary "Lawrence of Belgravia".

The eponymous Lawrence (his surname is never used) is difficult to pin down: certainly eccentric, sometimes funny (wittingly or unwittingly), generally not particularly likeable though endearing on occasions, above all optimistically single-minded in a search for pop stardom which, to those looking on, seems doomed to failure.

Erstwhile lead singer of eighties jangly indie darlings Felt and nineties glam rockers Denim, these days Lawrence fronts the novelty synth-pop outfit Go Kart Mozart. In one of a series of interviews shown during the film, he claims that he's now "legally bonkers". Fleeting shots of methadone prescriptions and arrest warrants in his name suggest he might be right.

If he seems a bit at sea these days, that doesn't mean that some of the music he made all those years ago wasn't pretty fine:

song of the week 35: sound of rum - so low

2011-10-22T20:31:00.001+01:00

Shake a leg there...

song of the week 34: trombone shorty - the craziest things

2011-10-16T19:50:00.000+01:00

Lately I've been listening to Mike Chadwick's Saturday evening "Big Easy" programme on JazzFM. It's pretty good.

The "Tremé" TV series is mentioned in dispatches more than a few times but a fair amount of new music gets an airing too.

Here's some Trombone Shorty to maybe whet your appetite (seems Jools is on the case too):

...and then there's also my fledgling Spotify playlist based on music from the show.

song of the week 33: white label - todd

2011-09-22T21:27:00.000+01:00

I've just come across "Stolen Voices", an interesting "bootleg remix album featuring rare or unreleased tracks and long-lost demos" from Norman Records.

It features originals by the likes of the Supremes, Harry Nilsson, Billy MacKenzie, David Bowie, Dennis Wilson, John Lennon... (If you're interested there are more details of the original sources here.)

My favourite track is this Todd Rundgren song recorded from a live performance in 1971. An interestingly angular melody which puts me in mind of another band I mention from time to time. The backing track is a bit X-Files, but I think it works quite well.

And can you spot the part where he forgets the lyric?

song of the week 32: focus - la cathédrale de strasbourg

2011-09-08T21:59:00.001+01:00

At the weekend I was out drinking with a couple of fellow quinquagenarians.

At some point the conversation must have got round to seventies Dutch prog/jazz/rock bands. It can happen.

We all agreed that Focus were just great...

song of the week 31: cecil sharp project - meadows of dan

2011-08-31T22:54:00.001+01:00

Here's a song I heard at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival at the weekend.

I told various friends I was going to the festival and almost all of them asked straight away: "Who's on?" Other than the ubiquitous Bellowhead, who claim to have performed at twenty-two festivals this summer, I couldn't particularly remember any names I was particularly looking forward to. Generally I don't go to festivals just because of the headliners but in the hope that, among the maybe twenty or so artists I'll be seeing in the space of a few days, there'll be the unexpected discovery of new artists who I haven't heard of before.

One such was Caroline Herring whose solo set was one of my highlights of the weekend. There's not a great deal of her own material available on the internet although the Cecil Sharp Project*, to which she contributed and who also performed at Shrewsbury, has received a fair amount of media coverage. Here's a pleasingly tuneful number from the resulting CSP album featuring Caroline Herring on lead voice and guitar:

* The Cecil Sharp Project is a suite of songs and tunes based on the life and work of the famous song collector composed and performed collaboratively by a number of folk musicians. This YouTube clip explains more.

song of the week 30: marvin gaye & tammi terrell - you're all i need to get by

2011-08-31T22:51:00.000+01:00

It's one of those sitting-in-the-pub type questions isn't it? What's your favourite ever Motown album?

Stevie Wonder made some great records in the seventies of course but, in terms of a single album, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's Greatest Hits probably does it for me.*

Some bog standard facts:

Tammi Terrell died tragically of a brain tumour at the age of 24.
Gaye was so shaken when it happened that he gave up live performance for three years and, rejecting the love song, turned to political issues for his inspiration. As it happened that worked out quite well.
Rumour was that during the recording of the Greatest Hits album Terrell was already too ill to complete her vocal parts and that songwriter Valerie Simpson was called in to do so in her absence. Simpson has subsequently denied this though.
Simpson and husband Nickolas Ashford wrote most of the tracks on the album, as well as many great songs for other Motown artists.
They also scored a number 3 UK hit under their own names in 1984 with "Solid".

Here's a tribute to Nickolas Ashford who died yesterday.

R.I.P.

* I suppose you could argue that it was really only a collection of singles but hey this is my blog and I make up the rules...

womadness

2011-08-12T23:10:00.030+01:00

Songs of the Last Three Weeks (numbers 27-29, not that anyone's counting...):

I Am Kloot - I Still Do
Oi Va Voi - Yesterday's Mistakes
Ana Moura - No Expectations

A couple of weeks ago I went off to the WOMAD festival. Despite its reputation as an exclusively world music affair, I actually found that in terms of the range of music on offer there's quite a lot more to it than that. For example. we also got:

the genre-defying Penguin Cafe,
lounge-dubsteppers(?) Submotion Orchestra: meaty bass-pedal effects to make your chest rattle and flugelhorn to send your spirits a-soaring,
Louisiana's Feufollet, beloved of Elvis Costello, peddling an interesting cocktail of cajun (all fiddles and accordions) and indie (all guitars and winsome vocals), and
Guy Garvey's Mercury-nominated mates I Am Kloot.

I know some people go to festivals to have a good ole party and consequently maybe judge the quality of the music on the extent to which it allow them to jolly well dance their socks off, but for me the great moments of the weekend were the quieter ones. I have to say that these three songs fair brought a lump to my throat...

Genial lead Klooter Pete Branwell admitted that the band had been sceptical about coming to WOMAD and "weren't sure they would fit in". They got a good reception though from what seemed to be a preponderance of white males of a certain age (er, like me...). This was a great pin-drop moment:

Oi Va Voi gave as energetic a performance as ever and went down a storm with the party people. I'm not sure though they've ever matched the quality of the songwriting on their first album, is it really eight years ago? I doubt that KT Tunstall (for it is she) ever regretted her move away from the band in view of the millions of albums she's shifted since, but for me this is by far the best thing she's written. Also what I'm guessing is Steve Levi's "cantorial" singing--anyone?--gets me every time:

I'm not generally a massive fan of Fado but I really enjoyed Ana Moura's performance. I'm sure world music purists would cringe at my lack of deference to nearly two centuries of Portuguese musical tradition but for me this Rolling Stones cover was the highlight of her set:

Next week something more upbeat, I promise...

song of the week 26: cornershop - biro pen

2011-07-27T23:32:00.008+01:00

It's been a while since we heard from Cornershop. Yesterday I picked up their excellent new album for a very reasonable price from one of my favourite CD shops.

As is the way of these things, a while ago Brill Records in Exmouth Market--for it is they of whom I speak--were obliged to diversify into bagels and coffees in order to keep their business going, but they still care about music. They've still got a good selection (rock, indie, soul, folk, jazz, world music), still pick out the best new releases and display them prominently alongside reviews from recent newspapers cut out and pasted up on a noticeboard.

Their genial and usually upbeat proprietor tells me though that sadly sales of CDs are now quite few and far between. Shame.

If you're passing by why not pop in and treat yourself to some new music?

End of commercial break...

song of the week 25: crosby stills nash & young - woodstock

2011-07-16T00:26:00.019+01:00

I've just been watching a BBC Four documentary about music in Los Angeles in the early seventies. There's something odd about the way I find some of these songs particularly evocative of the period. Odd because, although I did listen to them, a long time ago, this would have been a few years after their release. I would probably have been hitting my own "Me Decade" round about the time the Sex Pistols were making front page news.

There are maybe four albums in particular which bring on this strangeness: Joni Mitchell's Blue, Carole King's Tapestry, James Taylor's Greatest Hits and, most of all, Deja Vu by Crosby Stills Nash and Young.

To be honest these are artists I tend to airbrush out of my history in certain company. I used to own a lot of this music but much was culled from my record collection in the anti-singer-songwriter purge of, I don't know, probably 1986 or thereabouts when I'd decided to adopt some kind of post-punk/indie affectation. In latter years I've come to terms with my past predilections for massively unfashionable music.

For the benefit of younger readers, this song commemorates the landmark Woodstock music festival of 1969 and was recorded by three artists at the time, each version interesting in its own way: Joni Mitchell of course wrote it and included it on her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album. Matthews Southern Comfort (starring ex-Fairport Convention vocalist Iain Matthews) took it into the UK Top 40, their only hit in a short-lived career. This is the version which appeared on the LA supergroup's aforementioned Deja Vu album of 1970:

song of the week 24: fleet foxes - sim sala bim

2011-07-06T23:13:00.020+01:00

Did anyone else notice the preponderance of facial hair on display at Glastonbury this year?

There was this lot:

...who pale in hirsuteness in comparison with these boys:

...who are almost a latter-day...

No, you're right. ZZ Top didn't actually show up at Glastonbury although they're still very much a going concern and if you're interested--and are prepared to go to all that trouble--you can catch them on a mammoth US tour round about now. (You'll remember of course that Frank Beard is the comparatively clean-shaven one.)

It's Fleet Foxes though who are pretty much the pick of the beardy bunch for me at the moment. I've been giving their recent Helplessness Blues album a good few spins and it seems to me every bit as good as their 2008 debut. Here's a track from their Glasto set:

Spotter's badge if you identified Elbow and Eels hiding behind the hair at the top of the page.

cover versions

2011-06-24T22:56:00.007+01:00

Had a post-work CD shopping binge this evening at the excellent Flashback Records in Essex Road. You know how it is on a Friday.

Pretty pleased with my haul, which included the following two fine examples of Brazilian cover art:

They'd look even better on those big record sleeves we used to get...

song of the week 23: betty wright - clean up woman

2011-06-22T20:15:00.002+01:00

Heard this on 6Music the other day...

Pretty good huh? Really like how the two guitar parts interlock and that...

Annoyingly though, once I've listened to it, it's this song which plays in my head afterwards.

song of the week 22: michel legrand - dingo rock

2011-06-11T23:05:00.009+01:00

More jazz this week, featuring legendary veteran French composer Michel Legrand, who I was lucky enough to catch at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club this week.

Legrand is mainly known for the lush orchestrations and sweeping melodies of his film scores but, as we saw and heard, he's also an remarkably virtuosic jazz pianist and despite his seventy-nine years his dexterity at the keyboard remains undiminished.

He recorded his Legrand Jazz album with Miles Davis in 1958 and they collaborated again in 1990, a year before Davis died, on a film called Dingo. This funky big-band version of a piece from the soundtrack (which for reasons unknown never made it onto the resulting album) was a highlight of the evening:

Free music - Dingo Rock

More about Legrand's film work in my earlier post.

song of the week 21: gil scott-heron - winter in america

2011-06-05T00:51:00.013+01:00

In the twenty-four hours since my last post this song has followed me around.

Thanks for this mainly go to two commendable GSH radio tributes on Jazz FM. One was a compelling interview with Paul Jones yesterday morning which I caught completely by chance in a cafe in New Cross. As the owner and I sat listening he told me about the time he saw GSH perform in the very pub across the road from us. That must have been a good few years ago.

There are no finer testaments to GSH's poetic genius than the lyrics to this song.

gil scott-heron 1949-2011

2011-06-04T00:22:00.024+01:00

There have already been many tributes to Gil Scott-Heron who passed away last weekend. He was 62. Since the usual allocation is three score years and ten, he was comparatively young. But it's maybe not really too surprising that he sold himself short. There's no doubt that he had his demons, sadly, particularly in latter years when extended periods of drug use and consequent imprisonment must have taken their toll.

His best known pieces*--"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", "B-Movie", "Johannesburg"--were erudite, acerbic and witty comments on the political landscape but they were all very much of their time. Their references to Watergate, Reaganomics, Spiro Agnew, Caspar Weinberger et al are really no longer meaningful for anyone who's under forty years old. The world is poorer, not just for his loss, but also because we never really got to hear his thoughts on the Dubya era, Abu Ghraib, the Tea Party Movement, and so many more of the issues of more recent times. For me this is a large part of the tragedy of his latter years, of his death.

A huge amount of credit goes to Richard Russell, owner of XL Records, for coaxing Scott-Heron back into the studio and for watching over his work on I'm New Here, last year's "comeback" album, a poetic masterpiece. Russell's trip-hop/dubstep electronica is a far remove from the jazz/soul medium of GSH's earlier career but it's the perfect counterpoint to Scott-Heron's more personal, less politicised, take on the twenty-first century.

One of the consequences of the release of I'm New Here was the round of promotional TV and newspaper interviews which meant that GSH and his work were exposed to a whole new generation of music fans. He even got pride of place on Newsnight in a clip which, in the way of these things, has since been added to YouTube. Cringe with me as Jeremy Paxman hails "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" as possibly the greatest rap song of all time. (I'm sure he would know.)

This interview was filmed at round about the same time. I think it's a fitting tribute.

(The newspaper obit which most struck a chord with me was Suzanne Moore's piece in the Guardian.)

* Some of them songs yes, but others really poetic monologues set to music. I'd prefer to play down the rap/hip hop connection. Unlike most commentators, it seems.

song of the week 20: kane gang - the closest thing to heaven

2011-05-27T22:41:00.020+01:00

In its time the Newcastle-based Kitchenware record label has been responsible for some great music. I've waxed lyrical elsewhere about the songwriting genius of Paddy McAloon and his tragically now defunct Prefab Sprout. Round about the time when the Sprouts were being conscripted, fellow North-Easterner Martin Stephenson (these days on a seemingly unending tour of undersized UK venues) signed to the label with his band the Daintees, soon afterwards releasing the classic 1986 Boat to Bolivia album. Equally the post-Microdisney work of Cathal Coughlan--first in the guise of Fatima Mansions with their "Keep Music Evil" manifesto, then latterly under his own moniker--was also foisted on an unsuspecting public by the Newcastle label. All good stuff.

This week's musical gem is a laid-back blue-eyed soul offering from the Kane Gang, another band from the Kitchenware stable. They had a sizeable UK hit with this single from their 1985 album The Bad and Lowdown World of the Kane Gang. All these years later there's little trace of them on the new-fangled internet--their website kanegang.com remains sadly unconstructed--so it seems unlikely that they're planning a reunion Greatest Hits tour soon. As ever, though, Wikipedia lunges in where other chroniclers of obscure pop fear to tread. Can you believe their startling claim that it was the Kane Gang who performed the music for the "Ooh Gary Davies" jingle for the perma-tanned erstwhile Radio One DJ?

How did we even get through the day before Wikipedia * existed?

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* Davies also gets a ridiculously long Wikipedia entry to himself, but this discussion on the Word Magazine website seems more worthy of a link.

frankly my dear...

2011-05-17T22:09:00.008+01:00

Tonight I've been catching up with my backlog of videoed Jools Holland Later programmes. First episode up features kd lang with songs from her new album which sound pretty good. There's some Fleet Foxes, some Hugh Laurie (ahem), then kd brings the show to its end with "Constant Craving", her 1992 hit.

Now, judging by her performance all these years later, it seems to me that this is one number which lang has really sung way too many times before. She's really quite fed up of it. She can't be bothered anymore with the rise and fall of the melodic line, the rhythmic flow of the words. She's pretty much phoning it in. Seems to me that craving ceased to be constant a good while ago...

And this is how it's meant to sound:

It's not a hideous musical crime. Just a little disappointing.

song of the week 19: bud powell - bouncin' with bud

2011-05-13T23:01:00.015+01:00

Been "doing some jazz" this week, thanks to a visit to Ronnie Scott's to listen to the most excellent resident band performing various Count Basie goodies. The whole of the 1957 Atomic Mr Basie album (a.k.a. "E=mc²") got a good airing as did several of the songs from the Sinatra at the Sands album--recorded with the 1966 Basie big band line-up--Iain Mackenzie stepping up for vocal duties on "Come Fly With Me", "I've Got You Under My Skin" and a few others.

This week's musical gem though comes courtesy not of Basie, nor Sinatra, but of pianist Bud Powell whose Blue Note "Best Of" album is one I've been dipping into lately.

Powell led a troubled life. He was horribly beaten on the head by racist police in his late teens and consequently suffered bad headaches and mental illness until his untimely death at the age of forty-one. His style was hugely influential: he abandoned the "stride" technique which had been prevalent in piano jazz up until then and began instead to use the left hand to play only sparse accompanying chords. He also occasionally drew on influences from classical music, as on the Side Two opener "Bud on Bach".

In Bertrand Tavernier's 1986 film Around Midnight, Dexter Gordon plays a character who is partly modelled on Powell. The movie is based on the true-life story of the friendship between Powell and Parisian jazz fan Francis Paudras. This trailer is a bit cheesy but it gives a flavour of some of the great music in the film. It's well worth seeing if you haven't done so already...

Track One on the "Best Of Bud Powell" album is an upbeat number and features Sonny Rollins on tenor sax and Fats Navarro on trumpet. Enjoy...

song of the week 18: my bloody valentine - when you sleep

2011-05-03T21:25:00.002+01:00

High time we had some GUITARS in these here parts...

song of the week 17: low - you see everything

2011-04-17T19:51:00.010+01:00

In contrast to the lush instrumentation, unexpected harmonies and soaring melodies of the High Llamas (see last post), Low are generally acknowledged as one of the major purveyors of the "slowcore" genre. As such theirs is a music where, by and large, like the bar in Heaven, nothing ever happens.

Here's a track--actually much less sparse than most of their output--from their new album. Can't get enough of this at the moment...

See also:

song of the week 16: high llamas - fly baby fly

2011-04-11T20:52:00.009+01:00

Got a three-minute attention span? Then you'll hate the High Llamas. Need a sing-along chorus to jump out and grab you by the ears? Ain't gonna happen with these boys.

In my experience listening to a new High Llamas album--as I've been doing in the last hour or so, to Talahomi Way (out today, pop fans!)--usually works something like this:

1st listen: you can pick up all the familiar elements of the band's sound (Sean O'Hagan vocalising and plucking nylon-string guitar in a bossa-nova kinda style, Bacharach-type trumpets, string quartet/vibes/harps, percussive electric piano accompaniment...) but you find it all a bit disjointed. These key changes are a bit radical, there are hardly any noticeable hooks and no musical idea seems to last for more than three or four bars. It's all a bit too clever-clever.

2nd listen: It begins to fit together a bit better. You can see how one idea develops from another, that actually there is a kind of verse/verse/chorus-type song structure. The instrumental noodling isn't just that. It all fits in, echoing and counterpointing the melody.

3rd/4th listen: Actually, these melodies are genius. They go off in all sorts of directions but they're what hold each song together. Getting the hang of this now...

5th/6th listen: Reach for lyric sheet. Sing-along chorus ahoy. Altogether now: "Fly Baby Fly" etc etc...

song of the week 15: beach house - norway

2011-04-02T00:50:00.004+01:00

More music this week courtesy of those nice folks at Rough Trade. I'm still periodically dipping in to their massive Best 100 Albums of 2010 Spotify playlist and one of the gems I've uncovered in so doing is Beach House's Teen Dream.

Reckon this is a highlight:

(That's Victoria Legrand, niece of film-score great Michel Legrand, on the kind of breathy vocals which the French seem to do so well...)

songs of the week 13 & 14 respectively: helixir - summertime; pro celebrity golf & jay glaze - three sinister syllables (part 2)

2011-03-25T20:38:00.012Z

So... you set out from work on a Friday evening, it's nice and sunny, you start walking east. Like a moth to a flame, Rough Trade East record shop draws you in. There's nothing you can do about it.

You go inside, stare at the displays, maybe recognise a handful of names (the Strokes have got a new album out, you've heard of them!). You wonder: given that you spend so much time listening to music, how is it that hardly any of these names ring a bell with you?

You do a tour of the listening posts. The staff have added some blurb to a label on the front of each CD but you realise that this in no way describes the music within. It's commendable in some ways that there's no convoluted pigeon-holing ("acid/metal/P-Funk", "thrash lounge"), no lazy comparisons with other bands ("think Cocteau Twins meet Chic", "part Radiohead, part Right Said Fred"). But this can be frustrating when you're trying to get to grips with a lot of music in the space of a half-hour shopping trip.

Anyway, you pick some band names you like the sound of and listen to the opening few tracks of three of four of the albums... Hmmm. You've heard some interesting left-field electronica on Tom Ravenscroft's 6Music show lately so you grab a couple of CDs by artists you've never heard of and which sound... well, different. Face it, you could do with plugging that gap in the dubstep section of your collection.

You reach for your wallet and head for the till...

song of the week 12: scritti politti - overnite

2011-03-18T23:36:00.019Z

Another of those greatest hits compilations we love so much saw the light of day this week. Hence another artist of yesteryear has been out and about doing the round of media interviews. Step forward, on this occasion, Green Gartside of Scritti Politti.

A couple of Scritti hits, "Wood Beez" and "The Word Girl", still get a regular airing on the likes of Magic FM but there's quite a bit more to the man and his music than this 1980s radio-friendly sheen. For one thing, his frequent references in both songs and interviews to 19th Century philosophical theory--the name of the band itself a homage to Gramsci--set him a fair way apart from his post-punk contemporaries.

He can still talk a good game these days, as testified by a couple of interesting tete-a-tetes broadcast last week respectively on the Guardian Music Weekly podcast and Radcliffe and Maconie's radio programme.

The Cupid & Psyche album of 1985 was the "one with the hits" but I'd argue that almost all his other albums are more interesting: Songs to Remember, his 1982 debut, is a bit clever-clever but has some good tunes nonetheless, like the lilting "Sweetest Girl", later covered by Madness. All these years later Green claims that he'd originally wanted Gregory Isaacs to sing it and Kraftwerk to play it. That would have been worth hearing.

It was a measure of the circles he moved in in the late eighties that the album following the hugely successful Cupid and Psyche, 1988's Provision, saw him hanging out with the likes of Miles Davis. Unlikely as it may seem, there were some similarities in the music of the two men during that period: they both made liberal use of studio techniques of the time--synthesizers, samples, drum loops and such like. (Difficult to believe in retrospect that in the eighties this would have been considered cutting edge.) The Scritti fanbase probably would have been attuned to expect as much but Davis's Tutu and Amandla albums (1986 and 1989 respectively) shocked and alienated many of his followers in the jazz community. His dalliances with artists with more of a "pop" sensibility--not only Green, but also the likes of Cyndi Lauper--didn't work in his favour either.

In all though, the "collaboration" extended only to a sum total of two tracks: on Tutu Davis covered Green's "Perfect Way" and on Provision he contributes an understated, almost apologetic, solo on the sublime Oh Patti.

As I say, the synth base of much of Provision make it a very dated sound to modern ears but if you can get past the 1980s keyboards I think there are some great songs on the album. It might be interesting to hear Gartside rework some of them with a more modern instrumentation. Can't see that happening though...

Enough already. Here's one of the less celebrated tracks:

P.S. Absolute--Scritti's greatest hits compilation--awaits your attention on Spotify

song of the week 11: nicky thomas - is it because i am black?

2011-03-05T00:02:00.003Z

On my recent reggae binge, aided and abetted by some top programmes in the BBC4 Reggae Britannia season which I've already mentioned, I came across a concert from the 1973 Edinburgh Festival featuring a few reggae luminaries.

This performance by Nicky Thomas particularly struck me. The sweat is pouring off him by the end and he dances as if he's plugged straight into the mains. It put me in mind of Ian Curtis's "Dance dance dance dance dance to the radio" convulsions towards the end of this frequently-aired Joy Division clip.

song of the week 10: steely dan - here at the western world

2011-02-27T21:21:00.005Z

An outtake from the Royal Scam album, this track first saw the light of day on the 1978 Greatest Hits package and features the Dan at their most rhapsodic...

Read the full story at somethingelsereviews.com

song of the week 9: laura marling - goodbye england (covered in snow)

2011-02-19T19:58:00.005Z

In other news this week, who would have predicted that top folky Laura Marling would pick up a Brit Award? What, you mean she's really better than Cheryl Cole?

Judge for yourself:

...or, if you've got a sweeter tooth, listen to the fully-orchestrated version.

song of the week 8: gladys knight and the pips - i heard it through the grapevine

2011-02-14T20:48:00.004Z

Listening to the Motown Remixed album I was banging on about in my last post brings to my attention this lesser-known version of the Grapevine tune from a fresh-faced Ms Knight and her twinkle-toed Pips.

HINT: For maximum backing-vocals-effect turn up loud.

Remix here.

mix and mash

2011-02-09T23:24:00.008Z

For some reason I seem to have heard a lot of really good remixes lately. In my experience remixes can go either way: some are utterly pointless and sound terrible, some just work really well.

The following fall into the latter category. Well I think so anyway. (Note for pedants: I believe some of these may be better described, by people who care about such things, as "mash-ups".)

Bob Marley: No Woman No Cry (Love Is A Losing Game Remix)
Marvin Gaye: Let's Get It On (Da Producers MPG Groove Mix) (While we're at it, the Motown Remixed album on which this appears may be worth dipping into)
The Beatles: Blackbird (Bonzai Republic Remix)
"Afrobeatles" The Fab Four meet Fela Kuti (ticks two big boxes for me). Some of these work better than others. I think "Come Together" is probably the pick.

And then these two contrast such radically different styles in the originals that they flirt dangerously near to being horrible car crashes. I think they just about work though. See what you think.

Carl Douglas & Chris Isaak: Kung Fu Fighting (Wicked Game Remix)
Nirvana v Jackson 5: Smells Like Rockin' Robin. Just makes me smile...

songs of the week 6: dave & ansel collins - double barrel and 7: joan as policewoman - anyone

2011-02-07T18:34:00.015Z

Two contrasting songs this week, each of which were highlights of gigs at the Barbican which I went to over the weekend.

I confess that I'm not a massive expert on things reggae, although the excellent Reggae Britannia evening on Saturday, with its line-up of British greats, helped to fill in some gaps in my knowledge.

For example, I've always been able to hum along with this whenever it gets played on the radio, but now I know what it is. (It's good to know that it wasn't all Glam Rock at the top of the charts in the early seventies.)

I find that Joan Wasser is one of those artists whose songs aren't that easy to assimilate on first listening. Not that that is a criticism: I'd much rather a slow-burner than a humdrum singalong chorus which begins to grate almost immediately.

Not surprisingly, her set list was made up mainly of songs from her new album, which I'll need a few more goes to get the hang of. We did get this one though, from her 2006 debut "Real Life", which I do know.

I can confirm that no pins were dropped during the performance of this song.

song of the week 5: john barry (1933-2011) - the ipcress file

2011-01-31T17:52:00.009Z

Well not exactly a song this week...

Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley, who knows about these things, says it all much better than I can. He's right for example that Barry was the epitome of sixties London: "He shared a flat with Michael Caine, married Jane Birkin, and owned a pad in super-hip Cadogan Square."

And then there were the tunes of course: the unexpected chord changes and the distinctive arranging style, both of which have been massively influential on musicians of the last fifty years.

Spoilt for choice as I am, I'm going to plump for his score for this classic film starring his erstwhile flatmate...

More Guardian stuff here and here.

RIP JB.

song of the week 4: stereolab - cybele's reverie

2011-01-21T20:01:00.004Z

When the Fall appeared on "Later", Mark E Smith famously got the chirpy/annoying* host to sign an agreement that he wouldn't insist on playing "boogie-woogie piano" all over it.

Thankfully Jools also failed to get his early jazz-inflected mits on this one...

* Delete where applicable

song of the week 3: north atlantic oscillation - 77 hours

2011-01-17T23:10:00.005Z

How 'bout something new for a change? This one's been following me round on 6Music lately:

song of the week 2: joni mitchell - in france they kiss on main street

2011-01-08T21:03:00.004Z

I got the DVD of JM's fantastic 1979 "Shadows and Light" concert for Christmas (thanks brother Mike).

If ever there was a team of "crack" session players, then this is it.

Joni at her best too...

(Fancy checking out that bass part again?)

what's another year

2011-01-01T22:43:00.009Z

I'm finding it's increasingly difficult to keep up with all the music "out there" and the fact that in November Rough Trade (thanks guys) put together their 100 best albums of the year (count 'em) didn't help. I've already spent hours on these and still haven't got through more than about six or seven...

So in compiling this year's Best Of lists I'm more conscious than ever that there is a load of music a) which I haven't had the chance to do justice to by listening to more than once or twice (to whit KORT: Invariable Heartache, I Am Kloot: Sky At Night), b) which has shown up on my radar but I haven't got round to listening to at all or c) of which I remain blissfully unaware.

So for what it's worth...

TOP 20 ALBUMS (with Spotify links where such exist)

1. Teenage Fanclub – Shadows

2. Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

3. Ben Folds and Nick Hornby – Lonely Avenue

4. Gil Scott Heron – I’m New Here

5. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

6. Darkstar – North

7. Field Music – Measure

8. The Silver Seas – Chateau Revenge!

9. Edwyn Collins – Losing Sleep

10. Corinne Bailey Rae – The Sea

11. Laura Marling – I Speak Because I Can

12. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today

13. Warpaint – The Fool

14. MGMT – Congratulations

15. Beach House – Teen Dream

16. Cathal Coughlan – Rancho Tetrahedron

17. LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening

18. Olof Arnalds – Innundir Skinni

19. Tender Trap – Dansette Dansette

20. Best Coast – Crazy For You

Should you be so inclined you can also dip into Spotify for my top 30 tracks of 2010. Not many of them appear on the albums listed above.

As always, further recommendations, violent disagreements and such like are most welcome...

song of the week 1: kirsty maccoll - my affair

2010-12-31T12:57:00.005Z

It's now ten years since Kirsty MacColl died.

R.I.P...

fab four fest

2010-09-04T22:43:00.030+01:00

I'm going through one of my periodic Beatles binges at the moment. The Fab Four section of my CD collection runs only from Rubber Soul (1965) onwards so I thought I'd try brushing up on some of the earlier albums of the "Beatlemania" years.

What's brought this on is a British Library event I went to a couple of weeks ago to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the band (It was in 1960 that John, Paul, George, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best made their first forays into Hamburg clubland). Regaling us with Beatles tales, playing choice tracks and fielding questions are Beatles luminaries Paul du Noyer (author of books on John Lennon and the music of his native Liverpool) and Philip Norman (definitive Beatles Lennon biographer and author of a hefty 864-page tome on Lennon).

Both speakers are at pains to play down the usual stereotypes of Lennon as "Angry Young Man" and McCartney as "Sensitive Soul". Two tracks from the "White" album--Julia and Helter Skelter are played as cases in point. Lennon's early family background is well documented elsewhere and this song for his mother, who died in a car accident when he was seventeen, is full of poetic beauty ("When I cannot sing my heart I can only speak my mind") at odds with the cynical, sometimes spiteful, character who would often appear in interviews.

Similarly, McCartney--famous balladeer of Yesterday, Michelle and The Long and Winding Road--wrote Helter Skelter after reading an interview with Pete Townshend describing their recent single, I Can See for Miles, as the "loudest, rawest, dirtiest song" the Who had ever recorded. Not wanting to be pigeon-holed as a writer of slow songs, he set about trying to write something just as "loud, raw and dirty" for the Beatles. The song certainly provoked a reaction: its supposed prophecy of an apocalyptic war infamously led to it being appropriated by Charles Manson. It has even been hailed in some quarters as an important stage in the development of heavy metal music.

One of the tracks Du Noyer chooses to play is a reminder that, even among the uptempo sing-a-long hits of the first few albums, there are quieter, more reflective songs which hint at Lennon and McCartney's developing genius for songwriting. Clocking in at a sublimely understated 1 minute 57 seconds, I'll Follow the Sun--from the 1964 "Beatles For Sale" album--is a fantastically impressive early example of McCartney's nack for a cleverly crafted melody:

There's no disputing that John and Paul were the creative genuises of the band but I'm struck by the extent to which du Noyer and Norman seem willing to play down the roles of George and Ringo: Norman concedes that Harrison wrote some great songs but "only while he was in the Beatles". I wonder about the extent to which this is true: by the time the Beatles split he had written three whole albums' worth of his own compositions which had hitherto failed to see the light of day. Maybe not many of these were as good as the best of the Beatles. Surely his guitar riffs are worth a mention in dispatches though--I Feel Fine? Paperback Writer?

Similarly, when an audience member brings up Lennon's typically acerbic comment that Starr "wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles", du Noyer and Norman concede only that Ringo's easy-going personality was a calming influence on the more volatile other band members. They don't make any case for his drumming technique. Aren't there some tracks--particularly in the later years--(Come Together, A Day in the Life) which show Lennon's remark up for the cheap jibe it was?

This was the second Beatles event I've been to at the British Library and like the first it was an entertaining and thought-provoking evening. It's just good to be reminded again what superb songwriters and great musicians the Beatles were.

In a futile attempt to reduce their career to a handful of highlights, may I in conclusion offer the following "top five" Beatles moments:

1. The opening line of Girl, proof that you don't need an intro. Just get on and say what you've got to say.

2. The fugue-like harpsichord solo in In My Life played by George Martin (Is there really anyone else worthy of the official "Fifth Beatle" title?)

3. The final five chords of Please Please Me, the only possible way to end the song.

4. The whole of She's Leaving Home. I once foisted this song on a class of unsuspecting French sixth-formers to get me through an English conversation class. They seemed to enjoy it.

5. The trumpet restatement of the "You Never Give Me Your Money" theme (at 1:52) in the Abbey Road Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End medley, the final track (almost) on the final Beatles album.

Of course, ask me on another day and five different songs would get the vote...

P.S. This interview with Philip Norman gives a flavour of my British Library evening.

the great gig in the sky

2010-08-18T20:09:00.044+01:00

It always seems unfair to me that so few musicians ever get the recognition they deserve. I've been to some great jazz gigs lately and have come across a couple of veteran players in particular whose significance I've only become aware of because of some rather sad circumstances.

I recently saw alto sax veteran Peter King and his quartet at the Bull's Head, my favourite jazz venue. There were a couple of comparative youngsters on piano and bass, 69-year-old King himself of course on saxophone and Martin Drew on drums.

Such a large man that even sitting behind his huge kit, Drew was an imposing presence, particularly on the more up-tempo numbers where he was really able to let fly with some furious solos. He seemed to "sing" along with them, as if they were the accompaniment to a tune playing in his head. Slightly off-putting for everyone else though, just the kind of tuneless droning of someone lost in music they're listening to through headphones:

I also remember him apologising to the other band members during the half-time break for "playing the wrong song", having seemingly mistaken one of the numbers on the improvised set list. I doubt that many audience members spotted his gaffe. Indeed, I overheard him jokingly asking "whether it actually makes any difference which tune the drummer plays".

Quite a humble, self-effacing approach for a musician who in his time, it turns out, played with some of THE major figures in twentieth-century jazz: Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald and Ronnie Scott, amongst others. For THIRTY YEARS, he was a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio!

It was only after the gig that I discovered Drew's history because browsing through a newspaper less than two weeks later I came across a photo of Drew behind his drum kit in the exact same pose as I had remembered him at the Bull's Head. Drew had apparently suffered a heart attack three days after the gig and died. Here was his obituary. I had almost certainly seen his last public performance.

Eerily, today I discover that trumpeter and flugelhorn player Harry Beckett also died last month, within days of Drew. A couple of months ago I went to an excellent concert at the Barbican where many of the greats of British big band jazz played their way through a history of the music. Not surprisingly, the evening culminated in an extended tribute to the music of the late Sir Johnny Dankworth, including two numbers from his widow, Dame Cleo Laine, 84 years old, not so sure on her feet, but having lost none of her stage presence and self-deprecating wit.

Beckett was another veteran who had appeared earlier in the evening. Clearly a very old man, he played along with one tune--a Jazz Warriors number, I think--but then sat motionless at his desk in the trumpet section for the rest of the evening, looking very much like a fish out of water, but nonetheless seeming to enjoy listening to the music, as we all did.

Playing a kind of more typically British jazz music with many of the important groups of the sixties and seventies, Beckett also became an inspiration to young black jazz musicians in his work with the Jazz Warriors and continued to record until very recently. I know this--now--because I've just--today--read the obituary which appeared in the Guardian last month. Better to be appreciated after your death than not at all, I suppose.

They say these things come in threes, so here's wishing Dame Cleo the best of health...

Martin with Oscar ("trading fours" at 5:10)

Harry:

and Dame Cleo:

world of twee

2010-05-21T23:54:00.052+01:00

I notice that on its weekly new album reviews page, last Friday's Independent awarded a solid, if unspectacular, three stars out of five to the new offering by a band called Stornoway. Probably fair enough: from what I know they're solid, if unspectacular, purveyors of generally inoffensive tunes. Reviewer Andy Gill's parting shot though is that "they can't rock and roll for toffee". The general tone of what he says seems to suggest that he'd like to add "...and you kind of wish they did, frankly".

But Andy, there have been many, many bands who in their time have been totally unable to rock and roll. And as far as I'm concerned I'm not sure we would have wanted it any other way.

Besides all the glitzy New Romanticism and power pop around at the time, in the early 1980s a number of bands were quietly making names for themselves in a kind of off-shoot of the indie canon which was being established during these years. These were bands who had none of the testosterone-fuelled swagger and posturing of the leather clad metal rockers of the early seventies, none of the phlegmy vitriol of the punk rock explosion. Yes, they had guitars but none of the meaty riffs which had been rife in the previous decade. They played chords in the form of rhythmically percussive syncopations or delicately jangly arpeggios, sometimes in a gentle, almost Latin style.

These were bands usually made up of whey-faced (often Scottish) young men--occasionally women--wearing long tweedy coats with collars turned up against the wind and the rain. Regulation hairstyle (both sexes): long at the top--often quiffed--and short at the sides.

As if to celebrate the general wilful rejection of machismo, fans of this music, typically self-deprecating, proudly labelled it "twee".

And some of it was pretty good...

More recent decades have continued to produce their share of "tweeness" and hoorah for that. Here are some of the bands who held out against the Mancy swagger of those brash Oasis louts during the Britpop era:

...and here are some from the last ten years or so. These days they're sometimes Norwegian, like the Kings of Convenience. Occasionally, like the Postmarks, they're (whisper it) American.

I've just finished reading "Falling and Laughing" (see also above) by Grace Maxwell. It's the fantastically uplifting account of her partner Edwyn Collins's recent return to music-making and a life of at least partial normality after suffering two massive strokes in 2005. It seems that in their early days Orange Juice used to revel in the Twee philosophy:

They used to say they were 'anti-rock'. In the early days, Glasgow audiences used to chant 'Poofs! Poofs! Poofs!' at them. They liked that just fine. There was a campness in their delivery, deliberately affected to annoy the manly men of rock.

Take it away Edwyn...

(Spotified--more or less--here, if you're wondering...)

umbrellas, windmills...

2010-05-11T21:23:00.021+01:00

Sunday's visit to the BFI to see Agnès Varda's "New Wave classic" "Cléo de 5 à 7" reminded me again how many great songs in French films of the sixties were written by Michel Legrand. He was a hugely prolific film composer around this time--I seem to vaguely remember that he was even one of Parky's chat show regulars in his own pre-Bublé heyday.

Legrand actually has quite an impressive jazz pedigree, having briefly collaborated with Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans in the 1950s, but it's for his film music that he's best known. In the mid sixties, he composed scores for a number of films directed by Varda's husband Jacques Demy, most notably "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" starring Catherine Deneuve. The film's "sung-through" dialogue might not be to everyone's taste, but any sucker for big tunes with sweeping melodies (don't think I'm on my own here) ought to have a soft spot for "I Will Wait For You"...

...Just when you think you're at full tilt another soaring key change shifts you again up yet another gear. (The song returns dramatically in the final scene. I suppose you could just click on the YouTube link to view this one clip, but it's much more worthwhile working your way up to it through the rest of the film.)

By the time "Les Parapluies" appeared in 1964, Legrand had already scored nearly thirty French films including "Cléo de 5 à 7" in which he also makes more than a cameo appearance. (Corinne Marchand's performance of "Sans Toi" is worth a listen too). Deneuve's starring role, the tragically romantic storyline, the impressive photography, as well as Legrand's score, all helped to win "Les Parapluies" an amount of international success and an Oscar nomination. The resulting flood of offers from Hollywood kept Legrand in filmscore work until as late as 1995.

Although I'd argue that it didn't quite hit the peaks of his early scores for the likes of Demy and Varda, his Hollywood output did have some high points, like Noel (Son of Rex) Harrison's only hit record, from the 1968 film "The Thomas Crown Affair". This is Michel's own "version française"...

the art of the understatement

2010-04-09T21:02:00.014+01:00

It's generally agreed that a period beginning roughly in the early 1940s and ending in the mid-1960s constituted the golden age of the musical. Also during this time many of the "songs from the shows" became a staple part of the jazz repertoire, for both singers and instrumentalists, and this continues to be the case where modern-day artists are concerned. It seems strange that this is so. Aren't these songs rather outmoded now? Aren't they representative of different, perhaps more innocent, times? What's more, if greats like Fitzgerald and Sinatra recorded definitive versions in the forties and fifties, why invite comparison with them by re-recording these songs decades later?

That's not to say there aren't worthy re-interpretations by modern-day artists, maybe in interesting new styles or arrangements, and perhaps these songs are anyway still worthy of a place alongside original compositions but there's sometimes a tendency to wonder, well, if it hasn't all been done before.

At it's worst, this phenomenon can be very bad indeed. In my view, Michael Parkinson's reputation as a broadcaster has almost entirely been shot down in flames since he has begun championing peddlers of lazy cover versions of showtunes. Watch, if you dare, this nauseating clip of two grinning backslappers in a "Parkinson Music Special" (sic) last year. Brace yourself:

BBC4 has a a season of programmes at present on what is known as the "Great American Songbook" (we don't have one of these in the UK, by the way). There have been concerts by a number of greats like Nina Simone, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald as well as series of documentaries "charting the evolution of pop from Tin Pan Alley to today's billion-dollar industry" and, this evening, a selection of songs from the films of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

Strictly speaking, the films of Rogers and Astaire at RKO appeared before our "golden age of the musical" during a period when the Nazi war machine was clicking into gear in Europe, and although these were little more than fluffy, "screwball" affairs, many of the great American songwriters were contracted to write the music: Cole Porter to "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), Irving Berlin to "Top Hat" (1935), Jerome Kern to "Swing Time" (1936) and George and Ira Gershwin to "Shall We Dance" (1937).

Of course, it's for their dancing which Rogers and Astaire are best known, but their singing style is also an important part of the charm of these films. Neither of them has the strongest voice but their pitch, even on the high notes, is always spot on. It's just what these songs need. They don't have the overblown drama of operatic arias, but they do have witty wordplay, clever rhymes and unexpected and subtle melodic flourishes. The words become so much more meaningful by virtue of being understated.

Towards the end of "Shall We Dance", the characters played by Astaire and Rogers meet at the dockside. Having divorced for the sake of appearances and their showbusiness careers and now on the point of parting forever, they realise that they are in love with each other after all. "They Can't Take That Away From Me" is his remembrance of their time together.

The song, here in its original arrangement, has none of the swinging, almost jaunty, swagger of later interpretations, just a gentle string and horn accompaniment as perfect complement to Astaire's unfussy singing style. It may be a screwball comedy, but the line "The way you changed my life" with its final melodic up-turn followed by the close-up of Rogers's crying face I think is a genuinely touching moment. But then I'm just a big softie...

monkey man

2010-01-13T19:37:00.047Z

I've just taken delivery, courtesy of my local W.H. Smiths, of the most recent issue of The Word magazine. I have to admit that my heart sank slightly to find that a new issue had appeared so soon. Its interests and my own coincide to such an extent that there are very few articles which I don't feel compelled to read. So I haven't finished with the previous issue yet and my magazine reading, like a trail of iced-up vehicles on a snowbound A3, is now backing up.

In the last few days I've been picking through their lengthy review of the Noughties. It's hard to quibble with their choices as most influential personalities of the decade, even if some of them may not have made the world a tremendously happier place (step forward Messrs Beckham and Cowell). A few of them, though worthy, stand rather on the peripheries of my own musical taste (Arctic Monkeys, Dizzee Rascal) and a couple of them I can take or leave (Lily Allen, and Amy Winehouse--sorry but I think she's [whispers] "a bit overrated") but for better or worse they've all been in our faces quite a lot during the last ten years.

With one of the Word's choice personalities I'm not really sure where I stand. It's hard to deny that Damon Albarn has been prolific to an almost frantic extent in the last ten years. He's involved himself in a number of projects in which his own presence as principal driving force has been almost the only common denominator, from the tail lo-fi end of Blur, via dubby cartoonsters Gorillaz, melodica-fused collaborations with Malians and "alternative supergroup" The Good The Bad and The Queen, to his most recent forays into Chinese opera with Monkey: Journey to the West . Whatever you think of the music he's produced in the last ten years (and personally, while I've bought some of it, I'm not really that enthusiastic), you have to admit that he's constantly been pushing himself in new directions which, as the Word article points out, have in no way been in thrall to record company demands or expectations.

Of course, Albarn is by no means the only musician to have wandered from the path on which he originally set out. David Byrne has dabbled in world music, books and installation art in his extra-curricular activites, but the fact that he has ploughed a more or less consistent furrow with his recorded work probably means that he has retained most of his original audience over the years. It's doubtful however that many fans of early Elvis Costello and the Attractions albums have put their hands in their pockets for any of Mr MacManus's more recent recorded forays into string quartet music, opera and jazz. Of course no-one has changed direction as much as David Bowie and, apart from (you know what I'm going to say) the ill-advised Tin Machine years, he has managed to maintain both fanbase and critical acclaim throughout his career.

So do we prefer established artists to change styles? Is it OK to make, ahem, ch-ch-ch-changes every few years like Bowie? If Damon Albarn takes this to extremes seeming to break into new territory with every project he takes on, do we revere him for it or just find him pretentiously annoying? Should artists be content to play to their strengths, base a long career on a blueprint, stick to what they're good at? The Rolling Stones have recorded over thirty albums and if they released a new one tomorrow, we all already know what it would sound like.

we love beyonce!

2010-01-05T19:48:00.020Z

The other night I was listening to Gnarls Barkley's St Elsewhere. It's one of those albums which I was a bit non-plussed with when first I bought it, but have come to really like the more I've listened to it. These days its accompanying marketing blurb would probably claim it was "genre-crossing". It certainly has some soul and gospel tinges, a touch of hip-hop and maybe even a jungle rhythm here and there.

Of course, "Crazy" was a huge hit and went down in "parp music history" when it became the first single to reach number one in the U.K. due to download sales alone. This great slowed-down version of the song really shows off Cee-Lo Green's fantastic soul voice. I particularly remember it featuring several times on Top of the Pops, although as far as I was able to determine at the time, this particular arrangement seemed to be unavailable in the shops.

Gnarls Barkley - Crazy (totp 2006-04-16)
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This TOTP clip from 2006 proved to be one of the last number ones featured in the weekly chart run-down programme as it was axed a month or so later. We still get a best-of-the-year round-up at Christmas but it's clear that those whose views hold sway at the Beeb no longer see a place for the "Pops" in the TV schedules, bursting as they are with top quality programmes night after night.

The Christmas and New Year TOTPs last week were notable in two respects. Firstly, they presented a selection of almost unremittingly poor songs. Some were better than others of course, but there was certainly nothing which sent me scurrying to Spotify or iTunes. Mind, it's not that Top of the Pops ever played consistently excellent music. I'm old enough to remember the glam rock days of the seventies and even at the age of thirteen I knew that there was better music out there than Mud, the Sweet and, er, Gary Glitter. I'm sure it's true that the programme never existed with the intention of showcasing the critically acclaimed artists of the day, but rather to promote the three-minute pop single in all its disposable, sometimes tacky, glory.

The second reason the TOTP programmes last week were notable is that I'd heard almost none of the songs before. Music is almost totally fragmented these days with, for example, entire radio stations devoted exclusively to one style--black music hived off to Radio 1 Xtra, indie to xfm, and so on. As a result I exist in what I laughingly like to consider a rarefied musical world inhabited by the likes of Radcliffe and Maconie, Guy Garvey and Jazz Record Requests, and so I never come into contact with the chart pop fodder being peddled on Radio 1.

It does mean though that I might miss a great pop song now and then. And we can't have that. Come on, the Beeb. Bring the Pops back!

(Just to prove, I hope, that I'm not just a terrible muso snob, here's a gem from the archive. It was massively popular, has never--to my knowledge--been played on Radcliffe and Maconie. I think even Jazz Record Requests has so far steered clear too. It's a great song though and this is a great performance. Whassup Top of The Pops?!)

ghost in the machine

2010-01-01T22:33:00.015Z

There's nowhere to hide from "You Got The Love" at the moment. Every time I put the TV on it's lying in wait for me. In the last couple of days I've heard it three times in trailers for a thrilling new dance-related reality show, as well as on the last episode of Gavin and Stacey and performed in person by Florence and her accompanying Machine on the Christmas Top Of The Pops. It's featured on a few best-of-the-year round-ups on the radio too.

I haven't made my mind up yet about Florence Welch. I find her voice a bit grating, rather too shouty in the middle range and with an occasional tendency to be frankly all over the place intonation-wise. Having said that, she did a passable, if unnecessary, "My Baby Just Cares For Me" on Jools Holland's New Year's Eve knees-up last night. I do also like "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)", a single she released earlier last year. Listen to the difference though between her singing on the recorded version and her live performance of the song. Thank heavens for auto-tuner software eh?

No doubt spurred on by the excellent xx remix of the Florence version of the song, the Guardian recently ran an interesting article giving a comprehensive history of "You Got The Love". The piece serves as a timely reminder that, far from being a musical creation of the currently ubiquitous Ms Welch, in fact the song originally saw the light of day in 1991 thanks to a mysterious group of musicians calling themselves The Source and featuring the vocals of erstwhile disco diva Candi Staton:

Judging by what I've heard of Staton's voice--and there's some great southern soul material on her myspace page--I think it's fair to say that she can knock Florence into a cocked hat any day of the week.

yool choons

2009-12-18T21:27:00.024Z

Getting festive here and, as is popular in these parts, there's one of those new-fangled Spotify playlists to reflect the fact with a selection of recommended festive listening.

Some of these tracks are pretty obvious examples of syrupy fifties schlock, a few are slightly further off the beaten track. Many of the regulation Christmas musical cliches feature at some stage: there are chimes (track 4), a couple of "Jingle Bells" intros (tracks 9 and 22), a fair few unashamedly schmaltzy string arrangements and I can count six tracks on which sleigh bells appear. There is though, as far as I can tell, no children's choir.

Here's another Christmas song, cliche-free, and one which you can only get on YouTube, unless (shudder) you are prepared to spend some money, and we certainly don't want any of that kind of extravagance, particularly at this time of year.

Happy Christmas...

(See also: David Hepworth's Christmas playlist which also manages to steer clear of most of the usual suspects--Slade, Kirsty & The Pogues--but doesn't have a single choice in common with my own.)

lost in france?

2009-12-10T21:41:00.009Z

Every year I put together a compilation of the my favourite songs of the year to send to my sister as a Christmas present. She has three kids and lives in France so I tend to think that the musical treats which I obsessively pore over on an almost daily basis are pretty much denied to her.

Whether she's bothered about this of course is a different matter. I'm not sure to what extent she's just being polite but she always says thank you to me for sending it. She does now and then pick out the odd track for a special mention so I've no doubt she listens to it. At least once.

Anyway, tonight I've been looking at the iTunes playlist of tracks which I've been adding to during the course of the year. I've burned them to CD and will be putting them in the post to France over the weekend.

I'm listening to them as I type this, and damn, there are some great songs, if I say so myself. Many of them I've already banged on about in these pages, others not. See what you think:

OR: You can Spotify 'em here.

i'm it?

2009-12-01T20:48:00.011Z

Over at Cocktails and Records, it seems I have been challenged--in what the youngsters I believe are calling a "meme"--to come up with a song which makes me smile and to share it with the many hundreds of individuals who regularly log on to this here blog. Thanks for your kind words, Cocktails. You're absolutely right. I can't say I'm proud of it, but I can't justifiably deny my occasional penchant for tuneful soft rock.

Not wanting to disappoint on that score then, might I respectfully point you towards the Doobie Brothers, very much in a similar vein to Steely Dan who as you say I hold dear to my heart. Indeed the two bands have shared at least two band members during the course of their respective careers: mighty solo guitar wizard Jeff "Skunk" Baxter--of "Reeling in the Years" fame--and Michael McDonald, backing vocalist on The Dan's Aja and Katy Lied albums and later lead singer, keyboardist and songwriter for the Doobies.

Sadly, neither of these two feature in this 2004 footage of my favourite Doobies song, McDonald having recently been busy peddling unnecessary Motown covers and Baxter as long ago as the mid 1980s having gone on to great things as consultant to the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. As you do...

Enough blathering then. There was a pointless drum-machine-heavy remix in 1993 and apparently, Lord help us, a Bananarama cover two years earlier, but this is the definitive Doobies version of the song. There's a certain amount of stadium rock posturing in this clip as is sometimes the way with men in late middle age attempting to recreate the glory days of their youth, but the playing is pretty spot on and that guitar riff just gets my toes a-tapping every time. Enjoy...

edited highlights

2009-11-30T23:26:00.012Z

Notable musical events of the last ten days, briefly:

The London Jazz Festival, particularly a mesmerising performance by the Tord Gustavsen Ensemble. So moved was I that I shelled out for the new CD which I then queued up like some kind of Scandinavian piano jazz groupie to get signed by the man himself.
Finishing "Bringing It All Back Home", an enjoyable account of the musical loves of bolshie Yorkshire TV presenter and rugby league aficionado Ian Clayton. A good read and an unexpectedly harrowing last chapter...
Music quiz ignominy for Billie Piper At The Gates of Dawn, who put massive effort into finishing bottom of the table at the Three Kings. I was particularly pleased though to dig out Augustus Pablo (so to speak) to up our score slightly in the Obscure Reggae round.
Mozzer on Desert Island Discs: utterly compelling listening. Kirsty Young is good at her job, striking a nice balance between ex-teenage Smiths devotee and gently probing journo. Seems Steven Patrick is actually quite fond of his old mum and dad. Ah bless.
This week's contribution to the "gratuitous oldie" slot comes courtesy of Liz Kershaw on 6 Music. It seems TT main man Mark Hollis went on to make some interesting music, which I admit I need to investigate further before pontificating about here. In the meantime, how's about this for some good-time eighties synth pop...

Talk Talk - Such a shame

80s balladeers uncovered!

2009-11-14T20:20:00.009Z

Stackridge @ 100 Club, 6th November

What we learned tonight:

Stackridge have been going for ages
In fact, they performed at the first Glastonbury Festival in 1970
They probably get filed under "folk" in HMV but I can spot elements of prog and guitar pop too...
They've often been compared to the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band
...which may or may not be due to their occasional Wurzel-like trombone-based West Country oompah songs (boo!)
But wait, they also do a nice line in BigStaresque jangly guitar songs (hoorah!)
What's more, in another life they were the Korgis:

Double hoorah!!

bad cover version

2009-10-31T21:56:00.015Z

This week on "Later with Jools Holland", we learn that Diana Krall, for many years entranced by Brazilian rhythms, has felt sufficiently moved to cram her new album choc full of bossa nova tributes. To illustrate this, she slides into a husky gender-reassigned version of "Girl from Ipanema".

Now I like a bit of jazz as much as the next man but I just can't get on with this. Slurry and out-of-tune, for me it's bordering on Vic Reeves territory. It's a classic tune Diana. Why condemn it to such a painful and unnecessary death?

.

On the up-side, this week's programme also includes the very excellent Unthanks and some great soul from Maxwell.

oktoberfest

2009-10-27T21:31:00.032Z

Musicport Festival @ The Spa, Bridlington, 24th/25th October

This festival hasn't been on my radar until now--mainly because it's way "oop north" I suppose--but it actually celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. It's now relocated from its early days in Whitby and relaxed the "folk-only" policy of yesteryear to include world music--the African Jazz Allstars and Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara featured on the Sunday evening, and reggae--Misty In Roots and the Mad Professor Ariwa Posse, er, served up a double helping on Saturday night.

It's good to go to festivals like this I think because it reminds you just how many talented gigging musicians there are plying an honest trade with no lucrative album deal to line their coffers and no media exposure or so-called critical acclaim to promote their cause.

Honourable mentions, then, go to the following for brightening up my weekend:

Martin Stephenson: erstwhile Daintee with a nice line in Woolworth guitars and self-deprecating Geordie stage patter.
Fernhill: Welsh folksters featuring Julie Murphy, billed as "Eliza Carthy's favourite voice in the world" (and who am I to argue?). Sadly their sound was utterly lost in the cavernous main hall: "Last night we played in a bookshop which wasn't even as big as this stage".
Karen Tweed: survived an early hours breathalizer incident in Newcastle city centre to purvey early Saturday morning accordion-based tunes. Very nice too.
Pacific Curls: female Maori/Scots threesome featuring fiddle, ukelele, cajon, body percussion and Natalie Imbruglia's guitarist.
Chumbawamba: steadfastly refuse to play "the hit" and promise an anti-Thatcher tribute album when the old bag croaks.
Delta Maid: she talks like a boy soprano Wayne Rooney but sings like Shelby Lynne. I couldn't decide if these were her own songs; if so, she's a tremendously gifted writer for her age.
Samay: Yorkshire-based jazz/rock/fusion-type thing with sax, guitar and bass alongside sarod and tabla--reminded me a bit of Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu who I've seen at WOMAD in years gone by.

like it was summer...

2009-10-18T19:35:00.005+01:00

Another lazy blog post, but what can I do when "Sounds of the Sixties" keep unearthing these easy listenin'-type gems:

kinky afros

2009-10-15T20:46:00.040+01:00

In the last few days I've been listening again to this compilation of old seventies soul hits. I remember many of these ("You Can Do Magic", "Have You Seen Her?") with a lot of affection since they date back to a time in my early teens when I first started listening to music. (This often involved a transistor radio secreted under the bedclothes late at night and tuned to the Radio Luxembourg top thirty run-down).

Granted, there are some duffers here too. It's a shame, for example, that keyboardist and one-time "fifth Beatle" Billy Preston got mixed up in "With You I'm Born Again", a syrupy ballad with the one-time Mrs Stevie Wonder. The Stylistics were a band who seemed to have hit after hit for a number of years but I'm afraid I never really came to terms with the window-shattering falsetto of lead singer Russell Thompkins, Jr.

Doing a trawl of YouTube for some of the better tracks, I discovered a fantastic selection of videos from the US show "Soul Train" which are a real document of the times. Predictably, there's a preponderance of wide lapels, flared trousers and, yes, afros. And those synchronised on-stage dance routines are often a thing of wonder. As for the audience, on Top Of The Pops at around this time I seem to remember a lot of embarrassed dancefloor shuffling. There's none of that here...

sweet catatonia (2)

2009-10-08T21:35:00.026+01:00

Cerys Matthews has had her ups and downs.

Catatonia made some great 90s indie--"Mulder and Scully" and "Road Rage" for starters--but at the height of the their fame the band self-imploded amid reports that Matthews was sinking into one of those drink and drugs hells you read about now and then in the tabloids.

After moving to Nashville to put her life back together, she seemed to be back on track in 2003 when her first solo album, the "country-tinged" Cockahoop received an amount of critical acclaim.

She rather slipped off the rails again in a few years later with a toe-curling onscreen romance on "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here!" (I'm a big fan, obviously), but she's now rehabilitated again as a regular weekday DJ on BBC 6Music.

A couple of weeks ago her new single, "Arlington Way", was (unfairly I think) dismissed by Radcliffe and Maconie as a "Warwick Avenue" wannabe. (It's named after a London street. It's sung by a Welsh woman.) I quite like it though.

I have also, coincidentally, spent many happy hours in the Shakespeare's Head pub in this same London thoroughfare. It serves Courage Best and has a free jukebox.

(There's a rather glossy official video if you want--also a Welsh language version of same (!)--but I prefer this TV studio clip where she sings it live in front of what I'm sure is an appreciatively discerning GMTV audience.)

Also recommended:

Cerys Matthews - 08 Seed Song.mp3

Found at: http://www.filestube.com

dancing in the street

2009-09-28T22:34:00.009+01:00

It's now twenty years since Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" was released. I was lucky enough to see it again at the BFI a couple of weeks ago. It's got some great music.

How are these for opening titles which blow you out of your seat?

Reckon it's a sample of this JB song:

the last of the great romantics

2009-09-13T20:56:00.047+01:00

If you, like me, are a longstanding admirer of the recorded work of Prefab Sprout, you'll probably think that Paddy MacAloon is a songwriting genius. You'll certainly have been interested to read the many interviews in the press recently and maybe heard the man himself, gracious and self-deprecating as ever, talk to Stuart Maconie and Mark Radcliffe a couple of weeks ago.

You'll be familiar with the story of a compulsive songwriter whose addiction to his craft has meant that, in addition to the albums which have sporadically appeared over the last twenty-five years or so, he's also amassed a huge collection of songs which have, tragically, never seen the light of day. You'll also have heard the sad story of how severe health problems mean that the recording process is now a massively laborious one for him and live performances an impossibility. You'll have seen photos of a man in dark glasses, bushy beard and purple suit hugely at odds with his appearance as a handsome, clean-shaven twenty-something.

Thankfully a recording of at least some of the songs from the McAloon archive has now finally hit the shops. "Let's Change the World With Music" is the pared-down version of a possibly very overblown concept album first put together in 1993 and which consequently met with record company rejection.

These are songs of another time in many respects--they're imbued with the naive optimistism of a younger man and often saddled with rather out-dated arrangements. But they're great songs and, as is typical of Prefab Sprout albums, repeated listenings reap rich rewards. There are some great tunes: the chorus of "Music is a Princess" (below) is particulary majestic I think. "Falling In Love" is all the more heartfelt for its simplicity. The lyrics are clever and relentlessly upbeat. In "Last of the Great Romantics":

Here comes the last of the Great Romantics
Not tortured, not racked, illusions intact,
Undiscouraged by the facts.

He's a master songwriter. In "I Love Music", he claims his hero is "the unnerving unswerving Irving Berlin." You can see why.

Here's hoping for more from the vaults soon...

Links:

Album reviews: holymoly.com, the Independent
Interviews: recent Independent (excellent), Unoffical Sprout web site

Recommended Spotify listening:

Steve McQueen (1984)
Jordan: the Comeback (No, not that one) (1990)
The Gunman and Other Stories (2001)

hoping to take you away...

2009-08-30T20:16:00.023+01:00

Lately I've been flicking through a book called "The Beatles' London". It actually gives more information than anyone could humanly want about every location in the capital where the Fab Four played, recorded, were interviewed, stayed, lived, worked, went out to eat or listen to music...

In an attempt to come to terms with the subject, I went along this morning to London Walks' "Magical Mystery Tour" which, as I was hoping, presents some of this information in a more digestible form, taking in as it does a handful of the major venues in a leisurely two-hour stroll. I've done these walks before and always find them good value at £7 a pop. I do tend to find myself heavily outnumbered by foreign tourists though.

Almost all of the stories which the guide told were ones I'd heard before but it was nice to be reminded of them. I hadn't realised though that I'd walked past Trident Studios many times without knowing it and that it was here that not only the Beatles laid down tracks like "Hey Jude", "Dear Prudence" and "Martha My Dear", but also that many early Bowie and Elton John singles and "Walk on the Wild Side" (amongst others) were all recorded.

Nor did I realise exactly where that 1969 roof-top performance happened. In June 1968, the Beatles commandeered number 3 Savile Row as Apple headquarters and it became a social centre for friends, fans and fellow celebrities as much as a set of offices for serious business matters. Frequently riotous goings-on over the following four years--chronicled in a book by "house hippy" Richard DiLello--did little to endear the band to their straight-laced pin-striped-suited neighbours and they reached a head on 30th January 1969 when the band spontaneously decided to go up to the roof to play songs from what became their Let It Be album (see below). The local constabulary--still stationed less than 500 yards up the street--pulled the plug twenty minutes into the show.

No tour of London Beatles locations would be complete etc etc... and, sure enough, to end the tour we hopped on the Jubilee Line to the Abbey Road studios. The Beatles made the vast majority of their recordings here so there's no doubt that this is the location which had the greatest influence on the band's music. There's not much to see from the outside though, apart from a wall where fans are encouraged to scrawl ill-conceived tributes, a blue plaque reminding everyone that one Edward Elgar was laying down some wicked tracks at Abbey Road a cool thirty-three years before the Beatles jumped on the bandwagon...oh and there's "that" zebra crossing.

wires

2009-08-29T00:11:00.016+01:00

David Byrne's "Playing the Building" @ the Roundhouse, 25th August

Here's DB to explain what it's all about:

The Roundhouse was built in 1846 as a repair shop for locomotives on the nearby London and North Western Railway. I suppose then it's maybe appropriate that the musical sounds produced by Byrne's installation have something of an industrial quality, although this might be true of all buildings. Previous incarnations of "Playing the Building"--at the Färgfabriken in Stockholm and the Battery Maritime Building in New York--seem to have produced sounds with similar characteristics.

Byrne makes a point of his intention to democratise the playing process. This might be true where musical pitch is concerned, but the way people interact with the instrument perhaps raises some questions. Aren't experienced players more "at home" at the keyboard and maybe more likely to experiment with the different features? If it's difficult to predict the pitch of the keys you press, what about rhythm? Aren't musicians at an advantage in that respect?

At busy times, Roundhouse staff have had to "move on" players who have stayed at the keyboard for more than a couple of minutes so that everyone gets a turn. Do the long queues make people bored by the time they get a go? Are players self-conscious when it's their turn because of the long queue of other people waiting behind them?

Disappointingly, you can't really "see how it works" as Byrne claims. The different types of mechanisms may not be hidden from view as such but they are so far away that it's impossible to see how the sounds are being produced.

Interesting idea though...

Other stuff:

not so much relentless as half baked

2009-08-28T21:46:00.029+01:00

Piney Gir @ Upstairs at the Relentless Garage, 26th August

Piney Gir's MySpace biography makes a claim that her debut album fits into the ill-defined "electronica" category but in recent years she has played up to her Kansas origins by favouring a more country-based style. I wouldn't claim to be the biggest fan of this kind of music but Gir is an artist who I've warmed to on the couple of occasions I've seen her because of the pure energy and pizazz of her shows. She has jettisoned her previous incarnation as The Piney Gir Country Roadshow and is now billed--deep breath--as Piney Gir and the Age of Reason with the Reasonettes. Judging by what we hear tonight though, this doesn't seem to signify a move into yet more radically different musical territory. The songs are good enough and it's a typically bubbly performance but we get a disappointingly short selection. Maybe at £6 a ticket it's a bit churlish to complain about this. What does spoil things though is the poor quality of the sound: it's barely possible to make out the lead vocals.

For better or worse, ukuleles are big at the moment. The Leisure Society (see below) incorporate them nicely into their easy pastoral sound, but there seem to be a number of bands--most notably I suppose the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain--who are building careers as cover artists, often exploiting the supposed comic potential of an instrument most readily associated with the 1940s flat-cap filmic japes of George Formby playing the songs of the more profane modern era, like those who have their origins in the electric guitar-based posturings of heavy rock. Sure enough, the hysterically-titled Uke Attack!! Uke Attack!!--for it is they, one of tonight's support acts--plough through Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law" and Led Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" and the joke starts wearing thin in no time at all. In fact it's their kazoo-tastic version of Gerry Rafferty's MOR classic "Baker Street" which brings a reluctant smile to my face.

The small upstairs room at the newly-reopened Upstairs Garage--now the "Relentless" Garage--is a real disappointment as a venue: utterly soul-less, garishly lit with red and blue strobes, and cynically furnished with a handy ATM machine lest you run out of funds to buy more over-priced lager. Won't be hurrying back...

now that's what i call genealogy

2009-08-20T22:37:00.005+01:00

Saint Etienne, Charlatans, Bombay Bicycle Club @ Summer Sundae, 15th August

We love Saint Etienne...

broadstairs revisited

2009-08-13T22:44:00.025+01:00

Broadstairs Folk Festival, 8th & 13th August

Some highlights:

- Mississippi Ol' Macdonald: He's not old (late twenties, I'd say) and sounds like he's from nearer the Thames Delta than the Mississippi. His name may be Macdonald though. A great gravelly blues voice and some nifty fret work. Songs by Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, and other usual suspects. He's chock full of stories too, from his time in Memphis where he's been helping to raise money for a gravestone for O.V. Wright, unsung soul legend who died in 1980. It never occurred to me that steel guitars (he plays a National Steel for some numbers) are apt to go out of tune because they expand and contract dependant on the temperature. Obvious really...

- The Woodshed Session: I came here last year and recognise many of same faces this time. Individually they're called on in turn to sing or play a tune while the others strum, bow, blow and/or sing along with varying degrees of confidence. Some of them are impressively talented: a flautist improvises some interesting flute accompaniment to "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and an accordionist hurtles through a couple of reels at breakneck speed. Quite interesting that these hidden pockets of amateur music-making exist...

- Cocos Lovers were busking down by the harbour and I shelled out a fiver for a couple of CDs on the strength of their pleasing vocal harmonies and instrumental arrangements. I like their songs but I'm not sure how far that name will get them. Debut album coming soon it seems.

head honcho

2009-08-04T20:39:00.033+01:00

David Byrne @ The Barbican, 3rd August, featuring the Songs of Eno and Byrne

Some things we learned tonight and some things we knew already:

Talking Heads have a lot of songs which are great for dancing to. The 1980 Byrne/Eno collaboration Remain in Light is particularly good in this respect and we get a fair helping of it tonight. It was quite heavily influenced by Fela Kuti: I think the respective rhythm tracks in "Houses in Motion" and Kuti's "U Be Thief" illustrate the comparison quite well.
This ain't no disco. The Barbican is rubbish for dancing (see also Tricky below).
While we're on the subject, I found DB's three "interpretative dancers" a bit off-putting and generally surplus to requirements.
There is no-one younger than forty present. In comparison, Neil Young's Hyde Park gig which I went to last month was full of twenty-five-year-olds who knew the words to all his songs. Maybe it's because of the choice of venue and the price of the tickets. (Seats at the back of the hall cost £35.)
DB is good value though, performs for a good two hours, including five (count them) encores. The "hits" go down well--"Once in a Lifetime", "Burning Down the House", "Road to Nowhere"--but I think "Strange Overtones" is a great song.
You can't accuse Byrne of having a narrow range of interests. He's recently written a book on cycling and his installation at the Roundhouse opens later in the week.

DavidByrne.com has some live tracks from this tour which will give you the gist of proceedings this evening...

pick of the pops

2009-07-24T22:40:00.004+01:00

Top platters on the Hooley Towers dansette this week (in no particular order)...

Thanks to Radcliffe and Maconie for most (though not all) of these. Probably need to branch out a bit with my radio listening...

leisure centre

2009-07-23T21:38:00.011+01:00

Leisure Society @ ULU, 22nd July

This lot are great. I need to get down the shops and buy their album.

Listen to their myspace stuff. Good innit?

P.S. The building behind the bandstand is where I work.

fly me to the moon

2009-07-21T22:16:00.016+01:00

In honour of mighty spacemen Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, I present the following clip. "Everyone's Gone To The Moon" was the title of the first of a couple of TV documentaries which I watched the other night at the BFI as part of their One Giant Leap season. In the second one, an episode of "Horizon" from 1984, James Burke looked back at the Apollo 11 mission and then forward to plans being formulated at the time to establish a permanent space station positioned in the earth's orbit. Even fifteen years after Armstrong and Aldrin there was still sufficient enthusiasm for space travel that it seemed possible that everyone would indeed eventually go to the moon.

If this TOTP clip is anything to go by, it looks as though even as early as 1965 Jonathan King had already cultivated the facial ticks of a shifty second-hand car salesman. And look out at the beginning for equally sinister blond bombshell DJ Jimmy "Guys'n'gals" Saville moving in an extremely mysterious way.

Good song though...

droning on again about songs i've just heard on the radio

2009-07-15T23:15:00.006+01:00

Not so much droning on maybe, more just sharing for the benefit of humankind...

Thanks to Trevor Nelson just now for this 70s funk gem.

singing in the rain

2009-07-14T11:20:00.021+01:00

Guilfest, 11th July

I've seen Brian Wilson before a couple of times before. There's nothing new this time. Again he sits behind an unused keyboard, sings, sometimes in tune, now and then forgets the words of his own songs, and drinks from a paper cup while his band construct a show around him. For the third time, he asks anyone who has one to get out their cigarette lighter out and flick it on, then jokes "OK that's twelve cigarette lighters!"

Despite this, he still holds most of the cards: two hours' worth of classic songs, thirty-odd years of mental breakdown now behind him and in recent years seemingly as much a sucker for touring as anyone forty years younger than him, and yes a band of fantastic backing musicians: there's no reason why we won't be back for more next time.

Athlete, for all the bland Coldplayosity which pervades much of their music, can nonetheless rustle up the occasional satisfying singalong chorus, viz. "You got the style", "El Salvador" and "Westside", and they have one great song. Apparently they picked up an Ivor Novello award for it (mind you can be Mike Batt or James Blunt and win one of these):

We get very wet. But we sing along anyway.

Also starring: Linda Lewis, Eddi Reader, Transglobal Underground, The Charlatans, Los Albertos, The Le Brocks.

sun strokes

2009-07-05T13:16:00.008+01:00

Can I just say, a propos of nothing, that Don Letts's 6 Music radio show is well worth a listen if you haven't dipped into it yet.

He plays a real mix of genres. This was this week's "sun"-related selection.

I'm particularly liking the Nu Yorican track with its hypnotic piano riff.

There's a lot more going on in the original version though...

Groovy video too!

parklife 2

2009-07-02T23:02:00.010+01:00

Tindersticks & Big Star @ Hyde Park, 1st July

Big Star got all their best ideas from Teenage Fanclub*. What a cheek eh?

Listen to this, for example...

* No I know. Not true. Big Star=1971-1978 and 2005- . TFC=1990-2005.

parklife 1

2009-07-02T21:42:00.012+01:00

Hard Rock Calling, 27th June @ Hyde Park

After an impressive and hugely enjoyable two hour performance of classic songs by Neil Young, headlining the second of this three-day festival, it's probably a bit churlish of me to rant on about such a small thing... but what is it with the end of his songs?

I have observed that there's a longstanding convention that guitarist, drummer and bassist should mark the absolute end of the absolutely last note of a guitar-fuelled rock-out number (not really on my own patch here so bear with me) with what I can only describe as a simultaneous testosterone-induced "kerchang!"

Most, if not all, of Young's electric guitar-based songs tonight end, not just with this, er, "kerchang" but also with an extended feedback-fest or frantic exchange of unnecessary noodling with the drummer, each lasting some considerable time. It's a bit tedious frankly.

Seems it was ever thus with NY. Check out this performance of "Cinnamon Girl" from 1978:

See what I mean? The song as we know it (because we've heard the record right?) ends at 3:25 and yet the final "kerchang" doesn't get to us until 3:58.

It's asking a lot of an audience to keep the clapping and cheering going all that time, particularly when the same thing happens with every other song, and sure enough at the end of one number this evening NY complains that the crowd are "awful quiet". That'll be because we clapped and cheered for that last song when it finished five minutes ago Neil mate. Can you not wind things up a bit more sharpish?

Lest I present an unduly curmudgeonly view of proceedings, these are some of the things I did enjoy during the course of the afternoon/evening...

Everything else about NY. He's always been rather on the peripheries of my musical taste but I somehow know about two-thirds of the songs.
Fleet Foxes. Love those arrangements and they're pretty spot on with their vocal harmonies. Just a shame that a lot of festival goers talk, quite loudly, over their songs...
Magic Numbers, as ever. They'll soon have a new album out--hoorah!--and here are some of the songs from it, which sound good.
"A Day in the Life", NY's encore, along with showbiz mate one Sir Paul McCartney. Yes, I know he's got his thumbs up again like a grinning loon but he's a Beatle and I've never seen one of them before...

if you like that, you should try this...

2009-07-01T16:30:00.005+01:00

Run out of ideas of what to listen to? You can't have, surely.

But should it be that you're lacking a bit of inspiration, try music-map. Why, it's "the tourist map of music".

Some searches to try:
1. George Formby
2. Jason Donovan and, best of all...
3. Chas and Dave

Maybe havin' a laff then...

before they were famous

2009-06-24T22:32:00.013+01:00

The other day I found, lurking in what's left of my ancient cassette collection, a compilation tape I must have put together ooh I don't know a good fifteen years ago. One of the tracks--I think I used to have the single too--was "Don't Come To Stay", a moody soul ballad by a band called Hot House.

I've since discovered that the lead singer was one Heather Small who went on to front M People, the band mainly remembered now for being the least ever popular winners of the Mercury Music Prize in 1994 when they consigned Blur's Parklife to also-ran status. (Whatever happened to them?) The following year they went on to perpetrate the overblown "Search For The Hero" which I seem to remember becoming a clatteringly obvious choice to routinely accompany feats of sporting endurance on TV. Maybe then the Hot House years produced Small's best work?

This is the best YouTube can do, a bit jumpy and sadly it cuts off abruptly at the best part of the song, but you probably get the general idea...

On the same tack, how about this, an early offering from another northern soul diva who went on to bigger things. Again, I think this is better than anything Lisa Stansfield (for it is she) recorded later as a solo artist...

noisette on a string

2009-06-20T23:40:00.009+01:00

How great is this?

Front runner as UK entry in the next Eurovision Song Contest?

The album's good too. You can get it on Spotify.

test match special

2009-06-13T20:25:00.016+01:00

Recently I've been watching the excellent BBC series "Empire of Cricket". The episode about the history of the game in the West Indies the other day was particularly fine and had a tremendous musical soundtrack with a song to illustrate almost every stage of the story. Unfortunately there seems to be a large Kensington Oval-sized hole in the internet where youtube videos of--indeed any reference to--many of these songs ought to be, so instead I humbly offer my top five cricket songs...

5. Cod reggae and dodgy Jamaican accents from Stockport-based MOR seventies hitmongers: yes it's Dreadlock Holiday by 10CC
4. Tortuous-cricketing-metaphors-R-Us from 10CC-era Aussie one-hit wonders Sherbet: Howzat
3. Yet another one from the seventies: the rambling but rather fine When an Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease by Roy Harper.
2. Top calypsonian Lord Kitchener tells the tale of the Windies landmark test series victory in post-Windrush England: Cricket Lovely Cricket
1. It could only be our favourite TV sport theme tune from a group of musicians whose combined understanding of the laws of cricket probably won't be troubling the scorers...

P.S.: I notice that erstwhile Divine Comedian Neil Hannon is making a move towards the barely mined seam (ahem) of cricket in pop music with his new combo the Duckworth Lewis Method. Sounds promising...

summat for nowt

2009-06-07T20:04:00.007+01:00

Fopp Records have two of my favourite albums (Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain by Teenage Fanclub) in a box set. They are selling it for £3. This is scandalous. Consumers should not be allowed to have great music at grotesquely reduced prices like this.

the viking of sixth avenue

2009-06-02T23:34:00.012+01:00

The Music of Moondog @ Barbican, 30th May

It's no surprise that Louis Hardin became famous, inclined as he was to wander round the streets of Manhattan in Viking attire carrying a huge sword. That and playing strange and beautiful music on a selection of bizarre instruments, many his own inventions.

Moondog--for it is he--spent much of the 1950s and 60s doing these very things, mainly at the intersection of 53rd Street and 6th Avenue. At night he would sleep on nearby rooftops.

Positioned as he was near many concert venues and jazz clubs, musicians would often pass by and understandably his streetside performances aroused their curiosity. As a result, he went on to become an accepted part of the New York musical establishment, forging a particular friendship with Philip Glass, and eventually having many of his compositions performed in the concert hall.

In the 1990s, he collaborated with various British ensembles, and this tribute concert, held ten years after his death, features two of these: London Saxophonic and the Britten Sinfonia.

It's quite difficult to characterise his music: there are elements of big band jazz, sixties film soundtracks, Bach fugues and Mozart: the "Salzburg Symphony" is one work--of his total output of some 1,400 pieces--which has never been performed in public. Until tonight.

I reckon there's even a hint of a drum & bass rhythm in "Bird's Lament"...

More reading at Moondogmadness.

More tunes, you guessed it, at Spotify.

sea songs

2009-06-01T13:06:00.011+01:00

North Sea Radio Orchestra @ Brixton Library, 29th May

Purveyors of genteel instrumentals and song settings of the poems of Blake, Tennyson, and the like, NSRO are one of the bands I've cottoned on to via Stuart Maconie's mighty 6music Freak Zone.

At full strength there are twenty players. Tonight there are ten: on clarinet, bassoon, cello, Spanish guitar, organ, piano, "monosynth" and sundry percussions. And then there's Sharron Fortnam's fantastic voice...

More tunes, as ever, at myspace.

Their Wikipedia entry tells you all you could possibly want to know about the history of the band.

classical gas

2009-05-27T21:50:00.015+01:00

Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble @ Theatr Clwyd, 24th May

Mozart: Divertimento in D K.136
Weber: Clarinet Quintet in B flat Op.34
Beethoven: Septet in E flat Op.20

Five good reasons why it's a good idea to take a break from the usual diet of pop, rock and jazz and dip into the rarified world of classical music:

It allows you to go out for civilised night out with your dad and lets him go part way to redressing the balance, since you forced him to have Radio 1 on in the background throughout your teenage years.
Classical music is "soothing" (fact!), particularly if it's gentile chamber music (like we get tonight). Something to do with beats per minute, I reckon. No doubt pieces like Beethoven's near-histrionic "Ode To Joy" would be exceptions which prove this rule.
You marvel at the virtuosity of the players. Just how much practice must they have put in over how many years to reach this level? A level, actually, which is pretty much the norm for the hundreds of UK musicians in major orchestras and chamber ensembles. There's such minute precision in the playing in a small group like this. Every player is so exposed that even the tiniest slip in intonation or rhythm would stick out like a really sore thumb. Are revered instrumentalists in popular music--I don't know, Eric Clapton, say--as good as this? Do they really justify the adulation and lucre which comes their way? Or is that like comparing fish and custard?
It reminds you that the iPod, Spotify and the other modern-day gubbins I've been rattling on about lately, should not be taken for granted. The only way you would get to hear these pieces in the 18th and 19th centuries, when they were composed, was to be somewhere where there was a player of each of these instruments technically proficient enough to perform them. Then maybe you'd value your musical experiences much more than we tend to do these days...
It allows you to attempt to prove to yourself that that your A-Level in music wasn't entirely in vain, 'cos you can just about still pick out the different sections in minuet form, ("structurally the simplest movement of a symphony or string quartet", it says here, so probably not too much to write home about...)

Next week: How listening to AC/DC for ten hours a day can lead to a life of fulfilment and prosperity...

just because i can...

2009-05-13T22:38:00.010+01:00

David Byrne.

Then (1980) * ...

A few years ago (2001) ...

And now...

* There's a great version of this on YouTube, which I can't embed. Curses...

record yr wythnos*

2009-05-10T21:04:00.011+01:00

*Single of the week. From up-and-coming Cardiffians:

"Sun-dappled pop with wit and gay abandon" it says here, so hoorah for that...

why we love modern stuff (continued)

2009-05-06T22:27:00.027+01:00

Part 3: Cut down that Amazon shopping list by streaming a load of music. Save £££'s!!!

I'm not normally one to get worked up about the so-called wonders of the digital age but you can get so much music for free these days on internet streaming services that it sort of seems impolite not to explore some of the possibilities.

Spotify seems to be generally flavour of the month at the moment. If you can bear the thought of listening to one advert every fifteen or twenty minutes, you can stream full albums or create your own playlists free of charge. My current favourites include some old but very excellent jazz/blues by Etta James, and some top-notch songs from Congolese outfit Staff Benda Bilili.

Grooveshark even allows me to embed one of those widget thingummies for the convenience of my readers, thus allowing them to check out this top tune, "Counterpoint" by 2009 New-Order-a-likes Delphic:

Remember those "various artists" cassettes you used to foist on your unsuspecting friends and family in the eighties? Just me then. Well you can do a modern-day fancy-dan digital equivalent courtesy of the fantastic 8tracks site. Here's a playlist I put together a couple of weeks ago to mark the welcome appearance of a big round yellow object in the April sky...

meanwhile, back in the lounge...

2009-04-18T21:16:00.012+01:00

How about this forgotten gem, as featured on last week's Sounds of the Sixties...

It was written by Tony Hatch, a prolific composer in the sixties, although these days he's mainly remembered for his themes for tea-time soaps like stodgy old Crossroads in the seventies and eighties Kylie-fest Neighbours.

I reckon this song is in a different league though and there are definitely shades of Bacharach in some of the instrumentation. Is that a cor anglais I hear?

...And dig that final chord.

He also wrote "Downtown" for Petula Clark. So good for him, eh?

scaffolding

2009-04-15T21:55:00.012+01:00

At the BFI this month, they've got a season of films from the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 60s. On Friday I went to see Louis Malle's "Lift to the Scaffold" which was released in 1958. It's got a great (improvised) Miles Davis soundtrack...

Hear the rest of it here...

shrag. v. t. to trim, as trees; to lop

2009-04-06T20:37:00.011+01:00

Shrag, The Tender Trap, Arthur and Martha @ The Lexington, 2nd April

Arthur and Martha are big on synths, drum machines and other electronic gubbins, including an unwieldy theremin. Bleeps and bloops ensue. They in no way sound like Hot Chip however. Song title of the evening: "Squarewave to Heaven".

The Tender Trap: Women sing and play keyboards and drums standing up. Men play guitar and bass, also standing up. (Is that that bloke out of Nirvana on guitar?) The addition of two extra woman backing vocalists recently has filled out their sound a lot since last time I heard them, and their "ba-da-ba ba-da-ba"'s remind me of Stereolab and Teenage Fanclub. Which cheers me up.

Shrag: Energetic, occasionally profane, "jagged post punk". Again, men play guitars and bass and women sing, play dinky electronic keyboards, but also shout a lot and kick a considerable amount of ass on the drums. Great stuff. Hear more at their lastfm page.

and finally...

2009-04-03T22:58:00.008+01:00

While I'm on the subject of New York (and I promise to move on soon), I can't really pass up the opportunity to include a musical offering by these two grouchy old New Yorkers. This comes from their first album Can't Buy A Thrill, before Donald Fagen took over lead vocal duties. David Palmer gets the gig here.

This is a great clip I think. Enjoy...

follow the yellow umbrella

2009-04-01T23:43:00.043+01:00

Join me if you will for a whistle-stop tour of some groovy old music venues.

(Er, they're in New York, in case you were wondering...)

Day 1: Midtown Manhattan, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, etc etc

Radio City Music Hall

Perversely, like many of the skyscrapers in Manhattan, the Radio City Music Hall sprung up in the Depression Era and opened in 1932. Home to musicals, films, and in latter years, the Grammy and Tony Awards, the lavish annual Christmas spectacular, which has run throughout its history, is a Nativity re-enactment using real animals: sheep, donkeys, even camels. For the duration of the show's run, they're housed in special living quarters behind the stage and can apparently be spotted being given a Christmas Day constitutional around Midtown Manhattan. The theatre has a spectacular Art Deco interior and its "Mighty Wurlitzer" pipe organ is the largest pipe organ built for a movie theatre.

Day 2: Greenwich Village,
a.k.a. "The Village" (1960s vintage),
now West Village.

Cafe Wha?

One of a number of establishments now on the tourist trail by virtue of having hosted early performances by one Robert Zimmerman. The establishment's own website lists Dylan as only one in a string of famous names who've popped in over the years--"Allen Ginsberg regularly sipped his cocktails here. The Café Wha? was the original stomping ground for prodigies Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. Bruce Springsteen, Peter, Paul & Mary, Kool and the Gang, as well as comedians, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby..."--but a character called David Barry (??) has some interesting reminiscences.

Day 3: Walking tour of Harlem.

The Apollo Theatre

Originally opened in 1915, in 1934 the Apollo was given over exclusively to Afro-American performers as an opportunity to appear in the weekly "amateur nights" and, if well received, tour the U.S., make a name for themselves nationally, then return to the Apollo as a headlining act in their own right. Ella Fitzgerald was one of the earliest artists to do this, ditto Bessie Smith in 1935, and in 1959 James Brown, who later used the venue for his famous 1963 live album. So close was Brown's relationship with the theatre that when he died in 2006 he lay in state there, typically, "in a blue suit, white gloves and silver shoes." Harlemites queued up round the block to pay their last respects.

and finally, also in Harlem...

Minton's Playhouse

Founded in 1938 and frequented by early jazzers Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Earl Hines, it later played a huge part in the development of bebop. Dizzy Gillespie was a main mover, as was Thelonious Monk and, of course, Charlie Parker.

This is what they came up with...

subway sect

2009-03-31T16:02:00.013+01:00

Few stones left unturned on the New York tourist trail at the weekend, but I didn't in the end get to go to any gigs during my visit. I did, though, hear a great soul voice at one of the 14th Street subway stations on Saturday afternoon. It turned out to be a member of a band called Acapella Soul, singing and playing a keyboard.

I know the name because I was one of the six or seven onlookers during the five or so minutes between trains who stumped up $10 for one of his (their) CDs. For me, buying an album on the strength of a single hearing is invariably a let-down (spontaneity and atmosphere of live performance lost etc etc), but I've just got home with this one and it's actually quite good.

They're obviously regulars around the Manhattan subway network--they pop up a few times on YouTube, often shamelessly breaking off mid-song (as here) to flog a few CDs...

there's a boat that's leaving soon for new york...

2009-03-23T21:58:00.017Z

...well it's actually Virgin Atlantic Flight VS001, but I'll be on it.

Off the top of my head, a few songs about or from the City Which Never Sleeps...

See you on East 17th Street...

reading between the lines

2009-03-11T19:40:00.006Z

Oliver Mtukudzi, Baaba Maal & Extra Golden (African Soul Rebels Tour) @ The Roundhouse, 9th March

With the African Soul Rebels tour, now in its fifth year, you get to see three established African acts in one evening. So there's maybe enough of each of the artists to whet your appetite, but I'm not sure you get enough of a taste of any of the three. Baaba Maal's band seem to suffer particularly in this respect tonight. Having progressively increased the pace over fifty minutes or so, it seems a shame they have to make way just as the people start to dance.

Long-established Zimbabwean singer-guitarist Oliver Mtukudzi has made a career of diplomacy and tact. Where others--most notably fellow veteran Thomas Mapfumo--have moved abroad so they can safely vent their spleen on the subject of the Mugabe regime, Mtukudzi still lives there, relying on gentle allegory to get his point across rather than being openly critical. From what he says tonight, you can tell he is used to choosing his words carefully. There's what he says, then there's what he doesn't say.

Often it's up to you to fill in the blanks. “Where we come from, music is like food" (We need it to survive? It's under threat?). "Where we come from, you don’t get to sing when you have nothing to say" (People who sing have a chance to say something, to make their voice heard?). "Where we come from, most of all we use music to defuse tension" (If we just use it to criticise, we are silenced so we can no longer get our message across??).

Just occasionally his meaning is more obvious. "If one country is inferior to another, there is something wrong". "This song is about discipline. In order to be head of a family, you must have discipline."

This is what he sounds like:

talk talk

2009-03-04T23:03:00.014Z

Will Kaufman: 'Woody Guthrie - Hard times and hard travellin'' at the British Library, 25 February, and
Barney Hoskyns discussing Tom Waits and 'Lowside of the Road' at Waterstone's, Gower Street, 4th March.

The thing about music is that even with those singers or musicians who aren't right up there with your favourite singers or musicians, there's usually something you can talk about.

And the thing about talks about musicians is that they give you an authoritative, nicely-distilled account of the life and work in as little as an hour. I had a brief Tom Waits phase, in the early 1990s I think when, finger on the pulse as ever, I listened mainly to his early-eighties Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs albums. "Lowside of the Road", though, the new Waits biography, weighs in at a hefty 650 pages and I'm just not interested enough to plough through that.

Hoskyns divides the story into two parts. Waits spent much of the seventies hanging around bars in Santa Monica and song titles like "Closing Time", "The Piano Has Been Drinking", "The Ghosts of Saturday Night" and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" give you a pretty good idea of his lyrical concerns in those days. Then in 1980 (Hoskyns's part two) Waits met and married Kathleen Brennan, under whose seemingly Yoko-esque influence he suddenly distanced himself from long-time associates and adopted a more experimental and theatrical approach in his music, viz.

Is it music? Is it theatre? Beats me. Great though, isn't it?

Will Kaufman is professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire, which means he gets to read and write about Woody Guthrie and is paid for it. Cuh eh? As a semi-professional folksinger for over thirty years, he also gets to sing Guthrie's songs. He makes a decent job of it too.

Born in oil boom town Okemah Oklahoma, Guthrie moved to Texas when the Depression set in then, with thousands of other "Okies", was driven from his home by the drought and ferocious winds of the Dustbowl and moved to California. Here he travelled round the migrant camps chronicling the Okie sufferings in the face of the outright hostility of the local community and the unions' struggle for acceptable working conditions and a decent wage.

As a songwriter, Guthrie was prolific to the point of manic obsession: huge amounts of material survive in the Woody Guthrie Archive, hundreds of song lyrics, many of them never put to music and some of them scrawled on bits of newspaper, napkins from restaurants, bus tickets, anything he could write on that happened to be to hand at the time.

Pictures and music like this tell you all you need to know about the Dustbowl. No wonder whole communities were uprooted and forced to move hundreds of miles away from their homes...

and the award...

2009-02-27T17:12:00.007Z

...for best use of guitars in a single in 2009 (so far), goes to the Britpop-tastic Pull In Emergency...

Bit of a ropey band name though...

small beer

2009-02-13T18:41:00.010Z

High Llamas @ The Luminaire, 12th February

Last night I went to see the High Llamas, for something like the eighth time. I sometimes wonder what it says about me that while other people follow million-selling acts like U2, R.E.M. or Radiohead, I go along every year to see a band who's YouTube hits number no more than eight (I've just counted them) and wouldn't know a top twenty album placing if it was brought up to them on a plate by Brian Wilson himself.

Although we heard were a couple of songs which they hadn't played for a while, there weren't really any big surprises (which is good). I did discover a good new young band and a groovy new venue though:

Soy Un Caballo are Belgian apparently. Gentle, wistful, and sounding a bit like a French language cross between Fleet Foxes and the Kings Of Convenience. Nice.

The Luminaire, in swinging downtown Kilburn, is an "intimate" venue with a crowd capacity of a whopping 300. Bands play on a small stage in front of a red velvet curtain which put me slighltly in mind of Twin Peaks. As an indication of where they're coming from, there's also a seating area out of sight of the stage where a notice wards off noisy punters: "We're a live venue, not a pub. If you've come to chat with your friends while the bands are on, you're in the wrong place". My sentiments entirely...

One of YouTube's top eight High Llamas songs of all time then:

Mary Hansen, former member of Stereolab, sang on this track. It was recorded two or three years before her untimely death. I think she does a good job. R.I.P.

what should i write?

2009-02-07T10:08:00.010Z

In my humble opinion, Sounds of the Sixties, presented by veteran DJ Brian Matthew (8-10 on Saturday mornings), is one of the highlights of the Radio 2 week. There's a real mix of hits you've heard a thousand times, hidden gems, and songs which "unfortunately didn't make the charts", basically because they were just dreadful.

I heard this Carole King song on the programme this morning. I think it's a two-and-a-half-minute work of art. Five reasons why:

the lyrics: the rhymes all rhyme, rather than just sound as if they rhyme as they do in so many songs (which I sometimes find mildly annoying, but that's probably just me). And they say what needs to be said. No less and no more.
the tune. I'm a sucker for a great melody and this one does it for me. I like the way it curves up in the first two lines of the verse then back down at the end, and...
the middle eight. Again, what a tune. The same line repeated up a semitone (getting a bit technical for a moment if you'll bear with me), with a neat modulation second time back to the original key.
the "plink-plonk"/falling-raindrops pizzicato string figure which recurs a few times--like under "I don't need sunny skies for things I have to do" and "it doesn't matter whether skies are grey or blue" (see what they've done there?)--then again at the very end.
I like Carole King's singing style here. It's a bit rough and ready in places, but what the hell, she's a lovelorn teenager and she's got more important things on her mind than hitting the note on the head.

Enjoy...

Tapestry, schmapestry...