Christmas Number 1 if Scotland pull off the impossible today?

What was the name of that This Mortal Coil album?

Christ, I hope the Samaritans in Scotland are fully staffed tomorrow night. There's such an air of expectation over tomorrow's game that I fear for Alex Salmond's McLeish's feel good factor if what started out as mission improbable turns into mission cordoba.

The blog's getting so many hits at the moment from people hunting high and low for the 'We Have A Dream' mp3 that I don't know what's going to burst first: my bandwidth or Stuart Cosgrove's final brain cell.

Stu. Have a sit down . . . get Tam Clown Cowan to make you a cup of hot sweet tea . . . and get an engineer in to dislodge that Braveheart DVD that appears to be playing on permanent loop on your plasma tv screen.

Music Matters

Morphing Into A Music Blog (9):

The usual drill: sprinkle in a few hat tips to where politics and popular music try and intersect; mention a couple of obscure bands - the more dated the better - to make me seem more interesting by association; link to incredibly popular music blogs so that they might notice me for ten seconds; and a mention of the Scotland football team and their date with glorious failure this coming Saturday:

"Jesus wept -- I'm 54.": So said Andy Partridge. Last Sunday saw Mr P's unhappy birthday and another excellent song installment from the XTC Myspace page. This week the 1978 single, 'This Is Pop', comes under scrutinisation.
And I totally get where Andy P. is coming from with regards to the similarities between 50s Skiffle and Punk: what were the TV Personalities, if not a punk version of Lonnie Donegan Xs 2?

Not Enough Protest Songs: Brilliant post over at The Gaping Silence blog, where Phil dissects the lyrics of the Dexy's classic, 'There There, My Dear'. I must have listened to that song hundreds of times over the years, but it was only now that I've read Phil's post that I finally get what Kevin Rowland was singing in the second verse. Yep the lyrics are two-parts bonkers to one-part brilliance but I'll always have a soft spot for the couplet:

Robin, you’re always so happy, how the hell?
You’re like a dumb, dumb patriot.

That rabbit punch will never get old.

Nothing But Protest Songs: One of the best protest 'singers' out there at the moment bar none is The Coup's Boots Riley. The latest issue of the CPGB/Weekly Worker's student freesheet, 'Communist Student', has an interesting article by John Jo Sidwell on the music, politics and history of The Coup. (The article is on page 2 of the PDF linked.)
Also, check out the story about the original artwork for the cover of The Coup's 2001 album, 'Party Music', and wonder what might have been.

The Truth Can Often Be Painful: A sensitive and thoughtful post over at Vinyl Villain about Edwyn Collins and his recent rehabilitation from the life threatening cerebral hemorrhage that struck him down in 2005. With regards to the Artworks Scotland programme on Collins that is mentioned in the post, I downloaded it a few months back via UK Nova, but I've yet to watch it. I'm not sure if I could handle the uneasiness of watching someone so literate and witty picking the pieces of his life up after such a tragedy.

Busted Noses and Bruised Dreams: Is it just me or does the young raffish Pete Wylie look like Steve Bruce in this old Top of the Pops clip? Cheers to Danny over at the Socialist Unity Blog comments box - getting mighty crowded there these days - for the hat tip about the YouTube clip.
Pete Wylie really is/was a legend of sorts . . . or at least that's what it says on his website. And spare a thought for Steve Bruce. He's never going to get the Old Trafford gig (Mark Hughes and Roy Keane are ahead of him in the 'old boy to succeed Fergie stakes'), and he's currently caught in a tug-of-war between a midget jazz mag merchant and a union busting and price gouging scumbag. He should have stayed at Selhurst Park under the watchful gaze of tangerine man.

Recommended Music Blog of The Moment Too much unused disk space cluttering up your hard drive? Then head over to Rho-Xs and catch your jaw before it hits the floor. Take the excellent Not Rock On, and turn it up to 11: Rho-Xs is that good.
Latest post on the blog covers 1984 albums by the Eurythmics, Art of Noise and Felt. Granted, those albums don't really float my boat. (Felt, for fucks sake. Indie kids across the bedrooms of suburbia are wetting themselves as I write.), but the blog covers everything from early eighties Belgian post-punk to New York electro to Jamaican dub to "hiphop flamenkillo" from Barcelona. It sounds like an explosion in a John Peel factory.

'The album currently claiming squatting rights on iTunes': It was via Rho-Xs - by way of the 5P music blog - that I recently discovered the brilliant early eighties album, 'A Thin Red Line', by Edinburgh Post-Punksters TV21. To be honest - to paraphrase Renee Zellweger's character in 'Jerry Maguire' - they got me at (pre-maturely) naming their album after what should have been the title of the Crump/Rubel eighties classic.
I don't get it - how was it that they didn't even dent the lower reaches of the charts or the left-side of my musical consciousness? We're not talking about one of those infamous lost bands from music's murky past who recorded one single in some backwater back in '78, only to break up with bitter recriminations after the single got played on John Peel twice. According to the blurb on the Rho-Xs blog:

"TV 21 had been always in good company during their brief time together as a band. Teardrop Explodes' Troy Tate produced their first two independent singles. The 1981 album, "A Thin Red Line," was produced by Ian Broudie of the Original Mirrors and later Lightning Seeds. Mike Scott of the Waterboys and Pete Wylie from Wah! make appearances on their lp .They toured with the Undertones and were the opening act for the Rolling Stones for the Scottish dates of their 1982 European tour."

See what I mean? Look at the names cited. Troy Tate also did the original production work on The Smiths debut album*. Mike Scott is proof needed that I'm not so secularist that I can't tap my toe to tunes from a mystic gobshite, and that man Wylie again. Only a bona fide legend turns up in the unlikeliest of places - and twice in the space of a post on this blog to boot.

Bit of a happy ending of sorts out of the saddest of circumstances. The band reformed in 2005 to play a gig in appreciation of the legacy of the late John Peel, and decided to carry on from there.

When in doubt reach for MySpace, where there is a canny page for the band. Check out the reworking/re-recording of 'Something's Wrong' that was on 'A Thin Red Line'. It's as good as the original. And the other new songs on the page that have been uploaded carry themselves off with aplomb. Think The Silencers meet late XTC. I might see you other there. I'll be the one gushing over the track, 'When I Scream'.

“Messieurs et Mesdames, Les Ecars…”: OK, sample track of the day. Stick with Edinburgh, stick with early eighties post-punk, and stick with the theme of 'why the hell weren't they more famous?'
And that's despite being smothered with such prose praise as:

[they] . . . epitomise the post-punk new seriousness that has radically re-activated pop music, destroying the dichotomy between intelligence and emotion and confronting a whole range of different fears and desires. New pop that treats the transient thrill seriously." [Could only be this bloke in the pages of the NME.]

. . . the Scars were another Edinburgh band who never made it big. (In retrospect, Josef K seem like superstars by comparison.) Curious as to why they never made their mark. They had the scratchy post-punk guitars that weren't fooling anyone - they could play their instruments. They had the kudos of releasing a single on the Fast Product record label. For a Scottish band they were surprisingly good looking, which probably helped them get their pasty faces in the pages of Smash Hits, but to no avail.

Arguing from a position of splendid blogging ignorance, maybe being signed to the record label that they were didn't exactly help. Don't be fooled by the 'Pre' record label. It was a subsidiary of Charisma; the home to the likes of Genesis, Peter Hammill and RD Laing. I'd hazard a guess that the Scars were the token punk/post-punk/no wave/new wave band for the label. Well, them and Delta 5, and the record label probably didn't know what the hell to do with them.

And what was the deal with the Scars naming their only album after what was to be one of the worst films of Al Pacino's career? Sorry a misprint, I meant this sorry excuse of a film. They were just inviting indifference.

Back to why I think should check out the Scars. Think of a post-punk ménage à trois between The Sound souped up, Josef K and early Wire playing songs that lasted longer one and half minutes, and you get some sense of their musical lovechild that may or may not have resembled the Scars' 'Author! Author!' album.

The songs that everyone talks about from the album are 'Your Attention Please' and 'All About You', which are both fine songs but I have an especial soft spot for this track:

'Lady In The Car With Glasses On And A Gun' mp3

The title of the song suggests it should have been on last The Long Blondes album, but it is in fact the best Josef K song, Franz Ferdinand, Radio 4 and Josef K never wrote. By comparing the sound to Josef K, I'm not accusing the Scars of being copyists. Just trying to bring home to you how good this track is. You should *sample* it now.

Progress Report On The Ongoing Attempt To Upgrade The Blog Into A Music Blog 'Fraid it's not going as well as planned. The expanded sidebar, with the new music blog section, only helped to hit home to me how many good bona fide mp3 music blogs there are out there. My attempts at foisting my record collection on an unsuspecting desktop population is rightfully getting lost in the goldrush.
Also, it doesn't really help that for all after the obscure stuff I've posted on these pages, the mp3 that keeps getting hit upon again and again is John Gordon Sinclair singing 'We Have Dream'.

Aye, it's the best football song ever committed to vinyl but what happens to the blog come Saturday night? The Italians are going to get the result they need, and Scottish people living in Amersham and Leyton Buzzard will no longer be stumbling across my blog via a google search for that 1982 BA Robertson song.

Who can honestly contemplate another scenario at Hampden? And what's worse, if he's playing Saturday, it's guaranteed that Italian defensive midfielder, Rino Gattuso, will score with a goal of such sweet majesty that it will make Messi's goal against Getafe look like a tap in.

Gattuso will leave the pitch with Archie McPherson's knitted saltire wrapped around his shoulders and with tears in his eyes, will warmly embrace a watching Walter Smith whose been sitting in the stands, and in the post-match interview he'll insist that he still has plans to return to Glasgow and Rangers.

And I'll be left with posting sad bastard tunes by the likes of Smog, the Red House Painters and Arab Strap for the next six months. I may as well jump under a bus right now and get it over and done with.

*His production work was scrapped, and John Porter ended up producing the best album of 1984.

"I can't breathe . . . I can't breathe."

Morphing Into A Music Blog (7)

No, honestly, I can't breathe.

Coming down with a condition that is known within the medical community as 'Finding tracks you thought you'd lost forever'itis'. (Only know the Latin name for it. I'm guessing the layperson's term is something like 'Guitar Strep Throat'.)

Currently adding a list of music blogs to the sidebar, but that has been put on hold as I've just stumbled across the best mp3 blog ever. (Until I find the next one.)

Not Rock On blog comes out of Germany and, as its byline goes, Jörg, the bloke behind the legend, has a penchant for "New Wave, Marc Almond . . . The Smiths . . . The Sound . . . Soft Cell, Spandau Ballet . . . Scott Walker . . . Durutti Column . . . Holger Hiller . . ." amongst many others.

I'm sure you can get the gist of the music played and displayed from the music mentioned, but that's enough prattle from me. On to the must-have mp3 links:

Pillows & Prayers Cherry Red Sampler 1982

Perspectives and Distortion Cherry Red Sampler 1981

Jörg is a star for uploading both albums in full onto his blog for downloading sampling purposes.

Despite being released a year after 'Perspectives and Distortion', 'Pillows & Prayers' gets top billing in the post 'cos I picked it up for a couple of quid - yep, I paid over the odds for it - at Watford Indoor Market* in the mid-eighties when I was first getting into the obscure stuff.(Like the fool I am, I threw it Oxfam's way 15 years later when I was getting rid of all my vinyl.)

Listening to the album again after all these years, I'd actually forgotten how poppy and accessible most of the tracks on the album were. Then as now, The Monochrome Set, The Passage, Thomas Leer and Tracy Thorn tracks are the stand out tunes for me. But, mellowing with age, I've even given the Quentin Crisp track more of a chance this time round. Must be the shared kinship of New York and the dyed purple hair.

For some reason, the words 'Cherry Red Records' used to conjure up a muso image more akin to some obscurantist unlistenable bullshit jazz label than to its real indie bretheren of Rough Trade, Factory or 4AD from the same period. I guess it was simply because that unlike those aforementioned indie labels, Cherry Red never did have their Smiths, Joy Division or Cocteau Twins to break the label out of its supposed indie ghetto.

Unsubstantiated rumours are that their best bet for making the transition from Melody Maker to Radio 1 Roundtable, the Monochrome Set, fucked up their chance 'cos their drummer dropped his drumsticks.** Monochrome Set getting the Oxford Roadshow gig could have had the knock on effect of Lawrence from Felt being an eighties version of Luke Haines - the talented one from the current in-vogue music scene who never quite makes it 'cos he doesn't have the cheekbones or the hairline to compete with the sixth form common room brigade. We'll never know what might have been.

Despite the fact that five of the artists who appeared on the latter 'P & P' sampler also appeared on 'Perspectives and Distortion', the 1981 Cherry Red Sampler was definitely the more leftfield in tone and more of a challenge to the listener to get to grips with. (Maybe the album cover was a warning of sorts?) I defy you not to come away from listening to the Virgin Prunes track, 'Third Secret', without mouthing the words: 'What the fuck was that all about?'

The Lemon Kittens track starts off with you thinking, 'Robert Wyatt's going to pop up in a minute with a love-tinged lyric about Earl Browder', but it then shifts into a vocal and tune that is musically akin to that bit in the original Japanese version of 'The Ring' when the goth climbs out of the tv set. Before the track's over, you've put all the lights on in the apartment and woken up the pets 'cos you don't fancy sleeping alone tonight.

In fact, the most accessible track on the album - Kevin Coyne and Ben Watt don't count. If they'd collaborated on re-recording/reworking of Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music' album, it would have come out sounding like James Blunt - is the early The The/Matt Johnson's track 'What Stanley Saw'. Turns out this track even predates Johnson's 4AD album, 'Burning Blue Soul', and was part of album called 'Spirits' that dates from '79 but was never released. It actually sounds like typical The The, and wouldn't be that out of place on the 'Infected' album. (It's actually better than some of the weaker tracks on side two of that album.)

Nice to see that even as a teenager, Matt Johnson had the same lyrical concerns as his latter, more celebrated work: the twin concerns of Britain coming to terms with an increasingly dystopian future, with Matt Johnson ever-increasing need to get his leg over. It's a thematical consistency that Calvin Harris should make a note of if he ever wants the 25 year musical career and the Not-So-Smarties commercial.

In short, 'Perspectives and Distortion' is experimental and in your face whilst 'Pillows & Prayers' is comforting like a ginger nut dunked in a mug of tea. Even shorter still, Kara, with her playlist of Free Kitten and Julie Ruin, would dig P and D, whilst me, with Prefab Sprout on permanent repeat on iTunes, still laps up 'P & P' after all these years.

Enjoy them both.

Further Reading: Eclecticism for under a quid

*Watford Indoor Market - Same place I picked up Ian Walker's 'Zoo Station' for fifty pence.

**Don't mind me. I'm making this shit up as I go along.

Audio Hijack, I Love You

. . . you've made an eighties pop fan very happy.

The Ex Files

Excellent post by 'Girlcrawl' over at MOG about the Dutch anarcho-syndicalist punksters, The Ex, and their not so recent compilation album, SINGLES PERIOD (The Vinyl Years 1980-1990).

Sadly with the MOG website, it appears you can't *sample* the tracks uploaded but Girlcrawl has embedded in her post such early Ex tracks as 'Cells', 'Gonna Rob The Spermbank', and a cover version of The Mekons' 'Keep On Hoppin.''

Although I first became aware of The Ex over twenty years ago with the music press coverage surrounding the release of their 1936, THE SPANISH REVOLUTION EP, I didn't really listen to any of their stuff until a few years back when Stair, a SPGB comrade back in Britain, gave me a mixtape that included the absolutely brilliant Ex track 'Frenzy'.

Hand on heart, it is one of my top 25 favourite songs of all time (even if our Top 25 on iTunes suggests otherwise). I wish I could link to a page with the lyrics, 'cos they are so smart and so funny, and I won't even pretend to understand half of what the lead singer is singing about . . . and that has nothing to do with the fact that G.W Sok is not singing in his native-tongue. It's just that multi-layered and smart without having to lunge over into smartarsery.

How often do you get to signpost a kickarse tune/lyric that includes the opening line: "Let me tell you about Karl Marx, a visionary fish in a pool of sharks . . . ", and which then goes on to rattle on at breakneck speed about Lenin Lennon and McCartney, "Groucho, a serious bloke, who never told a single joke", and the sit-down strikes in Western Europe in the last century?

The track is off the 1998 Ex album, 'Starters Alternators' - produced by Steve Albini? Never knew that - and details of how to get a hold of the album are at the following link from The Ex's website.

'Frenzy' can only really be properly appreciated if played at very high volume. Your neighbours will thank you at a later date.

The Ex - 'Frenzy' mp3

I'd Rather Jack

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (16)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 16th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 872 friends!

Recent blogs:

Punk rock's silver jubilee

Opportunity cost

Freegans

This week's top quote:

""It is for the working class to study and realise that while one section of the community—the capitalist class—own the means of life of the whole community, the remainder of the community are slaves to that section. Whatever label a political party or person may wear—whether Conservative, Liberal, Radical, Reform, Labour or any other—the one question for the working-class is "do they stand for the retention of a system allowing a small section of Society to exploit the other, the working class"? If so, no matter, with what qualification or modification, if any, then they are necessarily and inevitably the enemy of the exploited and must be so branded. Fine promises avail them nothing. In the words of Wendell Phillips, "WE NEVER FORGET", but keeping the facts clearly in front of our fellow workers' eyes march steadily to the goal of our Emancipation." Jack Fitzgerald (SPGB), 1906.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Friday's Playlist #18 - It's a G-Thing

An ongoing series:

Paris, 'Guerrilla Funk' (Guerrilla Funk)

Kristen Vigard, 'God Give Me Strength' mp3 (Grace Of My Heart Soundtrack)

Cher, 'Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves' (Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves)

The Stranglers, 'Golden Brown' (La Folie)

Japan, 'Ghosts' (Tin Drum)

Liberty X, 'Got To Have Your Love' (Thinking It Over)

Robert Wyatt & Cristina Dona, 'Goccia'

Violent Femmes, 'Gone Daddy Gone' (Violent Femmes)

Electronic, 'Getting Away with It' (Get the Message - The Best of Electronic)

Microdisney, 'Give Me All Your Clothes' mp3 (Crooked Mile)

As you might have guessed, there's a theme - or rather a meme - to this week's playlist. The alphabetised meme was found via here, and hat tip to Will for pointing me in the direction of that particular blog. Even if I did get off at the wrong stop. Apologies Will.

A couple of the songs are available as mp3s for a limited time. Both class tracks, and after hearing them you'll be compelled to go out and buy the back catalogues. The finders fee can be determined at a later date.

Next Tagees?

The usual suspects: Vic Davidson; Patrik Fitzgerald; Sarah Silverman; Mooey and Tegan . . . Sara Nicole Atkins.

Blog Post-It Note

Dedicate the Alex Glasgow mp3 to Glasgow Branch of the SPGB and to Shiraz Socialist's Volty P for the most obvious of reasons.

Word a suitable disclaimer for uploading this and any future mp3s: no money is being made out of uploading the mp3 . . . only uploading hard to find songs and if someone wants me to take a particular song down, I will do so on request . . . it's for information purposes only . . . please urge you to go out and both buy the entire back catalogue of the artist featured and to donate 10% of your earnings to Bono's favourite charity . . . why don't you have to go through this rigmarole when uploading You Tube videos? Surely that's the bigger scam? Cut and paste the legal disclaimer from someone else's blog.

Anyone Can Play Guitar

Where did I put that old twenty pence piece?

Keep From Trucking

Via the Pretending Life Is Like a Song music blog - and for completists only - comes Prefab Sprout's "Faron Young (Trucking Mix)"

Take the opening track from one of the best albums of the mid-eighties, and smother it with a meaningless tinny remix, and you have all that was harrowing about pop music in the dark ages of 84-89 (save a few exceptions that I can't be arsed to list here).

I don't blame the record company; Paddy McAloon has to take the occasional brickbat alongside the fulsome plaudits. I lost count of the number of times that Prefab Sprout and the record company remixed and re-released "When Loves Breaks Down" before it finally crept into the top forty via an appearance on the Wogan Show. Paddy Mac knew what he was doing, and it was simply the opening chapter of him selling his musical soul before going that final stretch and passing songs onto Jimmy Nail.

You know the drill: download the mp3 within the next ten minutes, otherwise you'll lose out.

New Socialist Website

Bookmarks at the ready.

Kudos to Morgan M. (and his mate FN Brill) for the spade work in putting together the new website for the World Socialist Party of the United States. Now you have all those impossibilist hyperlinks at your fingertips.

It looks like a nice blend of contemporary articles alongside reprints of material from the long history of the *cough* World Socialists* in North America.

Articles that caught my eye on the 'is it a website or is it a blog?' include:

How Money Downed the Minneapolis Bridge

The Ballot Over The Bullet

The Wildcat Strike (from The Western Socialist, July-August, 1953)

Paul Mattick's review of Hayek's 'Road To Serfdom' (from The Western Socialist, September 1946)

Interview With a WSPUS Union Organizer

Who will do the dirty work? We all will!

I have to make a special mention of the innovation - for the WSM, that is - of including mp3s on the website. Of course, front and centre is the 'heavy stuff'; SPGB talks on 'War' and 'Israel, Intifada and Peace' (plus an interesting recording from 68/69, where the late Socialist Party of Canada member, Bill Pritchard, recounts the foundation of the One Big Union in 1919), but I also like the decision to include 'light stuff' such as the following mp3s:

The Fugs', 'Kill For Peace'

Chumbawamba's, 'That’s How Grateful We Are'

Groucho Marx's, 'I'm Against It'

Fatima Mansions, 'Shiny Happy People'

No doubt this FN Brill bloke was influenced by the classic 2003 SPGB Mix compilation CD, 'The Secret Melody of the Class Struggle',** that was specially produced for the SPGB stall at Glastonbury that year.

*The *cough* is in place 'cos I think the term 'World Socialists' is a bit naff.

**Original working title for the political pop music compilation CD was 'The Best Impossibilist Album in the World...Ever!'