New Year's Eve is probably the most overrated night of the year, all expectation and little delivery, and it's now been well over a decade since I had to go out, pay over-the-odds to get in somewhere and have a 'big' night out. It's round to friends, chuck the kids in a room with sweets and a games console while the adults get slowly drunk in the kitchen. With the same adults then complaining when I take control of the stereo.
Whatever you're doing tonight- going out, staying in, going out to stay in- you could do worse than start your night off with Andrew Weatherall's 6 Mix show from New Year's Eve 2010, an hour of tunes from the Primal Scream Screamadelica tour bus.
Tracklist...
Patti Paladin and Johnny Thunders Let Me Entertain You
Tav Falco Oh How She Dances
Bo Diddley Dancing Girl
Webb Pierce Teenage Boogie
T Rex Teenage Boogie
Simon Scott Move It Baby
Corporate Image Not Fade Away
Anandar Shankar Jumpin' Jack Flash
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band Faith Healer
The Standells Medication
New York Dolls Trash
Terry Edwards Never Understand
La Dusseldorf Rheinita
Silver Apples I Have Known Love
A.R. Kane A Love From Outer Space
The Glitter Band Let's Get Together Again
Bon Voyage my friends, thanks for coming. Quite a few people I know will be glad to see the back of 2012. Here's to a better year in 2013.
More from Two Lone Swordsmen as we head towards the new year. Locked Swords was a double pack of vinyl, limited quantities, released in 2001 following the Turntables and Machines tour (I saw them at The Music Box in Manchester; two men in semi-darkness with a laptops and turntables sending juddering beats and machine noises bouncing around a basement). The package is a load of short tracks, dj weapons, most around a minute long; some are just distorted, repeating voices (choose your sword, choose your sword, choose your sword...) some are just beats, some are drones and tones for mixing between or during techno tracks. The vinyl grooves are locked and there were two identical discs so you could play the same track at the same time and all that kind of clever dj stuff. Whether you'll want to sit down and listen to this very often is a moot point but it's got to be worth having. I saw it on vinyl once, fairly cheap. Didn't buy it, have regretted it ever since.
Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood's first full length album as Two Lone Swordsmen was a six sides of vinyl journey called The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate), released in 1996. If TLS was about Weatherall and Tenniswood refining and perfecting a techno sound, it isn't immediately obvious here (that would be 2000's six sides of vinyl Tiny Reminders). The Fifth Mission is rich, cinematic and complex, a drive through a city with a surprisingly full sound taking in all kinds of dance styles, from Big Man Original's uber-bass riff, the Kraftwerkian Beacon Block, the chattering funkiness of Gang Sweep Shuffling. Enemy Haze, all phased guitars, a track that can make me feel stoned just by listening to it. Side six is led by the jazzy double bass of Rico's Helly with drums borrowed from two-step. Throughout the album there is a certain Weatherallian moodiness but also hooks, loads of hooks. Machine music made by people, real life stuff. If you haven't got it, you should get it. Might cost you a bit but worth every penny.
While eating breakfast (full English, average if truth be told) in the pub next to the Premier Inn where we stayed last night, coping with a hangover and checking my memory to see if I drunkenly offended anyone last night (possibly I think), I heard this song. It took me right back to being 17 or 18. Not one of Talking Heads experimental, world music inflected, double bassist, funk injected, Brian Eno numbers- just a superior piece of 80s pop from the inside edge of the leftfield.
Two days recovery and we're off to another party- my side of the family all getting together for a Christmas bash. I'm the oldest of eight. Seven of us have partners and we have eight children, aged from 16 to 6 months, between us. Plus both my parents and a ninety-two year old Grandmother. Then factor in afternoon/all day drinking and the habit some of us have of espousing differing opinions on various matters (politics, religion, music, the price of fish...) and you have the recipe for a perfect family Christmas do.
Two hours of quality slow-mo chilled Mid Winter tunes from Hardway Bros here, worth losing a post-Christmas afternoon to, now you've got all the festive family commitments stuff out of the way.
Stuff bought for the kids, for example a cheapish NATPC tablet for the daughter, is now at the 'why doesn't this work anymore?' stage, leading to me pouring over poorly worded instruction manuals and looking for receipts.
Carole Lombard and friends are here to help you with that door on that calendar when they've finished decorating their tree. Got any last minute shopping to do? Not me, all done. Oh yes. But there's always something else you've got to nip out for isn't there?
My copy of this Jackie Edwards 7" gets played every Christmas- it's more than a bit worn, full of crackles and scratchy. Love those reggae string stabs.
That advent calendar's looking a bit battered now isn't it? It hasn't helped that someone sat on it, bending it in two. Since then two of the chocolates have slipped down the back.
Some people think that Cocteau Twins' version of Frosty The Snowman is on the twee side of things. They might be right.
Sometime in the 1920s Loretta Young hangs up a big wreath. Two more sleeps everyone.
I was out shopping in town and got a text from Mrs Swiss and it stopped me in my tracks. Back at home it was all over BBC News 24, which we'd only just got because they'd only recently cabled our street. Putting things into perspective, it seems a little bit daft to be affected by the death of a famous person, especially when you've dealt with real life stuff that is life-and-death serious. But there you go- we feel what we feel don't we?
The return of Lonesome Town, the Ricky Nelson song covered by The Cramps that was here last week. This time it's Holly Golightly's version from her excellent Singles Round Up album.
On finishing a long autumn term, on the day we finished for the Christmas holiday, I once passed a much older member of staff out in absolute lashing rain and wind, both of us heading for the car park looking to make our exits. 'In the words of the prophet' he said 'thank fuck that's over'.
Tonight is commonly known as Mad Friday- pub anyone?
I finish work for Christmas today. Two weeks off. Thank the Lord for that.
This is my fifteen hundredth post. The 2903 comments from you lot are a large part of what makes it all worth while. Otherwise it really is just me pissing into the internet wind.
And this song turned up in the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year on Sunday night (deservedly won by Bradley Wiggins, though I'd like to have seen David Weir make the top three). Someone at the Beeb is clearly a soulie- The MVPs super-upbeat Turnin' My Heartbeat Up. I'm no expert when it comes to northern soul but I like to dabble.
In December 1986 my parents decided to move house, away from South Manchester to rural Cheshire (a village eight miles from Chester). I was sixteen and stayed on at friends for three weeks after they moved to complete the first term in sixth form- that was my official reason anyway. They moved because my Dad got a different job but partly I think to remove some of us from Manchester and it's distractions. Which may not have worked too well seeing as most of us moved back sooner or later. On the last day of term (almost exactly twenty six years ago today) there was an end of term social at Cellar Vie off Albert Square in the city centre, which doubled as my leaving do. It was, I think, the first time I'd been in a nightclub, and I also got off with a girl in fishnets who I've never seen since.
Starting 1987 in Chester was different to Manchester. Chester's an alright little town. In 1987 it had a typical small town indie scene- three clubs, two of whom did an indie night on a Monday, a decent record shop and a shop, Tudor House, that specialised in the whole range of indie needs- second hand records, paisley shirts, bandannas, Chelsea boots, posters. It was outside this shop that one of my brothers and I bumped into Birdland, touring the nation's smaller gig venues. Birdland were named after a New York jazz club, four bottle blonde mop-tops with leather jackets, black drainpipes and winklepickers. Much loved by the music press briefly, they were surly and arrogant in interviews and in person too. In that two year gap between the end of The Smiths and the arrival of Madchester a mass of half-arsed indie racketeers made the front cover of the NME or Melody Maker, only to be swept away by the funky drummer and ecstacy. I didn't stay near or in Chester very long- eighteen months later I went to University and then three years after that moved back to Manchester. By which point I'd lost touch with my school friends from Manchester and then went on to lose touch pretty quickly with the ones I'd made in Chester.
I thought I'd posted a link to this but it appears not- Daniel Avery and Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s on a track called Magnetic. Minimal, spacey, going a bit krautrock via a dash of New Order. Stream at Soundcloud.
I was ironing to this track the other day and those creases just disappeared- seven minutes of lovely minimal ambient techno; ghostly vocals, repetitive beats, minor chords. It's on Andrew Weatherall's Masterpiece, which if not album of the year is certainly compilation of the year. Reminds me a bit of Renegade Soundwaves' Women Respond To Bass. Listen to it- it'll improve your day.
In response the the comment fest at Davy's place last Friday night, and because Christmas is a time for lists, here's the Bagging Area New Order Top Ten.
1. Ceremony
2. Everything's Gone Green
3. Temptation
4. Leave Me Alone
5. Age Of Consent
6. Your Silent Face
7. Thieves Like Us
8. Love Vigilantes
9. Bizarre Love Triangle
10. Run
11. Regret
Which still leaves me one over and no place for True Faith. I really like Dreams Never End as well. And Face Up off Low Life. And Every Little Counts. Lonesome Tonight. And I've missed Blue chuffing Monday.
Rush down and open the little door so you can have a chocolate before breakfast- and you can have this as well; Johnny Marr's free Christmas twangy instrumental Free Christmas here. Last Christmas it was on Soundcloud for free download but I can't find it there for free now. But you can stream it. I was going to post it as a d/l but they just removed Down On The Corner from a previous Johnny Marr post.
I'm not sure the Jesus And Mary Chain's Nine Million Rainy Days was crying out to be remixed or re-edited for a sort of subterranean, slow-mo club night- but I'm glad it was. Done by Los Lopez. Find it at Soundcloud.
I'm pretty sure some JAMC fans won't like this though.
List time.
I did think about not doing a list but couldn't help myself, partly because when I sat down and started to make a list I realised that I've listened to a reasonable amount of new music this year, surprising myself somewhat. At blogs where more than one person contributes or yer proper music magazines there always seems to be an attempt to get some balance into their end of year lists- here at Bagging Area there's just me so there's not so much balance, just a list of 40 songs, singles and albums that have had repeated plays through my record player/cd player in the kitchen/car stereo/mp3 player between January 1st 2012 and yesterday. I couldn't get my head around ranking them so they're in alphabetical order, rather than any attempt to say which is the best.
Andrew Weatherall- Masterpiece (compilation)
Cat Power- Cherokee (album track)
Chuck Prophet- Play That Song Again (album track)
Clock Opera- Once And For All Andrew Weatherall Remix
Daniel Avery- Movement Andrew Weatherall Remix
Daniel Avery- Fabric Live 66 (compilation)
Dexys- One Day I'm Going To Soar (album)
Django Django- Django Django (album)
Fuxa- Our Lips Are Sealed (single)
Hollie Cook and Prince Fatty- The Dub Goes On (album)
Hooded Fang- Tosta Mista (album)
Jack White- Love Interrruption (single)
JD McPherson- Signs And Signifiers (album)
Johnny Marr- The Messenger (album pre-release)
Le Carousel- Lose Your Love Andrew Weatherall Remix
Lightships- Electric Cables (album)
Madness- Death Of A Rude Boy Andrew Weatherall Remix
Mark Lanegan- Ode To Sad Disco (album track)
Orbital- Wonky (album)
Paul Weller- That Dangerous Age (single)
Public Image Ltd- This Is PiL (album, well most of it)
Public Service Broadcasting- Everest (single)
Public Service Broadcasting- Everest The Centaurs Remix
Public Service Broadcasting- The War Room (mini-album)
Savages- Husbands (single)
Scott Fraser- A Life Of Silence/A Life Of Silence Timothy J Fairplay Remix (12")
Slighter- Our Own End (single)
Tim Burgess- Oh No I Love You (album)
Toy- Dead And Gone (album track)
Toy- Dead And Gone Andrew Weatherall Remix
The Horrors- Moving Further Away Andrew Weatherall Remix
The Kills- Pale Blue Eyes (ep B-side)
The Orb and Lee Perry- Presents The Orbsetter (album)
Timothy J Fairplay- The Final Reel/The Final Reel Andrew Weatherall Remix (12")
Tindersticks- The Something Rain (album)
Underworld- Rez High Contrast Remix
Various- Isles Of Wonder London 2012 Opening Ceremony (compilation)
Various- On The Road (Original Soundtrack)
Various- Treasure Hunting (compilation)
Viv Albertine- The Vermillion Border (album)
Wooden Shjips- Crossings Andrew Weatherall Remix (ep)
All of which shows that about 25% of my list for this year were by this man (I did think about having a separate Lord Sabre list but decided against segregation)
And a fair few others there were connected to him. So here's your song, released on thick vinyl back in January this year-
Cavernous dub production, clattering drums, filthy bass riff, reverb heavy vocals, trippy disco noises, long enough to lose yourself in; from a man having a third (at least, maybe fourth) purple patch.
As a bonus, this is how to cover a Velvet Underground song you've heard covered any number of times before and make it exciting again- the guitars in this recording are why people still pick up a stupid piece of wood with six strings on it and try to make it sound good.
This time last year we'd bought our tickets for The Stone Roses at Heaton Park, probably half expecting they wouldn't make it even that far. What I really didn't expect was that on a Wednesday evening in May I'd be standing in Warrington's Parr Hall in a crowd of only a thousand waiting to see them at a free gig- and the outpouring of emotion from both band and audience that night, and the songs, will live long in my memory. This clip shows them playing Benicassim in July.
Still not sure about Ian's choice of tracksuit tops. It's worth noting also that they have maintained a total media blackout- not a single interview that I'm aware of. Shane Meadows' film of the whole thing is scheduled for release next year. Part of me is half expecting them to release a new song or single without any warning on Christmas Day or something. Whether you like them or not, approve of their re-union or not, they've managed to pull off some complete surprises and more power to them.
The Cramps come back for Friday night, at least partly because I wanted an excuse to post this gif. Originally a hit for Ricky Nelson, Lonesome Town gained fame in the 90s due to Pulp Fiction. Holly Golightly's done a version too but I think Lux and Ivy nailed it best.
Ooh, quick, open the door, what is it today? A chocolate shaped like a festive candle?
Nope, it's a song from James Brown's Funky Christmas- an album that includes Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto, Let's Make Christmas Mean Something This Year Parts 1 And 2 and Soulful Christmas. While these songs are definitely funky they seem almost to be the exact opposite of sounding festive. Take it to the bridge JB.
It's not that I'm against Christmas, more that I'm against Christmas music; there's just so much tripe. Sadly the 'alternative' Christmas song has become a bit of a cliche too. But door number two on the Bagging Area advent calendar opens- slightly badly I'm afraid, the perforations are not very well cut and it's ripped the face of the calendar as well- to reveal actress Clara Bow, a dog and Mr Wild Billy Childish mixing up The Who's A Quick One mini-opera with some yuletide mod rock.
If we carefully tear and peel open the little door on the Bagging Area advent calendar we can find a festive treat- not some small piece of cheap chocolate but former X Ray Spex singer, the late Poly Styrene and a wonderfully unfestive song. Also 1920s actress and bob pioneer Louise Brooks looking decidedly un-full of festive cheer.
Underworld doing to themselves what they did to Bjork in yesterday's post- an eleven minute version of Dirty Epic which was released as part of various single/ep packages in 1994. You can't have too much of this kind of thing really. It's funny how in the early and mid 90s all the acid house people who were inspired initially by the short, sharp shock of punk ended up making that went on for ten minutes plus. I guess it was the DIY aspect of punk and the general asthetic that inspired as much as three minute, three chord blasts. And the drugs.
I rescued this 12" from a charity shop recently, despite already having the A-side on that Bjork White labels For People Who Don't Buy White Labels mini-album. It's a bit crackly but the dub on the B side is good. So I thought we'd start the week with twelve minutes of Underworld remixing Bjork's Human Behaviour- thumping drums from the off, which double up and really kick in at around 1.12, vocals come in later (4.40ish), a big breakdown at around 7 minutes and lovely piano ending. Long but not too long.
The picture is of Man Ray's model and muse Nusch Eluard who fought in the French Resistance and died of a stroke shortly after the Second World War.
Nope, I don't know what's going on with Salvador Dali's trousers either (particularly the crotch area) although Gala seems to have got it going on. Tight trousered enthusiasts The Horrors have set a load of remixers loose on their 2011 album Skying, most of them doing exactly what remixers should. The digital release came out this week- two Weatherall mixes (the previously released remix of Wild Eyed and a new bleepy one of Moving Further Away). Other equally good highlights are present from Daniel Avery, Peaking Lights, Andy Blake and Blanck Mass (one half of Olympians Fuck Buttons). All well worth downloading from Beatport or somewhere similar. You can listen below.
The Higher physical boxset comes out in March- four pieces of vinyl, two cds,a dvd and one previously worn winklepicker. With a price tag of fifty quid. Which is, y'know, quite a lot of money.
This curious Roy Montgomery song opened Andrew Weatherall's Watch The Ride compilation album back in 2008. There's kind of a jazz club vibe with spoken beat poet vocals describing London nightlife. Cinematic, atmospheric, a tad moody.
The return of Link Wray to Friday night. Link returned from the Korean War minus one lung and so let his guitar do his vocals for him. A man who knew how to dress- the clothes (and hair for that matter) were not wearing him. It's Friday night, its cold, the central heating's on the blink again- we may have to drink and dance to keep warm. You're all invited.
This is that Factory Floor remix of Tim Burgess' White I mentioned a couple of weeks ago- Gabe Gurnsey strips all of the country-soul out of it and re-positions the song firmly on the dancefloor, a dancefloor in the Hacienda circa 1983 at some kind of Latin/post-punk/funk night. Gets away with it too.
I don't know where this came from- it shuffled up on the way home from work yesterday and sounded very good. Don't let a song called Purple Stuff by a band called Hounds Of Hate put you off. Timothy J Fairplay remixes them with clattering, clubby drums, speaker rattling bass and dub horns. I say clubby drums- I don't know if this is what gets played in clubs these days.
I got tickets to see Johnny Marr at The Ritz next March today. The Ritz has become Manchester's best gig venue, although the curfew's always too early- I missed the start of both Justice Tonight and Half Man Half Biscuit by misjudging my entrance at The Ritz. By coincidence (or not) he's appeared on Radio 2 with Dermot O'Leary, interviewed and performing live (a new song New Town Velocity and The Smiths' Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want). UK listeners can listen here. There's also a stream of another song off his forthcoming the Messenger lp here, a song called The Right Thing Right.
I'm not really a fan of Led Zeppelin. For years I avoided them like the plague. Some time in the mid 90s I realised I could tolerate, even enjoy, some of the first album (Communication Breakdown, Your Time Is Gonna Come, Good Times Bad Times especially), a bit of the second, the folkier parts of the third. And Kashmir. Goes without saying that. In fact even some of the ridiculous rock stuff like Immigrant Song and Rock And Roll. But I can probably get by with a forty minute compilation.
Sandie Shaw covered Your Time Is Gonna Come. It's not as out-there as her cover of Sympathy For the Devil off the same album and it's not necessarily the sort of song you'd associate with her. Which is maybe why she did it.
I've been trying to ignore the recent Rolling Stones celebrations. They haven't been any use as a recording band since about 1973. The documentary Crossfire Hurricane showed the band admit that themselves- two hours about the 60s, half an hour in the south of France, five minutes of Miss You and Ronnie Wood, the end. The press for the gigs at the O2 has been largely positive and I suppose if you were there (tickets starting at £95 and going up to around a grand, for all you Street Fighting Men and Ladies out there) it could have been pretty good, if you like arena gigs. Charlie keeps the beat going and Keef pulls out all the riffs and Bill and Mick Taylor turn up (but on the other hand so does Eric Clapton, and on one night Florence Welch sang on Gimme Shelter- gimme shelter indeed), but on this brief clip at The Guardian they sound a bit ropey to these ears and the problem is Mick. He looks absurd- I know he's 69 but that hat is awful and the jacket worse. Looks like he got them in the sale in Top Man. Worse still his vocals sound terrible. Someone said he sounds 'strident'. Depends on your definition of strident I suppose.
Keeping a band going for fifty years is an achievement- hats off for that. Their early records marrying delta blues with Deptford are great, their run of 7" singles from 1964-68 is superb and there are four albums in the 1969-1972 span that are crackers. Hats off again. They can't keep going forever can they- ten years, maybe less, and they'll be gone and we'll probably miss them. But we'll be missing what they were really, not what they are (unless you went to the O2 gigs, in which case you'll say they were brilliant. And maybe they were).
I don't think I've heard anything by The Stepkids, three Americans who play psychedelic soul and whose album last year apparently made the end of year lists in Mojo and Spin- but this Justin Robertson remix of their song Suburban Dream is an slinky electronic treat.
I am still trying to pin down the nightclub in Preston (Popcorn at Roper Hall) who have doorstaff who act completely unreasonably just because they can and who also have a cloakroom for your coat and scarf but then allow said coat and scarf to be stolen from it. What do you reckon my chances of getting anything out of them are? Pretty fucking slim I reckon. Twats.
Edit: I stand corrected. The manager has actually apologised to me and we settled on £80. I'd still rather have the coat and scarf but musn't grumble etc
I can't find anything this morning that sounds any better than this- Del Shannon's 1965 single Keep Searchin' (We'll Follow the Sun). Great singing, tinny production (that's a compliment), foot stomping drums on the chorus and a bittersweet vibe throughout.
It's been a while since I posted any Weatherall mixes so here's two recent ones.
Weatherall and Sean Johnston doing their ALFOS thing, two hours of slow-mo, arms in the air action from Belfast here.
This one is in advance of him appearing at The Warehouse Project, only an hour long but good stuff all the same- includes his own remix of Le Carousel and Villalobos' remix of Lee Scratch Perry.
If I ignore this hangover maybe it'll go away.
That isn't going to work.
Something nice and soothing- a remix of a song off Cat Power's Sun album from a couple of months back, by Nicolas Jaar. A church organ and Chan Marshall singing sounding like you're outside the church. Lovely. And quite seasonal as we enter December.
It's Friday night and I'm off to a works do/disco. Always difficult affairs aren't they- the combination of alcohol, people you work with and like, people you work with and tolerate, and people you work with who can drive you up the wall. Add in some awful music from a small club dj and you've got an evening made for disaster. Then there's the dress code- some people completely over the top in celebrity-reality TV show dog's dinner and some people looking like they've popped in on the way back from B and Q on a Sunday afternoon. On the other hand I can't remember the last time I went out on a Friday night so let's make the best of it eh?
So, like Vic Gallon in 1956, I'm Gone. This record features a very young rockabilly legend Dean Goffey on lead guitar and a whole heap of reverb.
No time for psychological romance? What's up with you man? Not that I'm sure what psychological romance is.
Word Up by Cameo is an absurdly good record. That codpiece always gets mentioned which reduces the record a little and turns it into an 80s novelty when it's anything but. Word Up is a funky, dirty, slapbass monster that can still rock a dancefloor today.
Meanwhile John Steinbeck contemplates psychological romance, from his armchair, sometime in the 1930s.
While I'm here, hello to readers in Haiti! One of the stats Blogger gives me is that it shows where readers come from- usually and mainly the UK and the US followed by various European countries and Canada. This week Haitian Bagging Area readers number forty- or one reader reading on forty different occasions. On some combination. This boggles my mind slightly- that a person or people in Haiti read my witterings, written in my room in M33.
A free treat from Public Service Broadcasting at the end of their current tour- latest single Everest (full of public information film samples about climbing on the roof of the world), remixed Balearic style by The Centaurs, bassline to the fore and some atmospheric synths and bleeps. Seven and a half minutes of ice pick and crampon joy. It's at Soundcloud (free download).
More retro rock from North America- this time from California's Allah Las, who couldn't sound more 1965 Stones/Byrds if they tried. Usually bands have to come from late 80s/early 90s Liverpool to sound this much mid-60s. Folk-rock guitars, harmonies, sunshine and Nuggets, and reverb turned up to ten. It's very well done. Is it any good? I really can't tell at the moment.
Ok, I know that that's the Hooded Claw with Penelope Pitstop and not the Canadian indie-surf/Tijuana brass, guitar twanglers Hooded Fang, but it's close enough.
Hooded Fang's Tosta Mista album could be one of this year's most enjoyable listens- it's short and to the point, full of bright and breezy 60s hooks, 80s indie-punk lo-fi spirit and upbeat despite mostly being about a break-up. I like it- its got charm and a bit of charm goes a long way. And that's what counts as a review here today.
The Hooded Claw had neither a hood nor a claw and was the alter-ego of Penelope's guardian Sylvester Sneekly who tried to kill her to grab her fortune... it's a cheap cartoon. Who cares?
Westworld's Sonic Boom Boy was in the music round of the pub quiz recently and sent at least two of us on a discussion of the dress sense and attractiveness of singer Elizabeth Westwood (and the merits of the song). Westworld mixed up 50s rockabilly and comics with beatboxes and sequenced stuff, not too far from early BAD, just a bit poppier. Westworld also had in their ranks Derwood, a former member of Generation X making a bid for pop glory. This was the remix from the B-side of the 12" single-
A genuine hit single (number 11 in 1987), this was the TOTP appearance-
Without getting all TV talking head clipshow about it, our kids just don't have the benefit of seeing bands play Top Of The Pops, watching the good stuff shine amid all the shite.
It's been reported that Joe Maher of Flowered Up has died. Joe was guitarist and younger brother of singer Liam Maher (who died in 2009). Flowered Up left behind a small but brightly coloured, e-fuelled back catalogue including this cover version of a Right Said Fred song (done for a Heavenly Records ep) which I've always liked. RIP Joe.
My Star was Ian Brown's first solo single and I think maybe his best solo moment- space race samples ('God speed John Glenn'), driving bass, some good guitar and a Brown lyric about superpower colonisation of space. He should have done more of this sort of stuff.
While we're on the subject of monkeys, a report last week said that psychologists reckon chimps and other great apes have a mid-life crisis- they become lethargic, their sense of well-being suffers, they start fancying younger apes. Which would suggest that a mid-life crisis is due to hormones or something wouldn't it? Surely apes don't have a sense of reaching mid-life and having achieved nothing or an awareness that they've passed the midway point. Like us.
I have been reminded twice about Adlestrop recently. First time was sitting in a cafe after I.T. marched at the Remembrance Day parade in Sale and leafing through the magazine of a Sunday paper I don't normally read there was an article on the poem, alongside some First World War poetry. Adlestrop was by Edward Thomas, a poet who volunteered for service (despite being too old) and was killed in 1917. The gist of the article was that Adlestrop is a war poem that does not mention the war. I read it in the cafe and despite all the cafe hubbub and noise and the aftermath of the parade and I.T.'s part in it, for a minute or so there was only me and the poem. I don't recall reading it since studying Thomas during 6th form.
By happy coincidence Davy H provided a link a day or two ago to a Gone West mix he did at Mixcloud, half an hour of pastoral music with some poetry kicking off with, yup, Richard Burton reading Adlestrop and then on to tracks from Chicane, Led Zeppelin, XTC, Villagers and Orbital and back to the poetry with TS Eliot. It's a really well put together mix and I thoroughly recommend it.
Yes, I remember Adlestrop -- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop -- only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Adlestrop (read by Richard Burton)
