Regular visitors to these shores will not be in the least bit surpised about the subject of this morning’s post.
For last Sunday, the news that many of us have been expecting for some time came through:
Although he’s a musician I’ve admired for many years now, someone whose music I have tried to foist upon as many people as possible over the years, including you lot (a friend, who had already welcomed Billy Bragg into his life at my recommendation, balked at the idea of letting Kris in too: “What? That bloke from Blade? Him???” he said) I was suprised at the out-pouring of grief on social media. I was even more suprised that his passing made the 6 o’clock news on the BBC the following day.
But I wouldn’t be in the least bit suprised if Dad was waiting at the Pearly Gates to welcome him in to heaven and to remind him of the words to Sunday Morning Coming Down one more time, and when I say that I’m including the existence of heaven too, for that’s where they’ll be.
Me? I’ll let the songs do the talking today, and place on record my thanks to KK for the good times.
And here he is, seemingly having a lot of fun with Willie Nelson, Jamey Johnson and Snoop Dogg, who may seem like a surprise collaboator, until you consider the title of the song:
Welcome one, welcome to the other one and anyone else who happens to wander into our little Friday Night World full of Friday Night Music to make your Friday Night the best night of the week.
Unless, of course, you’ve got something better to do? Like, oh I dunno, go out somewhere?
Nope, me neither.
So what’s on the menu this week? Oh, just the usual mish-mash of indie, pop, indie pop, Northern Soul, disco, a double-helping of Johnny Marr, a tune by a band that coincidentally featured over at JC’s legendary place as part of the ongoing ICA series recently (that’s Imaginary Compilation Album to the uninitiated) and I was mightily relieved, having already put this mix together, to find my choice didn’t make the cut over there. Read into that whatever you like about my choices. And maybe go check out the post at JC’s place for yourself), rock and what I’m going to loosely describe as 70s South London pub rock, fully aware that’s not a very accurate desciption.
Yes, some of these songs have featured in previous mixes, but that doesn’t mean I’m running out of tunes to post, nosireebob, it just means that I’ve stopped worrying about duplication these days and don’t bother checking that anymore (although, I may check it’s not appeared too recently).
I’m not sure what led me, back in 2006, to buy Rabbit Fur Coat by Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins.
I’d love to say it was because I was a massive fan of Rilo Kiley, Lewis’s former band, but back then they hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my radar.
If I’m honest, it was probably one of two things (or possibly a combination of both): it was cheap, and it had a cover version of The Travelling Wilbury’s Handle With Care on it.
I’ve posted that before, so here’s something else from it, a song which makes me very happy I parted with some of my hard-earned cash on a whim way back when:
I’ve played this four or five times today, at increasing levels of volume. The power of music to make me think of – and miss – someone never ceases to amaze.
It’s been a bit of a busy week here at Dubious Towers.
Not only has there been a week of celebrating the blog’s 11th and my 55th birthdays, I’ve also managed to squeeze in a trip to the office, a couple of days visiting my Mum, and a job interview (following which they kindly told me, a day earlier than promised, i.e. on my birthday, that I wasn’t wanted). I’d already decided I wasn’t going to accept the job if offered anyway, but still..I mean, do I look bovvered? (out-dated and over-used popular culture reference incoming)
I mention all of this as an explanation as to why this introduction is so brief. Which it is. I mean: look how brief it is.
As of today, I can no longer claim to be in my early 50s.
Today, I move up a category when entering my age on official forms.
Today, I turn 55.
One thing which hasn’t changed, though, is the record that was at #1 in the UK charts on the day I was born, and so, as is traditional around these parts, here it is:
But the fun doesn’t stop there, oh no. A few years ago, I started looking at what records had been #1 on my birthday each year, with mixed, but over all pretty cool results so far: Freda Payne’s Band of Gold, The Tams’ Hey Girl, Don’t Bother Me, and the fly in the ointment: David Cassidy’s How Can I Be Sure have all featured here so far.
I was incapacitated this time last year due to a flare up of my rheumatoid arthiritis, so I owe you a year. Here’s what was #1 on my birthday in 1973:
…which although I’ve never seen the original show, nor the recent reboot neither, and accept this is a bit naff, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for it.
And as for 1974? Well, it was this little…erm…belter:
I’ll be honest, not one of my favourite records. I’ve never really gotten into Kung Fu and the martial arts; I’ve never seen any of Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan’s movies, although as a kid I loved Monkey and Hong Kong Phooey (in case you were wondering what his image was doing at the top of this post).
Anyway, here’s a cover version of that one, performed by the ever-wonderful Robyn Hitchcock, and lifted from the Anti-Poll Tax indie compilation Alvin Lives (in Leeds):
It didn’t take long for the Labour government to be caught up in a sleaze/freebies scandal, did it?
Of course the current discourse about perks PM Sir Kier Starmer has received since taking office is being led by a right-wing media who didn’t seem in the least bit bothered when Boris was accepting millions of pounds to do out his flat, but still, it’s not a good look.
Starmer has accepted donations to clothe him and his wife, along with having a box at the Emirates stadium, which he says his security detail advised him to accept so that keeping him safe on a Saturday afternoon could be more easily achieved.
I’m not sure I buy that, but what I would say is this: leave him alone. When he’s safely ensconced in that box, he’s having to watch Arsenal. Hasn’t he suffered enough already?
Last year, I managed to miss the 10th anniversary of my first ever post, but today is the 11th anniversary of that *coughs* monumental, earth-shattering event.
OK, so, the second post didn’t emerge until almost a year later (September 11th 2014 – I sure can pick a date!), so it seems appropriate to pause for a moment, reassess and re-evaluate.
When I started writing this place, I had no expectations as to how long it would last. Also, if you’ve ever taken the time to read the Introduction, Explanation, Justification page which lurks somewhere on here. I wrote this as my mission statement:
“…you know that bit [in High Fidelity] when the recently dumped John Cusack decides to rearrange his vinyl collection into chronological order, the chronology being when he bought them, not when they were released, so that each choice would prompt a memory? Well, suddenly that seemed like rather a fun idea. And that’s why I’m here….“
For those of you unfamiliar with either the book or the film, High Fidelity is the story of Rob Fleming (played by John Cusack in the film), owner of a record store, who splits up with his girlfriend and then goes through a bit of a midlife crisis, meeting up with other ex-girlfriends in effort to establish whether it was a good thing they split or not. It’s a lot funnier than I’ve just made that sound. Anyway, if you’ve encountered neither (and the fact you’re here tells me you’ve probably read/seen one of them), then go read the book. The book is better than the film. The film is really good though, but that’s the way it works, isn’t it, that’s the hierarchy: books are better than films, records are better than books, books about music that were made into films and have a decent soundtrack trumps the lot.
“So, what we have here is a musical journey” I continued way back when,”from boy to man, to slightly older man, to miserable old bugger. I plan to be as honest as possible, to introduce you to some stuff you’ve never heard before, or reintroduce you to some things you’ve forgotten about (probably with good reason), and to have some laughs along the way.” .
As you will have gathered, just as Rob in both the film and book does, I soon realised what an impossible task I’d made for myself, so that aspect was swiftly dropped, and the blog morphed into a sort of diary, with recollections, anecdotes and stories lobbed in to pad it out.
What was that? What am I most proud of?
Well, The Chain was an obvious highlight, and yes I am still thinking about bringing it back. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time though, haven’t I?
The ongoing Sunday Morning Coming Down series, which people have told me introduced them to Country records which they love, having previously dismissed the genre as a load of old guys pretending to be cowboys.
The also-ongoing Friday Night Music Club series, which reached Volume 72 last night (and as I often wang on, there’s actually more than that, 95 as it stands, if you include all of the Christmas/Halloween/Easter special editions, and remember that the first six editions were up to five hours long, until I took on board some advice from Swiss Adam over at Bagging Area: “I enjoy doing long mixes too but sometimes wonder whether people have the time to commit to listening tothem” which is a very polite way of saying: nobody can be arsed with listening to these. So I split them all down to about an hour long mixes instead. Except Vol 3, which I hated and has forever been erased from everywhere, unless anyone actually downloaded it, which I very much doubt).
But in particular, I was really proud of the pieces I wrote when my best friend and honorary little brother Llŷr passed away, and the much more recent one when I lost my father. I revisit both posts often, it feels like I’m checking in with both of them, and I’m always blown away when I read the comments left on each.
Which leads me to mention the awesome people I’ve come into contact with since I started writing this. To any of you who have left a comment, liked a post or emailed me (well, not quite all of you; the bigots I either allowed through so I could provide a pithy response to put them back in their box, or those that I blocked because I did not want this place to be linked to the kind of pathetic bile they were spouting, they can fuck right off and then fuck off some more), but all the rest of you, thank you. Every message was appreciated.
Anyway, enough self-back-slapping. Time for a tune.
I figured I should post something by one of my favourite acts, but which one? Worry not, I didn’t land on Quo, but rather this, which I picked up on CD many years ago, a Peel Session complilation called New Season (Peel Sessions 1983-1991). A cursory scan of the acts featured will tell why I parted with some of my hard-scrounged cash back in 1991:
Ah. Since they were the subject of the only ‘take down’ notice I’ve ever received, and as Teenage Fanclub reference them on The Concept, the opening track on their flawless Bandwagonesque album, why should I deprive you all of a much more appropriate tune?
Not sure what she’s so happy about, for tonight’s mix is not the most dance-friendly of mixes.
That’s not to say it’s not another belter, of course. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
So let’s run our finger down tonight’s menu, shall we? Well, we kick off with a most tempting suggestion from Teenage Fanclub to come on over and break some bread, we have a cover version by Nouvelle Vague (the music on which sounds suspiciously like Blur’s Country Sad Ballad Man to these ears), another Go Home Productions mash-up (despite me generally disliking the genre, but if you’ve been a regular around these parts for a while you’ll have heard my thoughts before, so I won’t go over them again), we have Alison Moyet sounding surprisingly un-Alison Moyet-like (that is, unless you were wise enough to invest in her 2017 album Other and if you haven’t then you should), then we veer from dark British rap from the hotbed of British rap that is Northampton to the relentlessly upbeat technicolour Outkast, a ridiculously dumb one from Goldie Lookin’ Chain, back to dark again courtesy of the wonderful RAYE before we wind up with something kinda beautiful from R.E.M., taking in tunes by (in no particular order) Stereolab, The Lemonheads, Nancy & Lee, Bowie, Kings of Leon, Neneh Cherry, AC/DC, Stealers Wheel and Foo Fighters along the way.
A History of Dubious Taste 