Dr And Spaceman

Dr John, the Night Tripper, released Gris Gris back in 1968, still the spookiest New Orleans, gumbo voodoo rock album ever. Not rock music at all really, more a bad but funky r'n'b trip. Walk On Gilded Splinters is in a field of it's own. He's got a new album out called Locked Down, recorded with The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, which I haven't got but am tempted by come payday. Which is today. Hurrah!

This song Gris Gris was given away on an NME cd in the late 90s, remixed by another psychedelic explorer J Spaceman of Spiritualized (who also have a new album out, which I don't have but am tempted by). I'm sure I've got the cd somewhere but couldn't find it. I found the remix at ireallylikemusic and I hope the original poster doesn't mind me re-presenting it.

Gris Gris (J Spaceman Mix)

If I Can Shoot Rabbits

There aren't very many number one songs about the Spanish Civil War.

There's a copy of this poster in the Manchester Peoples' History Museum, worth a visit if you're kicking your heels this weekend and in the North West of England.

I've never shot a rabbit incidentally.

If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

Acid Brass And (Man Ray)

One more Man Ray portrait, this time of poet and celebrity fascist Ezra Pound, looking as cool as a cucumber while contemplating a move to Italy and the policies of Mussolini. Possibly. To be fair, Ezra did say he regretted his pro-fascist words and actions later in life. Spending several weeks locked in a cage by US forces at the end of World War Two didn't help his mental state either.

Some unrelated dance music (or dance music inspired music) from Jeremy Deller's acid brass album from ages ago. Here the Williams Fairey Brass Band tackle techno classic Strings Of Life, Derrick May's Rhythim Is Rhythim masterpiece.

Strings Of Life

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 56

Some modern rockabilly tonight from Justin Townes Earle, who's made four albums of acoustic based Americana. The latest one, Nothing's Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now, expands a bit with a little bit of Memphis soul here, some horns there, a bit of fiddle in the middle, and this song which is a good stab at old time rockabilly. And he looks the part.

I'm in the snug. Pint anyone?

Baby's Got A Bad Idea

Repetitive Beats 2 (And Man Ray)

Also from the Repetitive Beats remixes e.p. came this offering from The Lords Of Afford (Weatherall and Dave Hedger). From the techno end of Weatherall's output. They don't call 'em repetitive beats for nothing.

Repetitive Beats (Wasteland Britain- Lords Of Afford)

Today's Man Ray portrait is celebrated Catalan sculptor and painter Joan Miro, sporting a haircut that might have got him sent home from school until it grew out a bit.

My monthly Boxnet bandwidth is now over limit so I've sneaked back to mediafire for the next couple of days.

Repetitive Beats (And Man Ray)

In 1994 the Conservative government attempted to crack down on rave culture by bringing in a piece of legislation making it illegal to hold a gathering of a people listening to music characterised by repetitive beats. That's right- they were looking to outlaw drum patterns when played in public. This led to various protests including a pair of e.p.s by a collective called Retribution (The Drum Club and Steve Hillage mainly, with Sabrettes' Nina Walsh). The track- called Repetitive Beats obviously, released on Sabrettes - was then remixed by a variety of repetitive beat offenders, including Andrew Weatherall, Adrian Sherwood and On U Sound, Secret Knowledge, and Primal Scream (who turned in a somewhat lazy, drug-rock cover version of The Clash's Know Your Rights). Adrian Sherwood's dubbed up remix here features the talents of vocalists Little Axe and Bim Sherman and is probably the pick of the bunch.

Repetitive Beats (Mind And Movement On U Sound)

Man Ray picture- Lee Miller, photographed here in 1930s Paris, who led an extraordinary life. Lee moved from the US to Paris, having modelled for Vogue in the early 20s, becoming a photographer after inventing solarisation with Man Ray (by accident), leaving him to become a fine art and fashion photographer and then becoming Vogue's European war correspondent during World War II, accompanying the US army across France and into Germany after D-Day. She was the only female photographer at the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald. She also found time before the war to hang about with Picasso and Jean Cocteau. Not your average CV.

Boxnet bandwidth was at 95% last night so will shortly be exceeded I reckon. Get you d/ls quick if you want them.

Jah Wobble (And Man Ray)

We love the bass here at Bagging Area Towers and never moreso than when being played by Jah Wobble. After a spell out of the music industry (partly spent giving gnomic announcements to commuters on the London Underground's tannoy system) Jah came back with post-acid house outfit, The Invaders Of The Heart, resulting in the epic Visions Of You single and then in 1994 Becoming More Like God. What you have here is Secret Knowledge's remix which clocks in at a nifty fourteen minutes and one second. A 12" single where Kris Needs redefines expansive and epic. Hope it doesn't wipe out the rest of my Boxnet bandwidth for this month.

Today's Man Ray portrait is of another American lost in Paris, painter Karin Van Leyden. Well, you didn't want a picture of Jah did you? Or Kris Needs?

Becoming More Like God (Secret Knowledge To Hell And Back Mix)

The 14th Minute (And Man Ray)

CTel at Acid Ted blog is having a month off, and having posted several thousand dance music posts in the last few years who can blame him? Since exhausting the A-Z of his record collection he has mainly focused on new dance music for the last two years, often posting several times a day. I discovered this through him- The 14th Minute, who make upbeat disco-house, not big room, pump-yer-fist stuff, just uncomplicated, smiley-face dance music. Lovely.

Spoken (Original Mix)

In a completely unrelated way I've been into the photography of Man Ray recently, who more-or-less invented modern photography as an artform, though he denied that photography was art. Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921 and was on the fringes of the surrealist and Dada movements, and hung out with most of the 20s and 30s European movers and shakers. He invented the process of solarization and spent the 1920s creating surrealist photography and taking striking portraits of the great and good, the beautiful and the damned, including the one above of model and muse Nusch Eluard. I might put some more Man Ray portraits up to accompany posts- they beat some of the band pictures I use hands down (such as yesterday's Lemonheads shot).

Confetti

I've not followed the career of Lemonhead Evan Dando very closely. In the late 80s I had Lick on vinyl (one ace song that starts 'Here I am outside your house at 8 am', don't remember the name of it now and no longer have the record). I quite liked some of the early 90s stuff but never bought any apart from the odd single. He lost it publicly several times, claiming he had written a song called Purple Parallelogram with Noel Gallagher and a dalliance with Courtney Love. He probably needs some kind of award for surviving both. This song, Confetti, is a perfectly serviceable piece of early 90s indie-rock. It says it's a remix but I'm guessing this means it was mixed again for the single release rather than remixed as many other records were at that time.

Confetti (Remix)

Guess I'm Dumb

There's something going on with blogger at the moment, things don't work properly- the post scheduling function isn't working, and the line breaks don't break, hence the song link is right next to the end of the last sentence and looks messy; and they've redesigned the dashboard. Unless it's my gas powered computer. Or me. Glen Campbell, immaculate of dress and coiffeur, played and sang this Brian Wilson song in 1965. You'll love it. Sunday morning music.

Guess I'm Dumb

Carry That Weight

The Band's drummer, songwriter, co-singer and multi-instrumentalist Levon Helm died on Friday (he's in the centre in the picture). In 1968 The Band caused almost every rock musician you can think of to give up psychedelia and go stripped down and rural. They looked like they came from 'the old, weird America'.

The Weight

Bus Pass For Osterberg

He's a street walkin' cheetah with a heart full of napalm, the runaway son, the world's forgotten boy, only five foot one with a hard-assed pair of shoulders, the chairman of the bored, the passenger who sees the city's ripped backside, your dog, with a baby who's turned blue, he's gonna have real cool time, he's got a TV eye, down on the street, in the funhouse, in Kill City, on a death trip with a lust for life, he's looking for one new value, but nothing comes his way. He's 65 today. Happy birthday Iggy.

Search And Destroy (in mono)

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 55

Johnny Cash reckoned Carl Perkins was the King of rockabilly and who are we to disagree with the Man In Black. In this song, a demo recorded for Sun Records, Carl sings of an item of clothing I do not own. And am unlikely to, despite their availability online (see below).

Pink Pedal Pushers

In The Cool Of The Evening

This lovely Dusty Springfield song has been rotating in my head recently. Sometimes I imagine it segueing into Billy Fury's Wondrous Place, just after the bit where there's the pause.

That was interesting wasn't it.

Spooky

Standing At The Sky's Edge

A teaser for Bagging Area's favourite 50s throwback Richard Hawley, where a dollop of deep, rich psychedelia gets added to the pot. Album out May 7th, a single Leave Your Body Behind out Monday (also at Youtube). Another Sheffield reference too.

City Girl

A return to recent postee Kevin Shields and a song from the soundtrack of Lost In Translation (which came out in 2003. It really doesn't seem that long ago). Lost In Translation starred Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray as a pair of Americans marooned in Tokyo. The soundtrack was pretty good, featuring two other Shields songs, Death In Vegas, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Phoenix, Air and Squarepusher. This song is full of overdriven and distorted guitar, sleepy vocals and the sense of waking up very slowly, disorientated, while an amp overloads in a nearby room.

City Girl

Book Of Version

As an afterword for A.N., this is the dub version from the B-side of The Heptones wondrous Book Of Rules, posted yesterday. Get hold of that bass.

Book Of Rules Version

NB. Ripped at a piss poor rate of 128 so you may need to adjust your volume control in the upwards direction.

Common People Like You And Me, We'll Be Builders For Eternity

I saw an old friend over the weekend and we sat up late listening to records and talking nonsense. We finished with this song, Book Of Rules by The Heptones from 1973. I've posted it before but said I'd put it up again for my mate A.N. so here it is.

If you don't like this, there is no hope for you- glorious vocal reggae, soaring chords and voices, a song that is far better than can ever be described.

Book Of Rules

I've Got This Burning, Burning, Yearning

Soft Cell's 1981 hit Tainted Love has so many hooks- that beat, Marc Almond's delivery, its marriage of the new (electro-pop) and the old (Northern Soul), those handclaps, and all the sleaze that went with their image. A massive hit and a groundbreaking record that sold in millions. Those people that bought it on 12" got an added treat- an eight minute plus version with a hissing drum machine segueway and a drop-dead cover of The Supremes hit Where Did Our Love Go? to go with the Gloria Jones cover of the 7". Utter brilliance.

Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go?

She Said 'Love Is Dead'

A cheery love song for Sunday from London 80s band The Godfathers. Love Is Dead was a single from the Birth, School, Work, Death album. Good but not exactly earth-shattering. They reformed a few years back.

Love Is Dead

Wild Eyed

Half a year ago ago I wrote this piece about the Andrew Weatherall remix of the Horrors. Six months later you can get the instrumental remix here (no vocal remix yet I'm afraid).

Those of you who haven't seen this should pre-order the Andrew Weatherall Masterpiece 3 cd set as soon as possible, out April the 23rd. It looks very exciting.

Also, if you go to Soma Records you can download his remix of Pablo's Stratus for a quid. I posted the original ages ago. The remix is very good dub disco.

Edit; just realised The Horrors remix cuts out before the end. Soz, as my daughter says.

Liquid Swords

I don't post much hip-hop (I'm sure I've typed that line every time I've posted some hip-hop). 1995 was around the time I drifted away from hip-hop and to be honest I never really got into the whole Wu Tang thing. This track was a good 'un though, from GZA's 1995 solo album Liquid Swords. This starts with a spooky sample from a Japanese horror film and then moves seamlessly into very funky hip-hop track, Wu Tang's RZA on production, and GZA's superb, ahem, flow. Just typing that makes me feel like a middle aged white man.

Liquid Swords

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 54

Back in the rockabilly groove after a week or two's absence, here's Hasil Adkins who put rockabilly, country, blues and Appalachian bluegrass into a bucket and shook 'em around. Wild, untamed, and raw. He also had a thing about chickens.

Chicken Shake

The Return Of Clash Cover Versions

This song was posted over at The Vinyl Villain recently, among a load of others from a cd of Clash covers that came in 2 volumes with Uncut magazine. I hadn't heard this one and like it so I thought I'd re-present it here for those of you who missed it at TVV. Mr. David Viner, London based folky/rootsy artist and dog-thrower, turns Should I Stay Or Should I Go into an acoustic C'n'W tinged tune.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go

Living Room

Apparently the remastered versions of My Bloody Valentine's albums are imminent. At least four years after they were first mentioned I think I'll believe it when I can actually pick up physical versions in a record shop. My vinyl copy of Loveless sounds pretty good but the cd versions of Loveless and Isn't Anything don't sound so good, so while I'm not always a fan of re-mastering maybe the MBV stuff will benefit from Kevin Shields tinkering and twiddling. There's also a cd gathering the e.p.s, B-sides and extra tracks which should be good. If it exists outside record company promo releases.

Kevin Shields has done numerous remixes. I've posted some of them. Here he remixes David Holmes and his track Living Room, first available on the David Holmes 'best of' from a couple of years back. Living Room was on Holmes' 2000 lp Bow Down To The Exit Sign, which I loved back then and looking at it now, reads like 2000 in a capsule- guest appearances from Bobby Gillespie, Martina Topley-Bird and Jon Spencer, found-sound clips from the streets of New York, funky instrumentals (69 Police), fuzzed-up Stooges style punk, and a mixed up stew of hip-hop, soul, rock and funk and little of the techno he made his name with. It's good and very of it's time. This remix, as you'd expect, is noisy.

Living Room (Kevin Shields remix)

Cool And Deadly

I heard this while in London this week and it sounded as good as the day I first heard it twenty one years ago. If not better. In my mind St Etienne are one of the sounds of London. Here, with original vocalist Moira Lambert (above, the only picture I could find of her, someone from the video pictured), they get remixed by Bagging Area patron Andrew Weatherall. Dub splendour. Cool and deadly.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Dub Mix In Two Halves by Andrew Weatherall)

You Wish

2012 is looking good for music. There have been a load of good songs released this year already, even though it makes no real sense to judge music based upon it being put out between January 1st and December 31st of any calendar year. This is good regardless- Trailer Trash Tracys have saddled themselves with an awful name but have recorded an interesting lp with at least one stand out song. You Wish You Were Red has a great JAMC/Chris Isaac descending guitar riff, some atmospherics and a narcotic female vocal. Give it a listen. The rest of the album's a mix of shoegazing, kaleidoscopic pop, analogue gubbins and those vocals- patchy but never uninteresting.

You Wish You Were Red

I Don't Think Hank Done It This Way

This is brilliant piece of outlaw country from Waylon Jennings, not a genre I usually dip too far into. Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? is a gimlet-eyed view of touring and 'making it', coupled with some short shrift to the Nashville country establishment and their comparisons with Hank Williams, country music's first bad-boy, outlaw superstar. If you only need one Waylon Jennings song on your hard-drive, how about this one?

Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?

Disco Umpty Number Six

Some unreleased Andrew Weatherall from a couple of years back for you on this bank holiday Monday. Disco Umpty Number 6 is one of those funky seven minute dub-disco tunes with a super-fat bassline that he can probably produce at the drop of a hat. An Edwardian hat. This mp3 was from a Weatherall 6 Mix show, ripped by Moggieboy from the dearly departed Ripped In Glasgow blog and I'd forgotten about it until it popped up on the headphones the other day. Turn it up and move.

Disco Umpty Number 6

For those of you of a Weatherall bent there's a Soundcloud page here with two minute clips of a load of his recent remixes, some as yet unreleased.

We are driving to London today to see Mrs Swiss's best friend who's just turned 40, away for a couple of days. Because I'm good to you (and because I'm borderline obsessive; I mean who's making me do a post every day? No-one, I'm doing this to myself) I've set up some posts for while we're away.

Shakedown 1979

I was doing some ironing an hour or two ago while listening to BBC 6 through the TV (I know what you're thinking; take it from me, the fun never stops round here). Karl Hyde of Underworld was playing a diverse and eclectic mix of songs that inspire him, one of which was 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins. Now, I never liked The Smashing Pumpkins- grunge by numbers with bad hair, and Billy Corgan always seemed like such a dick. How, incidentally, did he end up playing with New Order? But 1979 was one very cool song, ace drum intro, great guitars, wistful vocal. Love it. I've got their Greatest Hits, bought in 2001 (2001? Jeez!), pre-internet days for me when I used to buy cds for the odd song. I bought it solely for 1979 but hoping there'd be something else on it as good.

There wasn't.

1979

Sea Shanty

The ever-reliable Occultation Recordings (home to ex-Factory band The Distractions, ex-Fall Martin Bramah's Factory Star and The Wild Swans) sent this to me a week ago- the debut album from New Zealand band Opposite Sex. This song should be enough to get you hooked, but the whole album's well worth a punt. Sea Shanty is a sing-song but off-beat tune with some chiming guitar and woozy brass that does the ear worm trick easily. There's some post-punk here (Raincoats, Mekons) and some lo-fi and some strange and off-kilter pop. Marc Riley likes it and so do I. And so will you.

Sea Shanty

Happy Easter.

Be Brave

I had a weird dream last night that featured some of you lot (at least dream versions of you, I don't know what most of you look like). Various bloggers had met up in a Scottish city. I've got a vague feeling it was Dundee, a place I've never been and know nothing about apart from there's a cake named after it and the two football grounds are very close together. We all took part in some music-based event on a Saturday night and the following morning played an 11-a-side game against a football team, in which I didn't play very well (Drew, Davy and Ctel pointed this out to me repeatedly). The Vinyl Villain JC (whose face is on his blogsite but had grown curly hair) sweated profusely afterwards in a pub. Then I woke up.

This song came out on 10" vinyl last year by Tropic Of Cancer. Described as dark ambient, drone, industrial and metal (!?) this is the soundtrack to a strange dream- repetitive, dark grey, doom laden disco. Unsettling and really very good.

Be Brave

Shake Your Hips

In the end I dashed out to see Wilko Johnson last night. It was pretty good- stripped down rhythm and blues, telecaster action, Norman Watt-Roy on bass (proving he can really play), some great songs. A little too much 'MojoUncut rock bloke' going on at times with some fiddly-diddly bits but I'm glad I went. And he did that shooting across the stage while machine gunning the audience with his guitar thing.

The blues has a long tail doesn't it? Not sure it shows much in the charts at the moment but it slithers on from the Mississippi Delta to Canvey Island to the Medway via elsewhere. It might die out in the next twenty years in terms of record sales and public profile but it's done pretty well. Some Slim Harpo for you and the slinky-as-anything Shake Your Hips.

Shake Your Hips

Friday Night Is... Wilko Johnson Is Playing In Sale Tonight Night

And I'm not going.

We've just stepped through the door fresh from barreling down the A19 and the A1(M) and the M62, with six washing machine loads to sort and all the rest. So while the guitarist from Dr Feelgood (song from way back in 1975 down below) is playing just a fifteen minute walk from my front door, I don't think I'l be there. Probably sold out anyway.

Sale's music venue is The Waterside, a small arts theatre. In the past I've either been away when there's a rare appearance by anyone decent (The Earlies) or haven't heard about it til the gig's passed (Roddy Frame, Imelda May) due to their crap publicity department or couldn't be arsed (Lloyd Cole). So... where's my coat?

Back In the Night

Caravan Update By Phone

A caravan in North East England in early April is surely one of the coldest places in the country. Last night the walls were shaking. This morning we had sleet. Now the sun is shining but there's a bitter northeasterly wind that flips the door open. We lost 2 of the 5 TV channels. Still, a change is as good as a rest eh?
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