Youths Boogie

This fantastic compilation came out back in June- fifteen songs from when Jamaican dancehalls rocked to the sounds of US influenced r'n'b, just about to turn ska. On some of the songs the guitars are just beginning to get that ska-ska-ska in place. The rhythms clearly have that Jamaican skank but with the unmistakeable sound of Black American music coming through the radio, spreading to the sound systems and then getting shoved around a bit. Horns all over the show. Well worth a tenner of your hard earned (or a fiver if you d/l it at emusic or somewhere similar). This one is by Owen Gray.

Please Let Me Go

The Torch

This documentary was on BBC2 the other night, a very good look at the Northern Soul scene, plenty of people young and old flying the flag and, yes, keeping the faith.

Saturday Night Live

New Order live in Barcelona from 1984, audio only but what a great performance and superb sound quality straight from the mixing desk. It's also an almost perfect circa 84 setlist, including Your Silent Face, Lonesome Tonight, Ceremony, a rare appearance for Skullcrusher, Age Of Consent, Blue Monday and Everything's Gone Green. Here are the young men (and woman).

Audrey Two Hundred

Two people (Drew and my Nuremburg based brother) have pointed me towards this recently which I had seen but hadn't posted- and it turns out this is my two hundredth Andrew Weatherall related post (which accounts for about 10% of my output, ridiculous really). So sit back for eighteen minutes and watch a revealing interview with the man with the beard in his bunker, chatting, smoking and producing a linocut.

In two days Boxnet will be back and I can start putting some mp3s back up. I can''t be arsed faffing about with Mediafire this morning so it's video only.

Car Song

I'm foregoing the rockabilly tonight. I just got in a while back having spent an hour and a half standing on the hard shoulder of the M60 with a VW Polo that went kaput while joining it from the M61. I was towed home eventually and now have the hassle and cost of trying to get it diagnosed or fixed tomorrow. Bollocks to it.



This song is from 1995 by thieving magpies and indie heart throbs Elastica, in which they make cars sound a whole lot sexier than watching them from behind the barrier on the M60 is. As for the video, I have no idea.

Slowlene

A while back this caused a brief spike in internet traffic and Twitter buzz- Dolly Parton's Jolene slowed down from 45rpm to 33. It is really rather good.

Mediafire continues to cause problems- they don't send a message or anything, just slap a big letter C for Copyright Protected on the file at my end so it can't be downloaded. The Prisonaires last Friday and Wendy and Lisa got hit straight away but the Orb didn't. I don't know how they do it or what qualifies. I'm hoping this one might get through but can't guarantee it- Irma Thomas's Breakaway at 33, all bluesy and gravelly.

Breakaway (33rpm)

Audio Ammunition

I don't know if you're getting bored of all the Clashery round here and elsewhere (and you really shouldn't be, it's The Clash) but this has gone up on Youtube recently in five parts, one part for each album. Mick, Paul and Topper interviewed recently together and Joe from Don Lett's Westway To The World documentary back in the early 00s. Brought to you in association with Google Play I'm afraid ('give me Honda, give me Sony, so cheap and real phoney'). But that's the way of the world now isn't it.

Shackleton

Intrepid explorer Ernest Shackleton would possibly listen to this piece of sun-drenched, meaty, uplifting dance music from Simon Shackleton and think 'What the bloody blazes is this nonsense?' But after a few listens, sitting back on the deck of the Endevour with his crew, his pipe in hand and his docking station pumped right up, he'd be converted.



You can get an edit of it here for free.

William It Was Really Early Electrobeat

There isn't much information to go on with William Onyeabor. In the early 80s he recorded several albums of electro-Afrobeat which have recently been compiled and re-released (on Luaka Bop). It is the sunniest, funkiest, most groundbreaking Nigerian music I'm going to be posting this week. William doesn't talk about his music making past, presumably due to his conversion to Christianity. He also has been crowned a high chief in Enugu and lives as a successful businessman working on government contracts and running a flour mill. It says here.

Monday Mix

A lovely podcast mix thingy from, yup- no surprises here- Mr Weatherall. It's in a similar vein to the one from the Green Man last month- starts with The Pastels and Julian Cope and a lot of low key tomfoolery, has that remix of Moby and Wayne Coyne (song of the autumn round these parts), The Fall, some rock 'n' roll, some kosmische and some Afrobeat. Getting Monday off to an eclectic, left-of-centre, generally forward thinking start.

Tsugi Podcast 302 : Andrew Weatherall by Tsugi Mag on Mixcloud

When Your Garden's Over Droned

Free gift for Sunday anyone?
Paul Weller was done up by Justin Robertson and it was never released, so Justin's gone and put it on Soundcloud- drone dub remix it says. And that's what it is. Free download and all that.

Love, Rockets

Jaime Hernandez (see earlier) wrote and drew the legendary 80s comic strip Love And Rockets, full of edgy indie-punk girls, who sometimes hung around in their underwear and sometimes played in bands, and who you might have fancied if you were fifteen and they weren't two dimensional creations.

Love And Rockets were also a sometimes iffy pop goth band. I used to have something by them on the hard drive, but I don't anymore. So no Love And Rockets song.

I Had Dreams When I Was Your Age

Back to yesterday's postees Wendy and Lisa (as drawn by comic artist Jaime Hernandez, thus cleverly tying in with the post about comics earlier this week). Wendy and Lisa escaped from Prince's sticky clutches in 1987, fed up with the way The Revolution were changing (too male, too macho, not enough credit). Staring At The Sun is a piece of summer-y, slightly psychedelic pop that could only have been made in 1990- just listen to those drums- and it appeared on their Eroica album. If truth be told I prefer the remix from The Orb but this has a good groove, a nice chunky guitar riff and cracking vocals.

Staring At The Sun

I'll probably get shot down for this but I never cared too much for Prince- I don't dispute the man's way with a tune early on, Purple Rain and When Doves Cry are, y'know, good and I did like Sign Of the Times (the song), and Cream and Get Off are funky. I don't believe I own much by him other than a couple of 7" singles that I must have been given at some point and an album.

Edit- there's been some problems with Mediafire so here's the song on Youtube (which you could always rip yourself though I wouldn't condone such practices)

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 120

The Prisonaires' Just Walkin' In The Rain came out on Sun Records in 1953. An African American doo-wop group, the were all incarcerated in the Tennessee State Penitentiary when the song came out, for a variety of crimes, some not very pleasant indeed (two of them were doing 99 years apiece for murder). Sam Phillips heard them on the radio and arranged for them to be transported under armed guard to Sun Studios to record the song. It went on to sell 50, 000 copies. Following this they were allowed out on day release to perform on occasion, even singing at the State Governors mansion. Lead singer Johnny Bragg had been serving time for six counts of rape- one was later withdrawn and the other five had been pinned on him by a police force looking to clear up their books a bit. All five members are now deceased.

Cheer up! It's Friday!

Just Walkin' In The Rain

Spanish Castles

Listening to and posting that Orb remix of Lisa Stansfield at the start of the week (available on Aubrey's Excursions Two, which is full of great remixes of a wide variety of folk) led me back to the first Aubrey Mixes album- The Aubrey Mixes: The Ultraworld Excursions. It was released and deleted on the same day (December 14th 1991) and has six different mixes of Orb tracks from their golden period, all of which are worth your time. The cd version had a seventh track...

Spanish Castles In Space (Extended Youth Remix)

Some very bad blog management to report- I've exceeded my Boxnet bandwidth with a third of the month to go and 4 Shared suspended my account a while ago. I've gone back to Mediafire for the time being which caused some people a few problems last time. Let me know.

And there's this as well from the Aubrey Versions Two album, a remix of Wendy and Lisa- a stunning slice of blissed out, woozy dub pop. Earworm.

Clay

Goldfrapp's new album, Tales Of Us, is a bit of a grower. It is largely folk crossed with baroque with Alison's breathy vocals, ten songs all named after people. At times I'm finding it a bit one paced but the sumptuousness of the songs carries it through. Most of them leave you feeling a little sadder than when you started. This one is the album's closer and is as good as any of the rest. It starts off low key with picked guitar and voice and then builds, adding some strings and a little drama before coming to sudden stop.

Clay

I've Read It In Books

Nice aren't they? This is The Teardrop Explodes (co-written with The Bunnymen, when they all got on. Hated each other but got on).

Books (Zoo Records Version)

Another Perfect Life

I wasn't planning back-to-back Weatherall posts but this appeared yesterday and I thought you'd be interested. A curious coupling (tripling?) of people here- Moby and Wayne Coyne (The Flaming Lips) remixed by Andrew Weatherall. House piano, female wailing, some gospel, bouncy bassline and bubbling synths, robotic vocals, an all round '89-'90 vibe- it'll put a smile on your face for sure. It did on mine.

Comic Shop

I was up in the loft the other day, which is full of boxes of stuff that have now survived two house moves. Getting up and down there requires some precarious balancing on the top of a step ladder, even more risky when hauling boxes up and down. I brought down four large boxes of comics and a biggish box of cassettes. In the mid 80s I was a big comics fan. I started as a young kid reading 2000AD and then moved onto Marvel and DC. I decided the time had come to sell them, especially as money is tight, there's a few things I'm after at the moment and raising the money out selling things seemed the best way to do it. Going through my comics collection (all filed in alphabetical order by title and then in chronological order, many of them in indivdual plastic bags) was a real Proustian rush job. I recognised some of the covers straight away and got a bit of a shiver, confronted with a much, much younger me. This younger me stared back in the shape of a few photo albums that came down as well. Look at a picture of yourself aged 17 and then tell yourself you haven't aged. I pulled out a few comics that I thought I'd keep (for, erm, sentimental reasons) including the run of Daredevil comics illustrated by David Mazzucelli (pictures above) and written by Frank Miller, a few X-Men, the full set of original Watchmen, a handful of others. The rest have gone up on ebay. The two big boxes (several hundred comics, buyer collects etc) sold pretty quickly. A run of Alan Moore written Swamp Things went last night and a pile of 2000ADs (variable condition) that have got some interest. I suspect the big boxes have gone to  a dealer who will make more money out of them than I have but I'm not going to start attending comic fairs and conventions to sell them individually and the amount I've raised will buy, ooh, that Clash Sound System boxed set for instance and a bit more besides. Although part of me is sorry to see them go, the rational part of me says 'they've been in the loft for twenty years, you'll never read them again- let them go'.

I also found a pile of Deadline magazines- an attempt to marry comic strips, satire and acid house. Tank Girl was Deadline's most famous character but there are interviews with clubby-comic crossovers and cartoon strips of 'real' people wearing MA1 flying jackets and ripped 501s (some by Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz) with references to ecstasy. Strange days. I'm keeping these too.

The cassettes went up on ebay too- not all look like they'll sell but some Joy Division and New Order cassettes, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts and one or two others have gone for anywhere between £2 and £8.50. These are albums I've got several times, in multiple formats. I'm slightly bemused that people will pay for two decade old cassettes (a pretty poor way to listen to music, let's be honest).

Cut Copy, remixed by Audrey from a year or two ago.

Sun God (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Time To Make You Mine

Credit where it's due- I was reminded of this by reader and citizen of Salford Paul Bob Horrocks and it's a stunning way to start Sunday. Rochdale's Lisa Stansfield remixed by Battersea's The Orb- ten minutes of ambient soul with a large portion of dub, beautifully smooth, slinky and chunky. Also quotes from Pink Floyd.

Time To Make You Mine (In My Dreams Mix)

Saturday Night Live

The Clash live in Tokyo in 1982- fully embracing both much larger arenas and the Apocalypse Now! look. This gig lacks the ragged, close up, immediacy of the 1980 Paris one I posted two weeks ago but is still pretty tasty. Considering Topper would be ejected from the drum stool within the next year for heroin problems he's bang on the beat here. Joe is in full on front man mode and Mick works his way through the guitar handbook and volume control. Pearl Harbour (of And The Explosions and Mrs Simonon) pops up for a bash through Wanda Jackson's Fujiyama Mama, they finish with White Riot and everyone goes home happy.

You Gotta Believe

Explorer and pioneer Sir Ernest Shackleton, second left in the dark jumper, led the Endurance and its crew into the Antarctic in the winter of 1915. They were trapped by ice and lost the ship. Camping on the ice floe and in a twenty foot lifeboat they survived and were rescued in the August of 1916. Without a single man lost. That, reality TV show contestants, is a back story.

Explorer and pioneer Lovebug Starski began work in 1971 as a record boy and by 1978 was playing a key role in the nascent hip hop scene in New York djing and later producing and making records. he had a regular spot in the rooftop roller rink in Harlem during the 80s and made this record in 1983, which somewhat surprisingly was one of the key influences on Johnny Marr when he was recording How Soon Is Now? with The Smiths in 1984.

You Gotta Believe (12" Instrumental)

I'm not saying the two men's experiences were comparable. It just amuses me to put them together and I've got to do something to keep this whole thing blog thing interesting.

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 119

I couldn't find any Patrick Caulfield paintings that said rockabilly to me so I've settled for this picture of a rocking revivalist couple who I think I've used here before. Johnny Burnette and his Rock 'n' Roll Trio were the real deal. Enjoy your Friday night, what ever you're doing- long time coming this week somehow.

Lonesome Tears In My Eyes

Broken

Friday the 13th- I trust none of you put any store in superstition (it's bad luck to do so I think). Death In Vegas' breakthrough album The Contino Sessions has several good collaborations on it, Dot Allison and Iggy Pop standing out. I loved this record at the time but can't help but feel some of it sounds a little dated now. I think with this type of record it's the beats that date- until a time comes around that those drum programs become fashionable again. This song has vocals from Jim Reid, on Mary Chain hiatus, doing a fine line in self-loathing over a bunch of noise.

Broken Little Sister

Twitchy

Following a tip off by the RiG contributors this a rather splendid, slow and funky electronic reworking of Bill Callahan's America by JD Twitch. Gets a bit messy in places. Free download from the I'm A Cliche people in Paris. Bob's your uncle.

Dog Years

I'm not fully sold on the latest Fuck Buttons album yet- they set very high standards with the previous one- but it's early days. I need to live with it a bit longer- the thing is, their music is not stuff you can ignore and I have to be in the right mood for their full on, electronic, wigout, melodic-noise assault.

Year Of The Dog

Space Scribble

A few months back Italian cosmic disco duo DJ Rocca and Daniele Baldelli released a remix e.p. of songs from their Podalirius album. The lead off was a suitably sumptuous spaced out job from our friend Andrew Weatherall. His remix of Complotto Geometrico is a beaut and together with that one of Speed of Dark by Emeliani Torrini and the indie-dance epic for Jagwar Ma make up a lovely summer 2013 remix triptych. But the Weatherall  one was only one of three- the Prins Thomas remix of Space Scribble is also very, very good. If you're familiar with Prins Thomas's subtle, elegant, minimal disco stylings, you'll have a good idea of what to expect.

Space Scribble (Prins Thomas Remix)

Where Did You Go?

There were slim pickings in Britpop if you were looking for good music. Too many derivative sing songs that were effective but not really much cop. I've always had a soft spot for this though- Slight Return by The Bluetones. The Rickenbacker guitars sound cool, all jangle with the right amount of fuzz, the vocals are good and the song just floats. It does seem to be a re-write of 'lost' Stone Roses song Where Angels Play, but it's a good re-write.

Slight Return

Oh Ma Corazon

Some kind soul has uploaded The Clash's 1979 song Spanish Bombs onto Youtube alongside newsreel footage from the Spanish Civil War. Their most folk-punk moment (English Civil war excepted maybe), this song is a sublime piece of Strummer-Jones songwriting and playing. It's all about the ratatattat drumming and the multi-tracked acoustic guitars and Joe's timeshifting lyrics- jumping back and forth between the days of '39, Federico Lorca dead and gone, and the ETA bombings of discos and casinos, all as imagined by Joe while flying in on a DC10 tonight. There's also a theory that in this song, during the chorus, Joe is bidding farewell to ex-girlfriend Paloma (Palmolive of the Slits).

Know It All

De La Soul were a massive part of 1989 and performed the rarely achieved trick of completely re-writing and re-wiring hip-hop, if only briefly. For a while their love beads, their Daisy Age, their 'conscious' lyrics and clubby t-shirts and 60s hippy band samples made everything before seem like old hat. Or old cap. A few hip-hop groups followed them through- Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest. Then they backtracked a bit and went more old school. I saw them live twice, both times while standing in a field. The first was a Glastonbury on Saturday afternoon in 1990- it was an unparalleled disappointment. It was what critics used to accuse hip-hop of being, just three men shouting over drumbeats. A year later they played the first day of the Cities In The Park mini-festival in Heaton Park, alongside ACR, Durutti Column, Revenge (during Peter Hook's Sisters of Mercy tribute act phase), 808 State, Electronic and Happy Mondays. De La Soul played early on but to a large crowd. And with the same lack of finesse and lack of charm they'd brought to Glastonbury. Shame really, because Three Feet High And Rising is excellent and there are parts of the rest of their catalogue worth looking a go. And as I said at the start, in 1989 they were inescapable.

Eye Know (The Know It All Mix)

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 118

Friday, the end of the working week- and it's rockabilly rave up time. The remaining members of The Clash were on the radio the other day and each chose some records to play. One of Paul Simonon's choices was this humdinger of a tune- I'm Comin' Home by Johnny Horton. Over the lovely, rapid strumming of acoustic guitars and a nagging drumbeat Johnny belts out his vocal, how he's comin' home to make sweet love to his woman, his 'turkey dove'. I've never referred to Mrs Swiss as 'turkey dove' but now might be the time to begin. This song also confirms that Paul Simonon is a man of impeccable taste, but I think we knew that already.

I'm Comin' Home

Shimmy Shimmy

Gif files are one of the greatest things about the internet- just a loop of something or someone moving for a few seconds that is utterly hypnotic.

Shimmy Shimmy Ya was a single by Wu Tanger Ol' Dirty Bastard, possibly the least parent friendly name a rapper ever took ('what you listening to son?' 'Ol' Dirty Bastard'.). Here the ever fantastic Prince Fatty does it over, roots reggae style. The B-side was a cover of Snoop's Gin 'n' Juice.

Shimmy Shimmy Ya

Dayglo

X Ray Spex were inspired by the first generation punk bands and this song is of punk but not punk. Poly Styrene bought into punk as 'be yourself' not 'buy a uniform'. By adding that most dreaded instrument, the saxophone, they set themselves apart from the three chord tricksters and second generation herders. This song is a blast and actually sounds like the world turning dayglo.

The Day The World Turned Dayglo

Too Late

This is the new single from Dreadzone, with an album Escapades to follow. Dreadzone started life way back in the early 90s as refugees from Big Audio Dynamite and now contain almost all the former BAD members. Going for a BAD Royal Flush this song has Mick Jones on guitar and backing vox and borrows fairly heavily from Department S' 1980 Is Vic There? single. There's a ravey bridge bit too, shoehorned in to great effective. In short, I like it.

Compare and contrast...

Is Vic There?

Clash Dub (Reprise)

Sorry if you're getting bored of The Clash but....

I've been enjoying The Clash's dub tracks a lot recently. By 1979 they had got the hang of playing something pretty close to 'proper dub'. Not just the punky reggae of Police And Thieves or Pressure Drop but a real appreciation of the space and technique required. Paul had mastered the basslines and the feel, Topper could play anything asked of him and when they hooked up with Mikey Dread they got some authentic Jamaican input. Mikey Dread performed live with the band on many occasions and did his dubwise versions on several single releases as well on Sandinista (most of side 6). The single Hitsville UK, Mick's tribute to the UK's independent record labels, was backed by six and half minutes of lovely dubbed out playing with Mikey toasting...

Radio One

And there's a bonus offcut too- not sure this appears on any official releases (mine's off the This Is Dub Clash bootleg).

Radio One (Reprise)

You can't beat a duffle coat either.

Fade Into You

A dangerously fragile, acoustic guitar-led, somewhat enervated cover of Mazzy Star's beautiful Fade Into You by J Mascis to start Monday and the first week of autumn. The ghost of Neil Young never far away, memories of Dinosaur Jr beyond reach. Bizarrely, cheapeningly, this cover version was done for a trainer advert, released on limited 7" single as a sop to the purists.

Fade Into You

Back to work tomorrow- Tuesday's coming like a jail on wheels, to misquote Mr Strummer.

Saddle Sore, Dig Deep

By the time you read this (assuming you read this on Sunday morning- which you may not, it could be next Tuesday for all I know) I shall be on my bike with three friends (and 3000 other people), somewhere in the lanes of Cheshire. I signed up for a charity bike ride raising funds for The Christie and their work against cancer. The distance is 100 km- 62 miles in imperial measurements- leaving Wythenshawe park and out towards Northwich, Nantwich, Middlewich and back. I am expecting, not to put too fine a point on it, a sore arse.

I am now rattling my tin...

My friend David lost his wife to cancer at the start of August after a year long illness. Donations gratefully accepted for The Christie here.

You can also or instead donate here in aid of regular visitor to this blog, Yorkshire's very own Dick Van Dyke (Tony), whose friend Steve is running the Great North Run in September to raise money for Headway, a brain injury charity. DVD lost his wife Maria in January to a sudden, serious brain injury.

If you come here often and enjoy the songs, and maybe even d/l them, please give to one charity or the other.

Tin rattled, on with the music. This is a very fine mix from Justin Robertson, taking in Will Self, electro, techno, post punk disco, classic house and various points in between. Free download. See you at the finish line.