Fate's Faithful Punchline

A few weeks ago Nina Walsh rediscovered and shared a YouTube playlist made my Andrew Weatherall when he and Nina were doing Moine Dubh (the record label they formed to put out weird, off kilter folk music based in Crystal Palace). Nina said Andrew often forgot his usernames and passwords for YouTube and was constantly having to create new accounts- it's nice to know that's something that affects top DJs and producers as well as the rest of us. The playlist, Dubh Drops, is here and features an array of acts including Cheval Sombre, The Shadow Project, Hungry Ghosts, Amanda Palmer and Edward Ka- Spel, The Black Ryder, Dean Wareham, Rose City Band, The Carpenters and Negative Lovers. It also includes this gem by The Legendary Pink Dots...

Fate's Faithful Punchline

Led by finger picked acoustic guitar and Edward Ka- Spel's echo- drenched voice and eventually some strings, Fate's Faithful Punchline is moving, gorgeous and elegiac psychedelic folk. The Legendary Pink Dots are an Anglo- Dutch group, formed in London in 1980 and have since then released forty- seven albums, twenty- six live albums and forty- eight  compilations. And you thought The Fall were prolific. 

I included Fate's Faithful Punchline on my latest mix for Tak Tent Radio which went live at the weekend, an hour of songs that you can listen to here at Tak Tent or here at Mixcloud. Andrew Weatherall's fingerprints are to be found elsewhere in the mix in the form of his remix of The Impossibles from 1991 and a Beth Orton song he produced that was a B-side on the Someone's Daughter CD single. 

• Alex Kassian: Spirit Of Eden
• Martin Duffy: Promenading
• Eden Ahbez: Full Moon
• 10:40: Ninety- Now
• Coyote: Nothing Rests
• David Holmes: No- One Is Smarter Than History
• Gal Costa: Baby
• The Impossibles: The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• A Certain Ratio: Houses In Motion (Version 1)
• Ultramarine: Stella
• Beth Orton: It’s This I Find I Am
• The Legendary Pink Dots: Fate’s Faithful Punchline

Full Moon

My second run of collaborative posts with reader Spencer continues today, the third part for 2023 following last week's lo- fi 1990 psychedelia courtesy of Woo and the previous week's song by either Brian Eno or Cindy D'Lequez Sage, the song that plays over the closing titles of The Lovely Bones. This week's takes the gentleness trippiness of Woo's song and the slightly spooked atmospherics of Cindy/ Brian's are delves even further into the cosmos although it predates both by decades. 

Full Moon is new to me, and already a firm favourite. Recorded in 1960 the song opens with some gently played piano and some glockenspiel, somewhere in the region of what in record shops today is put in the Exotica/ Library/ Weird Stuff section. It could be from a shelved Disney film created by some proto- hippy cartoonists and musicians when everyone else has gone home. The chords and notes shift slightly, a minor key melody with some very faint brushed drums and bongos. ' To live in an old shack by the sea/ And breathe the sweet slat air', the voice begins, close to the microphone and laced with a little echo, 'going on to describe the joys of getting away from it all- from life in Eisenhower's hyper- consumerist and conformist America at the dawn of the 60s, that decade's long, strange trip yet to unfold. 

The voice belongs to Eden Ahbez and he goes on, 'to know the thrill of loneliness and lose all sense of time and be free'. Nothing happens much but Full Moon is moving places slowly, Eden describing a life outdoors away from society 'in the evening when the sky is on fire/ heaven and earth become my cathedral/ all men are brothers'. He goes on, wanting to 'dream the dream that the dreamers dream' and then casually and in a calm and understated way says 'I am the wind, the sea, the evening star... I am everyone, anyone, no- one', (in a way that reminds me of San Pedro's punk heroes Minutemen, weirdly, given they play at twice the speed of Eden's song and two decades later). The word Spencer used to describe Full Moon was enchanting and I can't find one better. 

Full Moon

Eden Ahbez's album, The Music Of An Enchanted Isle came out in 1960, a much sought after record now. Eden was born George Alexander Aberle, a songwriter in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. He was very much a proto- hippy, living a very bohemian lifestyle in California, wearing sandals and robes and growing his hair and beard long way before the counter culture kids did it. For a while he camped behind the letter L in the Hollywood sign. He often slept outdoors with his family, and lived on fruit, nuts and vegetables. When stopped by the police once he told them, 'I may look crazy but I'm not. And the funny thing is that other people don't look crazy but they are'.