Do It Long Long

This has bubbling around on social media and some DJ mixes for a few weeks and has now been released digitally with a vinyl release to follow- Ewan Pearson's remix of Hallelujah, the lead song from the Mondays breakthrough release at the tail end of the 80s, the Madchester Rave On e.p. Across three different mixes Ewan has taken parts from the 7" version (the MacColl mix where Kirsty's husband Steve Lillywhite pushed her backing vocals forwards a bit and smoothed out some of the sheer lunacy of the Mondays' sound in '89) and some of the Club Mix (where Paul Oakenfold and Andrew Weatherall sampled some chanting monks, added some Italo piano stabs and dusted it down for dance floors) and added a snippet of Tony Wilson talking about twenty- four track recording. Shaun sounds as dangerous and off it as he did thirty years ago over the enormous re- figured bassline and Mark Day's guitar lines still sound unique. The past rebuilt for the present. Double double good.

Given that this song was produced in its original mix by Martin Hannett, sung on by Kirsty MacColl, released on Tony Wilson's record label and remixed by Andrew Weatherall it's also a tribute to four people who have gone before their time.

This five minute edit version is good, a five minute bug eyed dance but if you're going to go full Bez you're going to want the nine minute mix, available from all the usual places. There's a nine minute dub mix too.



Just so you can compare and contrast, here's the Oakenfold/ Weatherall remix from 1990, the Monday's ramshackle Little Hulton funk streamlined and intensified, hypnotically.

Hallelujah (Club Mix)

Twenty One

Today is our eldest's 21st birthday. Isaac was born on 23rd November 1998 and, as some of you will know, from that point on has had a complicated and difficult time. Diagnosed with a serious, life limiting condition at eight months, multiple operations, deafness, physical and learning disabilities, all compounded by meningitis at ten years old (a result of the refusal of his immune system to grow back following two bone marrow transplants in 2000). Along the way he has refused to stop or slow down and brought joy and laughter to almost everyone he meets- questioning them about the motorways they use, the day their bins go out, the tram or train stations they use and the supermarkets they shop at. He is now in his second year at college and loves it (his college in Salford integrate the young adults with additional needs with the mainstream students on one campus). He goes out with his adult social services group, a service that has somehow survived repeated cuts by the Tory government and council over the last ten years. Things have been on a fairly even keel in recent years but you can't ever really take things for granted with him (his immune system is still shot to pieces) so twenty one is an achievement, a marker, especially for a young man who more than once while in hospital wasn't expected to survive the night. Happy birthday Isaac.

I only twigged recently that this event was also on the 23rd November, nine years earlier. The legendary night in 1989 when Top Of The Pops was gatecrashed by Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. At the time in '89 I remember sitting in my student house, finger poised over the record button on the rented VHS machine. Happy Mondays came on first, miming Hallelujah, the lead song off the Madchester Rave On e.p. Hallelujah on the 12" is a colossal, six minute piece of grinding Mancunian funk, produced by Martin Hannett pumped full of pills the Mondays gave him, not the kind of song to make the nation's favourite chart show. The 7" featured a Steve Lillywhite mix (The MacColl Mix) slightly smoothed out with Kirsty on backing vox. It still sounds like a groovy, out of sync, unholy racket, Shaun William Ryder wanting to 'lie down beside yer, fill yer full of junk'.

Kirsty joined the band for the TV appearance, dressed down in double denim and trainers. The Mondays had been to Amsterdam before the show for some 'shopping' and were all Armani-d up. As the cameras began to roll Shaun asked the nearby cameraman 'does me knob look massive in these strides?' Bez apparently remembers nothing of the day at all.



The Stone Roses appeared shortly after having ridden into the top ten with a double A-side, Fool's Gold and What the World Is Waiting For. The forty date spring tour and debut album saw them grow and grow, bringing more  and more fans on board, hair was lengthening and trousers widening. Fool's Gold was a step on completely from the album, nine minutes fifty three seconds of liquid, ominous funk, John Squire's guitar circling round and round, helicopter noises and wah wah bedlam, Reni and Mani were locked in tight. Over the top Ian Brown whispers about greed, the hills and the Marquis de Sade.



Thirty years ago today and still sharper than the rest.

It's Wrong To Wish On Space Hardware

Billy Bragg's A New England, thirty years old right now, is one of the great lyrics of the latter part of the Twentieth Century. I know, a ridiculous claim, but there you go. The first verse has that almost nonsensical opening couplet about being 21 when he wrote the song but 22 now and the girls he knew at school who have already outpaced him age-wise and growing up-wise followed by the one half-rhyming pedestal and the pill. After the chorus 'I don't want to change the world, I'm not looking for a new England, just looking for another girl'- there's the brilliant verse combining the Cold War space race, shooting stars, wishing and unrequited love which is pure post-punk poetry...

I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them but they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care

The sparseness of Billy's rapidly strummed electric guitar adds to the early 80s lonesomeness. It may not be his best song but I don't think he's ever written a better lyric. He may have matched it but he's not bettered it.



Kirsty MacColl's cover version, below, is different- not better, not worse, different. Fuller, with a biggish pop production by husband Steve Lillywhite and two additional verses written for her by Billy. Number 7 in the pop charts in 1984.

A New England