John Peel- Desert Island Discs (1990)

On last week's Morrissey Desert Island Discs post we acknowledged the difficulty of selecting just eight records after a lifetime of following pop music. If it is hard enough for us mere mortals imagine the difficulty faced by John Peel when he was castaway in January 1990 (20 years ago? ridiculous).
I was going to write a bit here about how the teenaged Lonnie Donnegan fan's fetish for records led to him becoming the most revered figure in British popular music, but it would be superfluous.

Handel: Zadok the Priest
Roy Orbison: It's Over
Jimmy Reed: Too Much
Misty in Roots: Mankind
The Undertones: Teenage Kicks (overall choice)
Rachmaninoff: 2nd piano concerto
The Fall: Eat Y'self Fitter
The Four Brothers: Pasi Pano Pane Zviedzo


Here's the programme, first broadcast on January 14th 1990.

Рубль- Совесть (2009)

I wouldn't normally post something this new, but I doubt that it's widely available outside Russia.
When Leningrad split up in 2008 Shnur (Sergei Shnurov) formed Рубль (Rubl).
The punk elements are more to the fore on this seven track 'maxi single', Совесть (Conscience).


Рубль- touring Russia in February, apparently...

Alan Moore said...

Alan Moore said: If we were to take out all the leaders tomorrow, and put them up against a wall and shoot them— and it’s a lovely thought, so let me just dwell on that for a moment before I dismiss it—but if we were to do that, society would probably collapse, because the majority of people have had thousands of years of being conditioned to depend upon leadership from a source outside themselves. That has become a crutch to an awful lot of people, and if you were to simply kick it away, then those people would simply fall over and take society with them. In order for any workable and realistic state of anarchy to be achieved, you will obviously have to educate people—and educate them massively—towards a state where they could actually take responsibility for their own actions and simultaneously be aware that they are acting in a wider group: that they must allow other people within that group to take responsibility for their own actions. Which on a small scale, as it works in families or in groups of friends, doesn’t seem to be that implausible, but it would take an awful lot of education to get people to think about living their lives in that way. And obviously, no government, no state, is ever going to educate people to the point where the state itself would become irrelevant. So if people are going to be educated to the point where they can take responsibility for their own laws and their own actions and become, to my mind, fully actualized human beings, then it will have to come from some source other than the state or government.

The whole of the interview can be found here.

Bradford- Shouting Quietly (1989)

Hats off to social networking ! Mmm... Amongst the friend requests from people who normally pass you in the street and invitations to adopt nonexistent baby penguins you can, just occasionally, make contact with long lost friends. Therefore I would like to dedicate this post to Mr Jim Jones.

Appearances can be deceptive, and Bradford (who actually came from Blackburn) looked more like the feisty Redskins than the sensitive observers of eighties working class life that they were. They epitomised the socialist minded indie bands that followed in the wake of The Smiths. It does, indeed , take guts to be gentle and kind. Shouting Quietly is itself a phrase which to me sums up the discontent that was common amongst young, creative working class people after ten years of Thatcher. Criminally overlooked.
Bradford supported Morrissey in his first solo live performance and The Great One went on to cover Skin Storm as the b-side to his rockabilly hit Pregnant For The Last Time.
Lovely cover picture of Sir Noel Coward.

Ian Michael Hodgson - vocals, guitar
Ewan Butler - guitar
John Baulcombe - keyboards
Jos Murphy - bass
Mark Andrew McVitie - drums

Red Wave-4 Underground Bands From The USSR (1986)

This LP, put together by American producer Joanna Stingray, was the first western release of rock music from the Soviet Union.
At this time rock music in the Soviet Union was still largely an underground affair.
The four bands featured were all from Leningrad (now St Petersburg):



Аквaриум (Aquarium)

КИНО (Kino)

Алиса (Alisa)

Странные игры (Strange Games)

Morrissey- Desert Island Discs (2009)

Sorry for the delay in bringing you this -

Okay nostalgia lovers, who remembers the heady days of November 2009 when the world was a better, safer place? We used to leave our door unlocked in them days...

For those of you who don’t know (i.e.- those who are not from Britain) Desert Island Discs is a long-running radio programme. It was first broadcast on 29 January 1942 .
Imagine that you are obsessed with pop music from a young age- it is your all consuming passion- you become an aficionado.You enjoy a successful 26 year music career in which your work is rich in pop culture references, all influences reverentially eulogised. Then at the age of fifty, after 45 years of obsessive pop fandom you are invited onto Desert Island Discs and have to choose eight records.
Eight.
Practically impossible.
When he appeared in November last year I thought that Morrissey might include: Sandie Shaw, Jobriath, some Rockabilly, Ludus, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell.
Here’s what he did choose:
• New York Dolls - (There’s Gonna Be a) Showdown (overall choice)
• Marianne Faithfull - Come and Stay With Me
• Ramones - Loudmouth
• The Velvet Underground - The Black Angel’s Death Song
• Klaus Nomi - Der Nussbaum - The Walnut Tree
• Nico - I’m Not Saying
• Iggy & The Stooges - Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell
• Mott the Hoople - Sea Diver

Included here are the eight records in their entirity and the complete programme.
For a more comprehensive insight into Morrissey’s tastes and formative influences see the LP Under the Influence .

Black Flag # 1...

During the first quarter of the twentieth century the revolutionary zeal of the sailors of the Russian Fleet was impressive.
The Summer of 1905 saw the mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet, which provided the most enduring and evocative symbol of a year of great unrest (see Red Mutiny: The True Story Of The Battleship Potemkin Mutiny by Neal Bascomb. The 1925 film The Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein gives a dramatized version of these events).

During the riots of the February Revolution of 1917, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet based at Kronstadt,30 kilometers west of Saint Petersburg, supported the workers and killed their officers.
The Kronstadt sailors pictured above are about to embark on a protest against the Provisional Government in June 1917.
Later their role in the Great October Revolution would also be significant, providing the Bolsheviks with military muscle and an enduring symbol of October in the actions of the cruiser Aurora, but ultimately their disillusionment with the Bolshevik system would lead to a further revolt their destruction at the hands of Trotsky's Red Army in March 1921.
Whilst the artistry in the flag is rudimentary the message is clear- Death to the Bourgeoisie.

Vacation...

I'm off again- see you in about two weeks, weather permitting...

Birthday greetings to cousin Adrian.

Birthday greetings to cousin Adrian.
Have a good time and think about getting those vinyls down from the loft!
Five decades:

Rowland S. Howard 1959 –2009

Joy Division- Peel Session December 12th 1979

Cock Jockeys? No fucking way!

Joy Division’s second session for John Peel was transmitted on December 10th 1979.

Love Will Tear Us Apart

24 Hours
Colony
The Sound Of Music

Felt- Absolute Classic Masterpieces (1979- 1985 comp.1992)

Often overlooked, Felt were one of the coolest acts on the independent scene in the 1980’s.
This compilation of songs from the bands’ first five years (with Cherry Red Records), billed as a chronological history in reverse, provides an excellent introduction.
Included here are the booklet, featuring lyrics and an interview with early member Nick Gilbert .
This collection is now designated Absolute Classic Masterpieces Volume One, with Volume Two covering the period that they spent with Creation Records.



ps:In the picture: Martin Duffy, Lawrence, Mick Bund and Gary Ainge- so apologies, this comes from a later period of Felt’s history. Just noticed that. Nice pic tho.