I abandoned not one but two Sunday mixes this week- in frustration mainly, at not being able to get either one right. One was a Talking Heads/ David Byrne/ Tom Tom Club mix that kept defeating me and the other an Underworld one that I couldn't get into a state that I was happy with. Instead I've gone for a Nick Drake mix, one which came together quickly and which hits the spot in all sorts of ways. In some ways it's just an excuse to repost the recent Fontaines D.C. cover of 'Cello Song, which has come out physically recently as part of an album of twenty five songs, covers by a diverse range of artiss.
I first encountered Nick Drake aged seventeen or eighteen after reading a review in Melody Maker of a 1987 compilation called Time Of No Reply, fourteen songs that were all outtakes and alternate versions. I don't know why I bought it. It wasn't remotely like what I was listening to in 1987/ 1988, but something about the review must have appealed to me or it was a strange impulse that paid off in the long term. I liked the songs but details were scant, there was no internet to look him up on and explore further and I didn't dig much deeper until the mid- 90s when his three studio albums were re- issued. Nick's music- the finger picked folk guitar, his clear, well spoken English voice, the songs that were adorned with Disney- like string arrangements, the way his songs veer between dark and light, depression and light- confused me at times and I had to sift through them to find what I wanted. Some of these songs, 'Cello Song for one, have taken on huge meaning and significance for me (I wrote about 'Cello Song here when it became a lockdown song round my way, and again here in November last year, on the first anniversary of Isaac's death. I heard 'Cello Song in the aftermath of Isaac's death and the words took on new layers of meaning for me- it stops me in my tracks when I hear it now, partly why the Fontaines cover has gone near to the top of my most played songs of 2023 list). The backing on many of these songs add another dimension to them too, the use of hand drums, congas, cello and so on, lift them, adding subtleties and layers and put them in a different place from the more standard folky singer/ songwriter area. That's Joe Boyd's influence I think. There's something about these songs which often seems very autumnal but they fit into the long days of summer too. Even if the weather has been anything but summery these last few weeks.
'Cello Song and Time Has Told Me are both from Nick's debut Five Leaves Left, produced by Joe Boyd. The original version of River Man comes from Five Leaves Left too but this solo version is from I Was Made To Love Magic, a compilation released in 2004 that was an updated version of the cassette I bought back in the 80s.
Rider On The Wheel was on I Was Made To Love Magic along with the versions here of Three Hours, Clothes Of Sand and the haunting Black Eyed Dog. Rider On The Wheel and Black Eyed Dog both date from 1974 and were possibly intended for Nick's fourth album, a record which never happened due to his death that year.
Northern Sky and Hazey Jane I are both from Bryter Later, Nick's second album, released in 1971. The album was very polished, with string arrangements added by Joe Boyd- I can leave some of it, its too sweet but some of it is lovely. John Cale was involved in the production of Bryter Later adding piano and Hammond organ to several songs including Northern Sky. Northern Sky was also the song which spearheaded Nick's rediscovery, being sued as the lead track from a CD compilation and in a handful of films in the 90s. Introduction is an instrumental, one minute thirty seconds opening to Bryter Later.
The second version of 'Cello Song is the cover by Fontaines D.C., out now on album The Endless Coloured Ways. It kicks and spits and takes the song somewhere else entirely, a grinding rocking guitar song, with rockabilly drums and Grian Chattan's Dublin voice a new way to hear those words. Exactly what a cover version should do.
Every time I post here about Isaac and our loss since he died last November (as I did yesterday) I'm a bit overwhelmed by the responses. People leave the loveliest comments, here and on social media. I know that it can't be easy to find the words sometimes- I think I'd struggle myself if it the situation were reversed- but one thing we've learned in this is it's often better to say something rather than nothing. So thank you to you all who do leave comments. I'm sure there must be times when it's difficult to read and I don't blame anyone who comes for the music and doesn't want to read my posts about bereavement and grief. I get that too. Some of you I've met in real life, many I haven't, but you're all my friends in either real or virtual life and thank you.
Earlier this week JC at The Vinyl Villain posted a three song mini- ICA revival featuring New York indie- disco outfit LCD Soundsystem. In 2007 they released Sound Of Silver, a much lauded (deservedly so) album with a single, All My Friends, which is a superb piece of massive sounding, infectious, danceable, melancholic but ultimately life affirming music. The post is here. When All My Friends came out as a single fifteen years ago there were two 7" vinyl versions, each with a cover of the song by a different band. One cover was by Franz Ferdinand and the other courtesy of John Cale. Cale's version is magnificent (obviously) and it felt apt for this post.
This mural of Nico by an artist called Trafford Parsons adorns the gable end of a building, not far from the Apollo in Ardwick (a walk from the Piccadilly town of about fifteen to twenty minutes). The building is Spirit Studios, something I didn't know when I took the picture at Easter. Amusingly, the front entrance to Spirit Studios is on Downing Street. I'll leave that hanging there- you can probably fill in your own joke/ remark.
Nico had a history with Manchester, moving here in 1981. Her past as a model and then member of Andy Warhol's Factory set, role in his Chelsea Girls film and her vocals on The Velvet Underground's first album are the stuff of legend. Her solo albums of the 70s too, The Marble Index especially, with Nico taking up the harmonium, a very un- rock 'n' roll instrument, at the suggestion of Jim Morrison. She lived with John Cooper Clarke for some of the 80s (in Brixton) but spent much of it living in Prestwich (home to Mark E Smith) and Lower Broughton, Salford. She was deep in the grips of heroin addiction. Fall guitarist Martin Bramah said she liked the less salubrious parts of inner city Manchester, gazing at Manchester's dirty post- industrial mills and saying they were romantic. Some of Manchester's musical scene treated her like royalty but she equally preferred to played pool in the pubs of Prestwich, go to Chinatown for a meal or pop to the local shops on her bike. She played gigs to pay the bills/ support her habit and various members of The Fall, the Factory set and promoter/ manager Alan Wise tried to get her to write and record but accounts suggest she drifted, burning bridges and chances, and would lose interest easily. Eventually she began to clean up, switching to methadone and taking up cycling and healthy eating. She died while on holiday in Ibiza in 1988 while out on her bike, suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, and is buried in Grunewald, a cemetery near Berlin.
Her life as a child, born in 1938, adds yet more to her story- her father was conscripted into the Wehrmacht during the war and there are multiple accounts of his death, some attributed to Nico and her frequent changes to the story- variously shot by a French sniper resulting in terrible head injuries and then being shot by his commanding officer or ending up in a concentration camp or living out his final days in a psychiatric hospital or fading away from shellshock. Whatever the truth, after the war Nico and her mother ended up in Berlin, a far cry from their wealthy background in pre- war Cologne.
This song, Afraid, is from 1970's Desertshore album, an album she made with John Cale, and seems imbued with all the life she'd lived up to that point.
2020, it goes without saying, has been a year unlike any other. When the first lockdown kicked in back in March, schools were closed and everyone bar essential workers was told to stay at home, I briefly wondered if writing a music blog was suddenly a redundant activity, a bit futile and inadequate in the face of what was happening. The fear back in March was real, the scenes of people dying in hospital corridors in Italy coupled with rising case numbers and deaths and the sheer ineptitude of our government made everything else- even Brexit- seem inconsequential. In fact, as the weeks of lockdown turned into months and now almost a year of lockdowns and Tiers, music has been one of the things that has helped and despite our individual isolation has been one of the things that has brought us together. Anyone that has logged onto one of Sean Johnston's Emergency Broadcast Sessions and seen a community coming together in the chat function, enjoying hours of Sean DJing and chatting away will have seen how important music is as a release, as a connection and as simple escapist enjoyment. And despite everything there has been loads of great music made, written, recorded, produced and released this year. In some ways, I've enjoyed more new music this year than in many recent ones.
Albums Of The Year
The best albums this year seem to have reflected the year (some of been made as a result of lockdown and time artists have had to create). There are masses of albums that have been floating around and that caught my ear. Before I get into the list proper, these ones have all been part of 2020- Wedge by Number, an exuberant post- punk, dance album with an ACR remix to boot, Julian Cope's Self Civil War (my last gig before lockdown, in February, was Julian at Gorilla), Steve Roach's Tomorrow, Rickard Javerling's 4, The Orb's Abolition Of The Royal Familia (or at least parts of it), Youth and Jah Wobble's Acid Punk Dub Apocalypse (an album with multiple guest stars, including Hollie Cook, Alex Paterson, Blue Pearl and beats from Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh and which sounds good when it's playing but which I can't remember much about when it's not), Rose City Band's Summerlong (the latest Ripley Johnson project, cosmic country/ boogie, some of which is superbly out there, a blissed out version of Laurel Canyon), the nine remixes that made up Unloved's Why Not release (including a superb Richard Sen remix and dub plus outstanding remixes from Phil Kieran, Hardway Bros and The Vendetta Suite), a similar release by Joe Morris, nine remixes of his Balearic album from the year before compiled as Exotic Remixes, and a follow up to his The Malcontent Volume 1 by Duncan Grey (who drip fed us some great standalone songs throughout 2020 before giving us The Malcontent Volume 2). An honourable mention too to three albums that were made decades ago but only saw the light of day this year- Neil Young's legendary Homegrown, Rig's Perfect and Bushpilot's 23, three very different but better late than never albums. I also loved A Man Called Adam's career spanning oddities and extras round up Love Forgotten, a digital only release that packs a huge amount into it's twenty songs.
I know that I should have heard Working Men's Club by now and just haven't got round to it despite them appearing to be right up my alley. They're on my list, as are Sault who everyone else I know raves about and I just haven't dived in there yet.
These are the twelve albums that have been the pick of 2020 at Bagging Area, in roughly this order even if finding a meaningful way to rank them is really tricky. The albums at the top of the list could be placed either way round depending on which I'm listening to at the time.
12. Future Beat Alliance 'Beginner's Mind'
An immersive nine track trip taking in ambient, drones, acid and the melodic futurism of 2th century Detroit techno.
11. Kelly Lee Owens 'Inner Song'
A strong set of electronic songs and grooves from Kelly and a step on from her debut (which I loved). Corner Of My Sky, intense, weather beaten 2020 techno with John Cale's vocals stood out but everything else on it, from the banging grooves of Melt! to the bleary eyed soundscapes, sounded as good.
10. GLOK 'Dissident remixes'
GLOK's 2019 record was as good as anything else out last year. The remix album was trailed by one of the final Andrew Weatherall remixes, a beautiful but low key, urban ambient remix of Cloud Cover. Across the rest of the record were some equally innovative versions from Richard Sen, C.A.R., Leaf, Minotaur Shock and others and from GLOK (Andy Bell himself).
9. Brian and Roger Eno 'Mixing Colours'
A beautifully meditative set of treated piano pieces that drift out of the speakers and around the room. Made perfect sense back in May when I was raging about VE Day and contemplating turning fifty.
8. Richard Norris 'Elements'
Five long tracks made with modular synths, lovely pulses and washes of sound, hypnotic analogue sequences and gentle drones that built on his Abstractions records from 2019 and his excellent Music For Healing series from the spring and summer- deep listening for difficult days. Richard has made some of the defining sounds of 2020 for me.
9. The Long Champs 'Straight To Audio'
A one man band from Wales (Lloyd Jones) making chuggy, trippy instrumentals that found favour with Andrew Weatherall's Convenanza and the Weatherall/ Johnston travelling disco A Love From Outer Space. Multiple, shimmering guitar tracks, washes of FX, slow motion dance beats and a style of upbeat shoegaze that transported me when things seemed irredeemably gloomy.
8. Four Tet 'Sixteen Oceans'
Released as lockdown struck Kieran Hebden's latest record, three sides of vinyl plus a fourth of locked grooves, is a distillation of everything that he's good at. Teenage Birdsong came out in 2019, those skippy beats and lighter- than- air melodies pointing the way, and the rest of the album lived up to it. When I was hearing this in March it seemed like it made a stake to be the year's defining record and it hasn't diminished that much in the time between. A cut above most of the rest.
7. Rheinzand 'Rheinzand'
Rheinzand are a trio from Belgian who have made the darkest disco and the headiest sounds of 2020, a stunning twelve song record with a hot, sticky cover of Talking Heads' Slippery People and in Fourteen Again a song to keep picking up the needle and putting it back to the start. One of those albums that made you/ me forget everything and just focus on being in the music, in the moment.
6. Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini 'Illusion Of Life'
This record sound tracked March for me and will forever be the music of lockdown 1- drones, industrial ambience, some intense and dense atmospheres and mesmerising waves of noise. It is beautiful and ominous and sometimes a really difficult record to pin down. These are the sounds that increasingly have been where I've headed as the year has gone on and if Daniel hadn't recorded another album in lockdown that just pips this one, this could easily be my album of the year.
5. Sonic Boom 'All Things Being Equal'
Pete Kember's first new album in decades, an analogue synth based set of songs that are exactly what he's been doing for three decades but which sound like a new idea. The lead single, Just Imagine, is one of my favourite songs of this year and it sits among the hypnotic, beguiling, psychedelic trip of the rest of the record. When it's on the turntable it engulfs you and fills the room, Pete seeing through his own hallucinations to deliver a political message of kinds- the way you live your life matters.
4. Roisin Murphy 'Roisin Machine'
The glitterball, dancefloor dynamics of Roisin and DJ Parrot turned into album form, songs segueing into each other, tension and release, and Roisin's singular vision front and centre. Dazzling in places and dizzying in others, 2019's single Incapable and 2020's Something More showcasing the just- this- side- of- demented disco pop that she's made her own. If New Year's Eve parties were a thing, this record would be best slipped on at about 10.45pm and then played through to midnight. This performance was filmed in lockdown in Ibiza.
3: A Certain Ratio 'Loco'
Loco, the first ACR album for twelve years, came out in September, a ten song record that seems to try to fit onto one disc everything that makes them who they are: post- punk veterans, 80s funk experimenters, late 80s/ early 90s acid house dance movers, a motorik Berlin- inspired pop group and writers of Mancunian love songs. It's a completely self- contained record- it sounds like them and could only have been made by them, and Jez, Donald and Martin sound revitalised. Sadly, it came only weeks after the tragic death of Denise Johnson, who had sung with the band since the early 90s and who sings on four of the songs on Loco. Along with her solo album which came out at the same time, it's a fitting tribute.
2: Daniel Avery 'Love + Light'
In lockdown Daniel shut himself away in his studio, a shipping container overlooking the Thames and made music. Ghostly ambient moods, intense sounds that ripple and shudder out of the speakers, late night/ post- club washes of calming noise, bleepy melodies that pull at the emotions and some blistering techno capable with a few heart- stopping moments. A gorgeous, immersive record that sounds like the respite we've all needed this year.
1. Andy Bell 'The View From Halfway Down'
Andy stopped off from the Ride re- union and his cosmic adventures as GLOK to make a solo album and it hasn't been far from my turntable since it's release in the autumn. Opened by the late 80s guitar attack bliss of Love Comes In Waves and then followed by the rolling reverse groove and backwards vocals of Indica, the album is the perfect marriage of texture, sound and feel with songs- Skywalker is beautiful, sun kissed psychedelia, Cherry Cola is upwards looking, dreamy psyche- pop and album closer Heat Haze On Wayland Road is seven minutes of shoegaze updated for 2020, a Hooky- esque bassline and some achingly lovely synth sounds.
Neither Album Nor Single But Something Else Entirely Releases Of The Year
Richard Norris 'Music For Healing 1- 12'
In between my albums and singles of 2020 there is a series of releases by Richard Norris, twelve twenty minute ambient/ deep listening tracks, recorded and released with the intention of giving people music to help them switch off and to cope with the stresses of the first lockdown. The twelves pieces are all beautiful, meditative, immersive pieces of work that are as much part of 2020 for me as anything else I've written about here- they are neither albums nor singles but something else entirely (although the twelve have been edited down to much shorter pieces and compiled as a CD which is highly recommended).
Singles/Songs / Remixes/ EPs Of The Year
I'm not sure what even constitutes a single anymore and it probably doesn't matter. Anyway, a top forty five, the number most associated with the single format (apologies to anything I've missed and there will be something).
45. Fireflies 'The Machine Stops'
44. Joe Morris 'The New Dawn Will Come' EP
43. Stray Harmonix 'Mountain Of One'
42. Apiento and Tepper '17- 44- 58' EP
41. A.M.O.R. 'The Decline And Fall Of A Mountain Of Rimowa'
40. Fontaines DC 'A Hero's Death'
39. Rich Lane 'Barry Island'
38. Michael Son of Michael 'Babylonian Beaches' Rude Audio Remix
37. Pye Corner Audio 'Where Things Are Hollow 2' EP
36. Golden Fang AsTRiD
35. Doves 'Carousels'
34. Sink Ya Teeth 'Somewhere Else'
33. The Orielles 'Bobbi's Secret World' Confidence Man Remix
32. Thurston Moore 'Hashish'
31. Sinead O'Connor 'Trouble Of The World'
30. Roisin Murphy 'Something More' Crooked Man Remixes
29. Massey v Sir Horatio 'Music Control'
28. Leo Mas and Fabrice ft. Sally Rodgers 'This Unspoken Love' and dub mix
27. Rich Lane 'Prusik' (Live From The Woods) from the Knots EP.
26. Dreems 'Shark Attack' EP
25. Night Noise 'Dancing In Space' EP
24. Fjordfunk 'It's All Black' Hardway Bros Remix
23. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Woodleigh's Lament'
22. Number 'Wedge' A Certain Ratio v Number (ACR Rework)
21. Dan Wainwright 'Raindance' EP especially the pagan house of A Blessing
20. Duncan Grey 'Steve Killage'
19. The Avalanches ft. Jamie Xx, Neneh Cherry and CLYPSO 'Wherever You Go'
18. Richard Norris 'Golden Waves' EP
17. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Medieval Dub'
16. The Venetians 'Son Sur Son' Andrew Weatherall Remixes
15. Django Django 'Marble Skies' Andrew Weatherall Remix (from 2018 but unreleased until this year).
14. Cantoma 'Closer' Apiento remix
13. The Orb 'The Weekend It Rained Forever (The Ravens Have Left The Tower)'
An album track but I'm sneaking it in here because it shows what Dr. Alex Paterson can still do when he gets everything exactly right- a long, meandering, slightly spooky ambient future classic, Blade Runner and pouring rain, and another track that chimed in tune with lockdown in March.
12. Moon Duo 'Planet Caravan'
A ten minute long cover of a 1970 Black Sabbath song that is the pinnacle of chilled out, take your time guitar playing and whispered vocals. From a Sacred Bones compilation.
11. Andy Bell 'Chery Cola' Pye Corner Audio Remix
The album song made even better, layers of cosmic synths and the ending, where it breaks down into folky acoustic guitar, is sublime.
10. Andy Bell 'Love Comes In Waves'
Shimmering guitar lines beamed in direct from 1989 and a vocal that surfs over the top. Euphoric guitar pop. Summer 2020.
9. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Monthly EP Series'
These should probably be presented above with Richard Norris's Music For Healing series. In January Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh began a series of digital only, three track EPs to be released monthly throughout 2020. Events overtook them but the releases kept coming and there are some magnificent pieces of music contained within the folders- a few highlights include Birthday Three from January, Fume Homage a month later, Somnium from March, the tracks from the autumn with Joe Duggan's poetry over the top (Downhill and Play Bingo With Me), the Karra Mesh EP in May and July's Substation Glow and from the latest release The Fallen.
8. Bicep 'Atlas'
I slept on this a bit at first, thinking it was just another Bicep track, but its peaks, the ebb and flow, the rippling toplines, rattling drums, snatches of vocal and happy/ sad house music have been coming around again and again since it came out in March.
7. Formerlover 'Correction Dub'
A bonkers but enthralling collision of dub and Nigerian rhythms by Justin Robertson with his wife Sofia on vocals, speaking/ singing about domination and suchlike.
6. Aimes 'A Star... In The Sky' plus Hardway Bros remix'
Massive sounding sci fi chuggy dance music with a bouncing bassline and portentous vocal sample. Ridiculously good and with Saturn and Jupiter about to be in close conjunction in the sky next week well timed for pulling out again.
5. Sonic Boom 'Just Imagine'
I mentioned this in the album review above but it's such a wonderful, tripped out, wiggy song, Pete asking us to imagine being a tree/ simplicity/ being truly free as the analogies rhythms and synths whirr by.
4. Andrew Weatherall 'Unknown Plunderer/ End Times Sound
This pair of deep cuts, experimental end of the world dub with spaced out sound effects and some guitar from beyond the solar system by Andy Bell (him again), were released on February 21st, four days after Andrew died, a piece of timing no- one expected or wanted. The two tracks demonstrate why he was such a gifted producer and why he is so missed.
3. Green Gartside 'Tangled Man/ Wishing Well'
This came out of nowhere on 7" in the summer, a gorgeous pair of covers of songs by British folk singer Anne Briggs, the golden voice of Green Gartside reborn with some sumptuous dubby folk- pop music. I love it when a single blindsides me and this did exactly that.
2. Andrew Weatherall 'The Moton 5' EP
Four slices of Lord Sabre's customary, easy brilliance, not least in the title track of this EP which glides in with a propulsive bassline, a mechanical rhythm and some very moody synths. The strings that come in at two minutes add some drama to the chug and then it all then glides on, seemingly endlessly but actually only for another five minutes. The Moton 5.2 strips it down and delivers an alternate take. The 12" EP came out in April, two months after he passed and sounds like what he always promised on his Music's Not For Everyone radio show for NTS- tomorrow's music today.
1. Daniel Avery 'Lone Swordsman'
On the morning of February 17th Daniel Avery was in his metal box studio when he heard of the death of his friend and mentor Andrew Weatherall. He captured his feelings in this piece of music, four minutes of emotional, instrumental dance music that captures the spirit of the man and how many people felt with him suddenly gone- a breakbeat, some synths, an unfolding chord sequence and what appear to be the root notes of Smokebelch occasionally peaking through. In a year where emotions have often been very close to the surface, Daniel made a piece of music that is simple and minimal but layered and nuanced and extremely moving. Proof as well that music helps, and that when times are hard music is often the answer.
Kelly Lee Owens new album is imminent (Inner Song, out on Friday). This song, a deep, drifting and droning piece of electronic music with a vocal from John Cale came out recently ahead of it. The buzzing bassline and synth strings coupled with Cale's rich voice, particularly when he sings 'the rain, the rain, thank God the rain', make for an intense and emotional ride. Both Kelly and John have spoken of the need to reconnect with their Welsh roots and in the lyrics Cale tells the story of the land, through song, poetry and the spoken word.
Kelly's debut album came out in 2017, one of my favourites of that year. Last year she collaborated with Jon Hopkins on Luminous Spaces, a seven minute piece of brilliance. Covid delayed the release of Inner Song but its timing now at the end of summer seems perfect.
Today's Velvets on Sunday song comes from the vaults of Verve Records, who dropped The Velvet Underground in 1969. The recordings for what could have been their next album were shelved until the mid 80s when the first bunch were released as VU and then a follow album Another VU. In among them were five John Cale-era songs, including this rough and ready, fuzzed up, garage band song with Cale on bass. There is a point in all guitar band's lives when they should sound like this.
'Beautiful Dreamer versus Darkseid! Both hold the key to victory in the strangest war ever fought in comicdom history!'
More early 70s Jack Kirby-Third Eye- Black Light psychedelic madness. The more of this Marvel art I look for, the more I find, the more I want to post. I was planning to finish yesterday but there's more to come.
Two days ago reader KevM asked for The Box by Jack Of Swords, released on Weatherall's Sabres Of Paradise label back in 1994. The Box is a cover of The Velvet Underground tune (from White Light/White Heat), a tale of sexual obsession and accidental death, voiced by John Cale (and it's the original Cale vocal used on this cover too, a benefit of the being able to lift the whole isolated vocal off the Velvet's record by switching the speakers balance to the left hand channel). The Jack Of Swords version has a heavy, electronic backing that is pretty transfixing. On the B-side of the 12" single was a remixed version by Technova (David Harrow), a brilliant remix which adds a jackhammer beat, some speaker rattling bass and a load of acid-techno (the sort of record that makes me think I can smell dry ice) and see strobes flashing in the corner of my eye.
You might have thought that by 1988 Siouxsie and The Banshees were past their best but this No. 16 hit would suggest otherwise. There's still some good ole gothic melodrama and sexiness combined some genuine pop and a nod to late 80s hip hop as well. And an ascending and descending accordion riff that carries the whole thing along with Gallic flair. Peek-A-Boo began life as a B-side based around a John Cale sample but soon turned into a potential A-side and took a year to record, partly due to Siouxsie singing each line through a different mic.
I saw a man yesterday wearing a t-shirt with the slogan '1976 1988 Punk, Hip Hop, Acid House', which seemed like a pretty fair summary of what's been important culturally over the last 34 years. There are and have been writers and commentators more skillful than me to tie these three things together. But there are other parts of my record collection that fall outside these dates that are also important, and Jonathan Richman's Roadrunner is one of them.
Jonathan Richman first recorded it in 1972, as a Velvet Underground obsessed young man who had moved to New York to meet the Velvets and lived on a sofa belonging to one of them for a bit. His Modern Lovers also recorded it, produced by John Cale. Way ahead of their time, the first Modern Lovers lp is one of those punk-before-punk records. Roadrunner was issued as a 7" single in 1977 at the height of British punk, with Roadrunner (Once) on the a-side and Roadrunner (Twice) on the b, and another live version, Roadrunner (Thrice), was on the flip of a later Jonathan Richman single. All three are ace and I can happily play them back to back, although my copy of Thrice is the crackliest piece of vinyl I own. In Lipstick Traces Greil Marcus waxes lyrical about Roadrunner, spending pages just deconstructing the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 introduction. More recently The Guardian's Laura Barton took a road trip around Boston, Massachusetts visiting and passing all the sights mentioned in the song.
Roadrunner is about Richman's hometown, the romance of the road, the sights and sounds inside and outside the car, the joy of late night radio, and the thrill of a song with only two chords (although he sneaks a third one in briefly towards the end). It's massively influential, absurdly good, and doesn't sound like it came from a time before that chap's t-shirt.
'Roadrunner, roadrunner Going faster miles an hour Gonna drive past the Stop 'n' Shop With the radio on'
LCD Soundsystem are great- yeah they're arch, knowing, record-collectors that make music that sounds like The Fall in a disco, and they're all the better for it. There's something about Losing My Edge, a song narrated by an aging hipster who's losing his edge that surely speaks to all of us. Sound Of Silver topped loads of polls at the end of 2008, and had some great songs on it- North American Scum, Someone Great, All My Friends. When they released All My Friends as a single/digital bundle, as well as some remixes they got other bands to cover the song and released them as well. Cracking idea. Franz Ferdinand covered All My Friends, as did John Cale, which is what I'm giving you here. John Cale v LCD Soundsystem. Still looking good, John Cale, unlike his old mate Lou Reed...
