Brothers, Sisters...

Every Wednesday for the last five weeks my friend Stevie at the Charity Chic blog has posted songs under the title Brothers, Sisters... and every Wednesday morning when I open up the internet and see his posts I hear this running through my head...

'Brothers, sisters, one day we will be free/ From fighting, violence, people crying in the streets...'

The warm pulse of bass and 125bpm drum track follow, running through my mind, the tom tom fill at the end of the 8th bar crash in, the synth strings start to play, the Roland handclaps and cowbells dink in and I'm swept away by Joe Smooth's 1987 single. Promised Land was/ is the song that, as much as any, suggested house music was an open invitation to all, that the dancefloor was a place of inclusivity and openness, where colour, sexuality and differences were swept away by the power of dance music. 

Promised Land

In 1987 Joe Smooth was on tour in Europe with Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk and was blown away by the way European audiences had taken to house music. He wrote the song inspired by this and wanting to capture something of the spirit of Motown's classic singles, music as a call for unity and brotherhood/ sisterhood. 

'As we walk hand in hand/ Sisters, brothers, we'll make it to the promised land...'

The song was re- released in 1988 and 1989 and as the tide of history turned in Eastern Europe and then South Africa, Promised Land seemed to offer a soundtrack to those events. Lyrically it can't help but reflect Martin Luther King's famous I Have Reached The Promised Land speech too, the one he gave in Memphis the day before he was assassinated. The utopian dream of early house music. 

As a song it's a tempting one to cover, dance floor friendly, with two rousing chords, a pumping bassline capable of moving feet and vocals that provide a warm, misty eyed glow. Paul Weller caught the house music bug at the tail end of The Style Council and recorded a cover in 1989. The Style Council's cover is exactly the sort of thing mods in the late 80s should be doing, Paul and Mick on twin pianos, all slicked back hair and loafers while Dee C Lee stomps and dances centre stage. It was their final single- the house inspired album Paul presented to Polydor was the end of the road for them. 

In 2006 Findlay Brown covered Promised Land. Findlay's laid back, dreamily nostalgic and melancholic music was based in folk, ambient and pop- his cover of Promised Land was released as a single with a variety of mixes, versions and edits in 2010 including this one by French producer/ DJ Pilooski. 

Promised Land (Pilooski Edit)

Sunflowers

These sunflowers have been growing in a neighbour's front garden, just up the road from us. The tallest is over six feet tall. Walking home in late August they seemed perfectly framed against the sky. The picture I took was a bit overcast, the clouds and lowlight making it very heavy so I added a bit of a filter. 

We've been taking sunflowers to Isaac's grave all summer as well. There is something magical about them. 

In 2001 Low released Things We Lost In The Fire, an album recorded with Steve Albini that put them on the map of US indie rock royalty, a record that was dubbed slowcore. The first song on the album is Sunflower, a gorgeous, slow paced guitar song from a similar emotional space as Yo La Tengo (see last Sunday's post). 

Sunflower

Paul Weller's Sunflower is from 1993, a, maybe the, song that marked his creative rebirth. Sunflower is a thunderous, reverb drenched song with a stop- start, dynamic, the guitars and drums summoning late 60s psychedelia but in a very early 1990s way. Over massive drum fills and rolls from Steve White and ringing, circling guitar lines, Weller sings to his love, 'I don't care how long this lasts/ We have no future we have no past'. A song about being in love, about losing love and being in the moment. 

Sunflower

Half An Hour Of Weller Remixed And Live At The Apollo

Paul Weller played The Apollo on Friday night, I was there courtesy of a ticket from a friend (who also took the photo in the middle, capturing the curving sweep of the Apollo's balcony rather beautifully). Weller and his band took the stage at eight thirty and played a two hour set, long standing guitarist Steve Craddock present and at the front and two drummers. The first few songs were largely drawn from recent albums, White Sky and Long Time from Saturn's Pattern from 2015, Cosmic Fringes from last year's Fat Pop, sounding tough and very Seventies, lots of guitar and rhythms. From The Floorboards Up, with its Wilco Johnson inspired riff, kept the tempo up. From there Weller dipped in and out of his back catalogue: a slightly ragged Headstart For Happiness; a lovely, low key Have You Ever Had It Blue?; the 90s single Hung Up; recent songs like Fat Pop and Village set against older solo ones like Stanley Road; a dip into the later period Style Council with It's A Very Deep Sea, a song which has aged unexpectedly well. The crowd, many of whom seem to have been out all day in the warmth of some Good Friday sunshine seem a little subdued at times- maybe some are just waiting for the hits or maybe too many beers have sapped the energy (not the two blokes near us who were ejected by the bouncers following a couple of scuffles with people around them).  

The run in towards the end of the set- a trippy version of Above The Clouds, the circling psychedelia of Into Tomorrow, a raspy Shout To The Top, the quickfire blast of Start! followed by full on guitar heroics of Peacock Suit and Brushed- demonstrate the riches in his cupboards, songs from different decades and different parts of his life all sounding like the work of one person, a lineage despite the stylistic differences each one had when first released. When they band return to the stage for the first encore Paul sits at the piano, the fluid, rolling Broken Stones followed by You Do Something To Me (not a favourite of mine I should add), a crowd pleasing That's Entertainment (a definite favourite of mine I should add) and then the slowed down, folk tinged shuffle of Wild Wood. The second encore is the two song punch of The Changing Man and A Town Called Malice, the Apollo's crowd now dancing and singing along in full voice. Weller's reputation as a prickly character and as a traditionalist (the Dadrock tag of the 90s sticks to him) is undeserved- his albums over the last ten years have been full of detours into krautrock, psychedelia, drones and noise and whatever The Style Council were, the weren't unadventurous. His band tonight are young (mainly) and give the songs a thumping (two drummers should do that) but they're delicate when required too. Paul Weller himself doesn't seem to have any less desire in his sixties than he had in his twenties, a man who just wants to get the songs out, get them written, recorded and played. 

For today's thirty minute mix I've pulled together some of the remixes of Weller's songs, drawn from the range of his solo career and taking in trip hop of Portishead, the crashing noise and thumping beats of Richard Hawley's take on Andromeda, some lovely widescreen Balearica courtesy of Leo Zero and Drop Out Orchestra (on Weller's own mid 2010's Balearic groove Starlite), some psychedelic adventures with Amorphous Androgynous and Brendan Lynch's still stunning psyched out/ dubbed out version of Kosmos from 1993 (a record Weatherall used to play as a set closer to fried minds at Sabresonic). 

Thirty Minute Paul Weller Remix Mix

• Wildwood (Portishead Remix)
• Andromeda (Richard Hawley Remix)
• No Tears To Cry (Leo Zero Remix)
• Aim High (The Higher Aim) (Amorphous Androgynous Remix)
• Starlite (Drop Out Orchestra Remix)
• Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)

This blistering Two Lone Swordsmen remix from 2000 didn't seem to fit in the mix, Weller sent to some place where Killing Joke and krauty- techno co- exist, but I though I should share it again anyway. It's never had an official digital release and when it came out in 2000 it was a white label 12" limited to just 75 copies worldwide. One of which sits is downstairs from where I type this. 

Heliocentric (Swordsmen 4UR Mix)

When You Led Me To The Water I Drank It

I'd be happy to see the back of the monarchy, it's an anachronism and has no place in a modern democracy- not that this particular country looks much like a democracy at the moment what with the sitting Prime Minister having been found guilty of breaking the law but refusing to resign and his party refusing to remove him. By doing this Johnson and his colleagues further trash standards in public life, erode trust in politics and politicians, and embody the entitled attitude that they, the ruling class, can do as they please and can ignore laws and lie about them with no consequence. Those who support him, who enable and excuse him are just as bad. The Constitution and the Ministerial code mean nothing if a Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority and a self serving Tory Party can ignore them and do as they please- the phrase I believe is elected dictatorship. All of this entitlement, inequality and subservience is endemic throughout the UK's political system, from the top down, and that includes the monarchy and the unelected House of Lords. But, if we must live in a kingdom, then a Kingdom of T- shirts is one I can get behind. 

Following on from the soul and funk of Dr. Rob's post on Wednesday I went back to The Chi- Lites, a group I discovered in the early 90s via this song...

Stoned Out Of My Mind

Stoned Out Of Mind was a 1973 single for The Chi- Lites, a Chicago soul group. It's one of those songs that exists completely in its own space, a lighter- than- air, horn led swooping song with a soaring falsetto vocal and some glorious backing vocal harmonies. A song of heartbreak you can dance to. 

John Holt covered it in the same year on his 1000 Volts Of Holt album, an uptown reggae take on the song, Holt's voice an octave or two lower than the original and the horns replaced by the skank. 1000 Volts Of Holt is apparently the best selling album on the Trojan label ever.

Stoned Out Of My Mind (Jamaican Mix)

In 1982 The Jam released their final single, Weller's triumphant goodbye to the group, Beat Surrender. On the 7" double pack Weller dropped some hints about the direction he intended to travel in next, a cover of Stoned Out Of My Mind sitting alongside Jam versions of Curtis Mayfield's Movin' On Up and Edwin Starr's War. On Stoned Out Of My Mind Weller pushes the horns upfront and sings in a softer voice while Rick and Bruce gamely find the groove.

Stoned Out Of My Mind

I'm going to see Paul Weller at the Apollo tonight, courtesy of a ticket from a friend to whom I am very grateful (after seeing John Cooper Clarke last night). Full gig reviews will follow.

It's A Dream I'll Always Hang Onto

The Jam were such a formative band for many people growing up in the late 70s and 80s, whether you were twelve or eighteen their songs, look, attitude and influences had a long lasting impact (Weller was especially adept at dropping clues for fans to follow from the poetry of Shelly to the music of The Who and the books of George Orwell). There's been some discussion at various internet places recently about their best album. For some it's Setting Sons, for others Sound Affects. I imagine there's a significant cohort of fans who'd go for All Mod Cons. There's a strong argument too that albums weren't necessarily the trio's strongest suit and that their singles show them at their best, from In The City in 1977 to Beat Surrender in 1982 and all points in between. Is there a poor Jam single? I don't think so. 

Looking at their singles it's pretty striking too that their B-sides were rarely anything below very good and some of them equal their A- sides. A compilation of Jam B-sides would trump many of their contemporaries singles and/ or albums. Some of the B-sides are covers, a showcase for Weller's influences and for paying homage to his inspirations- Disguises was the B-side to Funeral Pyre and So Sad About Us was on the flipside of Down In The Tube Station, both covers of songs by The Who. The Beat Surrender 7" double pack had covers of Stoned Out Of My Mind (The Chi- Lites) and Move On Up (Curtis Mayfield), both signposts for where he'd go next. Shopping, the lead B-side from Beat Surrender is a must for a Jam B-side compilation, swinging modern jazz done Jam style. Then there's The Butterfly Collector (Strange Town), the Syd Barrett whimsey of Liza Radley (Start!), The Great Depression (Just Who Is The 5 'o' Clock Hero?) Pity Poor Alfie/ Fever (The Bitterest Pill) and Smithers Jones (When You're Young). Not to mention the funk workout of Precious (officially a double A- side with A Town Called Malice). 

The two greatest Jam B-sides for me though are these two- Dreams Of Children and Tales From The Riverbank. Dreams Of Children, officially a double A-side but a mix up at the pressing plant did for that notion, is Weller in 1980 coming out of Setting Sons and hitting the button marked 'psychedelic'. The song came out of Weller asking for Setting Sons to be played backwards and recorded onto cassette. Listening to it he found an appealing, trippy section of Thick As Thieves (backwards) and this inspired the guitar riff for Dreams. The horns and Summer of '67 acid guitars poke through the dense production with Weller's lyrics lamenting the loss of childhood ambitions and innocence as a generation brought up on the 60s ideal of full employment were shunted into the late 1970s, three million unemployed and the cold reality of the policies of the Thatcher government. ' I sat alone with the dreams of children/ weeping willows and tall dark building... but woke up sweating in this modern nightmare/ I was alone, no one was there...'

Dreams Of Children

Tales From The Riverbank was the b-side to 1981's Absolute Beginners (there's another clue to follow, the novels of Colin McInnes). Tales From The Riverbank again mines the sound of English psychedelia, but this is slower and sleepier, the bassline drawing us in, Weller singing again of the loss of freedom we enjoy as children, the days he spent in the fields and meadows near Woking- 'true is the dream/ mixed with nostalgia/ but this is the dream that I'll always hang onto/ that I'll always run to/ won't you join me by the riverbank'- while his guitar is beamed in via George Harrison circa Revolver.

Tales From The Riverbank

Kosmos

Back in 1993 Paul Weller, then on the crest of a wave and reborn after his wilderness years, released a seven minute remix of one of his songs, a space rock/ dub monster with samples from NASA, rockets taking off, a wah wah guitar isolated and distorted, crunchy drums, sounds whooshing around the place, panning from left to right, squealing siren sounds and bass parts that sounded like your speakers were about to pop. It was picked up early on by Andrew Weatherall who used to play it at the end of his sets at Sabresonic (a sweaty, filthy dungeon underneath London Bridge on Crucifix Lane) and according to those present, it caused mayhem. Eventually, when everyone had lost their shit and tried to find out what it was, Weller released it on the Hung Up single. There was a promo 12" which claimed, not unreasonably, that the two versions contained within the black plastic grooves were 'a sonic aural explosion of dub beats'. 

Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)

Lynch Mob was the production name used by producer Brendan Lynch. He worked with Weller on his early solo albums and were both with Young Disciple bassist Marco Nelson, Indian Vibes, a one off project who had a bit of a splash with Mathur, psychedelic sitar dance music for the 90s, a Dave Pike Set cover. The 12" came out in 1994 with various versions and remixes and was a hit in France. 

Mathur (Extended Mix)

Mathur Adbutha (Lynch Mob Beats)

I Know As Much As The Day I Was Born

This song has been posted at various blogs recently, many of them friends of this blog, but it seems tailor made for Bagging Area in many ways and it's a feelgood, upbeat dance song for Friday- and we could all do with a bit of feelgood and upbeat for Friday. 

Hifi Sean (Sean Dickson) got hold of the master tapes of Fire Island's 1998 cover version of Shout To The Top. Finding the original vocal part, sung by legend Loleatta Holloway, Sean re-wrote the track from the bottom up, in the end providing three different mixes- house, soul/ disco and orchestral horses for courses. Bassline, four on the floor, lovely late 80s pianos, strings, gospel backing vox and then Loleatta. Hands in the air. Hugging strangers. Lights come up. End of the night. Crowd spills out into the night. Here. 

Hifi Sean was in a former musical life the frontman of The Soup Dragons, the original indie dance crossover band. His journey from there to here shouldn't be too surprising given how enthusiastic he was about dance music back in 1989. The 1998 version of Shout To The Top isn't too shabby either, the work of Fire Island aka Terry Farley and Pete Heller (both men the subject of various posts here in the last eleven years, Boy's Own being one of the cornerstones of my record collection). Fire Island's cover has a more NYC, Salsoul flavour. 

Shout To The Top (Fire Island Radio Edit)

Back in 1984 Shout To The Top was the seventh single released by The Style Council. By this point Paul Weller had put significant distance between his then current band and his previous one. Shout To The Top is a classic Style Council single, the equal of most things The Jam released- those staccato strings, the thumping pace, Weller's vocal, the surge into the chorus. Shout To The Top, then and now, is hugely uplifting dance pop, a message of solidarity and determination and a refusal to beaten down in times of economic and political uncertainty- with a smile on its face. 

Shout To The Top

Starlite

Twice now I've been in the Co- op and heard Paul Weller singing 'The sound of thunder on the ocean...' In late summer 2011 he released Starlite as a standalone 12" single, a song very at odds with the album that came after it (Sonik Kicks which had a much more guitar attack oriented sound and was led by That Dangerous Age, a middle age crisis, mod guitar- pop banger). Starlite harks back tot he more soulful sounds of The Style Council and the house music influenced album that was rejected by Polydor that contributed to the band coming to an end. The mid- pace groove, drum machine and squelchy bass, sultry acoustic guitar and Balearic vibes make this song a perfect summer evening tune, beers at the poolside bar as the sun melts into the Med, straw hats and flipflops. Instead it soundtracked buying a few odds and ends in a northern mini- supermarket wearing a winter coat and a facemask. Such is winter 2020. 

Starlite

I'm assuming, as my friend The Swede recounted recently, the song was playing because it's on the Co- op's inhouse radio station, Co- Op FM or somesuch or a compilation they provide to be played rather than sheer coincidence that a relatively obscure Weller solo song from nine years has been playing twice when I've shopped there. 

More power to Weller though and his refusal to play it straight. He mines many seams and has developed a real restlessness in his approach to making music. A few years after Starlite he was recording Ethiopian dub with The Stone Foundation and Krar Collective.

Tiers

Tonight at one minute past midnight Greater Manchester goes into Tier 3, the highest rank of the government's new Coronavirus restriction system- if this government can really be said to anything as planned or thought out as a system. The government have had months to prepare for an autumn wave. Literally everyone said it was coming. They've had months to set up a functioning testing service, to create a Track and Trace system, to come up with a coherent plan for dealing with the rapidly rising numbers of new cases and the influx of hospital admissions. Instead, they paid people to go to the pub for food in August while turning the blame for non- compliance with the rules onto the people. 

What they have signally failed to acknowledge is that this government lost all it's moral authority to govern, every last ounce of it, when they failed to sack Dominic Cummings in May. At that exact moment and that charade in the garden of 10 Downing Street where their senior advisor- an unelected member of the government remember- refused to admit any wrong doing, Johnson's government could no longer tell anyone what to do. They had broken the rules themselves and didn't care. They were laughing at us. They were contemptuous of us. 

Since then some people have kept to whatever rules are in force wherever they live, some people have largely followed the rules using their own judgement and common sense about where they can bend them and some people have taken the view that if the government don't play by the rules then why should they? Some of us have barely crept out of lockdown at all- we are still effectively shielding an extremely vulnerable person. Watching other people flout the rules hasn't been easy. The feeling that existed back in April, that we were all in this together, which existed genuinely for a while, has been blown apart. As numbers have crept up again since September Johnson has dithered and delayed. They locked down too late in March, they opened up too early in the summer. They introduced local restrictions that were difficult to understand and changed seemingly on a whim. They left Leicester in a local lockdown that never seemed to end. They announced that one place would go into further restrictions almost instantly while another would be able to wait until after the weekend. Now, with Merseyside, Lancashire and Greater Manchester all in Tier 3, gyms in Merseyside must close while in Lancashire they can stay open. Pubs serving 'substantial meals' can stay open but pubs that don't must close- does Covid 19 not infect people while using a knife and fork? They bullied the civic leaders of Liverpool into accepting Tier 3 and then found that the elected mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, the leaders of the council and a cross party group of MPs wouldn't roll over. Funnily enough the pair of Conservative MPs refusing to accept new restrictions without a fight (including the Chair of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady) weren't attacked with the same venom Burnham has been. The politicians fighting the government's attempts to impose Tier 3 on Greater Manchester weren't even necessarily arguing that the restrictions weren't called for, they just wanted the evidence that the ones being proposed would be effective (which wasn't forthcoming because this government is shit at details and just relies on the selective use of data to try to prove points). What Andy Burnham and the rest also wanted was financial support for the thousands of locals who would be affected by the loss of their jobs and the withdrawal of income. Johnson's middle man, Robert Jenrick (himself guilty of breaking lockdown restrictions in April), found himself up against a Zoom wall of anger and disgust, from Tories as well as Labour, and when it came to finding another £5 million, told his boss Johnson that the deal was off. Andy Burnham stood in front of GMex- the site of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819- and quite rightly told the cameras that this government promised to level up the north and here they were further levelling down. 

It seems pointless to close some businesses while leaving many others open. It seems pointless to close some pubs while leaving many still serving. Schools, colleges and universities are one of the main breeding grounds of the infection currently but since various opponents have called for a short 'circuit break', Johnson's government refuse to consider this- not for scientific reasons but because it's politically unacceptable for them to do what the opposition have asked for. A circuit break policy is now taking effect in Wales and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Scotland follow suit, but once again Johnson dithers until it's too late. Their own scientific advisors recommended it several weeks ago. Johnson rejected it but still claims to be 'following the science'. Tiers, as someone pointed out recently, are not enough. 

Here are The Lilac Time, mid 60s psychedelic style, in 1990...

It'll End In Tears 

Here's Paul Weller remixed by Leo Zero, Blackpool Northern Soul style, in 2010... 

Tears Are Not Enough (Leo Zero Remix)

A couple of days ago on social media I said this about Andy Burnham...

It's fair to say that this man becoming a genuine hero in Manchester and the north west wasn't predictable. His reasons for becoming mayor didn't always seem clear, his run for the Labour leadership in 2015 was a disaster and I don't think everyone here has always trusted him, but he's shown true leadership and grit the last few days, standing up to the useless bunch of chancers and incompetents in the government and standing up for us. More power to him.

And I stand by all of that, cometh the hour, cometh the man etc. It has been a truly absurd year, a nightmare in many ways, full of personal and public disasters and political horrors. It's genuinely encouraging to see the odd green shoot while also keeping that anger burning.

Isolation Mix Fifteen: Songs Lord Sabre Taught Us Part Two

Two weeks ago I posted my fourteenth Isolation Mix, Songs The Lord Sabre Taught Us, an hour of music from Andrew Weatherall's record box, as featured on his radio shows, playlists, interviews and mixes, mixed together seamlessly (vaguely). Today's mix is a second edition, fifteen songs he played, raved about or sampled, most of them first heard via him (I was listening to Stockholm Monsters before I was a fan of Mr Weatherall, a long lost Factory band who made a bunch of good singles and a fine album called Alma Matter and also the best band to come out of Burnage). It's a tribute to the man and his record collection that there are so many great records from his back pages to sift through and then sequence into some kind of pleasing order. Rockabilly, dub, Factory, post- punk, krautrock legends, Weller spinning out through the Kosmos...



Cowboys International: The ‘No’ Tune
Sparkle Moore: Skull And Crossbones

The Pistoleers: Bank Robber

The Johnny Burnette Trio: Honey Hush

Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze: Dubwise

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry: Disco Devil

African Head Charge: Dervish Chant

Big Youth: Hotter Fire

Colourbox: Looks Like We’re Shy One Horse

Stockholm Monsters: All At Once

Holger Czukay, Jah Wobble and Jaki Liebezeit: How Much Are They?

White Williams: Route To Palm

Paul Weller: Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)

A R Kane: A Love From Outer Space

Chris And Cosey: October (Love Song) ‘86

I Know As Much As The Day I Was Born

In the 1980s Paul Weller's decision to keep moving and jump several steps ahead of where his audience were (and his band) led to The Style Council. Out went parkas, targets and guitar- drums- bass post- punk/mod rock, in came jazz and soul and funk, Dee C Lee and Mick Talbot. Looking back at Weller's writing in The Style Council a lot of the lyrics that shows the same concerns- The Style Council's love songs are more lovey (Headstart For Happiness and Long Hot Summer for instance) and debut single Speak Like A Child was brilliant soul pop in a way that The Jam could never have been. Weller never avoided politics in his Style Council songs, if anything he was more overtly political than he had been in The Jam. Second single Money Go Round is as powerful as The Eton Rifles but its sung over 70s wah wah funk instead of driving post punk. And as relevant today as it was in 1983.

'Too much money in too few places
Only puts a smile on particular faces
Said too much power in not enough hands
Makes me think "get rich quick; take all I can"
They're too busy spending on the means of destruction
To ever spend a penny on some real construction'

Or how about this one, The Internationalists, from 1985's Our Favourite Shop?

'If you believe you have an equal share
In the whole wide world and all it bears
And that your share is no less or more than

Your fellow sisters and brother man

Then take this knowledge and with it insist
Declare yourself, an internationalist

If your eyes see deeper than the colour of skin
Then you must also see we are the same within
And the rights you expect are the rights of all

Now it's up to you to lead the call
That liberty must come at the top of the list
Stand proud as an internationalist'

Walls Come Tumbling Down- governments crack and systems fall/Cause unity is powerful- goes without saying. If anything, these songs go further than Weller ever did with The Jam, overtly socialist and calling for change.

On Saturday night a friend had a spare for a gig by The Style Councillors at Gorilla, a nine piece band playing the songs of Weller's second band. I never saw The Style Council back in the day so was hearing many of these songs live for the first time, loud and up close in front of an enthusiastic audience. The political songs mentioned above were all played, the words cutting through from the mid- 80s to 2019 and a world where Johnson, Rees Mogg, Farage et al are all at a top people's health farm and pulling the wool over people's eyes. This one, a 1986 single, Weller's own brand of self- realisation and positive thinking...

Shout To The Top

Have You Ever Had It Blue? was a single in 1986 but first appeared on the soundtrack to the film Absolute Beginners, Julian Temple's much maligned attempt at Colin MacInnes' 1950 novel. The soundtrack version of the song has an extended jazz intro before Weller comes in. 

Have You Ever Had It Blue? (Soundtrack Version)

Kosmos

Back in November as part of the Monday Long Song thing he kicked off earlier this year Drew posted the nine minute version of Morning Wonder by The Earlies, a wonderful piece of music, sort of psychedelic folk with krauty rhythms. You can find it here with the download link still intact. In places it reminds me of this still amazing sounding Brendan Lynch remix of Paul Weller from 1993, Weller sent twisting around the kosmos by producer Brendan Lynch, on a dub- jazz- electronic mayhem trip.

Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)


Only a few years earlier The Style Council had their last hit single and Top Of The Pops appearance with their cover of Joe Smooth's house classic Promised Land. Everything about this clip is great- Weller and Mick Talbot on twin pianos, Dee's performance at the front, Mick's beard, the fun they all seem to be having.

The Place I Love

Forty years old this year, this song dropped back into my life recently, a young Paul Weller's rumination on place, identity, home and belonging. Tucked away in the middle of side two of All Mod Cons it can easily be overshadowed by its surroundings- A Bomb In Wardour Street and Down In The Tube Station At Midnight follow it- but its one of those songs which seems quintessentially Weller. Ray Davies is there in the lyrics and Motown in the music but no one else could have written these words at that point. It's also one of the few songs on All Mod Cons that is written in the first person (most of the songs on All Mod Cons are third person and observational). Home and place are topics he's come back to throughout his career but in some ways he said it all here and best in 1978, in two minutes fifty-four.

The Place I Love

Unity Is Powerful

Who could be fail to be moved by a call to arms set against some very funky mid-80s pop, railing against reactionary regimes and economic policies that keep people poor (with a slightly po-faced pop at Frankie Goes To Hollywood)? Who? Boris Johnson maybe. David Davis? Theresa May. The complete disintegration of the Conservative Party over Europe is a lovely idea. Long may it continue.

The Style Council's 1985 single Walls Come Tumbling Down is ace and their appearance on Top Of The Pops to promote it is proper time capsule stuff, Weller centre stage looking sharp with wedge haircut, blue shirt, white jeans and Rickenbacker bass. But, let's be honest, Dee C Lee upstages him, in black top and jeans with yellow cardigan combo, dancing non-stop, hotter than hot.



Headstart For Happiness is another Style Council gem, but personal rather than political and proof Weller could do wide eyed optimism when he wanted to. This is the version that closed Cafe Bleu, a delicious guitar riff and vocals shared between Mick, Dee and Paul, a song about being in love with being in love.

Headstart For Happiness

Mother Ethiopia

There are records that come along and surprise you sometimes, songs that show a change of direction, new influences, time spent with other musicians a willingness to experiment with new ideas and new sounds. And then there are the new 12" single from Paul Weller.

There are three new songs, all out now digitally with a 12" to follow in September, all titled Mother Ethiopia, recorded with soul band The Stone Foundation. This one is part 3, subtitled No Tribe No Colour and done with London based Ethiopian three-piece Krar Collective, with the vocals sung in Amharic by singer Genet Assefa. This is super loose and super funky Afrobeat and it's likely to cause a certain amount of shuffling of feet and shaking of arses. The more conservative elements of Weller's audience may be slightly perplexed by this and rush off home to put on Going Underground again- but make no mistake, this is really, really good.

Days Of Speed And Slow Time Mondays

That's Entertainment always strikes me as a bank holiday song, easily singable in a beer garden on a rare early May Day of sunshine, pub jukebox cutting through the TV sport and noise. Paul Weller admits to writing it drunk, home from the pub, in half an hour and it's easy to picture- once a couple of lines of the lyric came to him and the rhythm was there in his head, it must have just poured out. He even manages to make the 'two lovers missing the tranquillity of solitude' line work in among the urban and suburban poetry. Each line could describe a British bank holiday too from the screaming siren of the police car to feeding the ducks while wishing you were far away, from a kick in the balls to cuddling a warm girl and smelling stale perfume. Weller and The Jam at their best, although the demo version off Snap! always sounds better than the re-recorded one on Sound Affects.

That's Entertainment (Demo Version)

Into The Cosmos

If you're at a loose end and want something to soundtrack ninety minutes of your life you could do worse than this mix from the Quiet Storm family, a blogmind compilation expertly sequenced by Mark. This one took suggestions of songs inspired by the cosmos, the moon and the stars. It opens with William Shatner, takes in a wide cast of stargazers including Prefab Sprout, Billy Preston, AR Kane, The Upsetters, David Sylvian, Chilly Gonzales, Billy Bragg, Declan O'Rourke, Stereolab, I Am Kloot, Mayer Hawthorne, Sandy Denny and Labelle and finishes with Rutger Hauer and the 'tears in rain' scene from Bladerunner. See if you can guess what I suggested.



And this didn't occur to me at the time but it could have been a fine addition to the mix, Paul Weller dubbed out and spaced out by Brendan Lynch back in 1993.

Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)

Things Can Only Get...

Election day, 7th May 2015. I've been thinking a lot about how to vote. In almost all of the elections I've voted in since turning eighteen in 1988 I've voted Labour. Like many people the Labour party haven't endeared themselves to me quite as much in recent times. I'm pretty envious of our Scottish friends who have an actual, meaningful alternative to voting Labour in the shape of the SNP, and the same is true in Wales. I would like to vote for a left wing political party- a party who put social justice above narrow personal self interest, who aren't contributing to paranoid, stoked up fears about immigration, who will fund the NHS and who will support those less well off. You could suggest at this point that this option does exist for me and that I should vote Green. Which has crossed my mind. However I think when I go to the polling booth tonight I shall mark my cross against the name of the Labour party candidate. The bottom line, to my mind, has to be to get rid of the Tories, to vote this shower of shits out of office and I think that voting Labour is the most effective way to do that.

That brings up the dangerous question of voting Lib Dem tactically (and we can all see where that got us last time- the Lib Dems propping up a nasty right wing clique of bankers and ex-public school boys). Fortunately not a problem round here, the Lib Dems trail well off in third but some people may have to make that choice.

In 1997 after nearly twenty years of Conservative government the Labour party had the wind behind them and optimism in front of them. They appropriated D Ream's pop-house anthem Things Can Only Get Better. I quite liked it until that point. Right now, I'm not sure if things can only get better but if we get five more years of what we've just had then things will get a lot worse.



David Cameron (part time punk, Eton mod and class warrior) has stated before that The Eton Rifles is one of his favourite songs. Eton Rifles is a bile-fuelled invective against public school boys (from Cameron's old school) spitting and jeering at unemployed miners marching from Jarrow to London set to a piledriving post punk tune. As Paul Weller said 'which part of it didn't he get?'

Live on Something Else in 1979 (the same episode Joy Division were on).

Brand New Toy

Paul Weller put out a 7" only single for Record Shop Day last year and then got pissed off with the whole thing when scalpers stuck copies up on ebay immediately and said he wouldn't do it again.  The song itself was an unholy mash of piano, Small Faces, a dash of Lionel Bart, a touch of Bowie and a borrowed line or two from T-Rex. And rather good.

Brand New Toy

Puts Up The Closed Sign Does The Man In The Corner Shop

Man In The Corner Shop was on side two of The Jam's 1980 album Sound Affects although I should think I heard it first on Snap! The lyrics had a deep impact on me, possibly the first time I kind of understood that pop songs could be about something important. Paul Weller's 'Marxism for beginners in three minutes' still affect me today, even though I know them off by heart.

Puts up the closed sign does the man in the corner shop 
Serves his last and says goodbye to him 
He knows it is a hard life 
But it's nice to be your own boss really 
Walks off home does the last customer 
He is jealous of the man in the corner shop 
He is sick of working at the factory 
Says it must be nice to be your own boss (really) 
Sells cigars to the boss from the factory 
He is jealous is the man in the corner shop 
He is sick of struggling so hard 
He says "It must be nice to own a factory" 
Go to church do the people from the area 
All shapes and classes sit and pray together 
For here they are all one 
For God created all men equal

Man In The Corner Shop

It's a song that stands out musically on Sound Affects, with a chiming intro, 60s chords and middle eight, and powerful finish. I listened to the full album the other day. I'm not sure it's a 'great album', more a collection of songs recorded at the same time. Many of them are good but too similar in tone,Weller moving on from All Mod Cons and trying to absorb Gang Of Four's clipped guitars, while the rhythm section stretch out a bit. That's Entertainment and Start! are both career defining. There's some experimental pop-art. But Man In The Corner Shop (and That's Entertainment as well) seem to be the moral and human heart of the record.