The shit I post on Facebook . . . musical edition (Day 7)

Day 7 of my task, to choose 10 albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. No explanations, no reviews, just album covers. Every day I will ask someone else to do the same... today I nominate ET Thank you for nominating me MR.

"No explanations, no reviews, just album covers . .  ."

Bought one lunchtime in Our Price, and back to school (late) to look at the sleeve notes during a Maths lesson with Mr. Goodwin.

Big Gold Dream (2015)

The Glasgow School (2016)

Simply Thrilled: The Preposterous Story of Postcard Records by Simon Goddard (Ebury Press 2014)

In need of cheap soup and rich gossip, most lunch times Alan would wander to the Victoria Cafe, the social heart of the art school, open to students and casual interlopers, where the vain and resplendent gathered in conspicuous segregation according to their different artistic disciplines. Alan and Edwyn's catchpenny clothes stirred scornful laughs from the puffy new romantic posters of  the fashion school, but complemented the surrounding second-hand fixtures and fittings, plucked from an original site in Govanhill which had been due for demolition until rescued and reinstalled by the architecture students. The queen of the Vic was a big Irish woman called Mona, who specialised in assuring all patrons that the soup was vegetarian as she hauled the thigh bone of some poor slain unspecified beast from the same bubbling cauldron, and whose short-fuse hospitality blew at regular intervals in her cutlery-bending yell, 'Get outta ma cafe!'

The aloof fashion fops and their equilateral hair-dos aside, the art-school crowd and those who buzzed around its cafe and weekend discos were a sweet, oblivious antidote to the nice bores Alan had suffered at university. They were funny, nutty, fascinating and, to Steven's barely concealed annoyance, invariably 'greeeeeeat!'

The roll call of human specimens read as follows:

A candied darling who called himself 'Lucy Lastic'; who knew 'they' could never touch him for dragging up Sauchiehall Street as long as he didn't wear women's knickers; who knew no fear when it came to roaring 'fab doll!' at men the size of shipyards; who knew no shame when it came to recounting the gory details of his latest straight-corrupting conquest with his starter for ten, 'I've just been shafted'; and whose ultimate destiny in certain surgical procedures was beyond all reasonable doubt.

Jill Bryson, a pretty polka-dot Alice looking as if she'd missed the bus for Wonderland and ended up in Glasgow by mistake, living on the Great Western Road with her boyfriend and the rampant 'Lucy' in a flat below a dentist's surgery which rattled daily to the sound of drilling enamel.

Peter McArthur, Jill's boyfriend, a photography student and Southside punk who'd first befriended Edwyn at Glasgow College of Building and Printing, and later bewitched Alan with his shared love of Fellini, Pasolini, Cabaret and his unused ticket stub for the Pistols' phantom Apollo show. 

Drew McDowall, a performance poet from Paisley, and his young wife Rose from The Wee Scone Shop. When not surreptitiously handing out free pies to fellow punks under her boss's nose, Ross also played drums in Drew's band The Poems, once joined on stage by Edwyn and James for 'a musical recitation' of the hunting scene from War And Peace.

Gerry Hanley, Alan's usual lunchtime companion, who allowed him to join her cafe table of angry women in boiler suits, monkey boots and cropped hair, who shared a flat with the painter Adrian Wiszniewski and who herself, sometimes, could be coaxed on stage by Alan for a spot of performance art.

The tweedy man out of time called Malcolm Fisher, sufferer of untold allergies and pianist of unending jazz flourishes, who danced with his hands glued inside his raincoat pockets, whose flat, a chintz flock and floral eyesore like something from 101 Dalmatians, he shared with his similarly allergic sister.

And a punk graphic designer called Robbie Kelly, whose brother had very briefly strummed chords for the mythical Oscar Wild, and whose girlfriend, Anne, was usually seen pushing a shopping trolley down the street with a doll sat up front like a genuine baby.

As far as Alan was concerned, his new art school associates' rapturous reception to Orange Juice was an exploding plastic inevitability. He wouldn't be disappointed.

Detonation date was Friday 20 April 1979, as James Callaghan took forlorn stock of his final hours in Number 10 and as Art Garfunkel's 'Bright Eyes' bunny-hopped at number one somewhere above the shaking body of Michael Jackson, the wondering why of Sister Sledge and recently deposed yet eternally resilient Gloria Gaynor. The 1980s were but one catastrophic landslide victory and a few spins of the  glitterball away. The perfect time for Orange Juice, a name so wrong that it had to be right, to yodel their first Lifebuoy-scrubbed 'hello' to the universe.

The Next 30 Day Song Challenge - day 11

Day 11 - Your favourite one-hit wonder

A hard 'yin. 

I guess (technically) this qualifies as a one hit wonder, though I know so much of their other work that I could never think of them as a one single band. And there was so much great dance music back in the day that could fall into the category of OHW, but when I think of 'one hit and they were gone', for some reason, I think of The Lotus Eaters and their number 15 hit from 1983, 'The First Picture of You':

Despite the fact that I've always loved this song, I was always a bit hard on them for some reason.   Something about them really irritated me. I think it was the guitarist's haircut. I guess I wasn't the only one, and despite possessing a clutch of good songs, they'll always be remembered for just the one.

Document and Eyewitness: an Intimate History of Rough Trade by Neil Taylor (Orion Books 2010)

Geoff Travis: Alan Horne used to come in and play his Andy Warhol games. He was always a bit miffed with me because when he originally came down looking for a distribution deal and played me Orange Juice's 'Falling and Laughing'. I listened to it and quite liked it but didn't say it was the best single I'd heard in my life and that reaaly annoyed him. He went back to Scotland and Orange Juice made 'Blue Boy' and it got Single of the Week in Melody Maker. I read the review, listened to the record and loved it and said to myself that maybe I had been wrong about them. So I called up Alan and offered him a distribution deal. I think that not having embraced Alan's genius immediately counted as a big blow against me.

The taste challenge

Once upon a time I banged a lonely drum for The Low Miffs, but it's nice to see that other people on the blogosphere have since turned up with their drumsticks to make some noise.

JC over at The Vinyl Villain brings news that the Low Miffs have just recently released their debut album and he's so in love with it that he's broken with blog tradition and mentioned a record released this millennium. (Only half- joking.)

Check out the video at the bottom of JC's post for a flavour of their music. Of course, it's fitting that they're recording with Malcolm Ross of Josef K and Orange Juice fame. The old Sound of Young Scotland spawned many a kid and some, in turn, have picked up instruments.

Also check The Low Miffs MySpace page for info on the album, a forthcoming tour and a comment from the Socialist Standard MySpace page that dates from April 21st 2006. The comment is gushing over one their older songs, 'Also Sprach Shareholder' . It's the song that first got me into them and I've been looking out for them ever since.

One word of warning, though; the lead singer, Leo Condie, is, how can I put this?, a lot like marmite. I happen to like marmite. Some people don't. More fool them.

Mixing Pop and Politics (1)

Obscure Factoid of the Day

Mike Kidron's son, Adam Kidron, produced Orange Juice's debut album, 'You Can't Hide Your Love Forever'.

I Can't Help Myself

What's with Lou Reed looking over Darren Fletcher's shoulder? This skewed observation has been brought to you from a wan light.

Pic found via the Sound of Young Scotland blog.

Ashford (Kent) and Ronnie Simpson (Glasgow Celtic)

Morphing Into A Music Blog (6)

OK, so I didn't get the Sunderland/Newcastle result right, and that doesn't bode well for my other predictions regarding the ultra-left TinTin movie. I better just continue with the blog making its transition from being a spew of words dedicated to solipcism, spgb'ism and seltic to a blog dedicated to solipcism, spgb'ism, seltic and the sampling of mp3s.

A few music blog links for your sampling delectation:

17 Seconds brings you Mark E Smith doing his 'vocal-ahs' to a series of cover versions from down the years. Naturally, 'Victoria' and 'There's A Ghost In My House' are listed; they were The Fall's biggest hits. But I'd never heard The Fall's version of 'A Day in the Life' before. Smiffy should have got a guest vocalist in for the Paul McCartney bit. Maybe Rory Erickson was busy that week.
The post also includes The Fall's cover of 'Mr Pharmacist'. The song that brought The Fall onto my radar all those years ago. Good stuff.

The Vinyl District is currently doing a brilliant series of posts on the seventies as seen through the speakers of AM radio. Simple but effective, he's taking that decade year by year with artwork from the period and accompanying mp3 links to sample tracks.
I'll be honest, I'm really waiting for his posts covering the second half of the seventies as I'm intrigued what sort of tracks he will post, but for the oldsters out there, he's already covered '70; '71; '72; '73; '74.

Check out the album covers from 1971. Never knew that James Dean Bradfield used to be in Badfinger.

Weekend Shots from The Vinyl District Vinyl District must have heard me, 'cos whilst he takes a break from the seventies series - apparently it's a Monday thru' Friday thing - he throws in a side dish of proto-punk tracks from 1977. Brilliant to finally be able to check out for the first time Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill's pre-Simple Minds band, Johnny and the Self Abusers, (a foreshadowing of Simple Minds descent into stadium politicised rock in the second half of the eighties, when he became known as 'Jim Kerr, the Self-Important Wanker'). The post also features tracks from The Buzzcocks (including Devoto), Tubeway Army, Radio Stars (why weren't they bigger?) and the Flamin' Groovies.

The Vinyl Villain has a post dedicated to Bourgie Bourgie, another Scottish band from the second half of the eighties who didn't pull their weight during the 'Great Pop Wars of 1984-1988'. (See such other non-combatants as Flesh, The Big Dish, Love & Money and Owen Paul.)
I totally remember that YouTube clip of BB from The Tube. Is it not enough that I have heavy recourse to eighties musical nostalgia that I have to be stricken down with fond memories of eighties music shows now? I'll be singing the praises of Razzamatazz next.

Just had a thought: Isn't every other post on Vinyl Villain dedicated to Paul Quinn in some way or another? I get it: 'Breaking Point' is a great track - probably the third or fourth track I ever tried to hunt down when I discovered the delights of file sharing - but, for me, PQ's finest four minutes will always be, 'Mud In Your Eye', his duet with Edwyn Collins off the Orange Juice's 1982 album, Rip It Up.

If I'm going to cut and paste write a blog about music blogs, I should throw in an mp3 to sample as a way of finishing the post.

Orange Juice - Mud In Your Eye mp3

That can be my contribution to the 'Remember Paul Quinn' Campaign.