Unauthorised item in the bagging area

Sunday 31 March 2013

Nightmare


Must we fling this filth at our children? This 1967 song features a girl who shows off her ring, another girl who then takes umbrage, girl-on-girl violence and a soundtrack to match, a chorus which goes 'Push her down, get her down', the death of the other girl and our protagonist fleeing and then (cue thumping drums/jail house doors) her inevitable comeuppance. The Whyte Boots were an imaginary band apparently- which doesn't take anything away from this great 60s girl group psychodrama.

Nightmare

Or here Nightmare

Saturday 30 March 2013

She's Wicked


While looking for the rockabilly for last night I happened upon this ace slice of 80s garage rock revivalism by The Fuzztones. Led by Rudi Protrudi The Fuzztones came out of New York and have gone through several line up changes but keep ploughing on. This has fuzz guitar (natch), Mysterions style organ and great vocals about her.

She's Wicked

Try this She's Wicked

Friday 29 March 2013

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 99


There's only so many ways I can say- here's some cracking rockabilly from 1950-whatever. But it is Friday, and here is some cracking rockabilly from 1957 and Johnny Stark. Goes down great with alcohol and hot cross buns. Have a good Friday.

Rockin' Billy

Clash Friday


I found this photo of The Clash and various associates I'd never seen before. That's Joe on the far left with his back to camera, next to him fixer and tour manager Kosmo Vinyl, Paul Simonon centre with shirt undone and Pearl Harbour between him and Mick. Not completely sure who the blonde woman sitting on the ghetto blaster is, possibly Joe's then girlfriend (I could probably consult a book and find her name)- the one with the fan I'm pretty sure is Mick's girlfriend Ellen Foley. I also don't quite recognise the man between Paul and Kosmo but by process of elimination guess he's either one of the roadcrew or a member of The Explosions (although he doesn't look like any of The Explosions in the pictures on a Google image search). I'm guessing this is backstage in Japan circa 1982. Pearl Harbour and The Explosions supported them on their Far East tour, and the hair and clobber look very much like their get ups on the cover of Combat Rock. It's anyone's guess where Topper has disappeared off too.

In this extremely grainy, taped from Japanese TV clip Pearl fronts The Clash on Wanda Jackson's Fujiyama Mama and then sticks around adding vocals while they play their cover of The Equals' Police On My Back and White Riot.



Here's that original of Police On My Back by The Equals...

Police On My Back


Thursday 28 March 2013

Essoldo





I took these pictures of Stretford's art deco cinema building on my phone last weekend- it was so cold I could hardly operate the button. Stretford is just up the road from here and this old cinema building is one of my favourite Mancunian buildings. Previously known as Longford Cinema and Stretford Essoldo it's been empty since the early 90s when the bingo it housed moved out (Top Rank Bingo). The current owners said in 2010 they had plans for it but other than a coat of paint it's had little care or attention since. The location isn't ideal for much anymore I suppose. On the corner of a major crossroads, four lanes of Chester Road traffic flying past and opposite a seen better days shopping centre (once Stretford Arndale, recently re-branded as Stretford Mall).

In the 1930s it looked like this...


And in it's 1937 heyday...


The walkway/concourse has long gone since then, making way for a lane of traffic. In 1960 it was still a bustling suburban cinema...



Up the side Edge Lane leads to Chorlton. There's a row of shops, some empty, and the old exit from the Essoldo which has this beautiful curved brick recess and a large column sticking up.



Morrissey lived not much more than a stone's throw from here, the iron bridge where he kissed crosses the canal and railway line that pass behind the back of the Essoldo half a mile south. I think Ivor Perry (of 80s janglers Easterhouse and briefly Johnny Marr's replacement in The Smiths) is a Stretfordian too. Bowie played Stretford sometime in the 70s according to my hairdresser as well. But it's Morrissey's patch popculturewise. His public pronouncements have become increasingly bizarre and ill-judged recently and he's currently poorly (Still Ill with double pneumonia). His solo career is very hit and miss but this song, a B-side, is something special- if you want a self-pitying wallow.

Never Played Symphonies

Wednesday 27 March 2013

I'm The Window Fitter (In The House of Love)



It turns out that recent postees The House Of Love have got a new album out and are doing a short tour in April. When I'm going to be away. Damn.

Terry Bickers and Guy Chadwick have reunited. There's no real change in direction- Guy's voice and lyrics could have been cut and pasted from the late 80s and Terry's guitar playing is as good as ever. An article in Sunday's Observer claimed that Guy made/makes a living by fitting windows in South London. It also says that near the end of the Bickers first tenure in the band he spoilt a gig in Wales by singing Sham 69 songs over the band's own songs. I saw them at Warrington a few days before he was dumped by the side of a motorway and his backing vocals and playing that night seemed to be almost deliberately off key and out of time- but I don't recall him singing the words to Borstal Breakout over Christine. I'm pretty tempted by their new lp. But it's probably mainly nostalgia on my part.


Tuesday 26 March 2013

Why Must I Always Be A Failure?



This winter seems like it will never end. Where's the sun? Where is the sun? It's been so long I've been reduced to looking for pictures of it on the internet (that have been Instagrammed for that extra rosy glow).

Skinny were a downtempo/trip hop act from 90s London. Just typing that makes me feel like I'm wearing combats and a backpack. The David Holmes remix of their best known song keeps that trip hop vibe and chucks in a load of retro soul/blues, vinyl crackle and extends it over eight and a half minutes. Really very nice. Nice- ugh.

Failure (David Holmes Remix)

While we're here, this is a rather wonderful new remix Holmes has done for Belfast's Documenta Drone Pop.



Monday 25 March 2013

Baltic Fleet



I've just got hold of this via Twitter- it's not just there for clever one-liners and telling people what you're doing right now. If you give your email address to the box in this link here you can download an excellent guitar and organ led, post-punk/motorik instrumental from Baltic Fleet, who by name alone sound like they should be on the bill at some History Rocks festival alongside Public Service Broadcasting and British Sea Power, possibly held in a disused Cold War bunker site or a World War Two airfield. With only rationed food available in the food tent. Mr Billy Childish could appear too. And our friend Andrew Weatherall would dj between the bands while also modelling the finest tweeds.

Baltic Fleet is Warrington's Paul Fleming (who used pay the bills by playing keyboards for the Bunnymen). Course, what the free download is meant to do is get you to want to buy the album. Which I quite fancy now.

The photo shows the famous Baltic Fleet pub in Liverpool.

Axis Remix



Ahead of Record Shop Day (April 20th) comes details of an Asphodells remix 12" with this atmospheric beauty from Daniel Avery on one side (and a Wooden Shjips remix on the other). This is a song you can slide into.




Sunday 24 March 2013

Bowie, Berlin And TV

Listening to the new Bowie album (pretty good I reckon, some very good songs, two songs too long maybe) has sent me spinning back to the Berlin albums and some clips of Bowie and his band playing various TV shows in the mid-to-late 70s.

Station To Station has always been my favourite Bowie album, sheer brilliance from start to finish- and there's this live performance where the Thin White Duke (or Thin Dark Green PVC Trousered Duke) stands back grinning to admire Adrian Belew nailing the riff to Stay in very funky fashion.



The video for be My Wife (from Low) is hilarious- Bowie's facial expressions throughout are a scream; looks like the video making process is akin to being offered a plate of steaming hot dogshit. Great, great song. Cool hair too.



Bowie appearing on US programme Soul Train playing Golden Years (my favourite Bowie song I think), bit of shimmying, coked to the gills.



And live in navy blue again with full band doing Five Years on the Dinah Shore Show.



Which is maybe not as good as the Whistle Test one from a few years earlier (five years earlier?).




Saturday 23 March 2013

My Lucky Number's Three


I haven't got a lucky number. Lene Lovich's 1978 hit Lucky Number straddles a fine line between quirky pop genius and irritation, falling just the right side. So many hooks in one song- the new wave intro and verses, the 'ah-oh-ah-oh' vocal bridge, the African hi-life guitar part just after that. It always sounds a bit what would happen if Talking Heads attempted writing a genuine pop song.

Lucky Number

Friday 22 March 2013

Friday Night Is...Off To See Johnny Marr Night


As I mentioned last weekend. But I'm looking forward to this, so I've suspended the rockabilly for this week (and Johnny was always a rockabilly fan). The gig's at The Ritz which is a real Manchester homecoming too as it was the venue for the very first Smiths public performance thirty years ago. This song features Morrissey, Johnny, Andy and Mike early on, from the aborted Troy Tate sessions for the first Smiths album. It turned up on the I Started Something I Couldn't Finish single in 1987, suggesting someone in the band realised late on that those Troy Tate sessions were scrapped hastily. Or they'd run out of B-sides.

Pretty Girls Make Graves (Troy Tate version)

Pretty Girls Make Graves has loads of great Morrissey lines in it- I particularly like 'She wants it now and she will not wait, but she's too rough and I'm too delicate'

In 2010 Johnny recorded an all-guns-blazing cover version of Rabbit MacKay's Tendency To Be Free, with all the proceeds going to homeless charity Centrepoint. You can get it here for the princely sum of 99 pence. I heartily recommend that you do- it's ace. Rabbit MacKay's original was from the 1969 biker film Angels Die Free...







And I'm Absolutely Sane



Saint Etienne's cover version of Bowie's 80s film tie single Absolute Beginners- a good effort if truth be told although the repeated 'South Bronx' sample becomes a bit wearing. The film was based on Colin McInnes 50s novel- a classic of it's kind.

Absolute Beginners

The extended mix Bowie's single went on for over seven minutes and was the best thing about the film by a long chalk. Except for that pesky saxophone.




Thursday 21 March 2013

Trans Pennine Express



I don't know when these came out but at some point in the recentish past Justin Robertson remixed krauty-tech types Warm Digits and came up with two slices of Balearic house loveliness that will warm the cockles and make your fingers tap, particularly Trans Pennine Express. And you can't beat a track called Trans Pennine Express. Free download. Go get.




Wednesday 20 March 2013

I Hate To See Your Broken Face


Just to prove it wasn't all serious Marxist dialectic round Stereolab's way I'll post another favourite of theirs of mine- it was a toss up between this and the sunny day optimism of Captain Easychord but I've gone for this one off the Emperor Tomato Ketchup album.

The Noise Of Carpet

And the video was good too...




Tuesday 19 March 2013

It's Alright 'Cos The Historical Pattern Has Shown How The Economical Cycle Tends To Revolve


Marxist political and economic theory set to a counter-revolutionary 60s ye-ye beat by Stereolab, back in 1994- singalong together now...

'A slump then a war then peel back to square one and back for more

Bigger slump and bigger wars and a smaller recovery

Don't worry, be happy things will get better naturally
Don't worry, shut up, sit down, go with it and be happy

Dum dum dum, de dum dum, de duh de dum dum dum, ah, ah'

Ping Pong

Monday 18 March 2013

Condo 33



It's amazing what a bit of internet research pissing about on the net can bring you- Peter Gordon was the founder of Love Of Life Orchestra, New York avant garde ensemble, with ties to Steve Reich and Laurie Anderson and Arthur Russell, heavily influencing DFA and all those kinds of people. The song above is Condo- but slowed down from 45rpm to 33rpm- and is utterly wonderful.

Sunday 17 March 2013

Beachcomber

I found this recently at Just Press Play blog, an always reliable source of good leftfield electronic stuff, and it is a cosmic belter- Beachcomber is fourteen minutes of New York veteran Peter Gordon and Factory Floor making some beautiful links between stellar bass, wonky synths and post-punk sax. Out soon on Optimo.




Saturday 16 March 2013

I've Always Thought Of You As My Brick Wall

Mrs Swiss and I are off to see Johnny Marr at the Ritz this coming Friday- according to reviews of the gigs so far he's playing several Smiths songs (including Bigmouth, Stop Me, How Soon Is Now? and London) and a handful of Electronic ones- Forbidden City, Getting Away With It and the always ace Get The Message.

Here's Johnny, Bernard and four blokes from the Gay Traitor doing Get The Message on Top Of The Pops in April 1991 (if you pause it just before the end of the clip you'll avoid Nicky Campbell).




Here's the DNA remix version for some TV show...




Weatherdub



Here's that Weatherall dub remix of Primal Scream's 2013 that I mentioned last week- get that 12" ordered folks. Listen at Soundcloud. No vox on this one. Think he might have hidden them in that beard.

The Girl Who Waves At Trains


Ha! Another one- although this one is The Girl Who... rather than The Girl With...
Stephen Duffy's Lilac Time have get plenty of gems hidden in their back catalogue- this is one of them.

The Girl Who Waves At Trains

Friday 15 March 2013

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 98


Howsabout an instrumental 50s goodie for tonight from The Storms, with some rocking rhythms and a great saxophone line (not a phrase I use often. Many a good tune has been ruined by allowing the saxophonist into the recording studio). This may be more surf than rockabilly but... it's Friday, who cares? Pint please Gloria.

Thunder

The Girl With A Pearl Earring


Another Bagging Area mini-series splutters to a painful close (I'm ignoring dragon tattoos and hornet's nests).

Girl With A Pearl Earring is a painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, and a 2003 film starring Scarlett Johansson (which I haven't seen). The painting is also known as the Mona Lisa of the north or the Dutch Mona Lisa.

Pearl Bastard was a previously unreleased Stone Roses demo that saw the light of day with that huge boxed set re-release of their debut album. What does it sound like? An unfinished Stone Roses demo. As links go it's pretty tenuous- and I was going to put in a Pearl Harbour song (Pearl Harbour and the Explosions, former wife of Paul Simonon, Clash support act- in fact I've posted her rather good cover of Wanda Jackson's Fujiyama Mama previously) until I remembered about this Roses song.

Pearl Bastard

Thursday 14 March 2013

The Girl With The Loneliest Eyes


The Girl With The Loneliest Eyes was an end period song from The House Of Love when everyone, probably including the band themselves, had given up on them. It isn't up there with their peerless, perfect early records on Creation, with all those FX and wobbly guitars, but for a band (in 1993) totally out of time and running out of ideas it isn't half bad. In fact it shimmers.

The Girl With The Loneliest Eyes

Wednesday 13 March 2013

The Girl With The Sun In Her Head


I stumbled into this Orbital song recently and it sounded sublime. Real stop whatever it is you're doing and have ten minutes off stuff.

The Girl With The Sun In Her Head

Totally unrelated picture- Alexander Calder, wire sculptor and 'pioneer of mobiles' (hanging wire sculptures rather than early mobile phones), snapped by Man Ray in Paris in 1931.

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Booglaoo Dudes


I watched the Mott The Hoople documentary on BBC4 the other night, a band who I know not very much about. I enjoyed it- the name of Mott has always been about and I'm familiar with Ian Hunter and some of their better known songs, and the names of various members- Overand Watts and Ariel Bender being the two that stand out- and they seemed like a decent bunch. But I couldn't help thinking that if all their songs had been as good as the one Bowie wrote and gave them, it wouldn't all have been such a struggle for them.

All The Young Dudes

Monday 11 March 2013

Gubba Lookalikes

Tony Gubba, RIP.




Missing


Vini Reilly has had a rough time recently with health issues and major financial problems. One of his Durutti Column masterpieces LC is currently being re-released with twenty odd extra songs. LC is an lp I already own twice, once on vinyl and once in a 90s re-release version on cd. I don't think I'll buy it for a third time but if anyone from the Manchester scene deserves some cash to go with the talent it's Vini, so maybe we should put our hands in our pockets. This song was written for the missing boy, Ian Curtis. New Order, ACR, Durutti Column and Tony Wilson were all around a pool somewhere in the US in the early 80s and Vini said to Tony 'You know who's missing don't you?' As well as Vini's beautiful guitar this song features some very fragile Vini Reilly vocals..

The Missing Boy

LC stands for Lotta Continua- the struggle goes on.

Sunday 10 March 2013

Pushing


I haven't posted any Nuggety, 60s garage rock for a while so let's remedy that with The Seeds and their organ led classic Pushin' Too Hard.

Pushin' Too Hard

I once dj-ed at the wedding reception of friends of friends, fairly low key affair above a bar in town rather than some huge hotel room. The groom gave me only two playlist instructions- 'our first dance is Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell and at some point you've got to play The Seeds Pushin' Too Hard'.

Saturday 9 March 2013

51


A reader (Colin Dickson) sent me a link to this recently- Mr Weatherall live at the Hacienda in 1993- you can find it at BLOG51. The blogpost also mentions Hacienda resident dj Tom Wainwright, who I went to school with and, true fact, whose sister was my first girlfriend (aged 13 or something).

Brunswick Drive



Brunswick Drive by Black Merlin was the third release on Weatherall's Bird Scarer Records. I have this one and Bird Scarer 002 though missed out on Bird Scarer 001. Does that irk me? Yes it does. This is the B-side, remixed by Scott Fraser. High quality electronic sounds for Saturday morning. No dl, listen only- it's a vinyl only series, part of the Bird Scarer aesthetic.

Friday 8 March 2013

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 97



Mrs Swiss is off to a 70s night tonight- a fundraiser for Pictor Special School, the special needs Primary school our son I.T. used to go to. And it's an opportunity for her to see her friends and have a dance.

But it made me think- it'd be fun to book a venue, publicise a 70s night, wait for everyone to arrive in their Afro wigs and fancy dress shop polyester flares and then give them a different version of the 70s- Neil Young, various versions of Bowie, some heavy 70s reggae, some Lee Scratch Perry, a dollop of dub, some Clash, Pistols, Buzzcocks, Siouxsie, X-Ray Spex, Bunnymen, Joy Division, some obscure early Factory bands, some scratchy post-punk, a few bits of Postcard, krautrock, Kraftwerk... I could always play I Feel Love as a crowd pleaser at the end and then send them on their way with Lou Reed's Goodnight Ladies (from Transformer). Although there might be just me left by that point.

Anyway, enough- on with the rockabilly, this week from Billie J. Killen.

It Makes No Difference

Don't Be So La-Di-Dah


I happened upon this recently (thanks to  reader Paul Bob Horrocks) and rather like it- a song from a forthcoming Westbam album with the vocals of Richard Butler (him from Psychedelic Furs, still going somewhere near you). You Need The Drugs has a lovely skippy rhythm, wobbly bass and big synthy strings and Butler's vox ('Don't be so la-di-dah, you need the drugs'- quite). Find it at Soundcloud and lose part of the last working day of the week.

No d/l I'm afraid- listen only. Besides at the rate things are being 'listened to' from my Boxnet account I'll be out of bandwidth by the end of next week.

Thursday 7 March 2013

Neu Weatherall


Do you want to hear Andrew Weatherall's remix of Primal Scream's 2013 song? Thought you might.

There are some of the lighter aspects krautrock in this- Neu!ish keys, bass and guitars- before the breakdown around 4.44 and then everything gets thrown in, just short of the kitchen sink. Listen on Soundcloud via Fact Magazine. The pre-order advertised 12" has a dub mix mentioned too. Which I'm looking forward to hearing, buying and playing at considerable volume.

I Got A Letter From The Government The Other Day...


... opened it and read it, it said they were suckers.

Is as good an opening line for a song as any I can think of. In fact, the receiving of a letter is a good starting point for songs generally- Jimmy Cliff's Vietnam, Son House's Death Letter both spring to mind. It could die out within a generation couldn't it?- I was cc'd into an email last week doesn't carry the same drama.

Tricky's cover version of the Public Enemy song Black Steel In the Hour Of Chaos is one of those covers that is better than the original. The clattering beats, the female lead vocal shifting everything from the original around, the full on bass, the descending punk guitar riff- this is one of the best songs of the 90s and one of the few Tricky songs I can come back to time and time again. And there was a guitar heavy remix on the 12" that was even better.

Black Steel

Gypsy Rose Lee got more than a letter from her government- she was investigated by Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare of the early 50s. You've got to watch those burlesque artistes- Commies every last one of them.

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Sun Blows Up Today


There are Flaming Lips songs and albums I love with all my heart and Flaming Lips songs and records that I don't. The last album, Embryonic, didn't appeal to me at all. Previous one, At War With The Mystics, had two or three out-and-out winning songs. Yoshima and the Soft Bulletin are superb from start to finish. Wayne Coyne is interviewed in this month's Mojo and seems to be in the midst of some 50-something crisis but he always comes across as honest, a wide-eyed believer and a man who wants to keep doing something different. Which is good.

There's a new album, The Terror, out in April. Unlike Embryonic it's a concise nine song job, not a seventy-odd minute slog. If you pre-order it you get a bonus song as a download straight away- Sun Blows Up Today. Wayne has described the forthcoming lp as 'bleak and terrifying' but this bonus song sounds like the work of indie-punk chimpanzees on happy pills. Listen at Soundcloud. It's chuffing great. Apparently they performed it at the Superbowl (?) and gave it for use on a car advert(?).

Their 2006 song The W.A.N.D. was a George Bush baiting, Black Sabbath channeling, up, up and away thing of brilliance. Until this week I had never seen the video. Here it is.






Tuesday 5 March 2013

Kill City


In total contrast to yesterday's Appalachian ghostliness here's a raucous, sex-infused noise. Kill City were an electro-rock band who released a mini-album in 2004 called White Boy Brown Girl, on Alan McGee's short-lived Poptones label. McGee's mate Andrew Innes remixes them in early 00s Primal Scream style. Big drums, white noise, heavy riffs, female vox, lyrics about inter-racial shagging. You know what this is going to sound like don't you?

White Boy Brown Girl (Andrew Innes Remix)

Another song on the lp was titled Cease To Exist- which was the opening line in Pixies' song Wave Of Mutilation (borrowed from Charles Manson/Beach Boys), which took inspiration from Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou film. Luis Bunuel was photographed in the late 20s by Man Ray. Of course he was. Everyone who was anyone was.

Monday 4 March 2013

Foggy Mountain Top


There's something about The Carter Family which is really, really old- voices sounding almost as old as the Appalachian Mountains, plucked guitar or banjo and occasional yodelling. This music is so far removed from anything made in 2013 as to be almost a different art form.

Foggy Mountain Top

Sunday 3 March 2013

Generate!


I got the new Johnny Marr album last week. I'm not sure it's a great album but it has got some really good songs on it, at least half of them being more than a cut above. The guitar playing is the most Smithsian he's done since being in that band and also recalls some of the more guitar led Electronic songs (the majestic Forbidden City say). His voice is fine too, good enough to carry the songs. So, I can recommend it, if you fancy that kind of thing. There's a load of sparkiness to it to suggest the live shows will be great (as long as Ronnie Wood doesn't turn up for How Soon Is Now as he did in London a few days ago. I've also recently realised I missed a secret gig at Night And Day in town last Monday night). So I'm looking forward to the gig at the Ritz later this month. This song has a touch of post-punk and Buzzcocks about it.

Generate! Generate!

Johnny has done a ton of press and promotion for the album. The Guardian's weekly podcast features Johnny talking about his favourite 5 songs he's played on and for good measure, in a Bagging Area two-for-one special, Andrew Weatherall is also there talking to Alexis Petridis about The Asphodells, Fuck Buttons and djing in a foam party in a cowshed. Stream or download here.




'Space and light and order. These are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.'

Le Corbusier.

Saturday 2 March 2013

Vinyl Storage Solutions

Here is my recent storage solution for some of my vinyl following Glen Campbell's discovery that my record collection was getting damp. I still need to sort out something for half the cds (M through to Z and compilations) and potentially get another Ikea Expedit (product placement alert) for the vinyl stacked on the bookshelf in the right of this photo. It's an ongoing project.


I don't expect you to find this that interesting. But have a look at Drew's post today at Across The Kitchen Table and then play spot the difference.

Heliocentric Request


I've had a request for the Two Lone Swordsmen remix of Paul Weller's Heliocentric, a record released back in 2000 but only as a limited white label- which makes it a bit of a rarity. I don't think it's ever had any kind of official release. Apparently Weller didn't like it- although given the influences on and nature of his recent albums he should probably have another listen and reconsider. This is Weller put through the krautrock wringer by Weatherall and Tenniswood; driving drums and bass, doomy, odd noises, veers into Killing Joke territory. I love it. Play loud.

Heliocentric (Swordsmen 4UR Mix)

Runaway Again

Earworm ahoy- since the Joan Jett/Runaways post last Tuesday I have been playing this over and over (as the song says). So, here's the video (a bit grainy, transferred and uploaded from videotape I reckon- but authentically 80s)



And a version in a TV studio...



And here's a song, recently added to my hard drive...

Do You Want To Touch Me (Oh Yeah)


Friday 1 March 2013

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 96


It's Friday night so why not let Link Wray tear up your stereo with the fearsome guitar sound of White Lightning (intended as the follow up to Rumble in 1958 but the record label  bottled it). Link achieved his fuzzed up sound by sticking a screwdriver through his guitar speaker into the cone- I don't advise trying this at home but let me know how you get on if you settle into some hi-fi auto-destruction tonight.

White Lightning

Old Music


I overheard some 15 and 16 year olds talking the other day (at work, not out in the community)- they were discussing 'old music' but I couldn't quite hear what they meant by 'old music'. So I asked. 'The first Arctic Monkeys album' one of them replied.

I nearly spat my false teeth out. I mean, when was that released? 2003? Old music?!

They would have been 5 or so at the time, so maybe they had a point, but fer Christsakes!

They also see all music ever recorded as equal somehow- no context, no real distinction between music recorded in 2003, 1993 or 1963. It's all a 3.5MB, 79p download. One of them was equally into Arctic Monkeys and Rhythm Is A Dancer by Snap. And Iron Maiden.

I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor