Fifty Four

I am 54 today- and all of a sudden the mid- fifties have arrived. I have tried to put together a number 54 based Sunday mix. It turns out 54 isn't a particularly popular musical number. As so often happens Mr Weatherall came to my rescue along with The Clash and a very famous and debauched New York nightclub and a blinding reggae song. This mix is as a result somewhat varied stylistically and gets even more random towards the end- maybe that's a metaphor for one's 50s.

Forty Five Minutes Of Fifty Four

• Grace Jones: Nightclubbing
• Tom Tom Club: Genius Of Love
• The Clash: Ivan Meets G.I. Joe
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Shack 54 (Joe Mckechnie Remix)
• Patrick Cowley and Sylvester: Menergy (Rich Lane 'Too Hard' Cotton Dub)
• Big Audio Dynamite II: The Globe (Studio 54 Remix)
• The Velvet Underground: I Can't Stand It (2014 version)
• The Rolling Stones: All Down The Line
• Toots And The Maytals: 54- 46 That's My Number

Studio 54 was a New York nightclub located at 254 West 54th Street, midtown Manhattan. It was converted from a theatre to a club in 1977 and for a while was the world's premier disco nightclub, a place with a famously loose approach to sex, drugs and extravagance. It had apparently the world's most difficult entry policy but once in 'the dancefloor was a democracy'. A list of Studio 54's celebrity clientele includes Grace Jones, Woody Allen, Bianca Jagger, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Bowie, Cher, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Lou Reed, John Travolta, Margaret Trudeau, Divine, Farrah Fawcett, Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicolson, Liza Minelli, Rick James and many more. Some of those people were thusly shoehorned into my mix above. Chic famously were turned away at the door and went home and wrote Freak Out, a disco track which started with the phrase 'Fuck You!' chanted as the chorus instead of the eventual title. 

Grace Jones, a Studio 54 devotee, released her album Nightclubbing in 1981, an early 80sunk/ reggae/ post- punk/ new wave/ disco masterpiece, recorded at Compass Point in the Bahamas. The title track is a cover of Iggy Pop's 1977 song, an ode to numbed out nighttime adventures on the floor. It's Grace's birthday today as well- happy 76th birthday Grace.

Tom Tom Club's Genius Of Love is also from 1981, a brilliant slice of New York post- disco/ synth- pop/ art rap that nods its head to a cast of black musicians- James Brown, Sly and Robbie, Hamilton Bohannon, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Bob Marley- and was a big tune at Studio 54. Its creators, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz only went a couple of times, they claim, preferring the Mudd Club or Danceteria. 

The Clash went to Studio 54 once and Joe Strummer said they were observed by the Warhol crowd like animals in a cage. Joe wrote The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too about the experience. Ivan Meets G.I. Joe is from Sandinista!, and includes the line 'so you're on the floor at 54', imagining the Cold War as a competition on the nightclub's dancefloor, a Soviet- America disco face off, sung by Topper Headon. It's not my favourite Clash song but it fits this mix. 

Shack 54 was on Two Lone Swordsmen's Wrong Meeting Part 2, a 2007 album with Weatherall and Tenniswood by this pint deep into live rock 'n' roll/ garage rockabilly territory. It was great fun, Andrew once again turning on a sixpence and wrong footing people who expected him to keep doing the same thing. This remix of Shack 54 by Joe Mckechnie is I think unreleased. 

Patrick Cowley and Sylvester were both Studio 54 attendees. For his Cotton Dub edit Rich Lane ramps up the campness and Hi NRG to the max on a song that wasn't exactly lacking in either. 

Big Audio Dynamite II's The Globe was the best single the second incarnation of the band released, a  1991 single that samples Mick's most well known Clash riff. It was a Mick Jones and Gary Stonnage co- write and produced by Mick and Andre Shapps (making both of them related to current Tory Minister Grant Shapps, a man I sincerely hope loses his seat and his deposit come election day).  The Studio 54 remix adds some disco strings and keys and has never been officially released but is on the bootleg series The B.A.D. Files. 

The Velvet Underground have Studio 54 connections via Lou Reed and Andy Warhol but there's a big disconnect between the sound of the Velvets and Studio 54 so really this was just an excuse to shoehorn in this 2014 version of a Lou reed song that should be played daily by everyone, Lou and Sterling taking the Bo Diddey beat and rhythm guitar to its logical limit. The part where Lou counts down from 8 is among my favourite moments on any song. 

Bianca Jagger once rode into Studio 54 on the back of a white horse, an eye- opening way to celebrate one's birthday (a party for Bianca thrown by fashion designer Halston). Bianca later said she didn't ride the horse to or in the club, she just sat on its back once it was already inside. I was going to say, with a knowing smirk, hey, we've all been there- but then I remembered that at the Golden Lion last November at the end of a night David Holmes played at the pub there was a horse at the bar having a pint with its owner, so actually, maybe we have all been there. Bianca was married to Mick from 1970 to 1978, a period The Stones made their final absolute classic album, 1973's Exile On Main Street from which All Down The Line is one of four superb songs that make up the album's fourth side. 

Toots And The Maytals released reggae classic 54- 46 Was My Number in 1968. 54- 46 was Toots' prison number when he was jailed for possession of marijuana and for the next 365 day trip around the sun, 54 is my number. 

This Is Your Life

A rewind to 1991 today and to a song I posted back in 2010 when this blog was still in its first year. Banderas were a duo- Sally Herbert and Caroline Buckley- who were part of Jimmy Somerville's Communards band. They formed Banderas as a side project, signed to London Records and put this song out as a single. It went top twenty hit in March 1991. Built on one of those chunky early 90s rhythm tracks and containing a sample from Grace Jones' Crack Attack, This Is Your Life also featured guest spots from both Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner on guitar and backing vox, moonlighting from Electronic. Johnny's funky wah wah licks are easy to identify and the swelling strings and keyboards add some drama while Caroline sings, 'This is not a story/ This is not a book/ This is your life'. One of those songs that sounds like a postcard from the past, pinning a sound and a time onto a noticeboard as surely as photograph from 1991 could. 

This Is Not Your Life

Drums And Bumpers

While everything has been going on for us for the last three weeks the real world has been continuing to spin on its axis. The death of Michael Nesmith was a sad loss. If you grew up in the 1970s you couldn't escape The Monkees TV show (and why would you want to?). Mike was a talented songwriter and before he even appeared in The Monkees had written his classic song Different Drum, although he wouldn't record it as a solo artist until 1972. Linda Ronstadt and The Stone Poneys had a big hit with it in 1967 but I think the first version I heard was a cover by The Lemonheads in 1990. Evan Dando drawling 'You and I/ Travel to the beat of a different drum' over some crunchy early 90s indie- rock makes a good claim to be the definitive version of the song. 

Different Drum

The Monkees 1968 film and soundtrack Head are legendary, a trippy, satirical attempt to throw off their pop image. As We Go Along is one of the soundtrack's highlights and although it's sung by Micky Dolenz rather than Mike Nesmith I thought it was worth posting here today regardless. There's a bit of an all star cast playing on this one- Neil Young, Carole King and Ry Cooder. 

As We Go Along

Also gone is Robbie Shakespeare, a man whose basslines run through my record collection like the writing through a stick of rock. As half of the Sly and Robbie rhythm section he's appeared on more great records than most. Take Grace Jones in 1980 as as good an example as any. 

Pull Up To The Bumper

Isolation Mix Ten

I started compiling this one in my head when the sun was shining and it was hot enough to sit in the garden at night until it went dark without the need for a coat or sweatshirt. Since I started actually putting it together the sun has vanished and the temperature has halved but I've ploughed on anyway. It's a ten song mix with sunshine and balmy nights in mind from the political/ absurdist post- punk/ dub of Meatraffle, the finger picked acoustic guitar and Mellotron magic of Steve Cobby, some chuggy Scandi- disco/house, 80s heroes The Woodentops, a blissed out re- edit of Brian Eno, Andrew Weatherall spinning Toy into a chilled krautrock groove, some Belgian New Beat from 1989 and Grace Jones backed by Sly and Robbie.

Meatraffle: Meatraffle On The Moon

Steve Cobby: As Good As Gold

The Woodentops: Give It Time (Adrian Sherwood Mix)

Brian Eno: Another Green World (The Blue Realm) Mojo Filter Edit

Fjordfunk: Exile (Hardway Bros Remix)

LAARS: None (Full Pupp)

Paresse: Rosarita

Chayell: Don’t Even Think About It

Toy: Dead And Gone (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Grace Jones: Walking In The Rain

An Afternoon Without Keith Haring

On Sunday I spent much of the day in converted industrial spaces at art and music events. The afternoon event was organised by Dave Haslam, the man near the centre of much of what has been happening here since the mid 1980s. He's recently written a short book about Haring and, with the exhibition at the Tate Liverpool running at the same time, put together some events to celebrate Keith's life and to raise some money for AIDS and art charities. The venue was Fairfeld Social Club, a large, double arched space underneath the railway at the back of Piccadilly Station- a really good use of a post- industrial space with a very welcoming feel. There were DJs playing 1980s New York tunes, live music from a singer called Husk, an In Conversation With... Q and A with Samantha McEwen (who met Keith at college and shared a flat with him in NY in the early 80s), a recreation of Keith Haring painting Grace Jones (minus both Keith and Grace but with willing stand ins and it wasn't warm in there so hats off to the Teneille ), live painting in the style of Keith Haring by graffiti artist Boo Whorlow, an auction of the paintings and a Haring t-shirt and some energetic and passionate live poetry.

This is Grace Jones from her 1981 album Nightclubbing and a track which speaks for itself.

Art Groupie

In the evening I went to The White Hotel in Salford to see Thurston Moore. Of which, more to follow.

Shoes With No Socks In Cold Weather

In their fortieth year A Certain Ratio have gone all out and are set to release an anniversary box set in May, twenty eight tracks making up the singles and B-sides that weren't included on any of their albums and sixteen previously unreleased songs. You can read about it here. Ahead of this they have just put this out, the semi-legendary results of the time in 1980 that ACR, Martin Hannett and Grace Jones assembled in Stockport's Strawberry Studios to record a cover version of Talking Heads' Houses In Motion. In the end Grace never completed her vocal for the track so Jez Kerr's guide vocals are used instead (from a period when Jez wasn't even ACR's singer yet). How this has managed to lie unreleased for nearly four decades is something of a mystery but now it's here and, as they say, better late than never, the Eno- produced New York funk of Talking Heads transplanted across the Atlantic to a side street in northern England at the start of the 80s. Taut bass, monotone vocal, congas and some stunning distorted, choppy guitar playing from Martin Moscrop before those wonderful, off key horns.



The video is completely new but fits the general vibe perfectly. The song is the from the vaults find of the year so far. 

Drive It In Between

An extended version of Grace Jones' 1981 single is a good way to start the day even if this steamy, sweltering track seems most inappropriate for a Wednesday in late November. The bass is taut, the rhythm rolls, the guitars are choppy, the car horns are honking. Grace is sultry and insistent. Seven minutes twenty six seconds of New York in the early 80s. I've just noticed from the internet that we share a birthday, me and Grace Jones (May 19th).

Pull Up To The Bumper (12" Mix)

Walking In The Rain

I've been listening to Grace Jones' 1981 album Nightclubbing recently, something about its grooves and atmosphere fit in just right with this extended spell of sunshine we've had up here in the north. The opening track Walking In The Rain (a cover of a song by an Australian group called Flash And The Pan) is a powerful opener, driven on by the jawdropping rhythm skills of Sly and Robbie- I could happily listen to a version of this album that was just Sly and Robbie sometimes. Grace's delivery is bold and the guitars add menace and drama, gathering storm clouds. The rain Grace is walking in isn't fine Mancunian drizzle or British bank holiday downpour, this is steamy monsoon rain. There's a seven minutes plus 12" version that's worth having a look at too.

Walking In The Rain

We Learn Dances, Brand New Dances

I'm not sure if this is a 1977 themed week or an Iggy Pop themed week. Or if it's a theme week at all. In 1981 Grace Jones covered Nightclubbing, from Iggy's The Idiot- it was the name of the album as well as a cover of the song. Rhythm kings Sly and Robbie on bass and drums root the whole thing in dub coupled with a New Wave sheen and some hiss. In Iggy's version he's in the nightclub but dazed and distanced, an outsider looking in, numbed by party drugs. In this version Grace is imperious, glacial, in the middle of the dancefloor.

Nightclubbing

45 RPM

Tonight I am spinning records at a friends 45th birthday party in Sheffield. His initials are RPM and so the theme of the party became evident to us a few years ago- 45 RPM.

All the guests have been instructed to bring a 7" single with them, which I will play (or not possibly, I have some boundaries and standards after all). I'm bringing some extras from my collection as a) back up and b) to ensure dancing takes place later on. I'm boxing up some 12" singles where there are required tunes that I only have on 12" and hey, we make the rules, we can break them can't we? I may take a 10" or two as well. But mainly it's about 7" 45 rpm singles. What about 12" singles that play at 33 rpm I hear you ask? I don't know. Depends what they are I suppose.

I fear some guests may bring some 'funny' records. There's a balance to be struck between 'fun' and fun. And I'm attempting to take charge of that balance. No I will not play your Barron Knights single- well, maybe later, if there's time * drops Barron Knights single behind radiator*.

It's nice to be getting the gear and records together again after a good time off from this sort of thing. Having missed 33 RPM it gives us a dry run for 78 as well. In the unlikely event that anyone reading this is attending the party, see you there. For no particular reason other than I just found it in my downloads folder, here is Grace Jones.

Pull Up To The Bumper (12" mix)