Fools

Some fools for April Fool's Day. All Fool's Day is a tradition in many countries but there doesn't seem to be any real agreement about where it originates from- an association between 1st April and foolishness is mentioned by Chaucer in The Nun's Priest's Tale where a vain cock is tricked by a fox into believing it is 32nd March. Some scholars inevitably disagree and put this down to a mistranslation. 

A 16th century French poet mentions poisson d'Avril (April fool or literally April's fish) and a Flemish poet, Eduard de Dene, referenced a nobleman who sent his servants on foolish errands on 1st April. The first agreed British reference is from 1686, John Aubrey mentioning 'fooles holy day'. 

Pop culture is littered with fools. In 1973 Lee Hazlewood, the cosmic cowboy, asked a foolish question...

Poet, Fool Or Bum

In 2019, a reactivated Sebadoh saw Lou Barlow return with some typically ramshackle, melodic indie rock reaching the point where he 'won't be a fool in your eyes'. 

Fool

Gallon Drunk weren't a band to do things by halves. A noisy, chaotic early 90s blur of suits, guitars, sideburns, noisy blues and jazz. Some Fool's Mess was Single Of The Week in the NME in 1991, back when these things really mattered. The live recording here is from 1993 when they toured the US supporting PJ Harvey

Some Fool's Mess (Live In Chicago)

Escape- Ism is Ian Svenonius' latest vehicle for deconstructing music and overthrowing existing power structures. Last year's Charge Of The Light Brigade was one of my albums of the year. In 2021 they released Rated Z, their fourth album, a casual combination of arrogance and minimalism. Electronic rock 'n' roll reduced to its barest elements. 

Suffer No Fool

Lastly I need to direct you here to Bedford Falls Players where Mr BFP has done an entirely unofficial edit of Walking On Sunshine and Fool's Gold, Rockers Revenge and The Stone Roses mashed together in an unholy and total trip, seven minutes of Fool's Gold- En.  Free/ pay what you want. 

On 23rd November 1989 The Stone Roses made their one and only Top Of The Pops appearance, gatecrashing the shiny world of the BBC studios and the top ten with the groundbreaking indie funk of Fool's Gold. The fall of the Berlin Wall, The Stone Roses on Top Of The Pops- the 1990s started here. 

The photo at the top is the corridor of a hotel we have actually stayed in. I felt lucky to wake up in the morning and 

Edit: that last sentence for some reason was never completed. I got distracted and forgot to finish it. It should have read something like this...

The photo at the top is the corridor of a hotel we have actually stayed in. I felt lucky to wake up in the morning and not have been sold into some form of modern slavery. The hotel was a one night stopover and was cheap. The fire escapes had groups of men hanging around them smoking and the fire escape was in our bedroom- in the event of a fire the escape route was through our room. Off our room were two further rooms, one with a broken window that would not close and the other a cell. As I was about to put the light out to go to sleep and huge spider ran across my pillow. It was grim but also very funny. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Beloved

The Beloved were a massive part of the sound of 1989- 1990, their album Happiness released in February 1990, a summation of the sound of the times. They started out as an indie guitar four piece but lost two members in 1987, with Jon Marsh and Steve Waddington now spending their nights soaking up the new music of acid house and rave and then writing songs in the day influenced by those sounds. Steve left in '91 and Jon came back in 1993 with his wife Helena as co- writer and the song Sweet Harmony and an album Conscience. The sound had been smoothed out and something of the spirit of 1990 had been lost- lots of things had changed by 1993. This mix focusses solely on those records Jon and Steve made in the period between 1988 and 1990, songs alive with the possibility and excitement of those years.

Forty Five Minutes Of The Beloved

• Found
• Hello 
• Pablo
• Your Love Takes Me Higher (Piano/ 303 Demo)
• Acid Love (Acid Dream)
• The Sun Rising (Evening Session Remix)
• The Sun Rising
• Scarlet Beautiful
• It's Alright Now

Found is the song that ended Happiness, as close to a New Order Technique outtake as anything Bernard, Hooky, Gillian and Stephen could have recorded, the end of an album that is all ups with a love song, bringing a blissed out, chilled out ending. So I thought I'd start with it. 

Hello was a single, released in early 1990 and taking The Beloved to Top of The Pops, Jon Marsh fully embracing the new decade, growing his hair out, in a poncho and doing the dance. The song is a list of saints and sinners, from Jeffrey Archer to John Paul Sartre. 

Pablo was the B-side to the 1990 single Time After Time single, a fantastic slice of wonky acid house, some dubby melodica, a house rhythm and piano with Jon's vocal spun inside out and round about. 

Your Love Takes Me Higher was a song originally released in '89 and re- released as a single in '90. The 303/ Piano Demo speaks for itself, a (presumably) earlier version of the track led by a very Detroit synth bassline, rattling hi hats and then that whooosh the song has as the piano riff hits. 'Baby, let tell you something about love...' Jon  sings, simmering, one of those songs that could be about a woman, could be about a drug. This version is thumpy and chopped up, not as obviously radio friendly as the final one that made Happiness. 

Acid Love was the new look Beloved's debut, a 1988 B-side to the song Loving Feeling. The A-side didn't do much but the B-side got them into some DJ's record boxes. Dark and insistent, heavily house influenced. 

The Sun Rising was The Beloved's breakthrough, an ambient house classic, a crossover hit (in November 1989). It sampled Emily Van Evera's vocal from an album called Gothic Voices, one of several hooks in the song. Jon wrote the song after a night at a club night put on by Danny Rampling, Joy. Jon and Steve then put it together on Steve's four track before recording it more fully. The Evening Session Version was recorded for Mark Goodier's, faster, less ambient and more made for the hours before the sun rises. The appearance of the chant from Walking On Sunshine by  Rocker's Revenge is a genuine flash of brilliance, 'everybody to the sun/ that's right/ you're there'.

Scarlet Beautiful is from Happiness, one of the songs that wasn't released as a single, a fantastic slice of dance music crossed with pop. Lyrically, it's about positivity. Or love. Or E. Or about feeling massive positivity while in love on E.

It's Alright Now was a follow up to Happiness, October 1990, a single to promote the remix album Blissed Out- four minutes of moody dance pop that should have been massive. The album Blissed Out had different tracklists across the three formats, vinyl, cassette and CD, a total of sixteen different mixes and versions. The Beloved appeared on BBC 2's early evening dance music programme Dance Energy, a Normski presented attempt to catch the zeitgeist. As ever for the period, the crowd are the stars as much as the band. 'It's alright now/ Don't you worry 'bout a thing/ 'Cos when the morning comes around/ I'm gonna make your heart sing'. 

Monday's Long Song

One of the songs Sean Johnston expertly wove into his ALFOS set at The Golden Lion last Saturday was this 1982 classic from Arthur Baker and Donnie Colvin, Walking On Sunshine by Rockers Revenge (an Eddy Grant cover). Walking On Sunshine is post- disco/ early electro/ freestyle, a song which has New York running through its grooves like the writing in a stick of Blackpool rock. Jellybean Benitez was involved in the final mixing of Baker's production and Colvin's vocals. The full length 12" version is nine minutes and thirty seconds of effortless, genre busting early 80s fun, making the long trip from the streets of NYC in 1982 to a pub in the Calder Valley in 2023

Walking On Sunshine