V.A. Saturday

Last Saturday's various artists compilation album featured four ferocious 1950s rockabilly songs. Today's post comes from a connected place. Rock On was apparently the country's, maybe the world's, first collectors record shop, a vinyl goldmine dedicated to retro music- rock 'n' roll, rockabilly, blues, doo wop, 60s beat, soul, ska and reggae, jazz, 50s and 60s pop, more or less every type of music that was pressed onto black wax. It opened as a market stall at the back of the flea market on Portobello Road in August 1971. Rock On opened a shop on Golborne Road, near Portobello, a couple of years later and then a second stall in Soho market in 1974 and from there one in Camden too. In the mid- to- late 70s it played a key role in punk, a stop off for 7" singles for the movers and shakers (despite the punk's talk of '76 being Year Zero).  

In 2008 Ace Records put out a twenty eight track CD various artists compilation in tribute to Rock On, a line up of songs that were the soundtrack of the shop. The booklet has very detailed sleeve notes by Ted Carroll, an ever present in the shop from the early 70s. From the opening song to the last, the CD is very much a pre- punk party, a slew of songs from the likes of Vince Taylor, Link Wray, The Flamin' Groovies, Dr Feelgood, Waylon Jennings, Roky Erickson, Peter Holsapple, The Shangri La's, Charlie Feathers, Slim Harpo, Fats Domino, Don Covey and Joe Tex. This is just a handful of those for your Saturday morning pre- punk rave up.

Slim Harpo released Shake Your Hips on 7" in 1965, electrified Louisiana, mouth organ, clackety rhythms and clipped guitar, horns and Slim's raspy vocal. Mick Jagger was listening and taking notes. 

Shake Your Hips

Roky Erickson's Two Headed Dog came out in 1977, the version on Rock On a French release rather than the Doug Sahm produced Sponge EP version. Blistering acid guitar lead line, crunching chords, and Roky giving it the full Texan vocal. 'I've been working for the Kremlin with a two headed dog'.

Two Headed Dog

Waylon Jennings' Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? came out in 1975, a gimlet eyed country song about the price paid for a career in the music business, Waylon reaching Nashville peddling that same old tune, rhinestone suits and shiny cars, and asking the question, 'are you sure Hank done it this way?'. A rhetorical question I think. Hank Williams did it his own way. 

Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?

Lastly, some more rockabilly from 1957 by Peanuts Wilson and an Andrew Weatherall favourite from his rockabilly sets in the 00s too. 

Cast Iron Arm

Speaking of Mr Weatherall, this afternoon we are off to one of his spiritual homes, Todmorden's Golden Lion. Tonight is A Love From Outer Space, the night Andrew started in 2010 with Sean Johnston, a travelling cosmic disco that Sean has flown solo ever since. Me and my Flightpath Estate friends (Martin, Dan, Baz and Mark) are DJing at the pub from 2pm through until whenever Sean takes over. Upstairs this evening is a double header by the Stretford pairing of Psychederek and The Thief Of Time. It promises to be a lot of fun. 

Half An Hour Of Cope

Today's thirty minute mix clocks in at closer to forty such is the embarrassment of riches in Julian Cope's back catalogue combined with my inability to rein it in at half an hour- and my decision late in the day that Andrew Weatherall's remix should be added onto the end. This mix jumps around all over Cope's post- Teardrop Explodes career, not doing much more than scratching the surface and wobbles between Julian in stripped down, voice and acoustic guitar mode and some fuller sounding, full band/ remix mode.

The opening song is classic Cope, the Archdrude musing on the role psychedelics played in prehistory and since over organ and drum machine (from Revolutionary Suicide in 2013. It's one of his very best albums I think- CDs on the internet are sold at silly figures so it could really do with a re- issue). It's followed by a 7" only version of Paranormal In The West Country (originally from 1994's Autogeddon), a camp fire recording with children and revellers audible, recorded by the famous Avebury stones. The song was only available on CD single if you'd first purchased the Queen Elizabeth 2 album and sent a sticker from that off to Cope's Head Heritage website. Julian H. Cope is laugh out loud funny, one hundred miles an hour stuff, from 1992's Jehovahkill. I Have Always Been Here Before is a rollicking garage band cover/ complete rewrite of a Roky Erickson song recorded for a tribute album (and since included in the deluxe re- issue of Jehovahkill). Love L.U.V. is a Hugo Nicolson remix of the sublime Beautiful Love (which I really meant to include on this) and Try Try Try was the only single from 1995's 20 Mothers. Self Civil War was the title track on his 2020 album, a folk/ krautrock blast of brilliance. Revolutionary Suicide comes from the album of the same name. Rock Section is by the fictitious Dayglo Maradona from Julian's One Three One novel, a gnostic- hooligan road trip that switches between the neolithic and the 1990 World Cup in Sardinia. You know who Andrew Weatherall is. 

Half An Hour Of Julian Cope

• They Were All On Hard Drugs
• Paranormal In the West Country (Avebury)
• Julian H. Cope
• I Have Always Been Here Before
• Love L.U.V.
• Try Try Try
• Self Civil War
• Revolutionary Suicide
• Rock Section (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

The Grey Weathered Stones You Shelter Behind

                                                         Bryn Celli Ddu, Anglesey

One of the side effects of this summer's Covid restrictions has been me dragging my family round a good number of Neolithic sites. These places have several Corona advantages- open air, free to visit, you can go without touching anything and they are crowd free. When we visited Castlerigg stone circle near Keswick in the Lake District (on the way to Scotland at the start of August) my seventeen year old daughter was genuinely surprised to find other people there as well as us. 'there are other people here' she said, slightly amazed, and then followed this with (in tones dripping with teenage sarcasm), 'I thought it was only us who were arsed about stone circles'.

   Castlerigg, Keswick

In the early summer we started by driving to Mellor, in the hills overlooking Stockport, which has an iron age hill fort and down the valley and up the hill a long barrow (the barrow is on private land behind barbed wire sadly). A week later we drove to The Bridestones, a chambered cairn on a hill overlooking Congleton and the Cheshire Plain, no one around. We got out of the car, walked through a field, ate our sandwiches, poked around the site and then went home. In August, before new restrictions were imposed on Greater Manchester, after stopping off at Castlerigg on our way to Scotland, we drove out to Wigtown Bay and up to see Cairn Holy I and II, a pair of magnificent chambered cairns, burial places, from four and a half thousand years ago. Cairn Holy I has some really dramatic upright stones at its entrance. Cairn Holy II has a huge cap stone. There were to our surprise another family visiting this site but social distancing was easy.

Cairn Holy II, Dumfries and Galloway

                                                  Cairn Holy I, Dumfries and Galloway

In Scotland we were also able to visit the Twelve Apostles, a large stone circle in a field just north of Dumfries. This site was were the rest of my parry's enthusiasm faded. Two of them refused to get out of the car, the third said she'd stay in the car to answer some text messages, leaving me to tramp around a slightly wet field on my own.

Since then we've been to Anglesey which has more Neolithic sites than you can shake a stick at- the amazing burial chamber with henge and stone circle Bryn Celli Ddu (pictured at the top of this post. We were down to three members for this visit, one not wanting to join our Neolithic road trip). Anglesey also gave us the three chambered barrow overlooking the aluminium works at Trefignath, the nearby standing stone Ty Mawr (now across the road from a service station) and the burial chamber at Ty Newydd.

Ty Newydd, Anglesey

Last weekend in a desperate bid to have one more day out before September brought us all back into the real world of work, college and increased risk of transmission of the disease, we headed out to Derbyshire and the double treat of Arbor Low stone circle, a large site in the Derbyshire Dales and the neighbouring barrow at Gib Hill. 

                           

                Arbor Low, Derbyshire

 

                                                             Gib Hill Barrow, Derbyshire

I have a genuine fascination with these sites. Their age, four to five thousand years old, is one part of it. To stand at a barrow or stone circle and look at the landscape around them, to stand where our ancestors stood so many years ago, is in some ways magical. The view, give or take a few roads, hedges and fences, and fewer trees, is often what they might have seen. There is a sense of the unknown about them- we don't full know how they were constructed, what their use was, what people did there- and we probably never will. In a world that demands certainty it's good to have unanswered questions. Our Neolithic brothers and sisters had difficult, dangerous lives where starvation and disease were ever present threats but they had a desire to mark the lives of their people, to build and construct, to leave an imprint on the landscape they lived in, to create art of some kind. 

As I walked to and from these stone circles, barrows, standing stones and cairns I often found myself humming this 1992 Julian Cope cover of a 1977 Roky Erickson song, I Have Always Been Here Before. In Cope's hands it becomes an ode to the Neolithic peoples and the monuments they've left behind. He puts in some extra lines and stanzas, lines such as 'Like the grey weathered stones you shelter behind' and he adds an extra section to the start of the song-

'From the long barrows of Wiltshire to the pyramids

From the stone circles that challenge the scientists

And the Neolithics that tread the ancient avenues

And the children that died forever more exist'

I Have Always Been Here Before

Reverberation

This song was mentioned in the comments to my Roky Erickson post on Sunday and I thought it was worth dragging up- a 1992 cover of a 13th Floor Elevators song by The Jesus And Mary Chain. Reverberation was on the 1966 debut The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators. The Reid brothers covered it and released it first as a B-side to the loved up Almost Gold single (the 12" version but not the 10" or 7" releases) and then on 1993's B-sides and rarities compilation The Sound Of Speed (the CD version but not the vinyl one). Their trusty drum machine pounds away and Jim snarls the words while William fires off squally guitar lines and waves of feedback.

Reverberation

Almost Gold is a moment of genuine bliss and beauty in the Mary Chain's back catalogue, William dewy eyed and in love. I think this was when he was going out with Hope Sandoval, so who can blame him?

Roky

Rest in peace Roky Erickson. I can't remember when I first heard 13th Floor Elevators- it would most likely be through a compilation, Nuggets maybe, or a tape someone else made. They were a band whose name was always thrown around by interviewees and the music press in the late 80s. Julian Cope seems to be a likely starting point. Primal Scream covered Slip Inside This House on Screamadelica. From there on in, pre- CD reissue culture, it was a matter of scouring second hand shops and stalls and taking a leap into that lysergic world. Without a shadow of a doubt, without Roky and The 13th Floor Elevators leftfield, alternative music would be a very different place- You're Gonna Miss Me is one of the foundation stones of psyche-rock. He died on Friday aged 71. RIP Roky.

You're Gonna Miss Me

She Lives In A Time Of Her Own