Soundtrack Saturday

Soundtrack Saturday took a two week detour into TV cop show theme tunes with a pair of 80s classics- the Balearic beauty of Mike Post's Hill Street Blues theme and Jan Hammer's day- glo pastel shoot out for Miami Vice. This week's post goes a decade further back and finds Mike Post in the songwriting seat again with the theme to The Rockford Files...

The Rockford Files Theme

The theme tune was released in 1975, co- written by Pete Carpenter and featuring that distinctive guitar solo from session guitarist Dan Ferguson on dobro guitar and electric guitar plus a solo on MiniMoog by Mike Post. As with Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice you're going to want to see the visuals of the title sequence as well as the audio, not to mention Jim Rockford (James Garner) and the famous answer machine message...

The Rockford Files ran from 1974 to 1980 (and then in a permanent loop of repeats on early evening TV in the UK). Rockford was a down at heel private detective, lived in a trailer near Malibu Beach, was always broke and often ended up getting a beating in fist fights. In one of those odd trans- Atlantic cultural exchanges, the theme tune to The Rockford Files became the music Tranmere Rovers run on the pitch to at home games at Prenton Park, Birkenhead. Tranmere are the team of Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit, the man who should the next poet laureate. 

Picking a song from my extensive HMHB folders I found this one, Tommy Walsh's Eco House, which includes a reference in the opening line to another TV detective, this time Medieval sleuth Cadfael...

Tommy Walsh's Eco House

Nigel's taken '90 Bisodol/ He's had enough of Tommy Walsh's eco house... the only bloke from Harpurhey/ Who wasn't at the Free Trade Hall'. 

'While you're capturing the zeitgeist/ They're widening the motorway'. 

Volcanic Tongue

Last year I did a series of posts called Bagging Area Book Club and never got around to writing about any of David Keenan's books, several of which were on a list of potential posts. His appearance at AW62 has given me the prompt I needed to do it and also coincides with the release of an album and a book- both called Volcanic Tongue, both by Keenan.

Volcanic Tongue- A Time Travelling Evangelist's Guide To Late 20th Century Underground Music (the book) is a compendium of David's writing about music- interviews, articles, think pieces and in depth conversations with the likes of Nick Cave, Kevin Shields and John Martyn. It's a big book, in all senses- thick and with a heavy page count but also big in terms of ideas and creativity. 

Volcanic Tongue (the album) is a compilation of songs from bands that passed through the Glasgow record shop David ran with his partner Heather Leigh, also called Volcanic Tongue. The bands on the album, twenty of them, are from the underground, the underground of the underground, bands that self- released small runs of albums, handed out CD- Rs at gigs, put on nights in rooms above pubs and hoped get to enough people through the door to break even, bands that passed through David and Heather's shop between 2005 and 2015. Rock n' roll bands, folk bands, psychedelic bands, ambient outfits, drone duos, bands like Ashtray Navigations (blissed out drone/ folk) and Idea Fire Company (piano ambient/ avant garde), Counter Intuits (scuzzed up and fuzzed up garage rock) and Bronze Horse (acoustic guitar, handclaps and echo). Find it at Bandcamp, double vinyl and digital, a treasure trove of music. 

David Keenan's novels are a wild trip. The first I read was the legendary This Is Memorial Device, a love letter to the world of post punk bands and a fictional Airdrie rock group, Memorial Device. For The Good Times is set in Belfast during the 1970s, a tense tale of an IRA foot soldier, a kidnapping and Perry Como, a book that delves deep into a murky demi- world. I read Xstabeth not long after, a novel with some genuinely breathtaking passages, a story told by a teenage girl from St Petersburg, Russia. Xstabeth is haunted by ghosts and saints, Russian history and literature. Mystical and I found quite profoundly affecting. The fourth Keenan novel I tackled was Monument Maker, a weighty, experimental, time travelling story that has little actual narrative and detours into theology, sex, enigmas, the siege of Khartoum, Medieval cathedrals, the pyramids and God knows what else. It's partly also an exercise in what an author can do with the written page. It's both confusing and inspiring. 

David's partner Heather Leigh recorded an album in 2020, Glory Days- modernist folk music played on pedal steel and synth that sounds like the soundtrack to any and all of the above. 

In Fade

Last Of The Sell Outs

Escape- Ism is Ian Svenonius and Sandy Denton. They have an album called Charge Of The Love Brigade, a title I wish I'd thought of. Ian Svenonius has been declaring manifestos and making grand statements since his days in Washington D.C. punk testifiers Nation Of Ulysses in the late 80s and their 13 Point Program To Destroy America (a program which feels suddenly very relevant again). Ian and Sandy make similarly great claims for Escape- Ism, including that the band is 'found- sound dream- drama', an 'act of musical vandalism' that will 're- purpose music as we know it', music that will bring bourgeois society to an end and that will be enjoyed by 'musicians, amateurs and non- musicians but also plant life, wild animals and even inanimate object such as rocks'. Who am I to disagree?

This is Last Of The Sell Outs, a song that seems to gain and reveal more with each listen, an organ/ synth chord sequence and drum machine providing low fi backing to Ian's meditation on the creative and commercial process. The gnarly guitar part at the end is a joy too. 

AW62

AW62 was last weekend, a proper gathering of the clans at The Golden Lion in Todmorden, an 18th century stone walled pub nestled into a gap between a hill and the canal, to celebrate the life of Andrew Weatherall on what would have been his 62nd birthday. Andrew's brother Ian, one of the event's key movers, said that it was planned as a party that had 'everything except Andrew'. The line up of DJs and acts was testament to the spirit of the man, a diverse and exceptional bunch of DJs, writers, artists, producers, publishers and bands. 

Some highlights from a weekend packed full of them- this is necessarily a highly selective account drawn from my at times unreliable memories. Everyone who attended will have their own version and highlights but these were some of mine. 

Friday night saw Richard Fearless DJing in the downstairs bar, a vinyl techno masterclass- minimal, sleek, machine music, emotive and huge sounding on the pub's recently upgraded sound system, causing quite a stir among the crowd and packing the space in front of the DJ booth out with dancers. 

I took this picture while Fearless was playing. It may not be in focus or even a vaguely coherent picture but it sums the night up quite well from where I was standing. 

Saturday night was split between upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs Duncan Gray played a house set and then Scott Fraser took over at midnight. Downstairs David Holmes headlined, picking up where Matt Hum left off. David has played The Golden Lion often in recent years. He changes his set every time, saying he doesn't plan it too much, just goes with the flow and the feel in the pub. His set on Saturday night was out of this world, a huge range of dance music, from spangly chuggers to amped up noise, breakbeats and the sudden switching to huge piano tracks. Towards the end of his set, a 2 am finish, I was stuck in a corner by the door, just enjoying the music and the volume. Joe Strummer's voice came out of the speakers, his famous 'people can do anything...' speech from a radio show followed by ecstatic synth noise (an unreleased Holmes and Matty Skylab track, David said afterwards). There was a pause at 2am and then two or three more tunes, one a rumbly, garage band guitar song, one an explosion of synth chords, a wall of noise, and then finishing with the huge, extended Leftside Wobble remix of Tomorrow Never Knows, The Beatles most experimental, most progressive song filling the pub and scrambling heads. Thoughts were indeed laid down and voids were very much surrendered to. 

Saturday afternoon was our turn to play again, The Flightpath Estate DJs given the privilege of being part of the proceedings. Me, Baz, Martin, Dan and Mark played throughout the afternoon and into the evening. At one point I looked out into the space in front of the booth and saw author David Keenan and White Rabbit Books publisher Lee Brackstone  dancing and singing along to a song I was playing, the magnificent One Of Those Things by Dexys, from 1985 (a song even Kevin Rowland eventually had to accept he'd ripped off from Warren Zevon's Werewolves Of London). 

One Of Those Things

I spoke to David Keenan at some point, excitedly telling him about the experience I had reading Xstabeth a few years ago, a book which at several points blew my mind a little. This photo has me and David, me somewhat out of focus, mind probably still blown. 

Saturday afternoon also saw the fabled raffle and auction, Claire Doll's hard work and creativity raising  thousands of pounds for charity, Weatherdolls and Sabres cross stitch and a box of records found in Andrew's lock up when it was cleared out, promo copies of the David Holmes remix of Smokebelch and other delights. Golden Lion landlady Gig conducted the auction action in her own inimitable style. Holmes bid for and won this Gnostic Sonics banner.

Sunday saw the crowds, fans, punters and artists drawn back to the pub and its beer garden, bathed in early April sunshine. Andrew's friends Sherman and Curley played dub and ambient sounds the whole afternoon. Meanwhile the Sunday afternoon literary event came in three parts- a Lee Brackstone hosted discussion with Andrew's partner of seventeen years Lizzie Walker, Two Lone Swordsman guitarist Chris Rotter, Ian Weatherall and The Flightpath's own Martin Brannagan, Lee asking the questions which included 'when did you first meet Andrew?' which drew a range of funny responses. 

The second part was Lee and David Keenan, an interview and a reading from his new book Volcanic Tongue. The third was Keenan interviewing  Adrian Sherwood, a fascinating half hour with one of Andrew's heroes, the main man of UK dub whose reminiscences and thoughts could and should fill a book. David Keenan (and David Holmes, sitting on the front row) unpicking all sorts of aspects of On U Sound and Sherwood's music and career and the nature of dub. Genuinely amazing to sit in on and as much a part of the weekend as the DJs and music. 

Adrian Sherwood The Producers Series #1

This hour long Sherwood mix comes from the Test Pressing blog, published back in 2010. The tracklist can be found at Test Pressing- Creation Rebel, African Head Charge, Dub Syndicate and Doctor Pablo all feature. 

Sunday night finished with the twin attack of The Jonny Halifax Invocation playing live upstairs and Sherwood DJing downstairs. Criminally I missed both- having been at The Lion since Friday night, suffering from a distinct lack of sleep and having to drive home at some point that night, I called it a day at around 6 pm. 

Everyone involved in AW62 should give themselves a well earned pat on the back and maybe have a bit of a lie down- Waka and Gig at The Golden Lion, Ian Weatherall, Claire, Lizzie and Curley with the raffle and auction and merch, all the DJs and bands, Lee and David bringing the literature angle (books and writing were as big for Mr Weatherall as music was). It was a brilliant weekend and event- heart warming and inclusive, packed with energising and exciting music, and filled with great people. The Lion always draws a lovely bunch of punters and AW62 was no exception. And when the lie down is over and everyone's recovered, more please next year...

Weak Sun

Fans of instrumental, dark ambient, psyche rock should step this way. Weak Sun is the debut album from Sonar//Radar, a Leicester four piece, all veterans of other bands from the city of Claudio Ranieri and Richard III, bringing guitars, drums and bass together with synths and piano. The album is currently only digital but sequenced like a vinyl record, a short burst of drone and radio waves/ voices forming the intro to side 1, a track called Intro To Side 1, which then fades away for Baksheesh For Imi, a much longer piece of music, six minutes of synth, piano and a ghostly guitar lines all layered over the rumble of bass and drums. Wolf Eel follows, bursts of feedback from a guitar amp and then a ringing guitar line, a post- rock, Tortoise feel, the guitar taking the lead. Fifty three seconds of gorgeous ambient wobble, Too Many Novels, takes us towards Bad News From Outer Space, what would be side 1's end point- more ominous sounds from the Midlands- radio waves, static/ Velcro being unripped, the tick of the cymbal, guitar notes from the ghost of Michael Karoli's guitar, the sound of something bad coming through the line. 

Side 2 opens up slowly, one and a half minutes of drone and atmospherics and leads into the slightly softer, calmer notes of Barbel Hook, a track which spins around a minute in, the drums suddenly kicking the tempo up and the post- rock guitars and drums are back with echoes of Mogwai. The album's title track Weak Sun is the longest piece of music here, eight and a half minutes, the soundtrack to a sci fi/ folk horror short film, a totally absorbing trip with the synth taking the topline and the guitars, piano, bass and drums creating a dark dreamworld backdrop. The final track is a live track, The Lucky Ones Died First, the post- rock/ psyche rock live and direct from a stage somewhere in the East Midlands/ the outer reaches of space. Get Weak Sun at Bandcamp

Monday's Long Song

I got back from AW62 at The Golden Lion last night having had a wonderful weekend in great company, an incredible line up of artists, some brilliant moments in a truly magical and a concurrent lack of sleep. I'll write a longer, more detailed piece and post it later in the week. In the meantime, here's a long song from Friday night. Rusty and Rotter were playing records in the downstairs bar, the place was filling up nicely with lots of familiar faces and some new ones too and from the Lion's sound system the intense, ecstatic noise of Fuck Buttons began pumping out- waves of sheer joy, oceans of sound, bleeps and ripples, eventually the thud of a kick drum, building and building, repetition and momentum.

Surf Solar was released as a single. It came out on 7", an edited version, but the album one is over ten minutes long- from Tarot Sport, produced by Andrew Weatherall, a job so demanding- the intensity of the music- that he compared it to hard physical labour. What a sound the three of them cooked up though...

Surf Solar

Forty Five Minutes Of Two Lone Swordsmen

At the airport in Belfast they have robots to serve your breakfast. You have to go to the till and speak to a human to order but then the human loads your mugs and plates of food onto these robots and they bring them to your table. The eight year old me reading 2000AD in 1978 would have been beside himself at this aspect of the future but somehow, it just seemed a bit ridiculous. They even give the robot a smiley face to make them seem more human.

None of which has much to do with today's post and Sunday mix- except that the music Two Lone Swordsmen made is still far more of the future, more the soundtrack to 2000AD, than the robots at Belfast airport ever will be. When Andrew Weatherall formed Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith Tenniswood they made it a mission to go further and deeper, to take a more thorough and more purist approach to electronic music. After the sprawling magnificence of 1996's The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate) which went from stoned, paranoid ambience to big beat to two step and back again, they drilled deeper- minimal, brutalist electronic machine funk, ambient techno and glitchy dark electronic dub (with a detour into hip hop on A Virus With Shoes and then an exciting mutation into garage rock and rockabilly). Sometimes the music seemed a bit unfriendly and it lost a few people along the way but this being Mr Weatherall, there's no shortage of gold in among the darkness. 

This forty five minute mix is a celebration of Andrew's birthday today- he would have been 62 today. Many of his friends and family are at The Golden Lion today, day three of AW62 which will end tonight with a live performance by The Jonny Halifax Invocation (who have promised some live band TLS action) and a dub set from Adrian Sherwood. Happy birthday Andrew.

Forty Five Minutes Of Two Lone Swordsmen

• Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) (Two Lone Swordsmen Dub)
• We Change The Frequency
• Cotton Stains
• Lino Square
• Black Commandments
• Untitled Two Lone Swordsmen Remix
• Glide By Shooting
• Hope We Never Surface

Saint Etienne's 2000 album Sound Of Water was a bit of a departure for them. The Two Lone Swordsmen Dub of it's single Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) was a deconstruction, reducing the tune to its minimal dub basics, the wobbly bass a particular treat.

We Change The Frequency is from 1998's Stay Down, sometimes the TLS album I think is my favourite and one which has really grown over the years, lots of short, repetitive mechanical pieces and some gorgeous ambient techno, everything submerged in oceanic depths of bass and echo (like the deep sea divers on the cover). Hope We Never Surface is the opening track and always seems to be like a door opening... or a hatch...

Cotton Stains is on 2000's Tiny Reminders, the furthest and most purist they went, tunnel vision electro Six sides of vinyl, each disc starting with a track made up of static, a tiny reminder, before drilling into the netherworld of basement glitchy electronic bass and techno. Cotton Stains is the real sound of robots serving up breakfasts at airports- just before they declare independence and overthrow the security. 

Lino Square is from The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate), a fractured, mechanised but funky little number with a wiggy synth pattern kicking in after a few minutes. 

Black Commandments is from a 7" single that came with an EP, A Bag Of Blue Sparks, released on Warp in 1998, that included the track Gay Spunk (a title borrowed from Peter Hook's bass amp spray paint message).  

Untiled Two Lone Swordsmen is a remix of Ganger's Trilogy, a 12" from 1998, a nine minutes long and dusty with a flicker of guitar running through it. Ganger were from Glasgow, post- rock and krauty.

Glide By Shooting is one of the finest TLS tracks, a track on the double vinyl remix EP Swimming Not Skimming. Depth over surface. Eight minutes of sleek, mesmerising brilliance.