Stretford Hopping

This is a bust of John Rylands, a Victorian entrepreneur and philanthropist who lived between 1801 and 1899. The bust is in Stretford Town Hall- a friend had an exhibition of her print making art there recently. I saw Rylands in the foyer, peaking out modestly from a sideboard. He moved to Manchester from Wigan in 1823 and opened a warehouse for his textiles business. Textiles made Manchester. John settled in Manchester and set up his home in Stretford (a mile up the road from us in Sale). In the middle of the 19th century Stretford was a village near Manchester. Now it's very much South Manchester suburb. Maybe Stretford's most famous son is Morrissey who grew up on King's Road and kissed under the iron bridge that now crosses the Metrolink line. 

John Rylands did a lot for Stretford- he paid for the Town Hall, a swimming baths, a library and a coffee house. The Town Hall and library still exist through the baths have gone. There are several coffee houses but possibly not the one Rylands paid for. When he died his widow Augustina paid for a permanent memorial to her late- husband, the famous neo- gothic John Rylands library on Deansgate.

Down Chester Road towards Sale is Stretford Mall, formerly Arndale, currently in the process of being demolished and the town centre rebuilt and regenerated. Stretford Arndale had some rather nice late 60s features, a top deck with a sweeping staircase but 60s modernism is not fashionable and many people did  not love the Arndale. In 1971 Muhammed Ali visited Stretford Arndale, promoting Ovaltine at the Tesco supermarket . 

Ali caused such a crowd to turn up and the crush of locals to get so excited about seeing the three time heavyweight champion of the world, in Stretford Arndale!, that he had to be rescued by police. This picture shows Ali retreating from the baying hoard who wanted a glimpse of the great man and some free Ovaltine. Ali is on the right, his head visible as he backs into a corner between stacks of tinned goods. 

The southern end of Stretford was once surrounded by fields and known as the Garden Of Lancashire due to the amount of farmland producing food for the county, vegetables and a large pig market (and copious quantities of Stretford beef- rhubarb). Now the southern end of Stretford is a busy road system overlooked by Stretford Tower, Isaac's favourite building, which I pass every day going to work and which often makes me think of him. 

This potted history of Stretford is a long winded way of getting round to this- tonight at Head, a former branch of Barclays but now a really nice bar, Martin and myself are representing The Flightpath Estate live on the decks, an all vinyl set, from 8.30pm until 11. There is a regular Thursday night slot, Club Solo, which goes out as a livestream on Solo Stream and in person live from Head once a month. Club Solo was born out of lockdown by Stephen Mollynoodles and the archive of previous nights is here. I think you can watch it live and join in on the chat, watching us mess up the transitions and heckle us from the comfort of your front room. Or come down and do it in person. What else would you be doing tonight? Watching Switzerland play Bosnia-Herzegovina while waiting for news from the Makerfield by- election? 

Andy Burnham for the win eh?

Martin and myself will be playing our usual eclectic smorgasbord of dub, Balearic, leftfield indie, Weatherall remixes, Joe Strummer B- sides and maybe some oompty- boompty music for the last hour. 

Mango Street

Mango Street is a largely instrumental version of Island Hopping from Joe Strummer's 1989 solo album Earthquake Weather. It came out on a one sided 12" in October '89, tropical flavours and catgut guitars with spoon percussion. I love it. When I played it at The Golden Lion last September Martin asked, 'what the fuck am I supposed to follow that with?!'. 

Coney Island Baby

Last year I had an intermittent, year long Lou Reed solo career project. In January 2025 I bought a copy of Berlin second hand for £5, an album I owned on cassette in the late 80s but hadn't heard for ages. Not long after I chanced upon a copy of Lou's self- titled debut. From there I zig- zagged through some of his 70s and 80s, buying albums on second hand vinyl as and when I saw them- this took me to Transformer (which I already had), Sally Can't Dance, Street Hassle and then 1982's The Blue Mask at which point I ran out of steam (and if I'm honest enthusiasm- diminishing returns kicks in during the 1980s until 1989's New York). 

A few weeks ago I was in a second hand record shop and flicking through the racks found a copy of Coney Island Baby, cheap and in good condition. Coney Island Baby came out in 1975 on RCA, Lou in the midst of a settled domestic situation with his partner and muse Rachel, a trans woman. The album is a well produced, rich sounding set of songs, a love letter to Rachel and to Coney Island (as I understand it, the Blackpool of New York). The album sounds rich, professional musicians playing in an expensive studio, well arranged songs with crisp, full bodied production. At the time, some critics sniped at it, Lou gone a bit soft, Lou losing his revolutionary self, Lou sounding like The Eagles. Soft rock Lou Reed. They have a point but fifty years distance has also added to Coney Island Baby especially in the context of some of what came later. It's not Berlin but it's not Mistrial either.

There are eight songs and they veer between sublime and ridiculous. It's a Lou Reed solo album- these became the parameters fairly early on. A Gift is ridiculous, Lou singing that he's a gift to the women of this world, over plodding mid- 70s rock. It may be tongue in cheek. It may be deadly serious. Charley's Girl is good, taut and funky, Lou at his speak- singing best. There's a six minute version of She's My Best Friend, a Velvet Underground song that at that point wasn't officially released and wouldn't be until 1986's VU. It's a decent version, some nice spiky guitars and vocals, but if you've heard The Velvets' version first then your palette has already been spoiled. 

Ooh Baby is a rocker, a song for Rachel and a real highlight, lyrics about topless dancers, Times Square, massage parlours and fluorescent lighting, and then a chorus of 'ooh baby ooh baby ooh baby ooh ooh ooh' and later 'ooh baby ooh baby shake your bones now mama ooh baby ooh baby walk it'. It's prime mid- 70s Lou Reed. 

Coney Island Baby ends with the title track, doo wop vocals and laid back guitar rock, Lou singing of the glory of love and how he just wants to play football for the coach (the coach was 'the straightest dude I ever knew', Lou explains). The song gathers and Lou explores friendships, two bit friends, how different people have peculiar taste and that 'the glory of love might see you through'. The backing vocals swell, the guitars squeal and Lou sings of being with his Coney Island baby (Rachel) and how he'd give the whole thing up for her. 

Coney Island Baby

A Walk Across Town

Walking through town recently- we always call the city centre of Manchester town- I came across three music- related artworks that caught my eye. This flyposter for the Massive Attack and Tom Waits single Boots On The Ground on Whitworth Street, posted onto the building which used to have the nightclub The Venue in its basement. The song caused a sensation when it was released back in April, Waits singing from the point of view of a US soldier, a grunt, cannon fodder for foreign wars. 'How much does every soldier weigh?', he/ the narrator asks at one point. I posted it back then but make no apology for its re- appearance so soon after. 

The soldier/ Waits rants about the politicians who send him to war, 'Federal pricks/ Hiding in the senate like a bloated ass tick/ Air conditioned fuckstick loafers/ Sitting in a room of army posters'. In the end the soldier kills 'a brown man' and all they found was his boots on the ground. It's powerful, visceral stuff. 

It's coming out on vinyl, £25 for a 12" single, which is somewhat expensive. On the other hand, it's one of the songs of the year so far. 

Up on the elevated tram station Deansgate Castlefield I saw this piece of graffiti, a local artist's tribute to Gary Mani Mounfield, the much loved and much missed bass player of The Stone Roses- 'I wanna be adored... RIP Mani'. 

I Wanna Be Adored opened the band's debut album, first heard by fans back in early May 1989- a long slow FX and feedback intro and then Mani digging out that bassline. Squire's guitars trickle in and when Reni kicks in on drums we're off, the late 60s re- figured for the late 80s with a huge dash of Roses arrogance. 'I don't have to sell my soul/ He's already in me', Ian sings softly, 'I wanna be adored'. By the time the song winds down four minutes later many of those new listeners were already in deep, a new favourite band.

I Wanna Be Adored

I walked a different way to the pub I was heading to, dropping behind G-Mex and heading up a back road behind the Great Northern Goods Warehouse and to my left was this huge mural, Gorillaz v MCR. Damon Albarn's crew played the Co- op Arena back in April and this piece of paintwork was done to coincide, a history of Manchester from the Roman settlement of the 1st century AD to the arrival of Gorillaz in 2026, sanctioned and approved by Albarn and Jamie Hewlett and done by artist SketchMcr. 

Three Gorillaz songs selected from my hard drive. The Speak It Mountains is from 2010's The Fall, first released as a download only release. The track is various speaking voices and FX, Damon indulging his experimental side. 

The Speak It Mountains

Mick Jones appeared playing guitar on two songs on The Fall, one of which was Amarillo (recorded in Amarillo, Texas, in October 2010). 

Amarillo

Damon Albarn's talent isn't in doubt. He can write and he can sing- he can irritate too sometimes but this is one of those songs where he really hits the spot and finds an emotional connection out on the road in the vast open spaces of the USA. 

The Gorillaz mural has an excerpt from the song Dare (from Demon Days, released over two decades ago now, in 2005), the memorable line provided by Happy Mondays/ Black Grape vocalist Shaun Ryder, 'It's coming up/ It's coming up/ It's dare'. 

Dare

Monday's Long Song

Mid- June brings more treats from Sprechen, this week in the shape of Richard Norris remixes of Birds Of Pandæmonium, a track called Days Go By. Indeed they do- it seems like only a few weeks ago it was the New Year and now we're almost half way through the year. Last July I was standing photographing this church in Ypres, my last school trip at my old workplace, as the evening sun hit it and that doesn't feel like it was eleven months ago either. 

But, back to the music, Days Go By comes with four versions, two remixes- a vocal and a dub of each. The Rooms Of Percussion Mix is long and low slung, a chuggy monster with a bassline that writhes and buckles, some tripped out FX and a reverb drenched vocal. Slo and lo psychedelic cosmische that sounds like it would have fitted perfectly in an Andrew Weatherall DJ set a decade ago. 

The Stripped Mix is every bit the equal, trippier too with backwards parts, FX spiraling round, a nagging thudding rhythm and guitars. Dark dub disco, ideal for mirrorball situations. All four versions can be bought/ listened to at Sprechen's Bandcamp. 

A Mix For Eliza

It's Eliza's birthday today. She arrived in the early hours of 14th June 2003 and turns twenty three today. This has been causing some distress- Isaac was twenty three when he died in November 2021 and in a week's time she'll be older than he ever was. It's a strange thing to get one's head around and has brought some emotions to the surface. In the years since he died we've made a thing out of the number twenty three. We've all got a 23 tattoo and it's has become a way we jointly remember him. I still spot 23s out in the wild all the time. This was the table we sat at recently, in a busy pub, the only one with seats left...

Birthdays have been tough since he died. I know I always find them tough, another anniversary to get through, another date he's missing for. Eliza's twenty third birthday has stirred a lot of grief related stuff up and these are things which I've learned you just have to go through, you have to feel the feelings and accept it for what it is. 

We're immensely proud of her and everything she's done and we will be celebrating today, just in a slightly different way from usual. 

This is a thirty minute mix of songs for her twenty third birthday. There's plenty of other music she likes but these are some of the ones that have become jointly ours.

Eliza's 23rd Birthday Mix

• The Stone Roses: Mersey Paradise
• The Charlatans: Can't Get Out Of Bed
• Ride: Cali
• New Order: Sub- culture (7" Version)
• Oasis: Supersonic
• The Kinks: Misty Water
• Half Man Half Biscuit: The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train)
• Cheryl Cole: Fight For This Love

Mersey Paradise was the B-side to She Bangs The Drums back in 1989, when The Stone Roses were on their ascent and I was nineteen/. It's her favourite Roses song, one that we've sung along to in unison umpteen times in the car. The Mersey isn't far from where we live, we walk on its banks often. Upriver in Chorlton is where Ian Brown and John Squire lived when they wrote the song, maybe inspired by walks through Chorlton Ees and the water park and beyond that Didsbury where I grew up. Downstream it ends up in Liverpool where both she and I went to university, several decades apart. It's a been a constant presence in our lives in a way I only really realised while writing this. She missed The Stone Roses reunion, she was a bit too young and only really became interested a little later, something I regret a bit. 

We played North Country Boy at Isaac's funeral and it still retains a lot of power of as a song. I took Eliza to see The Charlatans a year ago at Castlefield Bowl and when they played it we both started sobbing. It's acted as a gateway into The Charlatans for her though and she has several of their songs on one of her playlists, often coming on straight after Mersey Paradise. Just When You're Thinkin' Things Over is one and their 1994 single Can't Get Out Of Bed is another. The album it's from, Up To Our Hips, got a bit of a mixed reception at the time- their star had waned a little in the press- but it sounds like a fine album today. 

Cali is from Ride's 2017 comeback album Weather Diaries, a gorgeous guitar song with end of summer lyrics and feel.It was one of the songs that got a lot of time in the car when we went to France in summer 2017, a long drive down to Messanges on the Atlantic coast near Biaritz. 

Sub- culture is one of those songs that cut through for her. I'm not sure where it came from- I've played it and many other New Order songs since before she was born so maybe it just seeped in by osmosis. There are various versions. My favorite is the Lowlife one but the one here is the 7" version from 1985, remixed by John Robie. 

Supersonic was Oasis' debut single back in 1994 back when they were just five likely lads from Burnage. Oasis are part of Eliza's generation's firmament, and last summer's re- union gave a lot of young people a chance to see them they wouldn't have had otherwise. We were going to go to Gallagher Hill last summer when they played Heaton Park but the Sunday evening when we were thinking about it it began raining heavily and we thought better of it. Probably should have gone- if you avoid doing things outside in Manchester due to rain you'd do very little. Supersonic is a blast, phased guitars and splintering notes over that early Oasis rhythm and a load of half- nonsense rhymes and typically Gallagher arrogance- 'I need to be myself/ I can't be no-- one else'.

Back when Eliza was much younger and going to dance classes every Tuesday night I'd take her and her friend Emma in the car, drop them and then an hour later pick them up. One of the routines of young children. For some reason, Misty Waters became a song they started singing along to, and it became an essential part of the Tuesday dance drop routine that we played Misty Water, the pair of them singing/ shouting along to the chorus. A 1968 hidden Ray Davies gem later covered by Billy Childish. 

Another car song from pre- teen years, The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train), is a Half Man Half Biscuit classic, one of their greatest moments. We'd all sing the breakdown, anticipating it from the start of the song- 'No frills, handy for the hills/ That's the way you spell New Mills'. Imagine our joy when we did this actually driving through New Mills. 

The line about Eyam is evidence of Nigel Blackwell's genius- 'We both grew up in Eyam/ And strange as it may seem/ Neither of us thought we'd ever leave'. For the benefit of non- UK readers, the village of Eyam is in Derbyshire and had an outbreak of Bubonic Plague in the 17th century. Rather than risk spreading the plague the villagers sealed themselves in, an act of self- isolation that confined the disease but led to the deaths of 260 residents. 

Cheryl Cole's Fight For This Love sticks out like a sore thumb in this mix but back in 2009 when she was six it was the first pop song she really connected with and I clearly remember downloading it for her and burning it to CD. 

Happy birthday Eliza. X

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Emphasise difference.

I responded to this with Iggy Pop's journey from 1973 to 1977, from Death Trip to Lust For Life and with The Clash who went from White Riot in 1976 to Death Is A Star in 1983. 

Someone pointed out this week when commenting on the race riots in Southampton and Belfast that they didn't think this was the kind of White Riot Joe Strummer was talking about which is indeed true. Joe would have been appalled by the rise of far right politics in the UK. But I digress...

The Bagging Area OS squad came up with some great replies emphasising difference- Martin Carthy covering Slade, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood's very different voices, Thomas Dolby and Prefab Sprout, Talk Talk, Cindytalk, Rodney Allen's Happy Sad, Paula Abdul and a cartoon cat...

... Elvis, Propaganda, Donny and Marie Osmond, Tonio K, and Boogie Down Productions. Thanks everyone- Chris, Walter, C, Khayem, Ernie, The Swede, Jase, Al G, Rol and Beerfueled as ever for your considered contributions.

This week's card says this- Ghost Echoes.

Just a few days before I turned the card over I finished Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids. It was published in 2010 and I've no idea why I only got a copy recently but I'm glad I did. It's a beautiful, powerful and poetic account of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti promised Robert she'd tell his story as he lay dying from complications due to AIDS. She attempted to do this with The Coral Sea but was often unable to get through a reading of the poem. Twenty years after his death, she felt able to write their story down. Her use of the written word is beautiful, as you might expect- she's a wordsmith if nothing else. The book is gripping, open and honest, with versions of their two childhoods and then their chance encounter in New York. She writes about her move to New York as a nineteen year old, an intense and slightly damaged young woman in love with Arthur Rimbaud, inspired by The Doors and Bob Dylan. Her early life in the city is a life of penury, of living hand to mouth and sometimes sleeping in doorways. Eventually she meets Robert (he rescues her from a predatory middle aged man who has taken her out for a meal and now expects something in return) and they live together as lovers and as artists, a completely bohemian life, inspiring each other. Robert is clearly struggling with his sexuality during this period and eventually they split but remain together. Their move to the Hotel Chelsea and the people they meet there changes both their lives and their relationship and their art. Just Kids tells their story up to the release of Horses, Patti finding her calling as a poet and then merging poetry with rock 'n' roll- and then to Robert's death in 1992. 

The copy I have has extra material at the book, and Robert Mapplethorpe's ghost is present there in photos and drawings, in poems and art. He haunts the pages as he undoubtedly still haunts Patti. In a sense though, in the pages that make up the bulk of the book, the story of Robert and Patti, he is very much alive; she brings him (and a lost world, New York in the late 60s and early 70s) to life. In the book, after speaking to a very ill Robert on the phone in 1992, a conversation she knows will be their last, she wakes up a few hours later and intuits his death.

Land (Part One: Horses Part Two: Land Of A Thousand Dances)

There is no shortage of songs with the word ghost in the title- step up The Gun Club, Andrew Weatherall, The White Stripes and Tegan and Sarah, Fine Yong Cannibals, The Fall and R. Dean Taylor, Daniel Avery, Broken Chanter, The Jam, Reverb Delay, Kristen Hersh, The Orb, Burning Spear, The Replacements, The Vendetta Suite,  Denise Sherwood, Hollie Cook, Trentemoller and The Style Council among others.... on and on we could go. 

This 2019 song from Circle Square though seems the one that has both ghosts and echoes contained within, Richard Norris and Martin Dubka's Ghost In The Machine,  a voice trapped inside a machine, echoing on and out for as long as the machine is plugged in.

Feel free to drop your own Ghost echoes into the comment box. 

Multiforms

Marconi Union's new album Multiforms: Ambient Transmissions Vol. 3 comes out today, six pieces of deep ambient music, each around eight minutes long, that form a single whole, each track merging itself into the next. The long slow opening into Multiforms I, drones and sound gently building, breaks at five minutes with a wordless voice and synths sounds that bend towards the light, a gentle ascent. Multiforms II drifts in with the sound of wind and then synth tones. The beatlessness and weightlessness continues as II segues into III, a movement with a piano line taking the lead, rising and falling over the drone. 

IV picks up and a rhythm kicks in, not a drum but something approaching a pulsebeat that propels us forwards, arpeggios gradually pulling clear of a distorted fuzz. Insistent and hypnotic. Multiforms V has layers of sound, more drones, an electric bass possibly, an oscillating topline and then a clear and rich ringing melody line, coming from I think a clarinet. The final part is VI, a return to blur and haze, ringing drones and long keening notes, Marconi Union bringing us through to the end slowly and a gentle, slightly melancholy conclusion. Trip over. 

The album is available at Just Music along with much of the rest of their back catalogue. There's a full length visualiser of Multiforms Vol. 3 to add to the immersive experience, the visuals to accompany the audio.

This is last year's Marconi Union album, their twelfth, Fear Of Never Landing- another full length immersive deep listening experience, very much an album to unplug from the world and surrender to for the time it plays.