Y viva Espana! We're off to Spain today for a few days, going to Granada, Nerja and Malaga. There are lots of songs with Spain or Spanish in their names in my collection. Let's go with cuatro songs for today's post.
Hinds are a Spanish, all girl group with four albums to their name- the most recent, Viva Hinds, was one of my favourites of 2024. They covered The Clash's Spanish Bombs in 2020 in fine style. Joe Strummer's lyric dealt with the Spanish Civil War, 70s separatist Basque terrorism and mass tourism. 'The hillsides ring with 'free the people'/ Can I hear the echo of the days of '39?', Joe asks, harking back to the civil war and the days of one of his heroes, the poet Federico Garcia Lorca (murdered by Franco's forces in 1936). In the chorus Joe declares his love for Spain, 'Yo te quiero, oh mi corazón' ('I love you/ Oh my heart').
In 1967 Jimi Hendrix's second album with The Experience had a song called Spanish Castle Magic on it, a glorious slice of '67 blues/ psychedelia, Jimi's guitar raw and raucous, the bass locked into the crunching guitar chords and doubling the riff, Mitch battering the drums. I don't think Jimi ever sang better than on this song.
The Spanish Castle wasn't actually in Spain, it was a roadhouse on the outskirts of Seattle where a young Hendrix was sometimes found jamming with local groups.
In 1999 Gorky's Zygotic Munki released their sixth album, Spanish Dance Troupe. The title track is gorgeous, absurdist, lilting Welsh psychedelic folk. This is Gorky's first appearance at Bagging Area which seems a bit of an oversight.
Last for today, Galaxie 500 and the B-side to their debut single Tugboat from 1988. In King Of Spain a man inures himself from pain and hurt by becoming the King of Spain, safely isolated as a powerful man but he ends up alone and lonely. Galaxie 500 may have refined their songs and sound over the three years they were active after they released Tugboat/ King Of Spain but almost everything that made them so special is present on this single.
Dicky Continental is one of Rich Thair's alter egos, a one man project away from his main band Red Snapper and Red Snapper's offshoot Number and his role as drummer and percussionist in the rejuvenated Sabres Of Paradise. Dicky Continental appeared on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 with his Andrew Weatherall sampling Large Bongos, Andrew's voice appearing over some low fi dusty funk on side one, very much holding its own next to the previously unreleased version of Sabres' track Lik Wid Nit Wit.
Dicky Continental have two new releases. The first is a single coming out in early August called Hostile Environment, ahead of an album called Queer The Pitch. Hostile Environment is a dubbed out gem with some typically cool percussion (conga and djembe), a sample from pirate radio, and Cardiff rapper/ poet Tia Zakura on vocals, a laid back and easy vocal style asking the right questions- 'Tell me what's the difference between existing and living?'
Recorded and produced at Buntys studio in Swansea and mixed in Hastings, listen and buy at Bandcamp. On the EP there will be a dub and an instrumental version to go with the vocal mix already available.
Meanwhile, The Secret Garden (Alex Vickers) have a track out called Weekend Away, remixed by Dicky Continental and featuring the vocals of Ioan Omar. Dicky's remix is a jazzy, summer sounding tune, keyboards to the fore and live drums and bass pushing it on. 'Call the collective', Ioan says, again like Tia above in a laid back vocal style- the tune and vocal flow press buttons that call Soul II Soul, Ballistic Brothers and Acid Jazz to mind. Find Dicky Continental's remix of Weekend Away at Bandcamp.
In the 2010s gentrification pushed Michael Smith, his partner and their infant son out of London and down to the south coast, the family settling in St. Leonards- on- Sea, a down at heel town next to Hastings. Smith is an author and flaneur* who wrote The Giro Playboy and Unreal City. When he moved to St. Leonards they decided to open a wine shop/ bar and the local community of artists and characters adopted this as the place to be. Michael found himself with a very young son, in a town he didn't know, staring out at the English Channel and sometimes wondering what on earth he'd done. Then came Covid and lockdown.
In time he turned this part of his life into a book, Strangers On The Shore, published last month by White Rabbit. It's not a novel, it's not exactly a memoir, it's informal in tone and traces his life in St. Leonards and much more besides. The strangers on the shore are often himself and the young Raf, killing the days, making a few pounds go as far as they will. The book heads from the decision to move to St. Leonards and the early days in the town into all sorts of areas- Aleister Crowley, Michael's disgust with end stage capitalism, gentrification, mobile phones, excursions into philosophy via Diogones and quantum physics (light particles and sausage dogs), owls, items that appear before him falling out of the cliff face, his realisation that there are things cannot be explained rationally, 'perfidious Albion on speed', signs and symbols, Raf's early life and how he sees the world, fatherhood... hopping from one vignette to another, all linked by Michael's distinctive voice and life in St. Leonards. A psychic flight of fancy grounded in the very real and every day aspects of life interrupted by a global and national emergency.
There are encounters with Andrew Weatherall, a dream encounter some months after Andrew died and some real ones too. In one of them Michael talks to Andrew in Weatherall's East London studio bunker, telling him how much the song Shine Like Stars means to him, Andrew tells Michael that he really should hear the unreleased remix of Shine Like Stars (released by Primal Scream after Andrew's death).
Copies of Strangers On The Shore bought from Gnostic Sonics came with an exclusive print and a pamphlet which describes teenage Michael's life in the north east of England, his discovery of acid house (and acid) and his first meeting with Andrew. In the pamphlet Michael writes about Andrew, his craft and talent, and his abilities as a 'weather controller' (which comes from a Weatherall story in the early 90s about him being atop Silbury Hill, out of his mind on psychedelics and trying to control the weather). Michael books Andrew to play his bar in St. Leonards and the young Raf is introduced to the alchemy of a Weatherall DJ set and the power of dub. It's a evocative and very moving addition to the book, one of the best pieces of writing about Mr. Weatherall I've read.
Back to Strangers On The Shore- Michael writes at one point that 'it's not easy trying to write your way out of a mid- life crisis'. I'll say no more but it's a highly affecting book, tender and funny, scabrous and rooted in very real life. St. Leonards becomes not just a 'rundown drinking town with a fishing problem' but the psychic motherlode. It's a book that stays with you after you've finished it, a book infused with 'magick with a K' (as Weatherall put it) a very human and readable memoir.
In 2013 when Andrew Weatherall was Faber's artist in residence the company published Unreal City, Michael's second book. Andrew introduced himself to Michael and said he'd like to work with him. Together with Nina Walsh, Andrew created an ambient soundscape soundtrack for Michael to read Unreal City over, a spoken word/ ambient Weatherall album (which came in a beautiful special edition with annotated margins, a CD and a 10" single).
In 2021 I strung all the different tracks together and uploaded them to Mixcloud. You can find it at Mixcloud here (with a comment from Michael himself and a link to more of his writings about the making of the album).
Michael more recently recorded an EP with Ride bassist Steve Queralt, spoken word ruminations on modern life, mushrooms and Chaldean oracles with shimmering ambient backdrops. It's highly recommended as is the subsequent remix EP. Both are at Bandcamp.
Michael's disgust with modern cities and 21st century lifestyles/ gentrification bleeds through on the track Glitches where he is flaneuring away in London and finds himself in a new part of the city, a re-developed hyper- capitalist shopping centre (Westfield in Stratford I think) surrounded by shops, flats and skyscrapers, glass and steel, cardboard cut out policemen in shop windows to ward off shoplifters, permanent bright lights and twenty four hour advertising selling a lifestyle that is for most people utterly unobtainable. Michael sees the city mutating in front of his/ our eyes into a megacity, people become permanent consumers, where the windows of shops selling suits promise that you are 'living the dream of a beautiful tomorrow'. As the track builds, Michael cuts to the chase, asking in his Hartlepudlian tones, 'What kind of a cunt's dream is this?'.
Indeed.
* Flaneur- one who wanders aimlessly through city streets observing the surroundings and people with no specific direction or goal. I can quite easily slip into it myself.
Coyote return with a new EP and more wisdom dispensed via well chosen vocal samples. Blue Bird is six minutes and forty four seconds of laid back ambient sounds, chilled bass and life advice-
'Focus on you/ People come and go/ If you don't control your mind,someone else will/ Sometimes the things that break your heart end up fixing your vision...'
In the second half it kicks up a bit, drums coming in and the bass pushing a little more, and there are choral backing vocals that coo like tiny angels.
'Failure is a bruise, not a tattoo... no regrets just lessons... life is too short... the calmer you are the clearer you think'.
There's a Polcari remix, a dub, that strips it down to electronic drums, bass and those backing vocals and a third track, Ode To Penguin, abstract Balearic ornithological ambience, layers of detail that reveal a little more with each play. Coyote's Blue Bird EP is at Bandcamp.
When they started out playing parties for their friends in abandoned churches and then rapidly became a proper band R.E.M. defined themselves as much by what they said 'No' to as by what they were for. One big 'No' was videos. Their label I.R.S. would have been happy with something that could have been shown on MTV, which was rapidly becoming the way Americans consumed their new music, but the band weren't comfortable with it and Michael Stipe refused to mime. Their early 80s music was drenched in mystery and for Stipe, a visual artist who was naturally drawn to the avant garde, making a brash, lip syncing promo just wasn't something he was prepared to do. They didn't really play the MTV video game until The One I Love in 1987.
In 1983 when R.E.M. released their second album Reckoning Stipe secured some funding to make a film to coincide with Reckoning. An Athens, Georgia filmmaker James Herbert was brought in to direct and Stipe's vision was that the band would be filmed at the farm that belonged to a local folk artist R.A. Miller, Whirligig Farm.
Between them, Herbert and R.E.M. they ended up with a twenty minute film. Herbert was used to making twenty minute films and was reluctant to edit his footage down to four minutes for just one of Reckoning's songs. The band decided that the film could accompany all of one side of the album (side one,labelled on the disc as the Left Side. Side two was the Right Side- hence the film became Left Of Reckoning). As well as some snippets of studio audio verite and Little America to start and finish it, the film provides visuals to Harborcoat, 7 Chinese Brothers, So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry), Pretty Persuasion and Time After Time (Annelise).
Herbert used slo mo, close ups, time lapse, silhouettes and a process called rephotogrpahy which used the same image twice with a slight time lag, cutting in and pulling out. It's an impressionistic but watchable film, very of its time and place, a time capsule of a period when for many artists pop videos and MTV were an enemy. MTV didn't show Left Of Reckoning- they weren't really into twenty minute art films of long haired indie rockers wandering round a hillside with some windmills and whirligigs.
I used to own Left Of Reckoning on an R.E.M. VHS compilation called Succumbs and there was a time when I would often put Left Of Reckoning on and sit and watch it, the visuals and music giving a glimpse into a world that I'd never visited and only knew through books and films- and this was a version of the south that was different from the one those books and films portrayed. A post punk Southern Gothic with jangly guitars, indecipherable but emotionally connecting lyrics, denim jackets and long hair.
Between releasing Chronic Town in August 1982 and Document in September 1987 (their last for I.R.S. before heading off to major label Warner Bros) R.E.M. put out four albums, each one a little bigger than the one before, each one adding something to their sound and style and their songwriting. They also played thousands of gigs, starting out at tiny venues in Athens and ending up in 1987 on the verge of big stages in big concert halls. They'd end up in arenas by 1995.
Today's Sunday mix is R.E.M. recorded live at various gigs between 1983 and 1987, the band powering through those songs from Chronic Town, Murmur, Reckoning and Fables Of The Reconstruction. The audio differs a bit due to the nature of how and where it was recorded but it holds together pretty well and demonstrates in fifty minutes, what a fearsome and life affirming live band they were- the speed, thump and melodic power of Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry and Michael Stipe's words, vocal melodies and presence.
There She Goes Again (Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
Radio Free Europe (Live at The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, 7th July 1984)
7 Chinese Brothers (Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
Ages Of You (Live at the Paradise Rock Club, Boston, 13th July, 1983)
Harborcoat ((Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
Life And How To Live It (Live at Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, Utrecht, Netherlands, 14th September 1987)
Sitting Still (Live at The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, 7th July 1984)
Talk About The Passion (Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
Pilgrimage (Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto, 9th July 1983)
Little America (Live at The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, 7th July 1984)
Second Guessing (Live at The Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, 7th July 1984)
We Walk (Live at the Paradise Rock Club, Boston, 13th July, 1983)
1, 000, 000 (Live at the Paradise Rock Club, Boston, 13th July, 1983)
R.E.M. were in the habit of covering The Velvet Underground both in the studio and live. In 1983 they often opened gigs with Femme Fatale and on the Green tour they often encored with After Hours. Three Velvets songs turned up as B-sides and then compiled on the Dead Letter Office album- Femme Fatale, Pale Blue Eyes and the one I've used as the opener for this gig mix, There She Goes Again (from the Velvet's 1967 debut album The Velvet Underground And Nico).
Larry's Hideaway was a bar in the Prince Carlton Hotel in Toronto, Canada, one of the first venues in Toronto to open up to punk and New Wave acts. It was originally a restaurant and then became a jazz club in 1961. The list of bands that played there is impressive- The Cramps, The Bad Seeds, Sun Ra, Killing Joke, The Fall, The Cult, Billy Bragg, John Cale, Black Flag and Bauhaus all trod the boards at Larry's. It closed in 1986. The hotel stayed open but was raided by police due to a series of robberies and assaults taking place on the property. It closed in 1988 and the building was destroyed by a fire in 1991. It's now the off leash dog section of Allan Gardens Park.
The Aragon Ballroom in Chicago opened in 1922 and has a long and storied history ever since hosting bands of all descriptions, from the Big Band era onward, as well as wrestling, roller skating and boxing, another life as a disco and its appeared as a location set in films and on TV. When R.E.M. played there in July 1984 they were supported by The Dream Syndicate.
The Paradise Rock Club in Boston opened in 1977 with a capacity of 900, close to the university. It's still open today- The Charlatans will play there in September. The plumbing may have been a bit off in 1983 however. In the final song in the mix/ set above, as the band power into Chronic Town's 1, 000, 000, Stipe cautions the crowd, 'Don't drink the water'.
Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht, Netherlands, was a 5000 capacity venue which shows the step up in audience and venue size R.E.M. took between 1983 and 1987. The building was demolished in 2008 and a new concert venue built on the site which opened in 2014. The version of Life And How To Live It they played there has a long introduction by Michael Stipe, where he describes the Athens man the song is about and the house he lived in, followed by the band absolutely flying through the song at the height of their 80s powers.
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 A very small object. It's centre.
I went all atomic with Quando Quango and Mark Kamins, Juan Moreno, and Massive Attack, all loosely tied together by Carlo Rovelli and quantum physics. Out in the Bagging Area community there were the usual array of fantastic suggestions- Newcleus from Michel Houellebecq's Petit Mort, Suzanne Vega from Trail Of Bread, They Might Be Giants from Rol, Chapterhouse and Badly Drawn Boy from Al G, Soft Cell from Chris, The Incredible String Band from Ernie and sneaking in at the end Mrs G with Tinie Tempah with a tribute to stars and teenagers.
Here's Chapterhouse's very small object, swirling shoegaze from 1991.
This week's card says this- Change instrument roles
The Roland TB- 303 is a bassline synthesiser, produced by the Roland Corporation in 1981 and designed to replace the bass guitar and to accompany the 808 drum machine. It was considered a commercial failure and discontinued in 1984.
Over in Chicago a group called Phuture had a 303 and had been seeing what they could do with it, what the instruction manual didn't tell them. By abusing the machine they discovered they could do much more than make a synthesised bassline- they could change the sound completely, making a squelchy, liquid, otherworldly sound that became the foundation stone of what a couple of years later became known as acid house.
Phuture were DJ Pierre, Spanky and Herbert Jackson. Marshall Jefferson helped out with the production of Acid Trax and in getting it released. Phuture had in turn built on the house sound that DJ Ron Hardy had been playing at Chicago's warehouse parties, the mayhem of those parties Hardy DJed at and the thump of the rhythm and the effect it had on the crowd. The acid squelch took it up to another level. When it was released in 1987 it made its way to the UK, to London, Manchester and Nottingham. That squelch, that distinctive, futuristic, face melting sound that warps its way through Acid Trax is what happens when someone changes instrument roles. And kick starts a revolution.
Nashville's Luke Schneider has taken an instrument usually associated with country and western and the Grand Ole Opry, the pedal steel guitar, added some FX and changed the pedal steel's role completely- in Luke's hands the pedal steel is an ambient instrument, layers of drones and ringing sounds, an enveloping soundscape. This is from 2020's Altar Of Harmony, as good a place to start as any.
Three EPs for Friday from the electronic end of things, suitable for home listening and for playing out, for making the humanoid banana wiggle and writhe and flip his skin. First, from Belfast the new EP from The Vendetta Suite (Gary Irwin). Gary's musical history goes back to the early 90s, to David Holmes' Exploding Plastic Inevitable and then becoming Holmes' studio engineer. Gary, David and Timmy Stewart kept going as producers and DJs, illuminating nights in Belfast with acid house, dub and techno. Fast forward to 2021 and The Vendetta Suite released an album, The Kempe Stone Portal, and David's resulting remix of Purple Haze Yellow Sunshine stands out as one of the best remixes of the 2020s. Fast forward again and here we are in 2026, with The Vendetta Suite's Scrabo Electro, an EP that harks back to the halcyon days of mid- 80s electro, breakdance, B- Boys and for Gary, teenage days in Newtownards.
The original mix of Scrabo Electro is a body rockin' gem, squelches and 808s, 'uh uh uh' and burping bass. A Dub For Dave kicks down with a skanking version, underwater dub with Space Invaders sounds. Uprock At Digby's Disco goes full on electro and we finish with the Lead Mines Bonus Beats, scratching and slo mo fun. You can get all four versions at Bandcamp.
Second, here's an EP from Photay from earlier this year- Always Cosmic is a four track EP led by Photay's remix of United Freedom Collective's Always Open, percussive, tribal, acid house with the distinctive vocals of Falle Nioke. Acid bassline and bleeps, Afro vocals, rattling breakbeat, deep and epic sounding psychedelic acid.
The EP adds three more versions: an instrumental radio edit of the remix; Always Cosmic, a stripped down cosmische dub that sets the controls for deeper and further; and the pH Dub, wiggy, dark jazzy acid, the elements bent out of shape with some Balearic piano. Always Cosmic is at Bandcamp.
Thirdly, out now on Barcelona label Adepta Editions is an EP from Ariadne's Labyrinth that I dropped into one of the recent Oblique Saturdays posts. Endless Corners has four tracks, a collision of classically trained piano and violin with rave and club culture. Opener Amble Eddy Song is a delight, dark bass and breakbeats with melodies dancing across the top. Missing Daydream is even better, Philip Glass crossed with 90s breakbeats, a heady trip into ambient techno.
Terminal Dot featured a few weeks ago. It's followed by Threads which rides in on bumping bass and a fractured drum break, urban and urgent, Ariadne's Labyrinth background in London's squat scene, classical training and love of Cuban and Brazilian rhythms in full flight. You can find Endless Corners at Bandcamp.
