This artist- audience exchange is sampled from the 1969 film of the Woodstock festival, Country Joe and The Fish protesting about Vietnam in front of quarter of a million kids*. It kicks off the DSS remix of We Wanna Live by Sandals, a 1993 single on the band's own Open Toe label. The drums rumble in and vocalist/ poet Derek Delves begins his address.
'Think you know what's right? Think you know what's wrong? How long? Well, it's anybody's guess, we all wake up, get out of this mess...'
The drums and percussion, courtesy of the four Sandals and on this remix Ashley Beedle, David Holmes, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, thump and rattle, everything part of a deep and murky, progressive house sonic stew, acid house that's been through the wringer and is now on the other side of the mother of all comedowns.
Well, it's late 1993 yeah, over five years since the summer of love, two decades since the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, two years since the first Gulf War, three since the Soviets left Afghanistan, two since Thatcher went, five since Reagan left, four since the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War suddenly ended and the Soviet Union fractured. Yugoslavia is becoming an ex- state, a civil war and sectarian murder, genocide, already underway.
In Oslo the PLO and Israel, led by the US President Bill Clinton, announce a peace process aimed at establishing self- government for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. A joint declaration about a peace process in Northern Ireland is issued, paving the way for the Good Friday Agreement five years later.
'If we don't wake up/ We don't get out of this mess'
'We wanna live!'
There's a sitar, raga scales running down, synths and at seven minutes a breakdown, crowd noise and then a lone voice shouting, 'Party!' and the crowd chanting it back, 'Party!'.
Derek returns. 'How long?'
Flute, more whispered poetry and more questions.
The questions remain the same. And now, March 2026, there are psychopaths in the White House. No restraint. No control. Reveling in their power to kill.
'What's that spell?'
* In a weird coincidence, an hour after writing this post I saw that Country Joe McDonald's death had been announced. He died aged 84 due to complications from living with Parkinson's disease. RIP Country Joe.
Green Gartside and Scritti Politti have led a long and strange musical life, from forming in Leeds in 1977 and their initial recordings, scratchy dubby DIY/ squat post- punk (where they released a single which was in part a demystification of the process of making a record) through to shiny 80s synth- pop, soul, reggae and disco, hip hop and rap and gorgeous folk- pop.
Underpinning it was Green's application of Marxist theory to music and hundreds of lyrical references- Scritti's 1982 song Jacques Derrida, named after the French post- structuralist philosopher, opened the eyes and broadened the reading lists of many listeners. Green has said that on many occasions he's been approached backstage by men carrying their PhD and asked to sign it, PhDs dedicated and inspired by him.
As well as this, Green's voice is like an angels and his songwriting is second to none and while he hasn't been particularly prolific since the glory days of the 80s, his back catalogue is packed with gems. This mix is filled with singles and big hitters. A deeper dive could be on the cards. I wasn't sure the various styles and genres would work as a coherent whole and was surprised by how well they do- even the early DIY post- punk/ dub finds a place alongside songs recorded in much more expensive studios.
King Midas Sound: Come And Behold (Green Gartside Revoice)
Scritti Politti: After Six
Scritti Politti: The 'Sweetest Girl'
The Boom Boom Bap is from 2006's Scritti Politti album White Bread Black Beer, an album which is now twenty years old. The Boom Boom Bap is a minimalist tribute to Green's beloved hip hop culture and rap music- to the sound of the drums, the 'yes yes y'all', and to the songs of Run DMC. Greens says its also about 'the difference between being in love with something and being unhealthily addicted to it'. The album is spacious, sumptuously produced and filled with heartstopping moments. Dr. Abernathy is from the same album, a gorgeous acoustic song that references Greek mythology (the owl of Minerva), Hegelian philosophy, the 18th century surgeon of the title, more 80s hip hop ('punks jump up to get beat down') and a range of substances including heroin, meth amphetamine, mescaline, beer and gin all sung so sweetly. One of the best songs of the 00s. After Six, a short two minute song is also from White Bread Black Beer, in which Green pleads, 'oh Jesus, keep your love away from me'.
Asylums In Jerusalem is from 1982's Songs To Remember, a change in sound and style from their post- punk recordings, funk bass and synths, backing vocals and bigger studios. It was a reaction partly to Green's growing distaste for the indie ghetto- the desire to break out, to not be seen as bedsit/ squat intellectuals, to connect with an audience, all drove it, as did Green's rejection of 'monolithical Marxism', and a nine month recovery in Wales from a nervous breakdown triggered by stage fright. Asylums In Jerusalem was inspired by Freidrich Nietzche's descriptions of the mentally ill contained in asylums built to hold the number of religious lunatics who appeared in the wake of Jesus Christ.
Tinseltown To The Boogiedown was released in 1999 on the album Anomie & Bonhomie, Green making music with the cream of 90s hip hop. On Tinseltown... Green sings and plays with Mos Def and Da Bush Babees (a New York Native Tongues affiliated group)
Skank Bloc Bologna is from 1978, an oblique, lo fi single, the musicians sometimes seeming to be playing different songs- scratchy, weird, post punk dub with a title inspired by Antonio Gramsci and his writings about class and society. Gramsci also gave the band their name, from his book Scritti Politisci.
Absolute is a 1985 single and is pop perfection, a sublime single with a sound that swims and soars with Green's voice never sounding better. The video is a joy too, Green in Nike Windjammer track jacket and moon boots and with huge Princess Di hair, and a party of impossibly young and beautiful people.
In 2020 Green released a 7" single out of nowhere, a pair of covers of Anne Briggs songs which revealed Green's pre- punk love of British folk music. The songs were done at home with bandmate Rhodri Marsden. Tangled Man and Wishing Well were very near the top of my list of my favourite songs of 2020 and both still sound lovely today.
King Midas Sound's Without You is dub, dubstep, experimental double album from 2012, songs reworked and remixed by an array of artists. Massive Attack and Tricky are close companions of the original album, from 2009. Green re- voices Come And Behold, adding his vocals to the song.
The 'Sweetest Girl' is a 1981 single, an about turn for Scritti in music and production, with Robert Wyatt on keys. The song was designed to be a hit single and provoked a furious disagreement at record label Rough Trade, many of whom were ideologically opposed to hit singles. It was also the most money Rough Trade had ever paid to make a single, £60, 000. For Green, making pop music in 1981 did not mean selling out or dumbing down punk's principles but was about making music that would find a way into people's hearts. Songs To Remeber was partly about what happens, as he said to The Face, 'when anchor points of political, moral or religious understanding fall away'. The 'Sweetest Girl' is about the promise and the myth of 'the perfect girl', or about how the idealised male version of the 'sweetest girl' was a myth.
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 was this- Towards the insignificant- and my song choices went all existential, Pixies, Julian Cope and Tim Burgess. Suggestions from readers (Ernie, Khayem, JC, Walter and Chris) took in Talking Heads' Road To Nowhere, Nic Roeg's film Insignificance and its soundtrack song by Glenn Gregory and Claudia Brucken, The Indelicates and The Last Significant Statement To Be Made In Rock 'n' Roll, John Martyn's Solid Air, Richard Norris' Music For Healing series, anything by Nick Drake, and Frazier Chorus' Nothing (Land Of Oz Mix). That's as good a playlist about insignificance as we're ever going to assemble.
Today's card is this- Put in earplugs.
Which made me laugh out loud when I turned it over.
Friends of mine attended the recent My Bloody Valentine gig at Factory Aviva Studios in Manchester (I missed out on tickets). They all wore earplugs, all found it deafeningly, unbelievably loud and couldn't tell, despite being confirmed and long time MBV fans, which songs were actually being played. Their account made me regret even more that I missed it in a way.
The loudest gig I've attended in recent years was Bob Mould at Manchester Academy 2 in March 2019, a gig that in retrospect I should have worn earplugs for. The hearing in my right ear has not been the same since. I wrote about it at the time...
Bob Mould at Manchester Academy 2 on Sunday night, twenty years after I last saw him play there. Back in 1998 he played almost entirely solo stuff, promoting his then new record The Last Dog And Pony Show, with just a Sugar song held back for the encore. This time around, promoting his current new album Sunshine Rock, he plays songs from the last forty years of playing and making records, from their earliest recordings to his latest. Backed by a high kicking bassist and a drummer engaged in a one man war of attrition with his snare drum Bob hits the stage loud and fast and doesn't really let up. His guitar/pedals/twin amp set up makes Bob sound like two or three guitarists and it's loud, really loud, with those crystalline melodies fired off within the sheets of distorted riffs.
There are few gaps between the songs, no light show to speak of, no projections or backdrop- just songs from the Bob Mould back catalogue. He opens with 2014 song The War and then blasts straight into Sugar's A Good Idea, the bass riff on its own for a few seconds before being submerged in Bob's wall of guitars. Three songs in and we're into I Apologise off Husker Du's 1985 New Day Rising. There is then a liberal smattering of songs from Sunshine Rock, Bob's self-willed optimistic, happy album, an album written in the aftermath of the death of both parents and Husker drummer Grant Hart, songs like Thirty Dozen Roses and Sin King, and highlights from Sugar's 1992 album Copper Blue (Hoover Dam sounds enormous, bigger than the guitars and keyboards of the album version). People around me are adjusting their earplugs.
Husker Du's 1982 hardcore single In A Free Land has been dusted down and in Trump's wake sounds no less relevant and no less alive. Bob has been unwell in recent days and on antibiotics for a chest infection, not that you'd guess- Sugar's If I Can't Change Your Mind roaring out of the amps, noise plus melodies, punk plus choruses. He pauses three quarters of the way through to thank us for coming and introduce Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster on bass and drums and then its back to business. Something I Learned Today, one of Husker Du's most vital songs, is a ferocious blast, spitting fire and piss and from this point, for the final fifteen minutes or so Bob and band go off setlist, launching into one Husker Du song after another, almost a medley- Chartered Trips, their cover of The Mary Tyler Moore theme Love Is All Around Us, a beautiful and raging Celebrated Summer with Bob stretching out the pause into the guitar picking section at the end, finishing with Makes No Sense At All, the single that paved the way for Pixies and Nirvana to name but two. No encore. Lights on. Ears ringing. Home.
Neither of those mp3s give any idea of how loud Bob was that night. At one point people were physically flinching and stepping back from the stage. I remember moving forwards into a gap and turning my head sideways on at one point as Bob turned the single guitar he was playing into three, all at max volume.
Bob recently announced Sugar's reformation and a new single, Long Live Love. And gigs including one in Manchester at the end of May. Put in earplugs.
'Language has the power to alter our perceptions... a single word can change our reality... and that word is yes!'
Jezebell's second album, Jezebellearic Beats Volume 2, came out last year, a twenty track, four sides of vinyl epic with remixes, edits, originals and five brand new recordings. The album's ultimate track was Turn It Yes, the song that maybe Jesse and Darren have been building up to all this time- rippling synths, rolling electronic drums and percussion, a vocal sample about language and reality and the word yes and a second vocal sample, one about a famous exhibition at The Indica Gallery in 1966 that proved to be a crucial part of the story of one of the most famous people of the 20th century.
Today sees the release of a remix EP, Turn It Yes redone in three versions. Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros remix is straight out of Sean's top drawer, a thumping, pumping, uptempo glide by that threatens to turn into Underworld on several occasions- I can imagine Two Months Off and this remix being mixed in and out of each other, cutting from one to the other for ages. Sean keeps it going, the juddering kick drum and the words and the topline, all piling up, a never ending peak. The Parvale Remix is tougher still, a four four chug with everything- bpms, synths, rave bass- set to max.
Justin Robertson is the third man, remixing Jezebell in his psychic folk dub, Five Green Moons mode, slowing Jezebell down, dubbing the bass, FX ricocheting, drums skanking, organ notes flaring like flashes of sunshine and that nagging key topline appearing and re- appearing and the vocals slurred and stoned... 'and that word is Yes'. Justin's on a roll right now and this one is right up there with his best work of recent times.
You can find Turn It Yes Remixes Vol. 1 at Bandcamp.
Justin can also be found remixing Brisbane band Das Druid. The Aussie three piece have been compared to the sound of late 80s/ early 90s Manchester, the swaggering indie- dance rolling drums, psychedelic guitar lines and euphoric, wide eyed spirit. On their Das EP there are three songs- Freedom, Less Than 3 and Incense- and if you slotted them into a Madchester/ indie dance playlist they'd be right at home, you'd barely hear the joins. The third of those three, Incense, also carries one of the next steps from those early 90s days, the spaced out swirl and psychedelic rock of Spiritualized and early Verve.
Justin's Five Green Moons remix of Freedom comes in two versions, a remix and a dub, each eight minutes long, the spaced out dubness, FX and melodica and slo mo rhythms slipping and sliding through a Five Green Moons haze. As well as those two Das Druid are put through their paces by Ruf Dug, the Stoner Trance Version of Incense, a slow burning behemoth, distorted bass and grinding rhythm in contrast to the half whispered, starsailing vocal. The drums double up at three minutes and there's some wailing, an acid house, psychedelic stew. Intense. Incense. 'Two hands are better than one'.
Justin is in demand in the world of Magick Knives too where he's taken the Dungeon Jazz and Wizard Psych of their song Existence into his folk- dub netherworld, where the hills have eyes and the isles are being prepared for midsummer. Dislocated trumpets, disembodied vocals, spindly guitars and whirling organs. Get tripped out at Bandcamp.
Last weekend was The Golden Lion's 11th birthday, a weekend of musical events to celebrate the 11 years since Gig and Waka took the Todmorden pub and turned it into something much more than a pub- 'ceci n'est pas une pub' is painted onto the side of the building. On Friday night Joe Goddard from Hot Chip played and on Saturday there was a Belfast themed takeover with David Holmes headlining downstairs and the band Deeply Armed playing upstairs. Around these two we got to play again, the Flightpath Estate DJs from 2pm downstairs and then either side of the band upstairs.
We played a bagful of tunes and maybe at some point we'll recreate at least part of the several hours long set and share it here. There was a section in the middle where I played Richard Norris' remix of Warpaint (Disco// Very), the Two Lone Swordsmen remix of X- Press 2's Witchi Tai To and then this...
... which had a few people reaching for the Shazam app on their phone. It's a wonderful Prins Thomas version, the drums and bass winding their way round and round and a guitar picking out single notes, building over several minutes, the guitars and strings gradually joining, the sound becoming richer and fuller but all the while following the groove. Those trademark, world weary Doves vocals arrive halfway through. A glorious eight minutes of music.
Deeply Armed flew over from Belfast, a band with a one single behind them, some serious remix action (Keith Tenniswood, Richard Fearless) and an album recorded and ready to go. They took to the stage at 9.30 playing to a full room, singer Michael brandishing a tambourine and giving the Ian Brown stare into the middle distance of the room. Around him the band kick up a motorik groove, synths and guitar/ bass conjuring a blissed, psychedelic sound- repetition, garage band chord changes, Spacemen 3 tempo, and the street menace of early Happy Mondays evident too on some of the first half of the nine song set. On last year's single The Healing it all comes together into one krauty/ Velvets drone...
Downstairs fellow Belfast native David Holmes is kicking up a storm. We miss the first part of his set due to playing before and after the band but after the Deeply Armed have finished and everyone has moved downstairs- Holmes v The Flightpath Estate, it's no contest- I make my way down and into the maelstrom of a packed Golden Lion, dancers everywhere, the red lights bouncing off the mirrorball and a Holmes set that takes in Crooked Man, the Leftside Wobble edit of Tomorrow Never Knows, All Seeing I and much more.
Black Bones, a Belfast duo, released a six track album last year that took nightclub music- techno, dub, disco, whatever else gets people dancing- and lit a fire under it. Tough beats, wonky experimental sonics, a dark Balearic feel, more than a little influenced by various points in Andrew Weatherall's back catalogue- the noir feel of Sabres, the basement beats of 2000 era Two Lone Swordsmen, the adventurism of his solo work from the 2010s.
Black Bones have followed that album with a new 10" single, two more slices from Belfast. The A- side, Barrios And Barricades is an urban trip with voices, a banging bassline, a rattling snare, shrieks and cries, the thump in the chest you get when music is played through a big soundsystem and the staccato flash of the strobe. Full blooded music that makes you feel alive and in the moment. Listen and buy at Bandcamp.
On the flip is Cruising, a Black Bones- Autumns collaboration. Cruising drives in with the same four four thud, the drum sound pushed to the edge and a bassline that would chew up the carpet at parties. Swirling around those two elements there are crashes and FX, echoed shouts, metal on metal and at two minutes forty seven seconds a breakdown, a brief pause before the tension and the rhythm returns.
A few weeks ago I came across the lyrics to The Broad Majestic Shannon, a Pogues song that is absolutely one of their finest songs and one of Shane's greatest lyrics. Looking at the words on my screen it occurred to me that they work perfectly as just the words, a poem.
The last time I saw you was down at the Greeks There was whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks You sang me a song that was pure as the breeze On a road leading up Glenaveigh
I sat for a while at the cross at Finnoe Where young lovers would meet when the flowers were in bloom Heard the men coming home from the fair at Shinrone Their hearts in Tipperary wherever they go
Take my hand and dry your tears, babe Take my hand, forget your fears, babe There's no pain, there's no more sorrow They're all gone, gone in the years, babe
I sat for a while by the gap in the wall Found a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball Heard the cards being dealt and the rosary called And a fiddle playing "Sean Dun Na Ngall"
And the next time I see you we'll be down at the Greeks There'll be whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks For it's stupid to laugh and it's useless to bawl 'Bout a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball
Take my hand and dry your tears, babe Take my hand, forget your fears, babe There's no pain, there's no more sorrow They're all gone, gone in the years, babe
So I walked as the day was dawning Where small birds sang and leaves were falling Where we once watched the row boats landing By the broad majestic Shannon
Every line Shane writes in The Broad Majestic Shannon, every image he paints, can be seen and felt. That's how it seems to me, written down. The Pogues matched Shane's words with a glorious, swooning, lilting tune and performance.
It took a while to suss out the penultimate line. I couldn't understand why after all these scenes Shane depicts so vividly, flashes of life from his childhood and teens, the tears and optimism of the chorus, and the new day of the last chorus, why Shane was watching robots landing. It made no sense. Was this a War Of The Worlds thing? Why were robots crossing Ireland's longest river? Back in the early 90s, having mentioned this to a friend, I got a postcard from him while he was on holiday in Ireland. He wrote an update of his adventures and places he'd been. The P.S. at the very bottom of the postcard read just this- 'it's row boats, not robots'.
Not long after I saw the lyrics in front of me on my screen and had these thoughts, news of the death of Pogues drummer Andrew Ranken aged 72 appeared on my screen too. RIP Andrew.
