Spooky Weatherall Mix

It's Halloween. Here's a special spooky, horror themed mix Mr Andrew Weatherall did for Mulletover. Be careful out there tonight.

http://www.mixcloud.com/mulletover/andrew-weatherall-exclusive-mulletover-halloween-2011-mix/

Bleep

Another record from Sheffield's Warp Records, this time in the shape of Tricky Disco by Tricky Disco from 1990. Serious bleepiness.

Tricky Disco

Pepper Trance

Getting on for twenty years ago I shared a flat with N, a man I met in my last year at Liverpool University who was later best man at my wedding. We've drifted apart over the last decade- he went to London in the late 90s, and I was always the poor relation finances wise when we flat shared, and we kind of mix in different circles now. Things were a bit strained for a while for various reasons though it's fine on the rare occasions we see each other now. He loved Speedy J's Ginger album, released in 1993 on Warp's Artificial Intelligence label. Speedy J is Dutchman Jocham George Paap and the album Ginger was full of techno-going-trance music. This track takes me right back to that flat in Altrincham in the middle of winter, three bar fire, crap black and white TV, cooked breakfasts, The Bleeding Wolf, the pub quiz, Regal King Size, trips to Cream, The Hacienda and Home.

Pepper

Ralph's Cupboard

Let's have some dance music today. While rummaging through stuff recently I found Orbsessions Volume 2, a compilation of odds and sods by The Orb which came out in 2006, although I have no idea when this particular track dates from. It's a magnificent, squelchy eight minutes of up dance music and no mistake. One reviewer at youtube left this comment- 'sounds like crossing a vast swamp on a bridge made of sticks while a million happy bugs dance beneath' and I really couldn't put it any better.

Ralph's Cupboard

Friday Night Is... Music Hall Night

No rockabilly tonight. For one week only (probably) we are grooving to some music hall. Tomorrow Mrs Swiss is holding a party to celebrate her 40th birthday. She decided she didn't want to hire a room above a pub or the local rugby club and have me play records. Everyone else has done that. She's having an Edwardian tea party in the afternoon, with tea, cake and sandwiches, and period costume. Note, that's period costume not fancy dress. Mrs Swiss has hired a beautiful dress and hat. I am using the splendid chap in the photo as my model and am getting quite attached to the plus fours (hired), though not the golf club. Tedious game golf.

We've bought three cds of music hall which could get quite annoying over the course of the afternoon. In the evening we're going out for a few drinks in Sale. I'm still contemplating whether to keep the plus fours on.

Having cast my eye over the track listing to The Glory Of Music Hall cd, including songs such as She Was Poor But She Was Honest, It's the First Time I've Done That, The Biggest Aspidistra In The World, The Yodelling Goldfish, the Wives Of Commercial Travellers and Nobody Loves A Fairy When She's Forty I've gone for this George Jackley tune.

Ain't It Grand To Be Blooming Well Dead

Friday Street

Streets, roads and places feature prominently in Paul Weller's songs, from the punk temptations of In The City, the bomb in Wardour Street and Tales From The Riverbanks' childhood idyll during The Jam through to the fascination with Paris in The Style Council. Once solo Weller continued the psychogeography. His first solo album featured the single Uh Huh Oh Yeah and a 'trip down Boundary Lane, trying to find myself again'. His third solo album was named after the road he grew up on (Stanley Road). By this point he was busy earning the Dadrock tag, and in truth although I liked the first solo album and loved Wild Wood, Stanley Road did little for me other than The Changing Man, Broken Stones and that nice Peter Blake sleeve.

1997's Heavy Soul album led with this single, and it turns out it's an actual place (a hamlet in Surrey). 'A pulse goes on, on Friday Street' he sings but truth be told at this point that Dadrock label isn't budging.

Friday Street

53rd & 3rd

If songs about streets and roads are about a sense of place, home, belonging and how far you can go from home, then Dee Dee Ramone's 53rd & 3rd is surely a measure of how far a person can fall. Dee Dee's narrator stands on the corner of 53rd and 3rd 'trying to turn a trick' and is dismayed he's also 'the one they never pick'. This two minute buzzsaw tale of male prostitution ends in murder. It wasn't all fun round The Ramones way y'know.

53rd & 3rd

Sun Boxes

From the random stuff that drops into my email Inbox this is Sun Boxes from Colorado. Ambient solar powered sound installation by Craig Colorusso. Very nice and on 7" vinyl too.

Youtube clip

Sun Boxes website

What I want to know is, who are the three people who downloaded Take That's Never Forget?

Electric Avenue

Regular reader and comment leaver Artog pointed out a while ago that the Electric Avenue ex-Equal Eddy Grant sang about back in 1982 was a real road. He spotted it from the top deck of the 159 bus. It's in Brixton, SW9. Those postcodes always seem important to Londoners. In the 1880s it was the first market street to be lit by, yes, electricity and it's beautiful Victorian shop front canopies survived until the 1980s, when some philistine pulled them down. Thatcher probably.

Electric Avenue

Keeping It Peel Day Slight Return

A second Peel Session song. It's half term and I've got the time. Early 80s left wing skinheads The Redskins, with Young And Proud from a 1982 session. Get your red docs on and bounce.

Young And Proud

Happy 40th Mrs Swiss

Today Mrs Swiss turns 40. The musical aspects of this post might be better off here. She was into them from the start. In fact the first time she took me back to her rented house she had a Mark Owen poster on her bedroom wall. And this song is at least bearable.

Happy Birthday Mrs Swiss.

Never Forget

Keeping It Peel Day

Keeping It Peel Day is organised across the web by Webbie, who you can find here explaining what it's all about. I joined in last year posting a track from Sabres Of Paradise's sole Peel Session. First up today is a Half Man Half Biscuit song, recorded for a Peel Session (in I think 2004) before it was available anywhere else, rapidly becoming an audience favourite. Paintball's Coming Home attacks those people, those couples, you know the ones- they've got a new conservatory, they got married on a Caribbean beach, they've got a German Shepherd dog called Prince, they know where things are in B & Q, they made friends with people on Henman Hill, they buy soup in cartons not in tins, they hire stretch limousines, they've got a website for their cat, they keep a torch in the back of the car. Most damningly of all they've got nothing but total respect for Annie Lennox/the Mercury Music Prize (depending on which version you're listening to). I once played this to a chap who took it as a personal attack on himself. And maybe he was right.

Here's to John Peel and his memory. And this fairly bizarre photo.

Paintball's Coming Home

AMCA CPI AW DRM

The list of letters stands for A Man Called Adam's Chronic Psionic Interface Andrew Weatherall Dodivor Remix, which is a pretty unromantic way of letting you listen to this piece of bleepy, blissed out balearica from 1991, a bit of a golden year for this kind of thing. Spaced out. And a break from all these roads and streets. Affects nasal whine 'How many roads must a man blog about, before he zzzzzzzz........'

CPI Andrew Weatherall Dodivor Remix

Whittier Boulevard

With a name like Thee Midnighters (or Thee Midniters) you just know that this is going to be hopped up mid-60s garage rock. And it is, but also hopped up mid-60s Chicano garage rock. A tribute to East Los Angeles Whittier Blouevard. We don't have many boulevards round here.

Whittier Blvd

The Sixties

I was reading what Drew wrote here about the late 80s, about how in '88 people were into the new dance music or the newish indie dance (or indie shuffle) and how there was some crossover between the two. After getting in from a colleague's gothic wedding reception last night I slumped in front of a Neil Young documentary. The combination of the two (Drew's post and Neil Young, not the goth wedding) got me thinking- around '88 everyone (well maybe not everyone, but y'know..) who was into music was into 60s bands. Not the really obscure, Nuggets garage bands but the then cult bands who've since become the 50 quid man mainstream- Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, the Velvet Underground, Love, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan et al. All American now I look at the list. I suppose British bands were there as well- The Stones, The Kinks, The Small Faces. At the time the 60s seemed so long ago. 1968 was twenty years before and we weren't even twenty yet. In '87 there was a rash of interest in it being twenty years since Sgt Pepper and in '88 some media interest in it being twenty years since the events of May 1968. No-one I knew bought cds except one lad who wanted to be the sort of person who bought cds, a yuppie wannabe. The cd reissues of back catalogues hadn't begun. Funnily, it almost seemed further ago then than it does now, now we're completely saturated in 60s (and 70s, and 80s...) culture. In '88 we devoured anything we could find- records obviously (not always easy to get, scouring second hand shops and bargain bins. It took me until about 1995 to find a copy of Neil Young's On The Beach. Now I'd just download it), but also books, odd magazine references, very occasional clips on TV late at night, two fingers poised over the Play and Record buttons on the video. Without Youtube, feature length documentaries, books and autobiographies, box sets, reissued cds and magazines like Mojo there was so little information, so few pictures, so little source information. What we had was poured over. I knew next to nothing about Neil Young. On chance I bought Harvest on cassette for £4.49 (with that Price Cuts! sticker. Early entry level retro culture) but had no real context to put it in, other than as part of the rest of the stuff I listened to. This sub-cult 60s influenced both parts of what Drew described- the indie shufflers and the dance scene (maybe not as obviously and many of the key players wouldn't acknowledge it for fear of contaminating the newness, and let's not forget dance culture led some misguided souls to suggest that 'the 90s will be the 60s upside down'). I suppose the twenty year rule also explains the current and recent vogue for 80s sounds in pop music. Our youth becomes period drama, as the 60s generation's youth was for us. The 60s bands had a bad 80s with some terrible records, still recovering from the kicking punk gave them a decade earlier. Since the megatours started most of these bands have played an arena somewhere near you, something pretty unthinkable in 1988, apart from the then 40 something Rolling Stones. The 60s also seems to have become less defined, part of a musical cultural mush that lasts all the way up to punk (and all the punk artists grew up listening to... those 60s bands). I watched the Neil Young documentary last night and there was a clip of Buffalo Springfield playing Mr Soul on US TV. Electrifying. I would've killed to have had instant access to this in 1988. I suppose the technology is a good thing, but part of the thrill in the late 80s was the chase, the constant looking for stuff, seeking it out and hunting it down, and the heartstopping moment when you found an lp you'd previously only heard about. This is Neil Young doing Mr. Soul live, acoustically, sometime in the early 1970s.

Mr. Soul (Live Sugar Mountain)

Two pictures, I don't know why. It won't let me remove one.

Jacob Street

From the imaginary novel that forms the sleeve notes to Sabres Of Paradise 1994 album Haunted Dancehall-

''Jacob Street 7am. Stumbling from the Charing Cross Road drinker, two hours kip and off to work. Dawn over Rotherhithe...could be worse''.

Sublime.

Jacob Street 7am

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 31

I've spent a little time looking for a rockabilly song with street or road in the title and can't find one in my collection, so I've settled for Jimmy Carrol's Big Green Car, cos, um, a car drives down a road. This is a wonderful slice of 50s rockabilly. 'I saw my baby in a big green car on the wide highway' Jimmy tells us. She gets stopped by the police. They let her go. There are engine noises at the start and the finish. What more do you want?

Big Green Car

Beasley Street

John Cooper Clarke's Beasley Street. Street poetry, I think you'll agree.

Far from the crazy pavements

...the taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
...on a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud
...are rendered obsolete
The legal term is null and void
in the case of ... Beasley street

In the cheap seats where murder breeds
somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
... a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter is your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
on the edge of Beasley street

Where the action isn't
That's where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
in a box on Beasley street

From the boarding houses and bedsits full of
...accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
Where the missing persons freeze
wearing dead men's overcoats
You can't see their feet
A Riff joint shuts - opens up
right down on Beasley street

Cars collide, colours clash
Disaster movie stuff
For the man with the Fu Manchu moustache
revenge is not enough
There's a dead canery on a swivel seat
there's a rainbow on the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
silence is the code

Hot beneath the collar
...an inspector call
Where the perishing stink of squalor
...impregnates the walls
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on ...Beasley Street

The hipster and his hired hat
drive a borrowed car
yellow socks and a pink crevat
nothing la-di-dah
O-A-P
Mother-to-be
Watch the three-piece suite
When shitstopper drains
and crocodile skis
are seen on ...Beasley Street

The kingdom of the blind
...a one-eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
...The doorbells do not ring
A light bulb bursts like a blister
the only form of heat
Where a fellow sells his sister
...down the river on Beasley Street

The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
Their commom problem is
...that they're not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can't keep it neat
It's a fully furnished dustbin
...sixteen Beasley Street

Vince the ageing savage
Betrays no kind of life
...but the smell of yesterday's cabbage
and the ghost of last year's wife
Through a constant haze
of deodorant sprays
He says ...retreat
Alsatians dog the dirty days
Down the middle of Beasley street

People turn to poison
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
Every time they kiss
It's a sociologist's paradise
Each day repeats
Uneasy, cheasy, greasy, queasy
...beastly, Beasley Street

Eyes dead as vicious fish
Look around for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
On a permanent monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
Around the back of Beasley Street

Beasley Street

Killermont Street

A short ride on the top deck back to Tuesday's postee Mr Roddy Frame, who ditched the lovestruckness of many of his songs on Killermont Street, realism over romanticism. Killermont Street was on 1988's glossed up Love but this version is Roddy solo, live with acoustic guitar and piano.

'Whisky words tumble down in the street with the pain that they cure

Sentimentally yours from Killermont Street'

'We can get there by bus

From Killermont Street'

Killermont Street (Live )

Harrow Road

Songs about roads and streets are an important part of the musical landscape. The punk and post punk lot wrote about them frequently, as if to set out where they had come from and maybe to measure how far they could go. This isn't the road as a journey, like Highway 66 or 61, but the road as home. They romanticised their local streets and roads. To most Londoners the Westway was just a concrete flyover; to The Clash it was the mythical centre of their world. Weller romanticised the woods and fields around the home streets of Surrey from his childhood and the streets of London. John Cooper Clarke found dark stuff down Beasley Street. Psychogeography I think it's called.

This is a cracking late period Big Audio Dynamite song, a tribute to Harrow Road where anything can happen, including finding Elvis in the launderette with washing powder on his nose.

Harrow Road (Ska Mix)

Summer In The City Where the Air Is Still

Various bloggers have been rhapsodising about Roddy Frame's recent tour, full of Aztec Camera songs, which makes me wish I'd done something about going to the Manchester gig. But I didn't. So instead I've relistened to some Aztec Camera songs. Somewhere In My Heart is commercial 80s pop, radio friendly, unit shifting gold. It's easy to criticise- bad synth horns, big 80s drums, squeeling guitar solo, verging on corny/cliched lyrics and none-more 80s video. In 1988 I liked it secretly, despite myself. Roddy was one of the good guys but in '88 this just seemed much too pop. Still, it was part of the soundtrack of finishing 6th Form and going to University. And I've got a large soft spot for it.

Somewhere In My Heart

Kiss Me Where The Sun Don't Shine

It looks like it's going to happen. I'd rather it didn't. Some things are better left as they where. But if they play somewhere round here next summer I'd have to go (assuming demand for tickets allowed it). Even though I'd rather they let it lie. Somehow, reforming for big money shows twenty years on doesn't seem like what they stood for in 1989.

She Bangs The Drums is perfect, a musical and lyrical manifesto I never get bored of. 'The past was yours, the future's mine'.

She Bangs The Drums

And this is a link to Youtube where you'll find a pretty stunning live performance of Fools Gold in Finland in 1990.

I Believe In This And It's Been Tested By Research

Or Clash covers, slight return. Jesse Malin, posted here last week with his song Wendy, turned in a piano led cover of one of Joe Strummer's key lyrics and one of London Calling's key songs- Death Or Glory with it's cheap hoods, gimmick hungry yobs, love and hate tattoos, sofas and girls, nuns and the church, dingy basements, dragging handclaps and how death of glory is just another story.

Death Or Glory (Jesse Malin)

There's No-One There

Hangover. Tired. Headache.

In a chain of events I won't bother to explain I ended up watching Rochdale play Colchester yesterday. I like watching lower league football every now and then. You can stand up. You can pay on the gate. The crowd have realistic/low expectations. As Rochdale went looking for an equaliser in the second half a long ball was punted towards the box. 'There's no one there' a man sighed. He looked like he'd spent the last 40 years watching Rochdale lump the ball towards the box, in vain hope of a goal. And he was right, there was no-one there.

Random song- M Craft covers She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult, acoustic style.

She Sells Sanctuary

I Ain't Seen The Sunshine Since I Don't Know When

Despite Nigel Blackwell's withering put down of the middle aged male Johnny Cash fan on Half Man Half Biscuit's new masterpiece (go buy it here if you haven't already), I can't get enough of this song at the moment. The stuff of myth and legend.

Fulsom Prison Blues (Live 1968)

After describing the terror of being cornered by a pissed Johnny Cash fan who goes on and on about the man in black, Nigel segues into...

'I wear a wrist watch on this arm of mine

I keep my flies wide open all the time

And I shot a man in Tesco

Just to watch him die'

...which is the kind of thing we pay our entrance money for.

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 30

It's 1958 and poor old Warren Miller's the only guy in town without a baby. If he had one, he could get her to jump over him at the hop while he looks up her skirt.

There's a gauntlet thrown down. See if you can recreate this picture tonight.

Everybody's Got A Baby Except Me

We'll Stay Inside 'Til Somebody Finds us

I posted The National's cover of The Clash's Clampdown last month and in the meantime have found myself going back to this song, from their Boxer album in 2007. If all their songs were as good as this one I'd love The National. It's got a lovely, insistent rhythm and tells a tale of a couple holed up in their apartment, taking comfort in each other, safe inside with four walls and the TV, while the cruel, relentless, adult world waits outside. At least, that's what I hear.

Apartment Story

Hey Is Dee Dee Home?

Johnny Thunders may either be the cockiest, coolest, guitar slinging ex-New York Doll who inspired a legion of imitators (Steve Cook for one), or the dick who introduced heroin to the London punk scene, sewed bad vibes throughout and ultimately caused the whole scene to splinter, but he did leave behind at least two punk rock classics- You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory being one, and the other being Chinese Rocks. Written by Richard Hell and Dee Dee Ramone, Chinese Rocks was an attempt to write a drug song that was better than The Velvet Underground's Heroin. There followed a bitch and blame session about who wrote what, what Johnny Thunders contributed ('nothing' according to Richard Hell) and much sniping in the way that only punk bands could snipe at each other. What is pretty clear though is that Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers recorded the definitive version.

Chinese Rocks

It's Just You Remind Me Of Brian Rix

From Brian Olive to Brian Rix. This song was a tribute to the 'king of farce' by 80s indie band The Brilliant Corners. This song is so of it's time, so of it's genre- jangly guitar, perky trumpets, verging on twee, rhythm section trying to keep up... but it's got period charm.

Brian Rix

Left Side Rock

The gentleman in the interesting suit is Brian Olive, a former member of The Greenhornes (who made some not terribly interesting 70s rock revival with Jack White). Brian has released a rather good 60s psyche influenced album (Two Of Everything), which was one of the selections the last time Weatherall played his 6 mix show. It's produced by The Black Keys Dan Auerbach, so has those vintage, valve amp sounds nailed down, but it's well worth looking out for if you like that kind of thing. This song opens the record.

Left Side Rock

Massive Burial

This looks good- Massive Attack versus Burial on heavyweight 12" vinyl, Burial re-working 4 Walls and Paradise Circus; crackle, bass, spectral samples, general air of spooky foreboding. It's out today for pre-order, available from next Monday and limited to 1000 copies so don't hang about. Get it here or here.

http://www.youtube.com/massiveattackvburial

No Postcard Or Telephone

Jesse Malin first popped up in 2002ish and was much beloved by the UK's music magazines. He had that tousle haired, black leather jacket, Johnny Thunders, New York look down to a T and some songs to back it up. Looking at the back of this album, The Fine Art Of Self Destruction, I can't remember anything about any of the songs listed except this one- Wendy- which I kind of love. There's nothing new or groundbreaking here, but it's got a crunchy guitar riff, a she-done-gone-sodded-off-and-left-me lyric and certain amount of spark. The album was produced by the absurdly overrated Ryan Adams.

Wendy

Just Swell

At only one minute and twenty nine seconds long Swell Maps debut single doesn't hang about and is none the worse for it. Read About Seymour was a DIY, punk inspired, 1977 self released single. Solihull's Swell Maps consisted of a pair of brothers (Epic Soundtracks and Nikki Sudden, great stage names both) and school friends Biggles Brooks, Jowe Head, Phones Sportsman (ha!) and John Cockrill. Come on, John, why no pseudonym?

Read About Seymour

Some People Try To Pick Up Girls

... and get called asshole, this never happened to Pablo Picasso. So said Jonathan Richman way back in 1972. Brilliant track, with a lovely riff and one great line turned into a whole song.

Pablo Picasso

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 29

The Blues Rockers with some rural rockabilly to liven up your Friday night. This was a favourite of Lux and Ivy. Let's mooove...

Calling All Cows

Biomass

...isn't a particularly inspiring name for a band, and the list of genres they label themselves as might cause some people run shrieking from the room. Biomass dropped into my inbox a week or two ago, with a link to free download for their album Energy. From San Francisco, Biomass list the following among others- ambient, psychedelic, industrial, neo-classical, psychonaut, visionary, shamanic, trance and visual music at their bandcamp page. So far, so San Franciscan, but their stuff is worth a listen if you like drones or hypnotic pulsing 'dance' music. The picture above is what I got when I image searched 'biomass' and 'energy'. The visuals the band use are somewhat more sophisticated but I like diagrams like this one.

Soar Acido

Dentistry

This isn't facebook it's a music blog but still- I got an emergency dentist appointment today. A few weeks ago I lost part of a filling to a chocolate brownie. The only appointment I could get then was for the dentist to confirm I had lost part of a filling and to make an appointment for him to fix it. The nearest appointment was on October 24th. So, unable to get it sorted out for six weeks, I've since been chewing on the right, wincing at hot/cold drinks, swallowing pain killers and dulling it with alcohol. Until last Sunday when it got really bad, with shooting pains round my head and non-stop jaw/gum/toothache. I finally got a proper emergency appointment today where I was drilled, filled, capped, scaled and polished. And told I also had a partially erupted wisdom tooth which had got infected. Much of the pain is now gone, replaced by a different, post -treatment pain, which is better. At least it's different pain.

Feel The Pain

Causing An Upset

Some very cool instrumental reggae for Thursday from The Upsetters. Organ led, funky, heading towards Blackpool Wurlitzer style organ in places, The Upsetters 1970 The Good, The Bad and The Upsetters album was disowned by Lee Perry on release. Can't see why. Nice cover too.

Straight To The Head

Bert

Bert Jansch died today aged 67, one of British music's true originals. I had the privilege of seeing him play several years ago at The Lowry in Salford. In 2000, on a wave of interest in his work he recorded an album with Johnny Marr and Bernard Butler. This song features both Bert and Johnny.

Downunder

Space Travel Wears Me Out, I Look Ill But I Don't Care About It

If every band in Britain in 1978 had at least one great single in them, this one was The Only Ones. Another Girl, Another Planet is inexplicably good and attempting to isolate it's constituent parts doesn't really explain its greatness. The band clearly weren't punk (look at them), but benefited from the floodgates punk opened. I know people rave about other songs they wrote but nothing else comes close to this moment of genius.

Another Girl, Another Planet

Going Ballistic

The Ballistic Brothers made a handful of laid back, jazzy, electronic, street albums in the 1990s. I sometimes wish they'd toughen up at bit, dig deeper into Ashley Beedle's reggae and Rocky and Diesel's house backgrounds, but there's some good stuff in the back catalogue. London Hooligan Soul from 1995 has the very ace ska tribute song Peckings, which appeared here well over a year ago. The album also has highly entertaining sleeve notes romantically detailing 'London hooligan soul' life- bunking school, casual clothing (Fila, Lacoste, Lois, Tachini), Blair Peach, soul weekenders, Studio One, the Tory government, The Jam, Phuture, East Grinsted, Bognor, poll tax riots- 'a thousand stories of promised lands and meccas'. This song closed the album.

Uschi's Lament

Sparrows, Potatoes, Workshops, Ladies

My friend H plays in a band called Echolocation, mainly in the Leicester area. Recently they supported Sparrow And The Workshop who have had two well received albums including Spitting Daggers, out earlier this year. He recommended them to me, both live and on disc, in fulsome terms. And who can deny a band so well dressed and with twin moustaches? They do a kind of alt-folk-rock noir, old time music and old time instrumentation, and it works really well. There's some rockier numbers among the dark folk but I had to go for this song, the true story of King Louis XV's fourteen year old Irish mistress.

Our Lady Of The Potatoes

This is my 900th post. I didn't think I'd ever get this far when I started out.

Viva Death In Vegas

Death In Vegas are back with a new album, Trans Love Energies, several years after their last one (the krauty Satan's Circus). It's shaping up to be a Bagging Area 2011 favourite. I found this on the net recently, DiV performing two tracks live on the lovely Lauren Laverne's radio show- first the magnificently titled Your Loft, My Acid followed by Medication.

Your Loft My Acid & Medication (Live Lauren Laverne)

The Lights On The Goodyear Blimp

The Goodyear blimp has been circling above Manchester for the last couple of weeks. I've no idea why it's with us but I like seeing it up there. And it reminds me of this early 90s gangsta rap song from Ice Cube. Blimp can only rhyme with one thing for Mr Cube can't it? This posting also contains scenes of a sexual nature, mild peril, heavy weaponry and a very funky Isley Brothers sample.

It Was A Good Day

Indian Summer Too

It's October and it's hotter than August. Beat Happening, kings of the lo-fi, none-more-indie, U.S. underground, with one of the most rudimentary songs you'll find. A tale of youth, lost love and lust, the cemetery and wild cherry, and days stolen from autumn. Highly recommended.

Indian Summer