You've Got To Let Go

This summer sounding house track came my way courtesy of Cal Gibson, whose Secret Soul Society have featured here previously a couple of times. You've Got To Let Go is by Pilots Of Peace, all sunshine and holidays, with skippy house drums, pianos, a happy go lucky feel and a sense that all could be right with the world if we just leaned in and listened to each other. It's out on French label Citizens Of Vice- releasing it in late October rather than early August seems counter- intuitive but given that the leaves have only just started to turn orange and brown everything seems a little off at the moment. Feel good and smile inducing music. There's an EP, Drop The Pilot, here.

Also out on Citizens of Vice is Meraki, a six track compilation EP at Bandcamp. Meraki starts out with some gorgeous, weightless ambience from Mass Density Human and follows it with Crooked Man's deep and dubbed out Illyiran Song, seven minutes of absorbing and entrancing music. 

Sons Of Dub's Sons Of Dub comes next, a disorienting and head spinning way to spend four minutes of listening time. With three more tracks, one each from Lanowa, Offshore And Coen and Stacattoman, Meraki is a high quality, value for money EP. Meraki is a Greek word that does not translate into English well but is something like this- 'you leave a piece of yourself, your soul, creativity, and love in what you do... to put a little bit of yourself into something'.

Monday's Long Song

Back to work with a bump today after a week off- and the clocks have gone back so soon it'll be dark at four. This is some aural balm to help ease those blues. A while back reader Spencer and myself were exchanging tracks for a project that never quite got going but it brought this to me, Body Blossom by CLAIR.

Body Blossom (Extended Version)

Body Blossom came out in 2022, the work of CLAIR, a six minute ambient/ experimental piece of music/ sound that blends found sounds and field recordings from the Yucatan jungle in Mexico with instruments- a warm modular synth or organ, some percussion and warm bass. There's a blissed out psychedelic feel to it, a euphoria, that I'm hoping may help lift the grimness of a cold morning in north west England in late October.  

Forty Five Minutes Of Renegade Soundwave

As promised last Sunday here's my forty five minute long Renegade Soundwave mix. Listening to them this week to pull this together was very enjoyable- they made many very good records, singles, remixes and albums, operating a little below the radar, but their sound would be picked up by acts that become much bigger and more successful (I'd be very surprised if both The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy didn't own some RSW records). Formed in London in 1986 RSW were a three piece outfit, Gary Asquith, Carl Bonnie and Danny Briottet. Their early records were a collision of hip hop, industrial and sampling with a large side order of dub. Over time the rhythms and sounds of acid house worked their way to the fore along with the breakbeats of early 90s jungle. In 1990 they signed to Mute and released four albums before splitting up in 1995. Renegade Soundwave seem very much a London act, the pubs, clubs, people, sounds and substances of the city transmitted onto black plastic. 

This mix only scratches the surface and I left out the Leftfield remix of Renegade Soundwave, possibly (as discussed earlier this week) the greatest remix/ club track of all time. Given that it's been on this blog twice already in the last seven days, putting it into this selection felt gratuitous. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Renegade Soundwave

• Renegade Soundwave
• Women Respond To Bass (12" Vocal Mix)
• Biting My Nails (Bassnumb Chapter)
• Positive ID
• Brixton (Sabres Of Paradise remix)
• Thunder
• Brixton (Dub Mix)
• Probably A Robbery

Their title track, a 1994 single, is led by acoustic guitar and a vocal about coming back from a house party with crunchy drums and cavernous bass. The song also features the deadpan Teutonic sounding woman intoning their name- a two word snippet of song that often pops into my head and has me  repeating the words 'renegade soundwave' apropos of nothing.

Women Respond To Bass was a 1992 single with a pilfered BMW logo on the disc and eye catching sleeve. Scientific veracity of the statement in song's title may be required- happily the bassline of this song is so good that everyone and anyone should respond to it. The woman saying 'renegade soundwave' appears in this song too. 

Biting My Nails came out in 1988, heavy and industrial, the sound of RSW before acid house hit them. 

Positive ID is one of my favourite RSW songs, a catchy and funky and released in an array of versions and mixes. The version here is the Radio Mix and it's a song which really should have got them some radio play. 

Sabres Of Paradise remixed Brixton, a 1995 12" single, Weatherall, Kooner and Burns going for the megathump with a high pitched top note and a single line of vocal, 'I'm checking out her rhythms'. The Dub Mix is by RSW. 

Thunder came out in 1990, sampling Perry Como and an early 90s classic with its sternum hitting bassline, crackles of guitar, enormous drums and wobbling synth sounds. In fact looking back now, its as good as anything else that came out in that year- and 1990 was by no means a fallow year for dance music. 

Probably A Robbery was the only RSW single that cracked the charts, a number 38 hit in January 1990. Rico Conning and Mute's Daniel Miller mixed it- the B-side Ozone Breakdown should have featured in this mix too. The vocal is very funny, a tongue in cheek celebration of a life of crime- 'Because its probably a robbery/ A bit of skullduggery/ The funniest thing I wanted to sing/ But the notes wouldn't come my way'. They made a video for Probably A Robbery too... 

Saturday Live

Standing in Probe Records in Liverpool on Wednesday afternoon, browsing the record sleeves, I had a bit of a moment. This may have been partly due to a sudden rush of emotions connected to it being Lou's birthday, Isaac being gone and being back in Liverpool, partly due to it being thirty five years since I first went to Liverpool as an eighteen year old starting at university there, and partly due to the in shop soundtrack, a live recording of The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed and the band making their singular, ramshackle and beautiful way through Beginning To See The Light (I'm assuming it was the post- John Cale, Doug Yule incarnation of the group). Everything piled up a little bit for me. I stayed there for a while, going through the racks and enjoying the Velvets in full flow c1969, another song came on (shamefully I can't remember which one now) and then the tremulous introduction to All Tomorrow's Parties kicked in and I had genuine shivers and went a bit teary. I pulled myself together and went outside. 

There is hardly any footage of The Velvet Underground playing live in the 1960s apart from this clip, the band playing outdoors at The Moratorium To End The War In Vietnam at White Rock Lake, Dallas, 15th October 1969. In the surviving clip the group play I'm Waiting For The Man and Beginning To See The Light but the audio is very patchy. In the clip below the uploader has taken the audio from the Matrix Tapes performance of Beginning To See The Light and overlaid it (the Matrix audio is from San Francisco in late November 1969, only a month later and therefore probably very close to how they sounded outdoors at White Rock Lake). 'Some people work very hard/ But still they never get it right/ Well I'm beginning to see the light' sings Lou and the guitars go for that VU all trebly and at the double sound, Mo thumps away with the backbeat and Doug plonks in the bass. In the clip people mill about, Sterling Morrison is pulled for an interview at one point and any members of the crowd that are there for the music stand around chatting, looking fairly unbothered that one of the greatest groups in the history of rock 'n' roll are playing on a balcony just yards in front of them.

There may be little film footage of the group but there are lots of recordings of The Velvet Underground playing live. The Reed/ Tucker/ Morrison/ Yule band played a double header The Matrix in San Francisco on the 26th and 27th November 1969. The versions of songs below are in some ways more relaxed that the recorded ones, the guitars are still beautifully trebly and a little wired but the feel is loose and smokey rather than amphetamines and feedback. Lou is in good form, joking with the audience about the songs. Before Rock 'n' Roll he asks them to 'imagine it with a hundred guitars'. No need- when you have Lou and Sterling, two is more than enough. 

I'm Waiting For The Man (Live at The Matrix, November 1969)

Lisa Says (Live at The Matrix, November 1969)

Rock 'n' Roll (Live at The Matrix, November 1969)

The Rub

This is the new track from Dirt Bogarde, The Rub, following hot on the heels of previous releases this year- last month's epic acid house chugger Peyote Plains, the post- punk dread of Tenth Floor Down, Cloud Walking, the magnificent, room filling, spine tingling Heavy Blotter and wobbly, speaker testing Backroom Sunrise. The Rub has some of Dirt's familiar sounds- the big synth sound, ghosts in the machine backing vocals, ripples of melodic toplines and thumping drums coupled a sense of wide eyed euphoria and some wonderful dynamics. When the breakdown hits, a distorted sax drifts in to take the lead and it pushes everything on for the last two minutes, stuttering synths, sax, hisses of steam sounds and that melody line dancing around again. Wonderfully evocative stuff from Stourbridge. Get The Rub here for just one pound. 

Short Forgotten Produk

The Soundcloud page belonging to user18081971 is widely recognised as belonging to Richard D. James, Aphex Twin. Every now and then he uploads previously unreleased material to it, presumably when recordings re- appear in front of him when looking through folders/ DATs/ tapes while searching for something else. Back in July this one was uploaded...

Short Forgotten Produk Trk Omc

Two minutes of fuzzed bass, a lazy drumbeat and some almost jazzy synth chords and keys. Just before the minute another synth part appears and shifts it into different territory before disappearing again and everything stripping back for the last thirty seconds, leaving just the bass. According to Richard  it was 'as promised to people that pm'd me. made approx 2006- 07'. It's not much more than a sketch, an idea slightly fleshed out, short and forgotten until now, but the AFX magic is located within it. 

If you want a further reminder of Richard D. James' ability to create transcendental music earlier this year he released an EP led by the track Black Box Recorder 21f, four minutes of electronic alchemy, dedicated to his parents both of whom he has lost in recent years, his dad in 2020 and his mum in 2022. 

Start Again

I took this picture two years ago today, of Sefton Park in Liverpool. We went over for the day for Lou's birthday- it's her birthday today, so happy birthday to you Lou. Eliza had just gone to university in Liverpool the month before, which was a huge change for all of us and she was excited and loving her new student life. The three of us, me, Lou and Isaac went over to see her, go out for lunch on Lark Lane and then into town for some shopping. We were still being really cautious about Covid, not doing much indoors and not taking Isaac into indoor public spaces. We had lunch sitting outside a cafe on Lark Lane in the October sunshine. It was the last time the four of us were together. Just over a month later we were all in hospital with Isaac who had Covid and which killed him, aged twenty three on 30th November 2021. 

Last year we went over again to see Eliza on Lou's birthday. We were all in a bit of a mess, going through the grief and the loss and having to navigate all the first anniversaries- our birthdays, his birthday (23rd November) and the first anniversary of his death. It was a difficult day, each of us in tears at different times but we managed to see it through and in the end had a good night out. 

We're going over to Liverpool again today, the three of us going out once again for Lou's birthday. Here's a scouse song to celebrate. I've been playing disc four of Echo And The Bunnymen's Crystal Days box set a lot, a CD mainly comprising songs from their Scandinavian tour of 1985 where they supported themselves playing covers of Paint It Black, Soul Kitchen, Friction, Action Woman, She Cracked, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and Run, Run, Run. At the start of the CD there's a live version of a song called Start Again, recorded live in Gothenburg in 1987, the final tour for the classic McCulloch/ Sergeant/ Pattinson/ de Freitas line up. In the booklet Ian says they never really nailed the song which suggests they had a go at it in some studio or other but as far as I'm aware this is the only existing Bunnymen version. It's a rattling, driving late- 80s Bunnymen song, with sweeping strings, a Will Sergeant guitar solo and a rousing chorus, 'sinking shadows again... And one day/ I'll turn around/ Wonder when/ I'll turn around/ And start again'. Looking at the words it does seem like it could be a coded message, Ian signalling to the other three he would be off shortly. 

Start Again (Live in Gothenburg 1987)

Incidentally, the Bunnymen HQ was across Sefton Park from the photo above on Aigburth Drive, the road that skirts the western edge of the park, a flat at the top of a large Victorian house occupied by various band members during the 1980s. 

Ian recorded Start Again for his 1989 solo album Candleland, the lyrics going through some changes. Candleland was filled with a few Bunnymen sounding songs but without the fizz that the other three Bunnymen brought. Producer Ray Shulman brought a production sheen to Ian's songs, there is the lovely title track where Ian sings with Liz Fraser and the very New Order-ish Faith And Healing. Start Again closes Candleland- the album version is slowed down, with an acoustic guitar, cello, a wash of synths and Ian singing softly, 'wonder when', as the song fades out. It's some distance from the live version in Sweden, a very different take on the song. 

Start Again

Candleland was partly a reflection on mortality following the then recent deaths of both Ian's dad and Pete de Freitas, Ian singing start again as a way to move on from both of those bereavements. And sitting here typing this I realise it applies to us too, trying to finding a way to start again without Isaac. 

Thunder

The Leftfield mix I posted on Sunday sent me back to Renegade Soundwave, digging out their records and CDs. The Leftfield remix of Renegade Soundwave, included in my mix, caused a little bit of internet excitement with Jesse leaving the following comment on social media - 'The RSW remix is the greatest remix of all time, and maybe the best electronic club track ever. To do that much with only the dynamics - the build, the tension, the power - it's just sublime. There's hardly anything to the track, musically, maybe 2 and a half riffs, and it manages to be hairs-on-end thrilling from start to finish'. As a result I thought I should post the remix in its own right so we can all appreciate its magnificence. 

Renegade Soundwave (The Leftfield Remix)

There's no denying its got as much oomph, as much taut energy and sonic thump as anything else from the period. The first two minutes build to the sonic equivalent of a dam breaking as the beat kicks in- after that they keep it going, a torrent of Leftfield and RSW combined.

While I think about putting together a forty minute Renegade Soundwave mix here's another of their finest moments, Thunder from 1990. A high pitched string stab, some wobbly guitar, a breakbeat the size of Brixton and a bassline that does indeed sound like thunder. Crunchy industrial dub for a Tuesday during the October half term holiday.  

Thunder

Monday's Long Song

Underworld's latest single came out last week, an eight minute epic that contains everything that is good about them, a song that sounds like classic Underworld, more of the same perhaps but when your same is this good why not give more of it? Denver Luna opens with warm and wobbly synths and Karl's voice, layered and FXed declaring 'strawberry jam girl'. There's a pause, an inhalation of breath maybe and then a kick drum kicks in... and we're off. 

What follows is brightly coloured forward momentum, a psychedelic blur of synths, drums, rushing, whooshing sounds and Karl's endless lists and non- sequiturs, occasional breakdowns and re- entries and the sound of a duo who haven't given up but are moving onwards. The Drift project seemed to re- energise them, find a new way to be Underworld and now they are right back in the groove. I sometimes think of their music as being like a train, one of those Japanese bullet trains, speeding through the night, lights flashing past in the blackness of the windows, speed and progression, rushing forth and going somewhere, very linear music. This is all of that and more. The acapella section in the fifth minute, Karl's multi- tracked voices symphonic, on the borderland between melancholy and euphoria, is superb. 

'Sleeping girl/ Kiss the animal... siren siren... stonewashed jean man... pizza sermon... the satellite is coming... reflection flection inflection connection...'

Forty Five Minutes Of Leftfield

I was listening to Leftism recently, Leftfield's 1995 debut album, an album that takes in sublime ambient house (Melt, Song Of Life), bass heavy dub techno pounders (Release The Pressure, Afro- Left) and eye catching guest vocalists (John Lydon on Open Up, Toni Halliday on Original). It was this Top of The Pops repeat that had me digging Leftism out, a 1995 appearance with a blonde Toni moonlighting from Curve and looking every inch the goth- dance star...

The back to back pairing of Melt and Song Of Life, tracks three and four, were the two that struck me the most this time around, a gorgeous way to spend ten minutes. The closing 21st Century Poem also had me appreciating it anew. I began a Sunday forty minute Leftfield mix and immediately had the problem of too many songs, many that are eight, nine or ten minutes long plus a load of remixes. In the end I've gone mainly for mid- 90s Leftfield, Neil Barnes and Paul Daley's glory years, tracks from subsequent albums/ versions of the group left for another time. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Leftfield

• Fanfare Of Life
• Release The Pressure (Adrian Sherwood Mix)
• Renegade Soundwave (The Leftfield Remix)
• Nothing (Extended Version)
• Melt
• Release The Pressure (The Rough Dub)
• Original
• Open Up (I Hate Pink Floyd Mix)

Fanfare of Life is a version of Song Of Life, Leftfield's fourth single, out in 1992, a masterful piece of optimistic ambient house. The Fanfare version also showed up on Cafe Del Mar Volumen Uno, a definitive mid- 90s compilation. There are a pair of Underworld remixes either of which probably could and should have featured on this mix. 

Release The Pressure appears twice, once in its 2019 re- released Adrian Sherwood remix version. You can never have too much Sherwood. The Rough Dub came out on 12" in 1992, Neil and Paul with Earl Sixteen on vox, a dark and deep, epic thumper.  

Renegade Soundwave were a London three piece, much underrated and unappreciated in some ways. Their singles  Women Respond To Bass, The Phantom, Positive ID, Probably A Robbery, Renegade Soundwave and Brixton are all worth spending time with as are their albums, the 1990 In Dub especially. This Leftfield remix of their title track came out in 1994.

Sandals were a beat poetry/ progressive house group who I thought were great, briefly. Several singles and an album with Paul Daley and Neil Barnes producing, mixing and remixing. Nothing was a 1992 single, with the whispered line 'Old man, what have you done?' just as pertinent now as it was then. There are old men all round the globe making the world a worse place aren't there?

'The film starts/ the film ends', Toni Halliday says as Leftfield's heavy bass and beats stomp on around her on Original. Toni was the vocalist in Curve, a duo with Dean Garcia who made a run of electronic rock/ goth dance singles- they've been featured recently over at The Vinyl Villain. While the dance music guest vocalist thing quickly became standard Leftfield's collaborations with Toni and John Lydon were attention grabbing in the mid- 90s. They put John Lydon back on the cover of the music press, somewhere he hadn't been for some time. Lydon's vocal on Open Up is the stuff of legend, a reborn, angry and exhilarating vocal from the former PiL/ Pistol, stridently taking down Hollywood and the film industry. The I Hate Pink Floyd Mix is by Sabres Of Paradise slowing the song down to an industrial dub grind, a PiL influenced remix by Weatherall, Kooner and Burns. 

Saturday Live

More gold from the vaults of Tony Wilson's late 80s Granada TV programme The Other Side Of Midnight. This episode went out on 6th November 1988, Manchester at the centre of a culture storm based around Fac 51, the Hacienda. For this episode the hardcore Hacienda crowd have decamped a short distance south to Victoria Baths on Hathersage Road. In the first section Tony Wilson presents (in a rubber wetsuit) an item about waterproof cameras and rubber wear, occasionally and knowingly dropping in the word acid. The very tall Manchester face and clothes shop owner Richard Creme models some rubberwear. Wilson promotes North: The Sound Of The Dance Underground, a compilation album put together by Mike Pickering, that sounds like November 1988 as much as anything else does. 

Then we cut to the real business, A Guy Called Gerald playing live, the mighty Voodoo Ray bouncing round the Victorian baths, assisted by Graham Massey of 808 State. In the pool, as the bass drum kicks, clubbers frolic on inflatables. After another awkward interview Gerald returns and then part two starts at 12.52, dancing, smoke machines, whistles and cavernous bass. Pete Waterman is interviewed poolside, discussing clubs, music and acid house, and then we go back to the dancers and some water aerobics, Wilson gamely trying to pull everything together. You're left with the slightly frustrating sense that the real party is elsewhere, off camera or happened once the cameras were turned off. DJ Graeme Park shows up by the pool, answering questions about the music and attempts to ban it and then we cut back to the dancers. A snapshot of a time and place, the podium dancers throwing their arms around and showing once again that in the late 80s the crowd are the real stars. 

This is one of the tracks from North: The Sound Of The Dance Underground, House Fantaz- ee by D C B (a Mike Pickering alias). The big hitters on the album were/ are Voodoo Ray, T- Coy's Carino and Annette's Dream 17, three tracks that still have the power to move today but the rest of the album still has plenty to commend it, thirty five years on, late '88 bottled. 

House Fantaz- ee 

Weatherall Remix Friday Fourteen

A trip back to September 1997 today for this week's Weatherall Remix Friday and a pair of Two Lone Swordsmen remixes of The Money- Penny Project. The intention of this series was to highlight and spotlight some of the lesser known and less celebrated Weatherall remixes and this release definitely falls into that category. The Money- Penny Project was an alias for French producer Benoit Bollini and came out on London label Nuphonic, a label that lasted from 1995 to 2002. 

The first remix is brief by Weatherall standards, sub- five minutes and in semi- ambient techno territory, skittish synths and percussion with a background rumble. It's not quite in the vein of Two Lone Swordsmen's Stay Down album, released a year later but it could be a step on the road towards the sound they found on that album (a submerged and murky, ambient/ techno album, abstract electronic music music made by stoned submariners).

Clarisse- C (Two Lone Swordsmen Hor Fen Mix)

Flip the disc over though and the B-side gives up much more, the twelve minute splendour of the Double Mutator Mix. This one rattles and spins, the drums skipping as the whirring, clicking noises bounce around, the bass reverberates and distorted voices echo in and out, like someone tapping on the portholes of the submarine while a small dub/ house/ techno party goes on inside. At five and half minutes in some angelic choral sounds break in, sirens maybe, pulling our intrepid underwater crew towards the rocks. At nine thirty there's a sensation of a shaft light suddenly breaking in, of surfacing from the depths, taking us back up above the waves and into the air. 

Clarisse- C (Two Lone Swordsmen Double Mutator Mix)

Spirit Dance

Jay- Son's track Spirit Dance came out on Leeds label Paisley Dark a month ago. It's a bit of a thumper, a six minute jolt of twisting, psychedelic acid/ techno, with a bassline that rises and falls, crisp drums, jagged synth stabs and voices in the distance, slightly distorted and out of earshot, coming into focus occasionally to talk about spirits and shamanism. All quite tense and intense.  

The EP comes with four remixes, one each from Hogt I Tak, Hunterbrau, Keith Forrester and The Machine Soul, each one progressively more wigged out than the previous- taken together quite the trip. The EP is at Bandcamp. 

Stop Apologising

This is my what seems like weekly David Holmes post, the newest single from his forthcoming album arriving yesterday, a perfectly timed piece of words and music for those of us who feel up to their knees/ neck in things at the moment. Stop Apologising is three and a half minutes of pulsating electro- disco, glam stomp and rattling snares and Raven Violet singing of how overthinking, catastrophising, inaction and how we should all find the power and strength to live more freely. There's a nod to psychedelic therapy in there too. 

As with the three previous releases there are some remixes of Stop Apologising to push the song in a more thumpy, clubby direction. Horse Meat Disco weigh in with a pair of runaway, pumped up, stomping remixes directly aimed at the space near the glitterball. Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy strips the song down into bassline and FX and clipped guitar, a  technicoloured funk version. All can be found here. 

The album, Blind On A Galloping Horse, comes out on 10th November and I'm calling it early, it's going to feature highly in end of year lists. Holmes is staking out some ground with the album lyrically, a  response to the current and recent insanities of the world, an album taking in the personal and the political, a record about inspiration and loss and trying to find a space in which to live. The three singles released over the last two years  have already taken in politics, populism and the power to resist it (Hope Is The Last Thing To Die), the collective strength and inspiration found in youth movements and subcultures (It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love) and a rollcall of the great innovators and artists of the recent past (Necessary Genius)- David's response to the internal and external world he and we live in, someone who has something to say and has found the words to say it. More power to him. 

Take A Drag Or Two

More Velvet Underground following yesterday's Sunray/ Sonic Boom/ Ocean post. Today's post has The Velvets via Liverpool and Barking. The photo above is of Eric's in Liverpool, not the original Eric's- that closed a long time ago, 1980- but a live venue on Mathew Street under the same name and logo. Since The Vinyl Villain's guest post here a few weeks ago I've been vaguely obsessed with one of the performances in his post- Echo And The Bunnymen, a group firmly connected to Eric's, playing live with Billy Bragg, covering The Velvets' Run, Run, Run on OGWT in 1985. 

Will and Billy have the Velvet twin guitar drone/ wired lead line nailed with Pete's thumping backbeat covering the Mo Tucker thump. Ian McCulloch gives it the full big hair, big coat, alternative rock star frontman, kicking off with 'show me the way to go home' and squealing/ crooning/ grunting as required. 

In 1985 The Bunnymen set out for a tour of Scandinavia, a tour Ian has referred to as 'the last great Bunnymen tour'. They played support act to themselves, playing a set of covers every night, then going off for a break before returning to play their own songs. Many of the covers were chosen by Will Sergeant- Action Woman and She Cracked- along with Bunnymen favourites by Dylan, Television, The Doors and The Velvets. This take of Run, Run, Run was recorded onstage in Gothenburg by Swedish radio.

Run, Run, Run (Live in Gothenburg)

Will has also spoken of his enjoyment of the Scandinavian tour, playing the support set of covers through practice amps in small halls with no stage, staying at the promotor's house and having breakfast with them. 'I think', Will said, 'it was the last time we were a band really. The next tour we played was stadiums. I hated that. Playing places like Wembley... was everything the Bunnymen wasn't about'.

Run, Run, Run was on The Velvet Underground's debut, the banana album/ The Velvet Underground And Nico. Lou Reed wrote in on the back of an envelope while on the way to a gig at Cafe Bizarre. It's a belter of a song, with those speed freak guitars, rumbling rhythms and lo- fi, reverb production. Lou''s cast of characters- Teenage Mary, Margarita Passion, Seasick Sarah, Beardless Harry- are all on the streets of New York looking for a fix and/ or to be saved, drugs and religion mixed up. Lou's guitar solo is unlike other guitar solos from 1967, a trebly, wired, atonal freak out. 

Run, Run, Run

Monday's Long Song

Edit: this should have published eight hours ago but gremlins prevented it. Apologies to anyone eager for today's post- better late than never. 

Back in 2006 Sunray recorded a single with Sonic Boom, a cover of Ocean by The Velvet Underground. Sunray's cover is a thirteen minute voyage of blissed out drones, led by organ and wobbly guitars, Sonic Boom on board all the way for the slo- mo, frazzled psychedelia. Epic in every sense. 

Ocean

Lou Reed wrote Ocean around the time of the sessions for Loaded but it didn't make the album. It turned up on his self titled debut in 1970, then on the 1974 Velvets live album 1969: The Velvet Underground Live and then the studio version finally seeing the light of day on VU in 1985. The tripped out lyrics- waves crashing down by the shore, the sea as a drug- are thrown into disarray by the second verse with its lines about insects, selfish men, Lou being driven nearly crazy and being a lazy son. The playing is superb, splashy cymbals and spindly guitars with a backwash of organ. The Velvets studio version, recorded in 1969, is much shorter than Sunray's cover, a mere five minutes- but what a way to spend five minutes.

Ocean 

Forty Five Minutes Of Jon Hopkins

Last Sunday's spoken word/ ambient mix featured two tracks with Jon Hopkins on board, one his own recording with the voice of Ram Dass and the other a track with David Holmes and Stephen Rea reading Seamus Heaney. Both could have been on today's Sunday mix, forty five minutes of Jon Hopkins, an artist who has the ability to switch between spaced out ambient, neo- classical piano and full on electronic rave. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Jon Hopkins

• Bats In The Attic
• Deep In The Glowing Heart
• Emerald Rush
• Luminous Spaces
• Everything Connected 
• Glitter (Jon Hopkins Remix)
• Love Flows Over Us In Prismatic Waves

Bats In The Attic is from Diamond Mine, an album Jon recorded with King Creosote in 2011. Kenny's fragile voice and guitar are matched by Jon's use of found sounds and musique concrete techniques. 

Deep In The Glowing Heart and Love Flows Over Us In Prismatic Waves are both from 2021's Music For Psychedelic Therapy, an album I've gone back to many times over the last eighteen months. 

Emerald Rush is a stuttering, distorted building piece of music from Singularity, his 2018 album that sounds as deep as the lush deep blue/ violet vinyl it was pressed on. Everything Connected is from the same album, an epic piece of entrancing, ebbing and flowing, intense 21st century dance music.

Luminous Spaces is a version of Luminous Beings, a track from Singularity but with Kelly Lee Owens on vocals, a track that achieves take off in spectacular fashion, music for stellar places. 

Glitter is by Daniel Avery, a remix of a song from Song For Alpha, the 2018 album that started his remarkable run of recent albums. Jon's remix takes Daniel's thumpy original and increases everything- the kick drum bangs and rattles and the drop and crashing re- entry two thirds of the way through are heart- stoppingly exciting, capable of making me feel vaguely anxious and laughing out loud at the same time. Goosebumps stuff. 

Saturday Live

Red Snapper have brewed up a smokey, funky, murky stew combining downtempo, acid jazz, trip hop, dub and Afro jazz, instrumentals and soundtrack sounds, a blend of live instruments and electronics, since 1993. This hour long film shows them playing at the Woodbridge Festival of Arts and Music in Suffolk a few years ago, long and deep grooves with instruments and sounds flying off all over the place. 

The group are about to release a live album and are touring the UK to support it. Live At The Moth Club comes out next Friday with the single The Sleepless out now ahead of it, recorded live back in May 2022 in Hackney. Joined by MC Det on vocals, The Sleepless is all loose drums, warped double bass, sax and liquid guitar lines.

The Sleepless originally came out in 1995 on their EP for Warp, the classic Reeled And Skinned. A month before this new live version of The Sleepless, Red Snapper released Suckerpunch, a set closer with clipped guitar and massive sounding Rich Thair drums, Ali Friend's bass causing all sorts of rhythmic madness as David Ayer's guitar solo spirals higher and higher, MC Det's voice echoing into the room. Live At The Moth Club can be ordered here. 

Sabresonic At Thirty

Big news announcement! Sit down, hold tight. Sabres Of Paradise, the early 90s dub techno trio of Andrew Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, released their album Sabresonic thirty years ago (the exact release date is a matter of some debate but we're settling on 11th September 1993).

Over at The Flightpath Estate, the Andrew Weatherall Facebook group we set up nine years ago, the admin team (Martin, Dan, Mark, Baz and me) have had some discussions about things that have seemed ridiculous to us and have then actually started to take shape and happen. One of these is under wraps for the moment but the other is taking place three weeks today. Martin had the idea of holding a Sabresonic 30th birthday listening party at The Golden Lion in Todmorden and of inviting Jagz Kooner to do a Q&A session with him DJing after. We knocked it around a bit, a few calls were made and amazingly the Sabresonic 30th Anniversary party is happening at The Golden Lion on Friday 3rd  November. The event is free. Jagz is going to have a chat/ answer a few questions about Sabres of Paradise, the making of the album Sabresonic, working with Andrew, the Sabres remixes from the period and whatever else comes up, we'll listen to the music and open it up to the floor. The Q&A part of the evening is going to be hosted by someone new to the David Frost/ Graham Norton role (that would be me). Fingers crossed eh?

Back in 1994 Sabres remixed James and the results came out as a two track, half hour epic titled Jam J. On Andrew's residency at Kiss FM he played an early version/ remix of what became Jam J. This was never released but has been ripped from that Kiss FM broadcast, a Sabres remix of James' Honest Joe. It contains all sorts of signature Sabres sounds, the Weatherall/ Kooner/ Burns team working their magic with seven minutes of 1993 four- four dub techno, Mr Booth et al bent into all kind of new shapes (with a Kiss FM ident annoyingly appearing in the middle).  

Honest Joe (Unreleased Sabres Of Paradise Remix from Kiss FM Radio Mix)

November at The Golden Lion looks increasingly like the month of dreams. The night after the Sabresonic 30th party Red Snapper are playing. The following Friday David Holmes is DJing, a launchpad for his forthcoming album Blind On A Galloping Horse. On Sunday 19th November Manchester's Aficionado team of Jason Boardman and Moonboots host at 25th anniversary bash. That's just four of the highlights. David Holmes' recent single Necessary Genius was followed two weeks ago by a remix package, David and Raven Violet's song reworked by Skymas, Phil Keiran, Decius, Robin Wylie and Lovefingers. They've taken some time to worm their way into me but now all the different versions offer up something new and different. Lovefingers slows the song down, sticks a big, reverb heavy piano part into it and samples snippets of the people in David and Raven's list (a bit of Loaded, a brief snippet of Sinead, some Morricone). Decius do their Decius thing, chopping up a bit of vocal, raisng the tempo and making it very intense. Phil Kieran stretches the song out, bringing the synths to the fore and eventually hitting the button marked 'massive I Feel Love sequencer'. Find them all here. 

Walrus

Duncan Gray's latest track, available here for just £1, is a monster, an eight minute epic that slides in and then starts snarling, the bassline growling and showing its tusks. Walrus was recorded back in July and is out now. It sounds like it emerged from the sea to make its presence known, weighs half a ton and will return to the choppy waters as soon as it's finished with you. 

Duncan's label Tici Taci has been celebrating ten years in the business of releasing chuggy dancefloor based electronic/ dub/ slo mo/ cosmic tracks. By nature much of this kind of music is ephemeral, made for the dancefloor but not necessarily intended to last. It's remarkable how much of Volume 1 and Volume 2 has withstood ten years and still sounds fresh. The latest release, Volume 3, is tracks from more recent times, with many artists who have featured here in the last few years-  Welsh cosmiche/ indie dancers The Long Champs, Tirana's Balearic Uj Pa Gaz, Duncan and Ian Weatherall's own Sons Of Slough, the brilliantly named Boy Division, plus Field Of Dreams, Martin Eve and Jack Butters. You can buy Tici Taci Decade Volume 3 here. 

A couple of samples from Volume 3 to whet your whistle (but you could dip into any of the sixteen tracks and hit gold). This is Martin Eve's Night Train featuring the talents of Fluke's Jon Fugler. Martin is immune suppressed, has been seriously unwell and been isolating since Covid hit in 2020. His continued cheeriness in the face of this coupled with his righteous ire at the way some people have been left behind since the government deemed Covid to be over, is inspiring. For Martin and half a million people like him (and for us, who lost a son to Covid) it's not over. Night Train is a gorgeous slice of slinky chug- house to make the next seven minutes seem better.

Men Of Letters came out on The Long Champs album Straight To Audio, an album I raved about in 2020. Men Of Letters is a sunrise kind of moment, pattering drums and glistening guitar lines, everything heading upwards as the early morning mist burns off. 

Tomorrow Is A Long Time

It's funny how you can be in the midst of something and a song can stop you in your tracks- in this case not even the song I'm posting here but a flicker of acoustic guitar that sounded like it and straight away in my head it turned into this one. The second or two of folk guitar in the background on TV propelled me to my CDs, pull this out and play it. 

Tomorrow Is A Long Time

Bob Dylan recorded Tomorrow Is A Long Time sixty years ago on 12th April 1963 while playing a gig at New York Town Hall. Just the young Bob, an acoustic guitar and a microphone very close to his mouth, three verses, each finishing with these lines-

'Yes and only if my own true love was waitin'/ And if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin'/ Yes, only if she was lyin' by me/ Then I'd lie in my bed once again'. 

I put the disc into the tray and pressed play, sat back, listened and then played it again several times. A song about loneliness, love and waiting, sweetly sung, a few fingerpicked chords with a capo on the third fret, over half a century ago.  

Dylan chose not to release the song until 1971. He recorded a demo of it in December 1962 but went no further. Joan Baez played it live. Elvis did a cover in 1966 as did Odetta and Judy Collins, Dorris Henderson and The Kingston Trio. In 1970 and 1971 there was a dearth of new Dylan product, Bob having retreated from fame and generational spokesperson status. The head CBS records suggested a new Bob Dylan Greatest Hits double album, eventually titled More Greatest Hits. Dylan agreed and said he'd compile it himself with an entire side made up of unreleased archive recordings of which Tomorrow Is A Long Time was one. In September 1971 Bob went into a studio and re- recorded several songs that eventually came out on The Basement Sessions in 1974- I Shall Be Released, You Ain't Goin' Nowhere and Down In Then Flood. They closed side four of More Greatest Hits, along with When I Paint My Masterpiece (also unreleased and dating from March '71), sequenced following two previously released songs, If Not For You (from 1970) and It's All over Now Baby Blue (from 1965). The latter jumps out stylistically, upsetting the flow of side four a little, but the other songs are as good a run of songs as any Dylan put out in the 1970s with 1963's Tomorrow Is A Long Time sandwiched in and somehow fitting perfectly. 

Indigenous State Of Mind

One of last year's highlights was Boxheater Jackson's full length album We Are One, released on Mighty Force. Almost a year to the day later Boxheater has followed it with a second one. Indigenous State Of Mind is an eleven track, fully realised piece of work inspired by Vernon's travels and encounters. The album starts and finished with spoken word and chanting, Boxheater's spiritual world and search for connections and a simpler way of life setting the widescreen parameters of the album. Track two, The Divine Opening, flows in with tribal drumming, shakers and bone flutes along with long synth chords. The Speed Of Light Is Changing (New Earth Mix) continues the trip, a voice guiding the way forward as Boxheaters' acid house begins to work its way in, stripped down and minimal but rich and full sounding, thumping dance music for dark rooms. Gotta Find A Way! (Living My Truth Mix) is ten minutes of kick drum, percussion and synth squiggles, laser beam simplicity and dancefloor dynamics. 

This is Star Nation Connect (118 BPM Mix), track eight, a heady blend of proto- house and indigenous prayer, kick drum and ritual, the gradually increasing intensity of the synthlines counter balanced by the calmness of the voice. 

By the time track ten ten arrives, Mother Earth Connection (The Red Blooded Truth Vocal Mix), the sense of being swept along by the album is real. The voice on Mother Earth Connection asks the listener to travel back to a time when the people lived off the land, Boxheater's marriage of 21st century acid house and the wisdom of the First Nations becoming a full journey and as the album ends with another prayer, a circle too. Big Vern was one of the Rotters Golf Club crew, someone who benefitted from Andrew Weatherall's generosity and Andrew's phrase Gnostic Sonics fits this album perfectly. Buy it on CD or digitally at Bandcamp. 

Monday's Long Songs

Andy Bell's GLOK side project released a new album last week, eight versions of previously available songs played live in session for Electronic Sound. The album, Gateway Mechanics, is out at Bandcamp digitally and on bright yellow vinyl. He's on tour as GLOK at the moment. The versions on the live album are superb, the synths and guitars flying off over pre- recorded drums, Andy's cosmische/ motorik influences in full flow. This version of Dissident (from the first GLOK album of the same name, released in 2019) is twelve minutes of Michael Rother- esque guitars and pulsing sequencer lines, the fuzzbox seeing some action in the final few minutes. 

As a bonus, a  few weeks ago Andy and Masal put out a cover of Neu!'s Hallogallo, recorded at The Social in May this year, nine minutes of West German by way of Oxford bliss.

Forty Five Minutes of Speaking Voices

I had the misfortune recently to see an advert on TV with the voice of Alan Watts is being used to sell cruises for the Cunard shipping company. Watts was a writer, speaker and philosopher who did much in the 1950s and 60s to popularise Eastern philosophies in the west. His lectures and speeches have been widely available for a long time, not least since the rise of Youtube. His son tries to control the use of them through an Alan Watts website where they can be downloaded when paid for, so presumably Cunard paid for the use of Alan's voice rather than just ripping it from Youtube. The advert chops up Watts' speech and misses the end section entirely, not surprisingly, (knowingly) misrepresenting the message of the original, selling a luxury cruise on the high seas as the dream Watts speaks of. I'm not here to complain about advertising, it's a bit late in the day for that. Watts' voice and speeches are instantly recognisable and catnip for use in media where his message, accent and speaking voice and rhythms are striking and attention grabbing. 

I came across this clip this week too, writer Paul Bowles interviewed in 1970 about a trance dance and self mutilation he witnessed while resident in Morocco. Bowles left the USA in 1947 and settled in Tangier, recording local musicians and writing. His novel The Sheltering Sky came out in 1949, turned into an epic film by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1990 (I read the book and saw the film at the time and enjoyed both but don't remember much about either now so need to revisit). Bowles' speaking voice, like Alan Watts, very much lends itself to being set to music, not just the content but the tone and timbre and patterns of speech. Which led to think that speaking voices set to music would make a good longform mix.

The mix below is forty five minutes of speaking voices set to music, sometimes where voice and music have been specifically made for and recorded with each other and sometimes where the voice has been taken from earlier recordings and sampled. I could probably find enough to make a second at some point in the future. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Speaking Voices

• Jon Hopkins, Ram Dass and East Forest: Sit Around The Fire
• 10:40: The First Step
• Coyote: The Outsider
• David Holmes and Jon Hopkins ft. Stephen Rea: Elsewhere Anchises
• Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright: Be Love
• Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Chaldean Oracle
• Steve Queralt and Michael Smith: Glitches (Flug 8 Remix)
• Fireflies and Joe Duggan: Leonard Cohen Knows

Sit Around The Fire is the closing track on Jon Hopkins 2022 Music For Psychedelic Therapy, the voice of guru and writer Ram Dass talking about spiritual discovery through sitting round the fire and staring at the flames, while Hopkins' slow piano chords and sound of wood burning and crackling drift by. 

The First Step came out on Higher Love Vol. 2 last year, a 10:40 track that borrows a Bertrand Russell interview and layers a slow burning groove and wash around it, growing in emotion with nods to Elvis and Spiritualized. Russell speaks of acting and of doing in spite of doubt and in the absence of religion.  Magical stuff. 

Coyote are masters of sampling voices and building beautiful Balearic songs around them. This one takes Alan Watts talking about artists, work, states of evolution and sane and insane societies, adds some lovely acoustic guitar, and pays tribute to Andrew Weatherall (who styled himself as The Outsider when writing for Boy's Own back in the late 80s). The Outsider is the last song on their 2021 album The Mystery Light, a highly recommended record. 

Elsewhere Anchises is from David Holmes' Late Night Tales, a stunning 2016 compilation album that pulled together nineteen songs of life and loss, spanning Buddy Holly and David Crosby to Eat Light Become Light and songs David made for the album. On Elsewhere Anchises actor Stephen Rea speaks the words of Seamus Heaney over David's ambient backdrop, the sound of something quite special taking place. 

Rude Audio and Dan Wainwright have released one of this year's best dub/ dub techno/ psychedelia albums, Psychedelic Science. Be Love opens the album with the voice of Ram Dass making his second appearance on this mix. 

Steve Queralt and Michael Smith released the four track EP Sun Moon Town last year, Ride bassist Steve writing and recording four very different pieces of music and Hartlepool born writer and flaneur Michael narrating his own tales of adventures and wanderings in the 21st century, a place and time that seems quite bewildering to him. The Flug 8 remix comes from this year's remix package, a dissection of late stage capitalism and advertising agency dreams you can dance to.  

Fireflies is one of Nina Walsh's musical outlets, a South London based collective. The voice is that of Joe Duggan, Derry born and resident of Crystal Palace. 'If anyone knows', Joe says, 'Leonard Cohen knows'. 

Saturday Live

Last Saturday's Saturday Live slot had Happy Mondays in seriously fine form on Tony Wilson's legendary Granada TV music programme The Other Side Of Midnight. Wilson had a certain amount of sway by the late 80s but his bosses were still pushing his music programmes to the late night slots, out of harm's way. The Other Side Of Midnight ran from June 1988 through to July 1989. The end of series party, broadcast on 23rd July 1989, was filmed at the Quay Street studios, Wilson introducing the show and the set transformed into a full blown 061 rave. Wilson tries to flog a OSM t- shirt and then we're into T- Coy, the Mancunian/ Latin house trio of Mike Pickering, Simon Topping (ex- ACR) and Ritchie Close, and their superb Carino. As was often the case at the time, the crowd are the stars as much as those on stage, the shots of the dancers bringing 1989 right back. 

T- Coy are followed by A Guy Called Gerald and and the British house record that beats all others, Voodoo Ray. Then we have the Mondays, Shaun slurring instructions in broadest Salfordian, 'turn it up, I said I like that, turn it up'. Later on they play Wrote For Luck, the corwd full of hair being grown out, whistles being blown and limbs waving. This all took place on an afternoon at the bottom end of Castlefield. 

Little Black Dress

Back at the start of the year 10:40 released an album, Transition Theory, an eleven track trip through the Balearic/ dub/ downtempo fields with each track containing the seeds of the next. It was in some ways 10:40's definitive statement, a bringing together of the sounds its creator Jesse had been pursuing and refining for the previous few years. This is the album's opening piece, Tumbling Down, where long synth chords and crackles of electricity provide the backdrop to a voice that's just out of earshot. Some slow hand drums start up and various melody lines weave in and out. The album is here if you don't have it or haven't heard it. 

Out today, a sidestep from Transition Theory, shimmying towards the flashing lights and smoke of the dancefloor, is the newest release from 10:40- Little Black Dress, a three version release on Powder Wax Vol. 1 which promises 'pop disco cosmic disco dub'. Little Black Dress (Original Fit), with vocals from S.A.A.R.A, is a collision of the pop and the disco with the cosmic and dub disco, a sleek, modern, mirrorball moment with wobbly synths, lasers, thumping kick drum and pulsing bass. 

It's joined by10:40's Heavy Eyeliner Dub and Undressed Dub. The Heavy Eyeliner Dub takes Little Black Dress from the main room to the 80s goth/ cool wave room, a smaller space and darker too with someone hammering the dry ice machine. There's more hairspray and leather jackets out on the floor, everyone glancing around as S.A.A.R.A sings, 'You send shivers down my spine' and the synths stutter.

The Undressed Dub rattles and shakes, S.A.A.R.A's voice chopped up and echoed. The second half builds in intensity, the punters in the cosmic disco backroom, a smiley friendly space, flipping out to the wiggly synths, tumbling drums and bumping bass. 

The Powder Wax Vol. 1 EP is available at Bandcamp, pay what you like.  

Push The Feeling On

I saw the video for this song recently, a song that was pretty inescapable in March 1995. It's not a song I was a massive fan of but I didn't dislike it either- you heard it so often you didn't need to buy it or go looking for it, it was everywhere. It pushed a few buttons sitting in front of the TV one night last week. Push The Feeling On was by Nightcrawlers, a Scottish group led by producer/ DJ/ singer John Reid. The song originally came out in 1992 in a disco/ Acid Jazz style but didn't cause too much of a fuss. When it was later remixed by MK (Marc Kinchen) in a house style it became a big hit, working its way from clubs to charts all over Europe and eventually got to number three in the UK charts at a time when that meant selling tens of thousands of records/ CDs/ tapes. The MK version was so successful that Nightcrawlers decided to make it the lead version and they switched to become a house act, actually deleting the original version from their back catalogue.

The song is a low key, subtle, deep house affair, a stripped back sound with hi hats, a bleepy organ part, an insistent, bouncing rhythm with two affecting vocal hooks. In a way though, although I instantly recalled the song and its effect on me thirty years later was instant, it wasn't the song as much as the video that struck me. The video, with singer John Reid lip-syncing his vocals straight into the camera while a variety of 20- 30 somethings bouncing around, is pure 1995. People in clubs in the north west of England in 1995 looked like this- short haired girls, long haired men, leather and satin, dyed hair, afros, chokers, hats, 70s shorts with knee socks, the two types of dresses being worn. Admittedly the cast in the video are a glamourous and attractive bunch but the look and the dancing is what the clientele of certain bars and clubs looked like, the crowd at Paradise in Manchester for instance or Nation in Liverpool. It struck me quite deeply that the mid 90s have a look just as noticeable as the mid 80s or mid 60s do. 

A reader at Youtube has left this comment- 'We don't search for old songs, we search for old memories. Nostalgia is a very powerful thing'. 

Wait On The Sons Of No One

The Replacements 1985 album Tim has been given the four disc box treatment, out recently and sold out almost everywhere. Tim came out in 1985, a year after Let It Be, their mid- 80s classic. Let It Be was full of classic Replacements songs, Paul Westerberg stretching out a little and the band on top of their ramshackle game. It took them to a major label, Sire, and then Tim. The title of Let It Be was a sly nod to The Beatles, but a middle finger too and a dare. The title of Tim came about after the band kept getting asked what the album was going to be called and they kept saying, 'Tim', and laughing. Eventually, that's what it was called. 

Tim has many very good songs but the mix was not ideal, the drums tinny, the bass indistinct, everything a little smaller than it should be. On songs like Bastards Of Young, Left Of The Dial and Kiss Me On The Bus it didn't matter, you just turned the volume up and sang along, the guitars cranked up high and Westerberg's outsider/ loser anthems hitting home like the first cigarette of the day (back in the days when I did such a thing). The new version of Tim contains this 1985 mix (remastered) but also has the entire album remixed by Ed Stasium, best known for his work with Talking Heads and The Ramones. It's fair to say that, after a few listens, the new mix of the album is going to become the definitive one. It's so much better, the songs sounding like they should have all along and as fresh as if they were recorded yesterday, while you were in the room with them. The muddiness and thinness is gone. The drums punch and sound real, the bass is up with the guitars, some of the guitar solos appear from the murk, the instruments sound closer together and louder, not in a radio station loudness wars way but in the way a band should sound. 

Bastards Of Young is one of Westerberg's best, a lyric for the alienated and dispossessed. The new mix makes it sparkle and jump, the Replacements' punk edge restored to the performance. 

Left Of The Dial, a song about where to find the best music stations on the radio/ a girl that's left him/ the loss of teenage years, is more dynamic than before, crunchy and alive with Westerberg singing like it's the last song he's ever going to sing. 

Little Mascara, is the most changed, the song not just remixed but rejigged, intro extended, verses and choruses shortened and tightened. In short the song it should have been in 1985.  

The other eight songs on Tim all benefit in a similar way. I know you can argue that the definitive version is the one that came out first (and the purist in me agrees up to a point) but in this case I think we have a situation where the Ed Stasium mix becomes the one to go to every time. The box comes with more discs including a third disc of outtakes, alternate mixes, demos recorded with Alex Chilton and alternate takes which I haven't had time to explore yet- however it's well known that the unused version of Can't Hardly Wait included here knocks the spots off the one that came out on Pleased To Meet Me. There's a live disc too, a record of the band at Cabaret Metro in Chicago, a twenty six song set from November 1986 with covers aplenty. The Replacements were a notoriously unreliable live band, drunk and self sabotaging and not long after this album the band began to disintegrate and by the late 80s was a Paul Westerberg solo outfit under the Replacements name. This new version of Tim offers a sliding doors moment, where The Replacements stay together, where the sound and the songs are what they should sound like. 

Test Card Girl

This is new from Stretford's Psychederek, a £1, four minute autumnal wonder. Test Card Girl starts out with a drumbeat and faint wash of synth and builds very gradually, with whispers, wobbles and echoes fading in slowly, then noises and waves swelling before it all falls away to leave just a lone trumpet part. Then the drum kicks back in and a female vocal part wanders on in top in a way which is uplifting and quite moving. The ending with trumpet, telephone bleeps and a sudden cut off is pretty magical too. Buy it at Bandcamp. 

Monday's Long Song

We went to the cinema on Saturday night to see the re- released print of Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads' 1984 concert film, directed by Jonathan Demme and showing the nine piece band on fire in Los Angeles at the end of the tour to promote the previous year's Speaking In Tongues. I first saw it in 1987, bought on VHS and played repeatedly. The re- release doesn't do anything the earlier one didn't but seeing it on the big screen and at volume was a total joy. The set up of the film is well known- David Byrne arrives on stage on his own with ghettoblaster and acoustic guitar and plays Psycho Killer. An 808 drum machine kicks in and David plays and sings along. During the instrumental section he staggers about the stage like a man being shot, his wired energy setting the tone for much of the rest. Over the next few songs the band join him one by one, first Tina Weymouth for Heaven, then Chris Frantz and then Jerry Harrison. After that Steve Scales bounds in on percussion, Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry take up their place at the front of the stage next to Byrne on co- vocals and dancing and then guitarist Alex Weir and Bernie Worrell on synths/ keyboards. Once the stage set is built and band are assembled its a full on Talking Heads show, with stunning versions of Slippery People, Making Flippy Floppy, Swamp, Tom Tom Club's  Genius Of Love (proving Chris and Tina could write hits too) and more. The version of Life During Wartime is absurdly good, the band running on the spot, Byrne circling the stage, running round the drum and keyboard risers three times and arriving back at the mic for his vocal. The sheer exuberance and joy the band exhibit, magnified by the big screen, is brilliant to watch, David Byrne's choreography and sense of theatre central to the show but not overpowering it- his dance with the lampstand during Naive Melody and the preacher persona performance on Once In A Lifetime are stunning. If you've seen Stop Making Sense you'll remember all of these parts- seeing it all again at the cinema was a blast. Everyone in screen two on Saturday night left with a smile on their face.

Before Stop Making Sense Talking Heads released a double live album, The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads, a two disc chronologically sequenced album drawn from various gigs between 1977 and 1980. In 1980 Talking Heads played Emerald City in New Jersey, the band expanded from the four piece version and heading towards the nine headed monster that would make Stop Making Sense. Houses In Motion is one of the key tracks from 1980 masterpiece Remain In Light, a weird slow motion funk groove and David Byrne's unique lyrical outlook- 'For a long time/ I was without style or grace/ Wearing shoes with no socks/ In cold weather...'. 

House In Motion (Live at Emerald City 1980)