Kevin Rowland is a genius isn't he? Genuine genius is pretty rare- people use the word all the time in pop music but I think it probably applies to Kevin. The late 70s through to mid 80s run of albums Dexys Midnight Runners made show him to be an auteur, a songwriter who could tap into the popular consciousness (not once but twice, Geno and then Come On Eileen, were both via wildly different styles, huge pop records). His mercurial nature, obsessive character and anti- everyone else stance led to many arguments and departures. The first line up of Dexys jumped ship and his paranoia about Top Of The Pops appearances and perception that Al Archer was trying to steal the limelight by wearing a red woolen hat show him a difficult person to deal with and be around. But the music and the ideas and inspirations that went into it- genius.
1985's Don't Stand Me Down is one of those completely misunderstood on release albums, a record that only really came to be listened to and seen for what it was years later. Seven songs, four over six minutes long, with the quartet dressed in suits and ties on the sleeve, songs with lengthy spoken word sections, the songs forming a backdrop to conversations between Kevin and other members of the group. This Is What She's Like is the longest song on the record, a twelve and a half minute discussion between Kevin and Billy Adams, partly written by Helen O'Hara, in which he never really reveals what she's like but meanders all over the place, Kevin eventually explaining what she's not like and listing the people he dislikes- people who put creases in their jeans, people who are members of CND, people who have 'home bars and hi fis and all that stuff'.
Kevin has mellowed somewhat since this song was written I think, is less wound up by those people, but he clearly meant it at the time. In the end he gets round to the point of the song, something he got from watching The Godfather, the part where Michael Corleone is in Sicily and gets married, and the word the Italians have for being stuck by a thunderbolt and falling in love.
'That's my story', Kevin says, 'Strongest thing I've ever seen'.
The Beta Band's reformation to play some gigs in the autumn and maybe make some new music is one of 2025's most cheering stories (in a year not exactly over- burdened with cheering stories admittedly). Sometimes people say that The Beat Band 'should have been massive' but it's a comment that makes me scratch my head and think 'in what world?'.
It's difficult to imagine a world in which songs, the sheer number of ideas, the weight of experimentalism and out there nature of what they were trying to do, crossing over into the world of millions of albums sold and stadium gigs. Steve Mason, John MacLean, Robin Jones and Gordon Anderson and later bassist Richard Greentree were not making music for the masses- and they seemed ill equipped to deal with that anyway. Besides, somethings are best kept n a smaller scale.
The Three EPs overshadowed everything they did subsequently, all three albums that followed felt like they failed to meet the expectations the Three EPs placed on them. Listened to now, they seem less burdened by that weight and there's a lot worth listening to in The Beta Band (1999), Hot Shots II (2001) and Heroes To Zeroes (2004).
Push It Out is the opening track on 1998's Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos, the third of the three EPs that announced them as the late 90s flagbearers for genre busting low fi, experimental indie. Is indie the right word? It seems too small for The Beta Band. Attempting to dissect or explain what makes Push It Out and the other songs from the three EPs is pointless. You just have to listen to them and feel them. The pots and pans percussion, dub basslines, acoustic guitars, samples and space/ atmosphere is solely their own. Steve Mason's vocals- double tracked, doleful, oblique, melancholic- sound more and more like a man trying to work his way through the depths of depression. Dr. Baker is stunning, a song that tells the story of the titular figure, a man whose 'dog was dead and wife was dead/ misery planned inside his head', a song with Mason singing the line 'see me lost inside' over and over, that sounds like a long dark night of the soul and yet somehow makes it all seem OK. Genius. Not a word I use lightly.
Dry The Rain I wrote about recently. If it's what they end up being remembered for, it's probably more than enough.
Eclipse is from 2001's Hot Shots II, a song about questions. The album was a complete piece of work, minimal hip hop beats and their experimental sound refined with the help of producer Colin C- Swing Emmanuel.
Assessment opened their third and final album Heroes To Zeroes, self produced and then mixed by Nigel Godrich. Over blistering ringing electric guitars Steve Mason sings 'I think I cracked my skull on the way down/ I think I lost my head when I lay down' and everything goes leftwards from there. The crunchy guitar breakdown in the middle is exhilarating and the pile on of instruments at the end, trumpets joining in, is a rush. Simple is also from Heores To Zeros, more lovely, expansive experimental indie with another lost and broken lyric from Mason- 'I tired to do my own thing/ But the problem with your own thing/ Is you end up on your own'.
Their albums are all overshadowed by The Three EPs but there's gold in all of the three proper albums and this is one of the pieces of gold. And the video is unbelievable. No- one else was doing this sort of thing or doing it so effortlessly (it cost them the band though- they split owing the record company one million quid, partly the result of making expensive arty videos).
Inner Meet Me is from the second EP, The Patty Patty Sound. Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 Dub is exactly what it says it is. Jesse's a big fan and I think you can hear it in a lot of his work. This edit originally came out on Paisley Dark in May 2021.
The Cow's Wrong is from their self- titled 1999 debut album, an album they legendarily slagged off to the music press. 'It's fucking awful', they told the NME, 'one of the worst records that'll come out this year'. Experimental pop, ambient drone, excursions into trip hop and cosmic balladry crossed with folky psychedelia and late 90s indie together with the mass of acclaim for The Three EPs took its toll on its makers. It's better than its creators had us believe at the time but its also dense and abstract, a complex and ambitious album. They also got into legal trouble with Bonnie Tyler and Jim Steinman on The Hard One. The Cow's Wrong and The Hard One are both from The Beta Band (The Hard One Manmousse Remix came out as an extra track on an extra disc, an ambient- abstract hip hop version of the song). They were following their noses and taking risks and that's what artists should do.
Following last Saturday's soundtrack into Hill Street Blues here's another 80s TV cop show with a very memorable theme tune and possibly the diametric opposite of Hill Street's gritty realism- the glitz and glamour of the waterfront world of Crockett and Tubbs and Miami Vice.
Miami Vice ran from 1984 to 1989. Jan Hammer's theme tune is a ridiculously over the top collision of synth pop and 80s rock guitar by Jan Hammer, a piece of music that says 1987 to me as much as anything else released that year- Strangeways Here We Come, It's A Sin, La Isla Bonita, Respectable, Pump Up The Volume, The One I Love and April Skies all included. It's also impossible to hear the tune without the opening titles flashing through my mind...
80s Miami was as alien a world as any for someone living in the north west of England in 1987, palm trees, flamingos, wind surfing, women in bikinis... none of these things featured much (if at all) in my seventeen year old life. Like the Balearic beauty of the Hill Street Blues theme tune, the theme tune to Miami Vice provides an instant Proustian rush.
Miami Vice was visually a riot of rich colours, buildings, cars, boats and clothing, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas providing fashion inspiration (even in rain lashed northern England, rolled up suit jackets and loafers with no socks, pastel tees and white cotton trousers became sought after for a while but wasn't a look I ever dabbled with). I enjoyed Miami Vice in a sort of anti- indie kind of way. It's rollcall of guest stars from the music world was long and varied too- Miles Davis, James Brown, Leonard Cohen, Frankie Valli, Eartha Kitt and Sheena Easton all appeared, as did Phil Collins who I loathed then and still do.
Some new dance/ electronic music for Friday, from a variety of sources. First up is the latest release from Leeds based label Paisley Dark, an EP by Airsine- the title track Like Fire and a trio of remixes. Like Fire is a low slung, dark corners chugger, pulsing with the stuff of lost nights and speaker systems. Rolling bassline, distorted voices, acidic toplines to mess with the synapses....
The remixes come from Mindbender, The Machine Soul and label boss John Paynter with Ben Lewis doing their Space Age Freak Out thing- stripped back and hypnotic, going nicely weird around the edges. The EP is available at Bandcamp.
Secondly, here comes the latest from Raxon whose track Your Fault was one of late 2024's peakiest peaks. Based in Barcelona but originally from Egypt, Raxon's newest release came out on Cologne's Kompakt in February, two tracks released as Speicher 134. Acid Call is in your face, high energy thumping acid. The flipside, Don't Cry Pluto, is slightly subtler but comes from a similar place and is no less nutty- kick drum and synth madness that is very persuasive. Available digitally and on 12" here.
Thirdly/ finally Manchester's Sprechen label have just released an EP by Hull maestro Steve Cobby, a man who over the course of a long musical career has left few musical stones unturned. His four track EP on Sprechen, UNO+, is unabashed house music and kicks off with No Rope Will Bind Those Who Refuse To Submit, a straight ahead, four four banger with percussion, synth whooshes, chopped up Afro vocals and all manner of seductive noises.
After that This House jacks and jerks, with stuttering vocals, rave breakdowns and massive bass. I Need A Fix slows things down slightly, a classic late 80s house tempo and synth chords- then the 303 kicks in and we're off again. On the last track Koreo Mr Cobby strips things down to drum track and single synth part, some bleeps and bloops and the deepest bassline. Fine work from Hull's hardest working shed based musician. Buy or listen here.
Ellen Beth Abdi came to our attention first when she joined A Certain Ratio on their 1982 album and live shows, singing on some of the songs on the album and a lot of the songs when playing live. She has a solo album ready to release in May and preceded it with a single, Tenterhooks, three weeks ago.
Tenterhooks has a woozy, off kilter rhythm and melody, a wheezy organ sound picking up the tune, jazz and soul both a part of the sound and the tune. The song is about the infernal wait after sending a message, the waiting for a response and the doubt that kicks in.
This week saw the release of Sad Chord, a short song that never quite does what you might expect it to- the drums and organ keep shifting, there is a flute, the bass bumps around and Ellen's vocal melody keeps things off centre.
Paul 'Wags' Wagstaff, the guitarist who supplied the funk and the acid jangle to Manchester's late 80s/ early 90s band Paris Angels, died suddenly at the weekend aged 60. His instantly recognisable guitar riff lit up 1990 single All On You (Perfume) along with the acidic squiggle and thump of the 303 and Rikki Turner and Jane Gil's dual vocals, the song that became the band's calling card.
They signed to local indie Sheer Joy and released several more singles, Wags a key part of the songwriting. The majors came and Perfume was re- released by Virgin in 1991 with this video to promote the single, everyone in it looking very youthful and of the time.
Rikki Turner and Wags started Paris Angels with bassist Scott Carey, out in the East Manchester badlands of Guide Bridge, near Ashton- under- Lyne with the line up expanding to become a seven piece band and work with Paul Johnson, the man who produced Blue Monday with New Order.
Paris Angels called it a day following a change of ownership at Virgin and the axe being taken to the roster (PiL also got dropped). After Paris Angels Wags played with Black Grape and then in 1999 with the reformed Happy Mondays as well as guesting with The Charlatans. A couple of days ago Rikki shared a crowdfunder to help raise the money to give Wags a decent funeral, a send off for the man he called the Captain, which can be found here.
Red Snapper's tour reached Yes in Manchester last Saturday night, a celebration of the 30th anniversary of their debut album Reeled And Skinned and their forthcoming album Barb And Feather. The Pink Room at Yes is close to full with ACR's Martin Moscrop on DJ support duties. Red Snapper are on at 8.30, an early start due to the room converting to a club night not long after 10pm and they waste no time getting the room moving.
The core duo/ rhythm section of Rich Thair (drums) and Ali Friend (stand up bass) are very talented musicians. If you had a functioning time machine you could drop them into 1920s Harlem, 1940s New York or 1960s Soho and within a few bars of music they'd have everyone rocking, Ali's deft basslines and Rich's on it drumming the bedrock to a set that takes in jazz, dub, surf, trip hop, rocking blues, all points in between and a fusion of all of those. Their set spans the years 1995 to now, everything sounding like the work of a band very much in the present but with one eye on the music of their past that has led to here, now, tonight. Along side Rich and Ali Red Snapper is Tom Challenger playing sax, clarinet and melodica, plus keys and laptop, and youthful guitarist Tara Cunningham who flicks between jazz, angular post- punk/ punk- funk and surf. On opener Lobster, Ali plays his bass with a bow and everyone joins in softly, a low key start to a set that ups the tempo straight after with newer cuts like B- Planet (from 2022) standing alongside the sounds of their mid 90s trip hop. Hold My Hand Up, a collaboration from last year with David Harrow, is a mid- set highlight, the ambient soundscape of the original turned into a dubbed out anthem.
The room is bouncing, the area near the stage full of dancers and the rest of the room bobbing up and down and left and right. New track Ban- Di- To kicks up a storm, pile driving horn riffs and sharp funk, raucous, infectious fun. They close with Hot Flush, a live version of the Sabres Of Paradise 1995 remix, Ali playing the circling jazzy bassline and the distinctive horn riff ringing out, future jazz crossed with dance music, time travelling music.
Ali Friend is a presence centre stage, head tipped back while his fingers dance around the strings, occasionally spinning his bass round, leaning into the mic to utter some encouragement to the dancers, a man lost in the sounds, as Rich Thair drives everything from stage right. They come back sharpish for a two song encore, the amped up Wesley Don't Surf sending the punters young and middle aged out into the Manchester drizzle happy.
What a great band Galaxie 500 were. They split up in 1991 leaving three studio albums behind them (Today, On Fire and This Is Our Music) on the verge of a tour of Japan. Singer/ guitarist Dean Wareham calling it a day when the band had a tough time making what was their final album and in Dean's words 'clearly weren't getting along'. Later in the same year Rough Trade went bust and the other two, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang bought the rights to their own music at auction. The three former Galaxie 500ers have been really careful with what happened to those recordings ever since and last year released a archival album, Uncollected Noise New York '88- '90.
One of the many highlights of their back catalogue is their cover of The Modern Lovers song Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste, Jonathan Richman's sub- two minute sketch turned into a just shy of seven minute slowcore/ dreampop epic by Galaxie 500. It was on 1988's Today and later released as a B- side in 1990 and re- recorded for a Peel Session too.
The bass and drums become an exercise in hypnosis while Dean's guitars (two of them, one chugging away like Lou Reed, the other spindly and bright like Sterling Morrison) create some tension. Dean's brittle, upper register voice singing Jonathan's lovelorn, tragic lyrics at the very edge of breaking down.
Dean Wareham is about to release another solo album, the follow up to 2021's I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of LA. A few songs have appeared ahead of it including this one- That's The Price Of Loving Me is a gorgeously understated song, sublime chord changes and padding bassline, Dean's voice in a lower register now than it was back in the late 80s. Kramer, the man who produced those Galaxie 500 albums, is back at the controls and it shows.
Last weekend's Jezebell Takeover at The Golden Lion in Todmorden was a lot of fun, two days of DJs and a live act playing to a full house. Saturday kicked off with Nessa Johnston getting things into gear quickly and setting the pace for everyone who followed. ACR's Martin Moscrop played a set that took in dub and disco, including a low slung dubbed out cover of Born Slippy, and at just after 8pm OBOST played a live set.
OBOST is Bobby Langfield, ridiculously young, still in his teens- synths, keys, laptops, a microphone and an hour of uptempo electronic music that sounds like it has decades of experience behind it. Jamie Tolley took over at 9 and took things up a notch again, bpms and energy levels rising. At one point he dropped As I Ran by Yame, a bit of an ALFOS at The Lion moment last year and the pub erupted. The Jezebell headliners took over at 10, Jesse first and then Darren. The floor was packed, a mix of youth and older dancers...
I had to run for a late train back to Manchester so missed the last our of Darren's set but was back in the pub on Sunday afternoon where Jesse and Darren were starting proceedings off. Maybe they'd stayed up and played straight through. My guest slot was at 4pm and I had a few technical difficulties at first- I accidentally cued up a track from Jesse's USB instead of mine, then the right hand deck got stuck in an emergency loop and things took a little while for me to sort. Eventually Martin Moscrop turned the deck off and on again and as usual with piece of IT support advice it did the trick. Adam Roberts, due to play after me, was also official photographer. All the photos here are his and if nothing else he made me look like I know what I'm doing.
I came off the decks feeling it had been a bit of a nightmare- technical issues, trying to cram too much into an hour- but looking at it now, a week later, it seems ok. The link below is the set recreated at home.
The Charlatans: Trouble Understanding (Norman Cook Remix)
The Beta Band: I Know
Dub Syndicate: Right Back To Your Soul
Soft Cotton County: The Future's Not What It Used To Be (Five Green Moons Remix)
David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse (Sons Of Slough Remix)
Totem Edit 12: Feel
Mogwai: The Sun Smells Too loud
Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen and Mike Garry: Tonight In Belfast
Adam Roberts followed me, four four house and disco action and then Kim Lana. We had to leave so missed the remaining Sunday night fun, Stuart Alexander and then FC Kahuna, both of whom were outstanding by all accounts, Jesse saying Dan Kahuna was the weekend's highlight. Some hardy souls were back in The Lion on the Monday for St Patrick's Day celebrations, a live band and unplanned karaoke session. There's a second Jezebell Takeover planned for September.
Jesse's been uploading recordings of some of the sets. His Saturday night hour is here and his Sunday afternoon set is here.
I hadn't met Jesse or Darren before despite having had a several years strong online connection. It's always brilliant when people turn out to be as lovely in real life as they appear online and the crowd they drew to the Lion- regulars and newcomers- was testament to what they've built together as Jezebell. More power to them.
Soundtrack Saturday is taking a diversion this week away from cinema and films and into the world of television. Between 1981 and 1987 Hill Street Blues ran for 146 episodes, depicting the lives of the people in and around a police station in an unnamed American city. It was a favourite of mine in the mid- to- late 80s and even now the opening titles and theme tune bring a rush of teenage memories...
It was fairly groundbreaking as a show- gritty, realistic, people with messy lives having to deal with messy situations, the good guys not always winning. Visually and with its production it was groundbreaking too, the rapid cuts between storylines and background chatter and noise giving it a documentary feel. The theme tune, Mike Post's piano led instrumental, is as legendary as the programme...
It was released on 7". I have a copy, one of those records that has been with me for a very long time. The sleeve is so creased and battered it's barely a sleeve any more. If anyone's interested there are 180 copies on Discogs currently, the cheapest only 15 pence. Skyrocketing prices for second hand vinyl don't appear to have impacted on the Theme From Hill Street Blues.
The guitar solo in the full version was by Larry Carlton, a session musician who played with Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell among others. Theme From Hill Street Blues gained a second life when Alfredo played it as part of his sets at Amnesia in Ibiza, often playing it as his last tune before clubbers went out into the morning sun.
I'm not exactly sure what the point of this post is and have written, re- written and deleted parts of it several times and almost scrapped the entire thing but in the end I thought I should mark it. Five years ago this week Covid's arrival in the UK brought about the first lockdown and life changed dramatically for everyone.
The Friday of this week in March, five years ago today, schools were closed and everyone was sent home. At that point I was an Assistant Head at the school I work at. I made the announcement in the assembly to our Year 11s that this was their last assembly and that they wouldn't be sitting their exams that summer (you might reasonably ask why the Headteacher didn't do that and therein lies a whole other story which is not for here or now). School was difficult all week with increasing numbers of staff and students off ill, the rest of the staff very stretched as absences left gaps and tensions were running high. Coughing became a classroom issue. Year 11 and 13 were particularly emotional as their school experience was came to an abrupt and unexpected stop.
I started to write a post about our experience of lockdown, a reminiscence- lockdown nostalgia is a genuine thing (not for everyone I know)- but I didn't like the post and binned it. The impact of Covid has been huge and apart from a few pieces here and there in the media this week, for many people Covid is done, gone, over, to be forgotten, consigned to a weird period four to five years ago that they want to forget about and move on from. There was a lot of talk at the time about the new normal, about things being different when 'all this is over'. I don't see much of that.
Our son Isaac died of Covid in November 2021, just as the world was opening up again. He was 23. He is one of 232, 112 people in the UK who died from Covid. His name is on the Covid memorial wall in London. It still staggers me sometimes that he is not just our personal loss and grief but that he's one small part of a national and global catastrophe. The memorial wall was on the news recently and there he is, one name among many. The news in January and February looked bad, cities in China in complete lockdown, Italian hospitals overrun and in chaos. We watched all of that and then all the fallout in this country with the nonsense and chaos of the Johnson government- and then Isaac died of that disease eighteen months after we went into lockdown.
There are probably millions of people connected to the 232, 112 who died, millions of personal tragedies. There are also an estimated 1.9 million people with some form of long Covid, just under 3% of the UK's population. Many schools are still reeling form the fallout of lockdowns and the lost months, not just of learning but of socialisation and social skills and behaviour. It'll take another ten years for those young people to move through the education system. They've lost out in many ways and for those in already deprived communities the impact on their education and well- being will likely follow them long into adulthood.
I'm not sure what we've learned from Covid. The Tories moved on as quickly as they could and the Labour government seem to want to treat the disabled as benefit scroungers and force them back to work. I don't see a new world being built from our experience of Covid and lockdown. Lockdowns built some bridges between people, community spirit in many places was stronger than before- street WhatsApp groups buzzed constantly- but they created differences and disagreement as well as people became judgemental of others who weren't following the rules correctly or of those deemed to be following them too closely. Into the void of human contact, division and conspiracy theories grew. Vaccination scepticism spread and undoubtedly caused deaths. When Isaac was on the Covid ward that he died on, the nurses told us almost everyone else on the ward was unvaccinated and that many would die due to their decision- and they, the nursing teams, had to deal with that daily.
In some ways it feels five years ago, all of that. In some ways it feels very recent, very present. It's not something all of us can move on from.
Lockdown saw the arrival of a few albums that arrived in the post, packages wiped down and isoalted for 24 hours before being opened, that sound tracked the evenings of those days in March in April when we all adjusted to living in lockdown. One of them was Four Tet's Sixteen Oceans, a record that if I reach for now instantly drops me back into the spring of 2020 and that sense of the unknown that the early weeks of the first lockdown brought. Four Tet's music on this album is so warm and enveloping, an aural balm, real mood enhancing music. This one closes the album in fine style.
At the end of January Dinosaur Jr main man J Mascis released a digital single on Sub Pop, a cover of The Cure's Breathe. Over a wall of acoustic guitars and an occasional lead line J sings in that wracked, half asleep way of his, his voice wandering around the tune. It's less than three minutes long and very nice indeed. You can buy Breathe here.
Breathe was a B-side to Catch, a single in 1987, one of four taken from the eighteen track double album Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (an album that was no slouch when it came to great singles- Just Like Heaven and Why Can't I Be You? were two of the remaining three singles, the other being Hot Hot Hot!!!).
Today is the funeral of my friend Pete. He died in February of prostate cancer which had spread to his bones. The last time I saw him, just before Christmas when I popped round with a card, he was clearly unwell and we all knew he wasn't going to survive but still, when death comes, it's very sad.
I've known Pete since the early 90s. My friend Nick and I lived in a flat near Altrincham. One night the pair of us were in the pub and the quiz was about to start so we decided to take part. Near us was a table of two men in their early 40s (we were early 20s), Pete and Lynds the Bins (Lyndsay, wore glasses hence the Bins nickname, smoked like a chimney, a carpet fitter). We started to chatting to them as the results were read out and realised that if we'd joined forces we'd have won the quiz. We agreed to come back the following week and so began three decades of Monday night pub quizzing- at first me, Nick, Pete and Lynds, then me, Pete, Charles and Lynds and then for a long time Pete, me, Charles and Neil. From 1993 to about 2018 we did the quiz almost every week until travelling apathy and lethargy set in, people began to drift from it and appearances became less frequent. Then Covid hit and we never quizzed again.
For a long time in the 90s I'd get a tram from Salford, later Sale, to Timperley, call at Pete's, we'd get us into his van (he was a builder, had been since leaving school in the 1960s) and we'd go to Wythenshawe to pick up Lynds and then head to the pub to meet Nick and/ or Charles and/ or Neil. The three of us sat across the front seat of the van, the dashboard and windscreen strewn with dirty coffee mugs, cigarette and cigar packets and lighters, bits of paper from Pete measuring up jobs with his recognisable handwriting on them, bits of building equipment, receipts and other detritus from Pete's working day. The music would be whatever cassettes Pete had in the van. Often it was The Walker Brothers and the song the three of us would sing along to was this...
Sometimes Pete would try to get away with slipping Stars by Simply Red into the tape deck but we'd usually put a stop to that. Lynds would bring his Led Zep tape and rave about them. Kashmir was another van favourite. Pete liked The Moody Blues and saw them every time they played in Manchester, taking his wife Sandra along. Pete and Lynds were twenty years older than us. Pete's daughters, who are our age, couldn't understand why their dad hung around with us and vice versa, but a friendship is a friendship. In my house we often referred to Pete as Uncle Pete and that's how he was to me in some ways. A friend and surrogate uncle.
Pete was a massive Manchester United fan, a season ticket holder. Back in the glory days of the 90s and 2000s we'd watch European matches together in the pub and celebrate cup wins. In more recent years we'd all moan about how bad things had got. Pete was a big England fan too and went to several Euro tournaments with his England gang- Howard and Charles and a few others. I never went on these foreign football jaunts, the Euros are always in term time. When they went to the France '98 World Cup I asked him to get me a snide shirt of an lesser fancied country from a bootleg football shirt street seller. He brought me back an unbranded, 5 euro Chile shirt that I wore at Tuesday night 5 a side for years. Pete always, without fail, left Old Trafford before the final whistle. He was often home before some people had left the ground and missed umpteen late wins (back in the days when late wins were a United speciality). We'd rib about this and he'd exhale his cigar smoke and do his Pete chuckle.
The quiz would always have a half time break and we'd all slip outside for a smoke (back in the days when we all still smoked. I haven't smoked since 9pm on 3rd June 2013, Charles and Neil both gave up before me). Pete smoked slim cigars. We started to knock around the idea that our quiz team had gone on for so long it should be turned into a film- called Quiz- a gentle/ gritty northern comedy about a pub quiz team across three decades with four friends of different ages. We knocked around jokes and ideas about who would play each of us and Pete was always very definite on this point- he would be played by Al Pacino. And in a way that's how I think of him, No Regrets by The Walker Brothers blasting in the van, a pint or two, talk about United while standing outside pubs in all weathers, Pete smoking his cigar and chuckling about being played in a film about a pub quiz team by Al Pacino.
I was in two minds about going to see Mercury Rev at New Century Hall last Friday night. A friend who saw them in Dublin last year said they were a bit hit and miss and the album, Born Horses, has some good songs on it and some I'm less sure about. But, I've been playing the pair of late 20th and early 21st century albums that are probably their peak- Deserter's Songs and All Is Dream- a lot recently and the possibility of seeing those songs played live was very tempting. My brother was keen, several friends were going and there were some tickets left so I took the risk and it more than paid off. Mercury Rev were on fire and as they wend their way across the country this month anyone going to any of the other dates is in for a good evening.
The two core members, singer/ guitarist Jonathan Donohue and guitarist Grasshopper, have been joined by a new piano/ sax/ flute player Jesse Chandler and keys player Marion Genser plus a drummer (set up at the side of the stage) who loves the motorik kraut rhythms. They arrived on stage one by one, picking their way into the ambient soundscape of The Little Bird. Donohue arrives, very much the frontman, theatrical hand gestures and long cuffs sticking out from under his black jacket and then they burst into Tonite It Shows. From that point on their homebrewed combination of 1940s Disney soundtracks, 60s psychedelia, 90s alt- rock, their own weird Baroque Americana, long drawn out Tangerine Dream style sections and bursts of twin guitar, everyone playing everything together and really loudly, really hits home.
Halfway through, after a run of psychedelic torch songs, Jonathan leans into to the mic and starts speaking Rutger Hauer's famous lines from Blade Runner, 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I've watched C- Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate... all these things will be lost in time... like tears in rain'. Jesse gets the sax out and they play a full cover of Vangelis' Tears In Rain from the Blade Runner soundtrack that drifts by beautifully. Then the dive into Goddess On A Hiway, blasting into the chorus with the lines 'And I know it ain't gonna last/ When I see your eyes arrive/ They explode like two bugs on glass...
The second half of the set is perfectly weighed- Ancient Love from Born Horses, a song with a lengthy spoken word section inspired by the words of Robert Creeley and sumptuous, orchestral early 70s easy listening.
Tides Of The Moon from All Is Dream is followed by the always powerful Holes from Deserter's Songs, a song that still startles not least the bit where the band drop down and Donohue sings, 'Holes/ Dug by little moles/ Angry jealous spies/ They got telephones for eyes'. And then Opus 40, a song seemingly inspired equally by 1920s cinema and wasted 60s cosmic psychedelia, the existential lyric 'I'm alive she cried but I don't know what it means' at its heart. 'Tears in waves/ Minds on fire'. Donohue is conducting the band, throwing his arms out left and right. Finally the play The Dark Is Rising, the huge, emotive and affecting opening song from 2001's All Is Dream, a song about love and loss set to a grand swell of orchestral psychedelia, Jonathan crooning 'In my dreams I'm always strong'. I'm sure I can't be the only wiping their eyes.
The band start to wind the song down, Jonathan departs, the musicians leave one by one and that's it, no encore, the songs played almost without a gap between them, one becoming the next and fading out as they faded in ninety minutes earlier.
The two pictures above are mine. This one is from the band's Facebook page taken by Vittorio Bongiorno.
Sticking with my Jezebell themed weekend, by happy coincidence one of Jesse from Jezebell's other projects released a new song last Friday and it's quite unlike anything else he's done before- and unlike most other people too. Electric Blue Vision are Jesse and Emilia Harmony and have a couple of releases behind them. This new song- Folklore Rising- is nine minutes long, a song in two acts. The first part is all Medieval folk, Emilia's voice wafting above music from the 14th century, a folk song from before the modern world existed, lute and weird percussion, pastoral sounds. The second half judders into another gear, suddenly transplanting Jesse, Emelia and us into a techno future, a world where Detroit joins the madrigal party. The piano runs at eight minutes are a particular joy. Get it here free or name your own price.
A Jezebell mix for this Sunday to go with their weekend takeover at The Golden Lion in Todmorden with the emphasis on dancing. Jesse and Darren's music, edits and remixes have been one of post- 2021's joys starting with Thrill Me in November 2021, taking in various EPs and singles, an album and most recently Cream Tease (wordplay and sexual innuendo are a Jezebell speciality. Personally, I'm not a fan of innuendo- if I see one in my writing I whip it out, straight away*).
Bibbles is by Brighton Balearica duo Andres Y Xavi, a single on Higher Ground in February 2024. Jezebell did three remixes, the Pots And Pans Mix being my favourite, all manner of whirrs and clicks and abstract rhythm sounds.
Re- birth first saw the light of day on the Diavol edit label and then on Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1, a shimmering, shuffling, woozy piece of edit work.
Perfect Din is from Shelter Me, a compilation released in April 2024 to raise funds for Crisis, a homelessness charity.
Citirc was one of four tracks released as the Weekend Machines EP, machine funk for cyborgs to strut their stuff to. Hand claps, hi hats, guitar riffs, synths, all synced up for endless, beautiful repetition.
We All Need is one of the songs on A Certain Ratio's It All Comes Down To This album, one of 2024's best records. Jezebell's Ghost Train Mix came about when ACR's Martin Moscrop was record shopping in Berlin and found and bought a copy of Jezebellearic Beats Vol. 1.
The Jezebell Spirit takes one of the key tracks from David Byrne and Brian Eno's groundbreaking 1981 album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts and Jezebells it, the 808 cracking away under the sampled American TV preacher. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is a seminal album, a record streets ahead of almost everyone else in the early 80s.
Darren's Theme is from Cream Tease, a track and EP with its tongue firmly in its cheek and possibly its trousers undone as well. A snatch of vocal from Karen Finley's Tales Of Taboo, a 1986 song with a lyric that could be described as sexually explicit.
* Thanks are due to Kenneth Williams for this joke obviously
Midnight Cowboy, John Schlesinger's 1969 film, was one of those films that when I was a teen in the 80s you had to watch, one of those 60s and 70s films that were required viewing and would turn up at some point late night on BBC2- along with Bonnie And Clyde, Apocalypse Now!, The Deer Hunter, Taxi Driver, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and 2001.
Midnight Cowboy is an odd couple film set in the late 60s New York seedy underbelly. Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, newly arrived in the city from Texas dressed in cowboy clothes to find work as a male prostitute. He bumps into Dustin Hoffman's Ratso, a conman and hustler, and they team up, Ratso as pimp. There are unpleasant encounters, unpaid bills, sex acts in cinemas, flashbacks to childhood trauma and Ratso's increasingly poor health. Eventually the pair end up on a Greyhound bus bound for the warmer climes of Florida. Joe abandons his cowboy clothes and hustling dreams and says that when they reach Miami he will get a regular job but by this point, as the bus heads south, it's already too late for Ratso.
The film won three Oscars and the Library Of Congress designated it as being 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant'. Hoffman and Voigt both became stars. It's got an edge- it's gritty, and unflinching and bleak if ultimately a film about friendship. It strikes me though as a film its unlikely that today's teenagers are watching in the way we were in the mid- to- late 80s.
The soundtrack is as legendary as the film, two songs in particular songs for the ages. Harry Nilsson sang Everybody's Talkin', a 1966 Fred Neil song about escape and leaving the city for a simpler, better life. Nilsson's version, released with the film in May 1969, was the film's theme song, playing over the opening scenes and again at the close.
It wasn't until writing this piece that I remembered that Bob Dylan had been supposed to supply the film's theme song and wrote Lay Lady Lay for it but didn't complete it in time. It's impossible to imagine Midnight Cowboy without Everybody's Talkin', and with Lay Lady Lay in its place.
John Barry wrote and recorded an equally brilliant and beautiful song, the title track, a gorgeous instrumental with the best harmonica part ever recorded snaking its way through Barry's laid back track, the harmonica courtesy of Belgian jazz musician Toots Thielemans.
I've been reviewing records over at Ban Ban Ton Ton again, Dr Rob's Japan based Balearic and electronic music one stop, most recently on Monday of this week when the newest Coyote mini- album came out. Coyote (Timm and Ampo) have been in a rich vein of form in the last few years, releasing a slew of 12" singles, albums, six track mini- albums, edits and remixes. In May there's the prospect of a collaboration EP with Peaking Lights, a 12" called Love Letters on their own Is This Balearic ? label. In the meantime, hot on the heels of last year's six track mini- album Hurry Up And Live, comes Wailing At The Yellow Dawn- a record which evokes all sorts of things but mainly for me music as a soundtrack to dreaming. My review at Ban Ban Ton Ton is here.
A week before that I reviewed an album by Thought Leadership, an album called Ill Of Pentacles that is about to get a vinyl release on Be With Records. I knew it was familiar and realised while listening to it that my friend Spencer sent me a link to it last year when it was released as digital and on cassette- getting re- acquainted with it second time around was even better. Thought Leadership is a mysterious musician living in Edgeley, Stockport armed with nothing more than a guitar, some FX pedals, a drum machine and a home studio. The music, ten tracks of it, is entirely instrumental, FX affected pieces of guitar music with occasional drum machine backing. It's a wonderful album, still available at Bandcamp. The most obvious comparison in sound is Vini Reilly but other post- punk and indie guitarists are in there too- John McGeoch, Robin Guthrie, Johnny Marr and Maurice Deebank of Felt. My full review is here. There's a second album too, Ace Of Swords which was recorded in the middle of last year, at Bandcamp.
It put me in mind of another Mancunian guitarist whose music I reviewed for Ban Ban Ton Ton, a pair of re- releases from the early 80s by Kevin McCormick together with a new one called Passing Clouds. I wrote about Passing Clouds last October and I didn't share it but you can find it here. This is It's Been A Long Time...
Meanwhile, over in Todmorden at The Golden Lion Jezebell have a weekend takeover, a line up of DJs, musicians and chancers playing on Saturday and Sunday. The DJs are Darren and Jesse (from Jezebell), Jamie Tolley, Martin Moscrop from ACR, Nessa Johnston, Stuart Alexander, Kim Lana, Adam Roberts and FC Kahuna. The musician playing live is OBOST (Bobby Langfield). The chancer is me. I'm on at 4pm on Sunday afternoon, playing after Jesse's afternoon set.
Both days should be great fun, the Sunday session maybe a bit more chilled than the Saturday, it's free all weekend and it'll be great to finally meet Jesse and Darren after featuring so much of their music here since 2021 and only ever chatting online.
Out a couple of weeks on Berlin's Nein Records is an EP by Parvale (Ian Vale and Neil Parnell) with the track Breaker City complete with Jezebell's Nice And Slow Remix, a cut 'n' paste, jerky breakbeat anthem for dancefloor action. The EP is here.
Out on Exeter's Mighty Force label, the home of much high quality electronic music in recent years, is this ten track album from J- Lower. The album is packed with deep, dynamic tracks. It opens in fine style with this one, String Theory, a punchy and powerful acid track that never stops giving.
Vortex is one I keep going back too, more 303 action, busy drum pattern, a squelchy bottom end, the distinctive tink of the electronic cowbell and a mangled snatch of vocal. You can listen and buy here.
M- Paths released two albums on Mighty Force and also have a Bandcamp page adorned with electronic music, not just the optimistic ambient- techno of M- Paths but also Reverb Delay's heavy duty dub techno and more recently a track by a third outfit, Mars Geographical. America, What Have You Done! came out last week, an eight minute reaction to the election of Donald Trump and his first few weeks in office which have upended the international order, sold Ukraine down the river in order to make friends with Putin's Russia (appeasement has some powerful messages for us when the history of the 20th century is taken in to account) and sewn chaos and distrust internationally. America, What Have You Done! samples Trump at the start and then powers into a rolling, throbbing acid thumper with a message in the middle. Get it free/ name your price here.
Here's one to file in the Albums I Missed In 2024 file- Kim Deal's solo album Nobody Loves You More. There's lots to love about Kim Deal- her past playing bass and writing songs in Pixies, The Breeders and The Amps, her Mid- West/ ciggie smoking voice and her all round coolness. On Nobody Loves You More she takes all of this, her alt rock/ indie songs and adds some slightly unexpected flavours, including string arrangements, a horn section and bossa nova. I read some reviews back in November when it was released but didn't go any further and when I stumbled across the title track last week I suddenly realised what I'd missed...
What a lovely song that is. The eleven songs on the album veer lyrically from reflections on her mother's Alzheimer's to the actor Rose Byrne to on Coast, a song written when deep in addiction issues and wishing she could enjoy the simple outdoors joy that the surfers she was watching were having. This song, Big Ben Beat, is more in the vein of some of her former bands...
Playing catch up with the album means that I've had the full eleven songs to digest in one go, a wonderful set of songs with Kim joined at various points by Kelley Deal, Steve Albini (who produced eight of the songs), Raymond McGinley from Teenage Fanclub, two of Savages (Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan) and Raconteur Jack Lawrence.
Richard Norris is over forty years into a career and life in music and shows no signs of slowing up or losing inspiration. His Bandcamp subscription service pays off every month with the continuation of his Music For Healing series, a long running ambient/ deep listening music monthly release that is specifically designed to help listeners find peace and calm via twenty minute ambient pieces, all recorded live and in one take at 98 bpm. For 2025 the Music For Healing series has moved into oceans. March 2025 release is called Southern Deep and starts out with Mariana trench style depths followed by waves of synth chords. Find it here. It might help deal with the daily madness coming from the USA.
Richard's Oracle Sound dub outlet is up to volume four, an album out at the start of April with three slices of deep modern dubwise sounds released last week. The Oracle series has grown with each album, out digitally and on vinyl, and the latest is no slouch. Connected Dub is fractured, broken dub,slow motion drums and snakey bass and a very messed up vocal. Earthsea Dub goes slower and deeper still, waves lapping on the shores and a melodica wending its way. Flying Crane Dub is my favourite of the three cuts so far, a long sonorous piano note repeating over bass and drums dredged from the depths of the ocean. Oracle Sound Vol 4 is here.
As if to prove he can do any electronic style easily and at will Richard has another release lined up for release next week, this one under the name of Dr No with Una Camille on vocals. Let Yourself Go is four four house, a main room banger with bass and bleeps that force the feet to move and Una's vocals rich and deep delight. Early 90s Manchester- style house music vibes. The EP comes with two Richard Norris mixes and a pair of Leo Zero remixes, one electro and one acidic, that do exactly what they promise, deep and dark fun, the Acid Mix particularly. Get Let Yourself Go here.
Soft Cotton County are from Richmond- upon- Thames and make, in their own words, 'folk music from the future'. In October last year they released an album called 10 Years Of Travel, slow burning, low key dream- pop indie with detours into bossa nova. Last week a remix of the song The Future's Not What It Used To Be came out, a remix by Justin Robertson wearing his Five Green Moons hat. Last year's Five Green Moons album, pagan folk/ dub, was a Bagging Area favourite and Justin's done it again with this remix- slow motion, indie dub stretched out over a very chilled seven minutes and twenty one seconds.
The new Dub Syndicate album- Obscured By Version- has taken up residence on my turntable, nine new versions by Adrian Sherwood of tracks from the 1989- 1996 period, the original tapes redubbed. Style Scott's rhythms remain the centrepiece. Around them Sherwood constructs entirely new versions, the original track sometimes peeking through with classic dub FX bouncing in and out- door bells, lions roaring, bicycle bells, horns, tyres screeching. It's a wonderfully pulled together album, Adrian's tribute to his friend Style who was found dead in his home in Jamaica in 2014.
Style Scott and Adrian formed Dub Syndicate in 1982, Scott having drummed with Roots Radics, Sons of Arqa and Creation Rebel. Fifteen albums followed, most of them on On U Sound and two recorded with Lee 'Scratch' Perry. 1985's Tunes From The Missing Channel, the third Dub Syndicate album, is a personal favorite, one of my favourite dub/ On U Sound albums. 1990's Strike The Balance is not far behind it. With all this in mind, I thought a Sunday mix was in order.
Right Back To Your Soul is on Obscured By Version, a superb dub of a dub, the bass and riddim riding in, organ and melodica floating around and eventually jazz club piano, Sherwood's mastery of the desk and production at its absolute peak. The original track dates fro the 1993 Echomania sessions according to Dr Rob's excellent sleeve notes.
Drilling Equipment was on 1991's One Way System and prior to that a cassette only release in 1983 on ROIR, uncompromising sound sculpture, industrial dub.
Hawaii is from 1990's Strike The Balance, an album with vocals courtesy of Bim Sherman and Shara Nelson along with a bizarro world cover of Je T'aime. Hawaii has a lilt and melodiousness to it that is entirely appropriate and naturally a Hawaiian guitar solo.
Pounding System was the 1982 Dub Syndicate debut, members of Creation Rebel and African Head Charge throwing the heavy rhythms and dub FX around. I think this release actually predated Style Scott joining and then becoming the centre of Dub Syndicate.
Walking On The Edge is from a live album, Live At The T+C 1991 (not released until 1999) complete with an echo- laden sampled transmission warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons.
Out And About is from Tunes From The Missing Channel, a seminal dub album with contributions from Jah Wobble, Ashanti Roy, Keith Levene and Bim Sherman. Out And About is the album's closing track, a magnificent dub ending. Ravi Shankar Pt. 1 opens it, the sound of the sitar and dub crossover, a legendary piece of On U music.
2001 Love is from 19993's Echomania and samples Allen Ginsberg's voice from the 1968 film Tonite Let's All Make Love In London, a documentary about Swinging London.
Train To Doomsville is from Pay It All Back Vol. 2, the series of wallet friendly compilations On U Sound have released periodically since the early 80s. Vol 2 came out in 1988, Train To Doomsville saw Dub Syndicate joined by Lee 'Scratch' Perry.
Today's songs come from the soundtrack to the film High Fidelity, released a quarter of a century ago in 2000, the film version of a Nick Hornby novel of the same name. High Fidelity is about Rob Fleming, a record shop owner going through a mid- 90s, mid- life crisis. It's all very of its time, very mid- 90s/ turn of the millennium, Rob a slightly sad soul who can't commit, who deals with life via making lists and tapes, and with crises by re- organising his record collection. When the book became big- and then the film- lots of people assumed that if you bought records and filed them in any kind of organised way, you were a version of Rob. Which maybe some of us are- but also aren't.
Anyway, this post isn't really about High Fidelity, a film which has its moments as any film with John Cusack in will. It's mainly about the band in this scene....
Teasers on social media led us to assume that a Beta Band announcement about a re- union was imminent and lo, earlier this week it happened. A tour of the UK in September and October followed by one in the USA. The scramble to get tickets for the UK dates has been a bit mad but I managed to bag a ticket for Manchester Apollo on 4th October and though it's six months away I'm really looking forward to it. Word has it there will be new music too.
Dry The Rain is on the High Fidelity soundtrack but originally came out in 1997 on their first EP, Champion Versions. The Beta Band sounded so different and so fresh in '97 they became treasures immediately, the melancholic and doleful vocals matched by the inventiveness of the sounds- dub basslines, samples, pots and pans percussion, trumpets, acoustic guitars, a new low key psychedelia for the late 20th century, eclectic but accessible too, experimental but with tunes. Dry The Rain, 1997's best song, floats in, shuffles along, builds beautifully and ends with the chanted vocals' 'If there's something inside that you wanna say/ Say it loud it will be ok/ I will be alright/ I will be alright', the sound of a man trying hard to convince himself that he will be ok.
I saw them in 1999, on what would be Eliza's birthday four years according to the internet, at Leeds Irish Club. I went to review them for a long gone Manchester arts and music magazine. The venue was swelteringly hot, hotter than hot, trousers sticking to your legs hot. The Beta Band were epic, four men with banks of equipment, instruments, amps, microphones and gaffer tape. They split in 2004, three albums behind them and a million pounds in debt. They've all travelled some distance since then. It will be good to have them back.
Another band on the High Fidelity soundtrack, another 90s band combining experimentation and pop and also still touring, are Stereolab.
I've been enjoying the new album by The Liminanas, the French husband/ wife duo who've released umpteen album since 2010, an exhilarating fusion of French ye ye, psyche and garage rock. On Faded they've brought in a whole raft of guest vocalists- Bertrand Belin, Bobby Gillespie, Jon Spencer, Pascal Comelade, Penny, Rover and Anna- Jean. The songs sound like a French Velvet Underground, the Mo Tucker backbeat and rattly guitars the bedrock for the vocalists to sing above. It's really good fun and shoots by in a whirl, an album that creates its own universe. Back in autumn last year J'Adore Le Monde lit up a grim November, singer Bertrand Belin reminding us of what's worth holding onto.
This one, Degenerate Star, has Blues Exploder Jon Spencer and Pascal Comelade giving twin vocal over the thumping drums and wheezy organ.
And on Ou Va La Chance, Lionel and Marie paid tribute to the late Francoise Hardy with a cover that closed Faded in gloriously romantic style...
Seamus Heaney has been in the air around me recently- an article at The Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan, our trip to Belfast two weeks ago, Mike Wilson's 100 Poems, and the quote on Heaney's gravestone that inspired me when we were looking for pointers about how to go about Isaac's gravestone ('walk on air against your better judgement'). I bought a copy of 100 Poems second hand, a self- explanatory selection of Heaney's poems chosen by the Heaney family with the plan that I'd read one a day. I haven't started yet, but will soon. It's always interesting when a second hand book comes with a handwritten inscription...
Questions eh? What happened to Sophie and James? Why did Sophie get rid of this book? Or did someone else? If nothing else, it gives the book a life, a past.
By coincidence Mike Wilson's 100 Poems have a new album out. Mike named his musical project after Heaney's poetry collection and, a fellow Irishman, is a fan of Heaney's work. Mike took the 'walk on air against your better judgement' as an inspiration for his music, the casting off of concerns and doubts and just going for it, creating, making music. Last year 100 Poems released three albums, all of which contain some wonderful music, music that lit up 2024- blissed out Balearica, tunes for sundown and sun up, spaced out dub and wide eyed electronic songs. He followed those three with a live album this year. You can find them all at the 100 Poems Bandcamp.
Yesterday Mike put the first fruits of his latest album onto YouTube a song called My Wicked Son, with an album- Let The Horse Run Free- out tomorrow. Not content to stand still Mike's dug out the acoustic instruments, guitars, fiddles and banjo, and taken inspiration from the Old West, an album of electronic beats crossed with country, cosmic/ Balearic Americana. It's also an album that deals with personal issues, stands up squarely to the past, to the black dog of depression and mental health issues. When the album goes onto Bandcamp tomorrow, any proceeds will go to mental health charities, seven songs are infused with Mike's wide screen sound and attitude.
Opener My Wicked Son sets Mike's new stall out- distorted vocals, a backdrop of fuzz and FX, the vocal snapping into focus as the singer tells of being on the road again. Harmonica fades in, a guitar squeals, the singer asks for mercy and the bluesy cowboy stomp kicks in. As the drums kick and pound, a synth appears, a 303 whooshes in, the saloon bar piano player picks out a one fingered melody, everything all at once... a song destined for dance floors.
The album's title track follows, the lonesome wail of a steam train, hand drums and then a slow motion groove with guitars, After the breakdown things go left, the acid and the cowboy yodel playing off against each other, synths building up a head of steam, an eight minute rodeo. Johnny Plays Guitar is a torch song, female vocal and burbling acid house balladry, the Johnny Guitar of the song a nod to the 1954 Joan Crawford film.
She Don't Want Me Know combines a chuggy stomp and echo- drenched banjo and a croaky vocal from an old timer. It comes after The Ballad Of Josey Wales, a song littered with film samples in the way early Big Audio Dynamite songs were. Sister Rave pounds in with thumping late 60s drums and a vintage sounding vocal, the sound of 60s soul crossed with an acidic 303, hands raised in celebration. At the end we left on Big Dub Candy Mountain, the squelch of the bottom end countered by cowboy blues, Mike updating a 1928 Harry McClintock song, the lyrics from the view of a hobo eternally on the road looking for paradise, a song reverberating down the railway tracks from a hundred years ago to now.
