Soundtrack Saturday

In 1973 Sam Peckinpah's revisionist Western Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid hit the big screens, a retelling of the story of Billy and Pat starring James Coburn (as lawman Pat) and Kris Kristofferson (as outlaw Billy). Peckinpah had a track record of Westerns behind him by 1973, depicting violence explicitly and graphically, stories about outsiders, loners and losers. Ride The High Country. The Wild Bunch. Major Dundee. The Ballad Of Cable Hogue. 

Pat Garrett And The Billy The Kid is famed for the behind the scenes rows with the studio MGM and a mangled version that was largely disowned by cast and crew. In 1988 a re- edit by Peckinpah was released and widely praised as the film the 1973 one should have been. 

Peckinpah saw the film as a chance to complete a trilogy (after Ride The High Country and The Wild Bunch), to make a definitive statement about the Western and complete his revisionist perspective of the Old West. He fell out with everyone while making it, suffered budget cuts and technical problems, re- shoots and crew illness, some of this caused by the director's own drinking and argumentative nature. The 1988 version is a gem though, Peckinpah's original vision of the film restored. 

We're here for the soundtrack though and the soundtrack was by Bob Dylan. Peckinpah, unbelievably, had never heard of Dylan- Kristofferson brought Bob down, Bob played him a song, and Peckinpah hired him straight away. Dylan appeared in the film too, as an enigmatic character called Alias. In 1973 Bob was a background presence. Self Portrait, released in 1970, seemed a deliberate attempt to shed fans, to get people to leave him alone and to lose the Spokesman for a Generation tag. 'What is this shit?', Greil Marcus famously wrote when reviewing it. It was followed by New Morning, Bob sounding more like Dylan again but still for many a little tame. In 1972 and 1973 there was nothing though, radio silence, until Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. 

The Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid soundtrack is an overlooked Dylan album- or rather, nine of the songs are overlooked and the other is Knocking On Heaven's Door, a worldwide hit, with Roger McGuinn and Jim Keltner on guitar and bass, a song which has suffered from being covered by too many people, usually badly. The other nine (of the twenty four recorded at various sessions, fourteen still unreleased) include four versions of Billy, any one of which is as good as much of what Dylan released in the 70s. This one is Billy 7...

Billy 7

Billy (Main Title Theme) is an instrumental (with Booker T Jones on bass) and none the worse for it. Billy 1, Billy 4 and Billy 7 all have words, slightly different versions and lyrics, different takes on the film and its themes. 

'Spend the night with some sweet senorita
Into her dark hallway she will lead you
In some lonesome shadow she might greet you
Billy you’re so doggone far away from home

They say that Pat Garrett's got your number
Sleep with one eye open when you slumber
Every little sound just might be thunder
Thunder from the barrel of a gun

Maybe you will find yourself tomorrow
Drinking in some bar to hide your sorrow
Spending the time that you borrow
Figuring a way to get back home'

Mani

The Stone Roses were one of those bands that, in the overly dramatic words of the youth and the music press, changed your life. In 1989 they changed the way I looked at the world, they changed my relationship with music, made it deeper and more intense (and I was already pretty far gone before that). The news yesterday that bassist Mani died suddenly aged 63 is hard to take- a Stone Rose, Mani the rogue Rose, gone. Awful. 

Picture credit where it's due- the photo above was taken by my friend Darren when The Stone Roses played Manchester's International 22 in 1987, a youthful Mani caught staring out into the crowd, paint splattered bass at hand. Thank you Darren for letting me use it. 

Edit: Darren shared this one with me too, Mani and Ian at the same gig...

I first saw The Stone Roses at Liverpool Polytechnic (the Haigh Building, now demolished), 4th May 1989. At this point I had a couple of singles- Sally Cinnamon was my first encounter with them. They changed going to gigs for me that night, they were electrifying, four young men with absolute self belief, locked in and playing the songs which would make up the debut album (the album was released the same week as the Liverpool gig). Mani's bass was as much a part of that sound, that late 80s psychedelic sound, bolstered by the best rhythm section in town, as John Squire's guitar playing and Reni's out of this world drumming. The rumble of bass that slowly brings I Wanna Be Adored in. The instant hit of the bass intro to She Bangs The Drums. The heavy Hendrix grove of Standing Here. The subtler dynamics of Shoot You Down. The thrill of the bassline and snare that opens I Am The Resurrection and the epic twisting, funked up groove of its extended instrumental ending. All these things took hold of me that night at Liverpool Poly- in some ways it's the gig I judge all gigs since against. 

At the start of that year they appeared on Tony Wilson's late night, north west only Granada TV music programme, The Other Side Of Midnight playing Waterfall, a band as cool as fuck and who know it, the genuine article. Mani, paint splattered Rickenbacker bass, black and white striped t- shirt, flicking his fringe out of his eyes, a group on the cusp.

By the end of 1989 they world was theirs. The appeared on BBC 2 early evening show Rapido, interviewed at Battery Studios in North London and wandering round the streets. At one point Mani nips into a hairdressers to wash his locks. Fools Gold turns up in the studio playback, a monster of a song driven by a monster of a bassline- the breakbeat, the guitars, the whispered vocal are all vital but the thing that moves Fools Gold, that drives it, is Mani's bass. 

Fools Gold took them to Top Of The Pops, a night that felt seismic, The Roses and Happy Mondays crashing into the chart world and inanities of early evening pop music television, Mani in red swinging his bass around, flares flapping around his legs. A nation of indie kids get up and dance. 

I saw them again- Spike Island, the Apollo in 1994 on the Second Coming tour (Reni was gone by that point) and then in 2011 at the re- union warm up at Warrington Parr Hall, an amazing night. Mani looked as pleased as anyone that it had actually happened, bounding onto the stage and celebrating like he'd scored a winning goal in injury time and then, in front of his bass cabinet and amp adorned with his collection of Toby jugs, that familiar rumble of bass notes faded in, dum dum dum dum/ dim dim dim dim/ dum dum dum dum/ der de der... 'I don't have to sell my soul he's already in me...'.

1990's single One Love came with this B-side, a seven minute swamp groove with Mani's bass central to the sound...

Something's Burning

By 2016 the Roses re- union rolled on and they did four shows at the Etihad (playing at Manchester City's ground was surely a shocker for Mani, a life long match going United fan). By this point they were being adored by two generations of fans. I took these two pics as mayhem ensued around us...

When the Roses ended Mani went onto Primal Scream, giving that band a much needed shot in the arm (poor choice of phrase possibly), dragging his bass onto Vanishing Point and giving them an energy and a sound they'd missed. Live Primal Scream were untouchable with Mani on board- his bass playing part of the guitar army era of Andrew Innes, Throb and Kevin Shields. Mani said that other than The Roses there were only three bands he'd consider joining- Primal Scream, The Jesus And Mary Chain and The Beastie Boys. I'd have happily seen him play with the other two as well...

There's so much more I could write. The Stone Roses- Ian, John, Mani and Reni- have been a central part of my musical life for over three and a half decades. Their music rewired me, changed my DNA. I feel privileged to have seen them back then and to still have that debut album and the songs from those singles, from 1988 through to 1990, to still get so much enjoyment from them when I hear them and play them. There's something special about those songs that stadium tours and late stage capitalism can't tarnish. The Roses were from round here, they were us on stage, us on record, four ordinary Mancunians but also they were something else, something so un- ordinary that they transformed themselves when they played together- and by doing that they transformed us too. 

Where Angels Play

Gary Mani Mounfield. RIP. 

Still Feel The Rain

This record, Still Feel The Rain by Stex, was released on 19th November 1990, thirty five years ago yesterday. 

Still Feel The Rain (The Grid Remix)

It rolls in on a very danceable, very 1990 breakbeat. There's a clipped, funky guitar riff, the spirit of Nile Rodgers has been conjured into acid house. A bumpy bassline, sounding like The Orb or The Grid. And then a vocal, a female lead joined by a male on the chorus, 'I still feel the rain now the storm is over/ Still the cold when you open the door'. Wonderful uptempo house/ pop. 

Stex briefly promised to be a Sly Stone for the 90s. it wasn't to be- an album, Spiritual Dance, didn't follow until 1992. Still Feel The Rain got some music press coverage and should have been a smash hit. The press coverage came via two factors- the single was remixed by The Grid and the guitar was played by Johnny Marr. 

Richard Norris and Dave Ball were just starting out as The Grid in 1990- singles like Floatation and A Beat called Love and an album, Electric Head, saw them flying their flag high. It's easy to see why Johnny Marr was happy to play on Still Feel The Rain. He was post- Smiths, Chic had always been an influence on his guitar playing and in 1990 he was perfectly placed to enjoy acid house. He was repositioning himself away from those Smiths fans who still blamed him for breaking up the band, playing on a slice of good time, acid house pop, grooving in the video with hair cropped short and wearing white with a gold necklace. Johnny's moved on writ large. 

It didn't work out for Stex- there was an album and a handful more singles. Better to have made one great single than none at all and this record is a perfect little time capsule,a postcard from 1990. 

Innenleben

I've written many times about Exeter's Mighty Force, a label reborn in 2019 and since then responsible for a run of great electronic albums and EPs from a huge roster of artists including David Harrow, Long Range Desert Group, Reverb Delay, M- Paths, D3, Dylab, Fluffy Inside, Myoptik, Boxheater Jackson, Yorkshire Machines, KAMS, Paddy Thorne, Golden Donna and more besides. 

At the end of October SubDan returned with a full length album, Innenleben. All ten tracks, as well as the album itself, have German titles. It opens with Denkmuster (translation 'thought patterns' or 'mindset'), a setting out of the stall, ticking hi hats, bleeps and bass, lovely machine repetition- there's a laser focus on Innenleben, absolute precision and timing, the occasional human voice dropped in, but there's also a lot of feeling and a lot of soul. 

Liebesgefluster (translation, love whispering- and don't the Germans have a word for everything) is a technoid joy, warm and minimal, the synth hook bouncing around, robotic voices just within earshot muttering sweet nothings, and the drums and bass gathering pace. 

This music, streamlined, linear and all forwards momentum, always puts me in mind of travel and transport (something Kraftwerk picked up on half a century ago with Autobahn and Trans- Europe Express)- it's the sound of gliding through miles of countryside after dark on the rails or under the sodium lights on the motorway, the white lines shooting past, miles falling away. 

Translating the song titles is a joy in itself. There is Gedankenfrei (thoughts are free) and Vorstellungskraft (imagination). At the end there is the tile track, Innenleben (inner life), a beatless and weightless ambient techno affair with loops that repeat until dissolving into nothing. Lovely stuff. Get it at Bandcamp.

It's Plain To See

This song revolved back into my life at the weekend and I played it umpteen times on Sunday, something about it really striking a chord. 

I'm Not The Man I Used To Be

How good is that? I was reminded on Sunday evening that it was a favourite of Drew of the now dormant but once essential music blog, Across The Kitchen Table. 

In 1989 Fine Young Cannibals were making a second album, The Raw And The Cooked. Some of the songs that would appear on it were already out- their cover of Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't Have Fallen In Love With) was in Jonathan Demme's 1986 film Something Wild and Good Thing, Tell Me What and Hard As It Is all showed up in Barry Levinson's 1987 film Tin Men (with FYC playing a band in a nightclub in the film). They were moving away from the 60s soul towards something more contemporary. Andy Cox and David Steele had made an acid house inspired single as Two Men A Drum Machine And A Trumpet while singer Roland Gift was acting in Sammy And Rosie Get Laid and Scandal. They reunited and the band told their label they wanted Prince to produce the rest of the album. Prince wasn't available but strings were pulled and Fine Young Cannibals ended up in Paisley Park with David Z, a member of Prince's Revolution. The big hit single She Drives Me Crazy came from those sessions as did I'm Not The Man I Used To Be. 

I'm Not The Man I Used To Be is built around a James Brown drum loop, the ever dependable and in 1989 increasingly ubiquitous Funky Drummer, a subtle guitar part and some lovely synth chords. Roland Gift's voice was indeed a gift and his vocal is wonderful, introspective and heartfelt, full of regret and emotion. It's not house music but it's coming from that plac. 

'Oh, it's plain and it's a shame/ I can't explain/ But I'm not the man I used to be'

It was the fourth single off the album- record companies really rinsed albums back in the 80s. Of the remixes and extended versions the Jazzie B and Nellee Hooper remix is a winner. I don't have an mp3 but it's on Youtube.

I once saw Roland Gift in real life, walking down the street in Islington one evening in the mid- 90s when we used to spend quite a bit of time in that part of London. He has that kind of charisma and style that makes it look like he's in a video when he's doing nothing more than walking down a North London street after dark. Fine Young Cannibals didn't make any more albums, more's the pity- the former Beat pair of Andy and David and Roland drifted apart and they called it a day in 1992. Roland apparently resurfaced this summer playing two gigs. 

Monday's Long Songs

Back in July I wrote about Galactic Ride, a solo single from Gordon Kaye, a Brighton based DJ and producer who has been active in the Brighton music scene (and beyond) since the mid- 80s. This Friday Galactic Ride is released in a variety of versions including a brand new vocal version. Gordon originally saw Galactic Ride as a nine minute Cosmic Disco instrumental but his daughter Gabriella arranged a vocal for it and now its difficult to imagine it without it...

Chuggy cosmic/ Balearic that really moves when the bassline hits a minute in and Gabriella's vocal soars over the dreamy synth arpeggios. It sounded great back in the summer and has now returned in its orbit to light up late November. Galactic Ride is out this Friday- pre- order at Bandcamp. 

Out last week was a Hardway Bros remix of Le Carousel's We're All Gonna Hurt. The original version came out back in February this year and has been much played by Sean Johnston at ALFOS nights up and down the country. It seemed right therefore that Sean did a remix- which he ahs and it more than delivers the goods, with a heavy new breakbeat that kicks and a monstrous bassline is so huge it's almost a living breathing entity. The second half, the vocal surfacing with the line, 'Sooner or later/ We're all gonna hurt', as the synths bounce around, the pianos clang and the bassline buzzes, is genuinely thrilling. Nine minutes of electronic fun from Phil Kieran in Belfast. Get it at Bandcamp. 

Forty Minutes Of Grant Hart

Last Wednesday's Husker Du post, three albums from a period of a little over a year and a new box set of live recordings at gigs from 1985 sent me back to the Husker Du back catalogue and then into some of Grant Hart's post Husker albums. A Sunday mix seemed like a good idea (to quote Bob Mould who will turn up with his own mix sometime soon). Grant was a singular character in US 80s hardcore/ punk and a fine songwriter and drummer. I was genuinely saddened by his death from cancer in 2017. 

Grant and Bob had a difficult relationship- they could both be difficult with each other and the pair's non- communication in 1987 contributed to Husker Du's split. They made up in the end, when Grant's illness was terminal and laid some ghosts to rest. 

Grant's life was tinged with tragedy and difficulties. His older brother was killed by a drunk driver when Grant was ten. Grant inherited his drum kit. Both Grant and Bob struggled with their sexuality as young men in the early 80s punk world, a place where homophobic attitudes were often very close to the surface (Bob came out in the 90s, Grant was openly bisexual). In the late 80s Grant had an HIV Positive misdiagnosis and was spent some time dealing with heroin addiction (which contributed to Husker Du's break up). In 2011 his house caught fire and burned to the ground and his mother died a month later. 

Let's remember Grant this way, with eleven songs that burn with passion, desire, emotion and the punk rock flame...

Forty Minutes Of Grant Hart 

• 2541
• Turn On The News
• Green Eyes
• Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely
• She Can Hear The Angels Coming
• My Regrets
• The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill
• You Can Make It At Home
• You're The Reflection Of The Moon On The Water
• Old Empire (BBC Session)
• Keep Hanging On

2541 was a solo single from 1988, from Grant's debut solo album Intolerance (December 1989 on SST), an album on which he played all the instruments and produced. After the guitar assault of Husker Du Grant shifted to organ as the central instrument for Intolerance and on 2541 acoustic guitar. 2541 is a story song, a couple move in together and then split, told in a few verses with some very well drawn touches and details. A personal song that has universal appeal. She Can Hear The Angels Coming is also from Intolerance. Grant got the front cover of Sounds when Intolerance was released. I still have a copy in my archive (boxes in the loft) of music press and magazines. 

Turn On The News is from 1984's double album Zen Arcade, the releases that lifted Husker Du apart from their peers. Doomy piano note, TV news samples at the start, a long fade in and then the three Huskers power into some frenzied punk/ psyche. Great backing vocals on this one as Grant howls away up front and Bob riffs away.

Green Eyes and Keep Hanging On are from 1985's Flip Your Wig, Husker Du's pinnacle in songs and sound, and also home to some Grant Hart masterpieces. Keep Hanging On is everything a Grant Hart Husker Du song should be. Green Eyes rings and clamours, with cymbals splashing and guitars crunching. 

Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely is from Husker Du's major label debut 1986's Candy Apple Grey. Not to damn Candy Apple Grey with faint praise but it's one of the foundation stones of 90s alt- rock, a slightly more introverted and slowed down approach, acoustic guitars higher in the mix. Don't Want To Know... was a single too which came with Husker Du's assault on The Beatles' Helter Skelter. Don't Want To Know... is neither acoustic nor slowed down. 

My Regrets is from 2009's Hot Wax, an album I love. Grant started it in 2005, travelling to Montreal to record with members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion before finishing it on his own. My Regrets is the album's stately, confessional closing song, with dense clanging guitars and stirring vocals. You're The Reflection Of The Moon On The Water opens Hot Wax, the lyrics a series of Buddhist sayings and the music a burning fire.   

The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill is from New Day Rising, one of two Husker Du albums in 1985. After the three word howl of the title song Grant's song bursts in, all feeling, noise and melody. On finding out that Heaven Hill is a US brand of whiskey, the song's lyrics and subject take on a different tone. 

After Intolerance Grant formed nova Mob, a band in which he played guitar and sang. In 1991 they released The Last Days Of Pompeii, an album with lyrics taking in Pliny The Younger, Werner von Braun and the Nordic God of War. Their second and final album, self titled, came out in 1994. Old Empire opened it and was played at a BBC Session in 1994 hosted by Marc Riley. 

You Can Make It At Home is from the final Husker Du album, a double released in 1987 called Warehouse: Songs And Stories. It is packed with great late period Bob and Grant songs but it also sounds like an end is nearing, it's there in the tone and the feel. On You Can Live At Home, the final Husker Du song on the final Husker Du album Grant and Bob duel to have the last word, Bob peeling off  notes amid feedback, Grant banging the drums and singing the line over and over, 'you can live at home now...', the song a long fade out, no one wanting to find the way to bring it to a stop. 

Soundtrack Saturday

In late July I was sitting on the roof terrace of a hotel bar in Napoli overlooking the Bay of Naples with Mount Vesuvius behind me drinking this negroni (a cocktail I became quite partial to in the summer, equal parts gin, Campari and Vermouth Rosso, garnished with some orange peel, a bittersweet drink that went down very well on holiday in Italy). It seems so unlikely now with the British autumn in full effect- at the time of writing this it is dark early and pouring down. So it goes. 

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' working relationship has gone well beyond the Bad Seeds (Warren joined in The Bad Seeds in 1994 and has become Nick's right hand man. He was instrumental in Grinderman too). Their soundtrack work is spread over a range of films and documentaries, starting in 2007 with The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and The English Surgeon and then really gathering acclaim with the soundtrack to The Road two years later. There are many others, full length scores, most recently Back To Black (a biopic about Amy Winehouse which I had the misfortune to watch one evening last year. The soundtrack was rather good though). 

Cave has spoken about how their collaborations for film scores comprise a totally different approach than the writing for The Bad Seeds- Warren records music all the time, sometimes just loops, rhythms, a couple of minutes of synth or violin. He sends it to Nick who then works on it, quickly and usually without the pressure of having to present it to a band for working up into a song or having to provide lyrics for it. There's a compilation called White Lunar, two CDs, which rounds up the soundtracks for The Proposition, Jesse James, The Road, The English Surgeon and more with a handful of otherwise unreleased pieces that works really well as a full album, disc one especially. Instrumentals, some only a couple of minutes long, piano, some bass, some violin. Some of it is elegiac, mournful, melancholic. Some of it is tense and droney. Some bleak. Cave's voice appears occasionally, croaking or whispering. It works as a standalone album without the weight that The Bad Seeds songs sometimes bring with them. 

This is from The Road, the 2009 film of Cormac McCarthy's novel. The book and film tell the story of a man and his son trekking through a post- apocalyptic North American wilderness. It's never quite clear what the apocalypse consisted of but it's truly end times- harrowing and tense and unbearably moving in places. For some reason I read the novel while Isaac was in hospital with meningitis in 2008, a six week stay that involved emergency hospitalisation, a coma, brain surgery, a desperate close to death forty eight hours and months of recovery for Isaac. We had a lot of time sitting by his bed and I guess the book didn't seem as bleak in those circumstances as it might otherwise. This piece of music, mainly gentle piano is lovely.

The Road

Song For Bob is from The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford starred Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, a 21st century Western that stands up (as does Unforgiven, a similarly toned modern Western). Cave appears in the film briefly as a balladeer in a saloon. Song For Bob is six minutes long, very different from The Road- slow paced and subtle, a lead violin backed by a string section, piano and some soft padding bass notes. 

Song For Bob

In 2021 Nick and Warren provided the score for a documentary about snow leopards called La Panthere Des Neiges. The long title track has drawn out synth chords and twinkling sounds, violin (again) providing some tension, piano notes rippling in, and a build up that breaks eventually with a ghostly choir and Cave singing, ending with the repeated line, 'We are not alone'. Nick didn't write the words- they were by the film's writer Sylvain Tesson- but they feel like they fit perfectly with Nick's post- Skeleton Tree, post- Ghosteen, Carnage world, a feeling of survival and of something bigger than yourself. 'I was observed/ We are not alone'. Rather beautiful all told. 

L'apparition: We Are Not Alone

Friday Three Times

Today we're at one of those bloggers standby types of post, songs named after the day of the week that we've arrived at- Friday. The weeks seem long at the moment and Friday is always welcome. Two of the three Friday songs today have connections to recent Bagging Area posts and the third has a connection to an album that came out this year and has been largely unnoticed. 

Friday number one- The Replacements...

Love You Till Friday (Live at Cabaret Metro 1986)

The Replacements were Minneapolis contemporaries of Wednesday's postees Husker Du and were considered to be the ones most likely to make the jump to a major label- a more palatable, classic rock 'n' roll sound- The Replacements were quite capable of scuppering those kind of expectations by their own willful self- sabotage. In 2023 a remixed and re- issued box set version of their 1985 album Tim was released, a remix that actually made the songs entirely new, the really poorly mixed mid- 80s album totally redone and better for it. There was a live disc, The Replacements kicking the arse out of their own songs at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago in 1986, of which Love You Till Friday was their second song, rattled off in between the ridiculous and the sublime, between set opener Gary's Got A Boner and third song Bastards Of Young. And that's The Replacements all over. 

Friday number two- Jack Kerouac...

Friday Afternoon In The Universe

Jack Kerouac's On The Road was the subject of a Saturday Soundtrack post a few weeks ago. Friday Afternoon In The Universe is from a very long narrative poem Kerouac wrote called Old Angel Midnight, a 'monologue of the world' Kerouac dreamed up in Tangiers in 1956 and then began in a notebook while staying in a cabin with Gary Snyder later the same year. Kerouac called it Spontaneous prose, naked word babble and automatic doodle writing. A judge in a censorship case called it a prose picnic. Whatever it's called, Friday afternoon in the universe is a good time and place to be in. 

Friday number three, Half Man Half Biscuit...

Friday Night And The Gates Are Low

In 1995 Wirral's finest released their second album Some Call It Godcore. Friday Night And The Gates Are Low is a lamentation for Friday night football, Tranmere Rovers playing in the rain in front of a small crowd and the 'bastard slip of a sub's ruined my weekend'. Nigel signs off with 'Friday night and I just love complaining/ And no I haven't got anything better to do'.

In the summer of this year HMHB released their sixteenth album, All Asimov And No Fresh Air. I will return to it- its very much business as usual, in other words thirteen slices of customary laugh out loud lyrics coupled obscure references to modern life and some genuinely moving moments. If you haven't heard it, you really should. 

Cowboy Time

Mike Wilson records as 100 Poems, straight outta Kildare, Ireland. Since January 2024 he's released six albums of music sample based songs, edits and original compositions, straddling the wiggly line between Balearic, dub and all sorts of electronic delights, and earlier this year throwing some acid boogie, Americana and cosmic country and western into the stew. His newest album, Rodeo Disco, came out last week and continues down that route, with uptempo floor fillers, dub basslines and some more Western cowboy business. For Mike, music is about creating but also about facing life full on and in his own words, there to help 'shake off the black dog'.

Rodeo Disco opens with a pair of bangers, the Doobie Brothers cosmic funk house of Let The Music Play and an Elvis sampling Rockin' Dub Music, Elvis coming to us from an interview in 1953 being asked about juvenile delinquency over slo mo beats and whooshes. On Freedom Fears Nothing there are acoustic guitars and more slowed down tempos and Martin Luther King, recorded speaking the night before his death in Memphis, a speech that almost prefigures his assassination the following day.  Sister Dave's Rodeo Show goes Western and gospel- acid beats and a Brian Christopher vocal and La Danse De Mardi Gras spins us back onto the floor with fiddles and Cajun dance. 

The final two songs bring the album home in emotional fashion and demonstrate Mike's range. On Big Purple Hands there is a Seamus O'Rourke vocal, reading from his book Leaning On Gates, a novel from Leitrim with home truths, booze, bedsits in Dublin, work in New York and an author/ narrator finding out his place in the world. Mike's drums and synths provide a clattering backing that veers into cosmic territory, a splicing of genres and cultures that works really well, O'Rourke's conversational style making it sound like you're sitting in a pub listening to him while tow bands compete to be heard, a cosmic country and an Irish jig outfit. On the closing song Wand'rin' Dub, Lee Marvin's famous number one single, Wandr'in' Star, is reworked with Lee's gravelly voice embellished with waves, acid beats and bleeps, dub space and a ticking drum machine. Wandr'in' Star was played at the end of Joe Strummer's funeral which adds a certain poignancy to it- the anniversary of Joe's death is coming up next month. 

You can find Rodeo Disco at Bandcamp, a free/ pay what you want deal. Any monies raised are going to support two mental health charities close to Mike's heart. 

The Western theme on this 100 Poems album and my Soundtrack Saturday post last weekend have brought a cowboy and Western themed vibe to Bagging Area. There are lots of songs and artists with the word Cowboy in my music folders. Cowboy Junkies and Cowboys International have both featured here before and Midnight Cowboy was a Soundtrack Saturday post earlier this year as was Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Here are some more cowboys...

Cowboy George

Cowboy George is from The Fall's Your Future Our Clutter, their twenty seventh studio album, released in 2010 (which also featured a cover of Wanda Jackson's rockabilly Western song Funnel Of Love). Taut slide guitar, rumbling bass and clattering drums with the inimitable Mark E. Smith in rampant form with lines about low fat Limeys, broken bottles and Robin redbreast. 

Cowboys Are Square

It's been ages since I posted any Billy Childish, like Mark E Smith a total one off with a prodigious work rate and idiosyncratic worldview. Cowboys Are Square was on Thee Headcoats 1990 album The Kids Are Al Square: This Is Hip! In the last few months Billy has reunited Thee Headcoats and released a new album. They've probably recorded a new one in the time it took to write this blogpost. Billy's anti- cowboy obviously, cowboys are square, Indians are best.

Cowboys

Cowboys was the opening song on Portishead's second album. Claustrophobic and dense, hip hop/ jazz noir with Beth's lyrics eviscerating the British establishment. 

Cowboys And Indians

Cowboys And Indians is Pearl Harbour and The Explosions, a 1980 rock 'n' roll single in the Jerry Lee Lewis style, and also from the album Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost Too. Pearl arrived in London, had a relationship with Kosmo Vinyl, married Paul Simonon, supported The Clash and got members of The Clash, The Blockheads and Whirlwind to play on the album along with BJ Cole. 

Hey Cowboy

Lee Hazlewood recorded Cowboy In Sweden in 1970, a collection of country/ cowboy songs but done with that psychedelic, cinematic sound Lee pioneered. Nina Lizell sings with Lee on Hey Cowboy. 

Paul Simonon is a big Lee Hazlewood fan and was married to Pearl Harbour. Lee Marvin was played at Joe Strummer's funeral and is on the final track on 100 Poems' Rodeo Disco. The connections are everywhere. Sometimes these things just come together as I write them. 

Miracle

Between July 1984 and September 1985 Husker Du released three albums, the first  of which (Zen Arcade) was a double (and preceded by a non- album single, their scorching cover of Eight Miles High), followed by New Day Rising and then Flip Your Wig. Fifty two songs. Each album raised the bar, both songwriters, Bob Mould and Grant Hart, in a million miles an hour race to keep moving, keep writing and playing. 

Zen Arcade is a punk concept album of sorts, Bob Mould telling the story of a young boy leaving home and finding the world is a difficult and tough place to live in. It is a blur of riffs, melodies and rhythms, high octane punk rock filtered through psychedelia opening with Mould's killer Something I Learned Today and Grant Hart contributing a pair of huge songs- Pink Turns To Grey and Turn On The News. On the last song, Reoccurring Dreams, they play a hardcore jazz- punk instrumental, fourteen minutes long and not a moment wasted. 

Something I Learned Today *

New Day Rising, released six months later, is even better. Grant Hart was a songwriting, singing drummer whose long hair, love beads and bare feet marked him out as a non- conformist in US punk's sometimes fairly orthodox world. On New Day Rising he throws in The Girl Who Lived On Heaven Hill, Terms Of Psychic Warfare and Books About UFOs. Mould, struggling with alcohol and sexuality, countered with the title track, Celebrated Summer (where Husker Du slow down and Mould plays an acoustic guitar) and I Apologise among the album's songs, an embarrassment of riches. It sounds tinny and scratchy to modern ears, the guitars at times like a jetwash being sprayed on a metal fence, the bottom end hardly there at all. 

The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill

Six months after that they put out their last album for SST, Flip Your Wig, the band producing themselves for the first time and the sound bigger and fuller, the songs even better, everything slightly clearer (that's not to say Mould had turned the distortion down, he really hadn't)- Every Everything, Green Eyes, Hate Paper Doll, the single Makes No Sense At All, Divide And Conquer, Keep Hanging On (Grant's Husker Du peak for me), Find Me and Private Plane. Mould says Flip Your Wig is their best album and I can go with that. The fact it came within fourteen months of Zen Arcade is incredible.

Keep Hanging On

I don't think you'll hear a better song that that today. Please let me know if you do. 

Husker Du also toured incessantly, the three men playing across the USA and Europe, scorching a trail of melodic, emotional, hair raising live performances, playing as if Armageddon were upon them and they had just thirty minutes left and everything depended on Husker Du giving their all. Bassist Greg Norton has recently been working on a box set of live performances from 1985, an album called 1985: The Miracle Year. The first disc (single CD or double vinyl) is a full show from First Avenue in their home town Minneapolis, 30th January 1985, kicking off with the three word blast of New Day Rising and then powering their way through a set that takes in It's Not Funny Anymore (from 1983's Metal Circus) and then cherry picks from the Zen Arcade and New Day Rising. The sound is rough, it is like being there, the guitars are buzzsaws and hornet's nests, the drums are frenetic, the bass is big and muscular (more so than on some of recorded versions), and Mould and Hart sing their throats raw. They do the covers, searing versions of Eight Miles High, Ticket To Ride and Love Is All Around

The second CD/ pair of records is taken from a variety of gigs- Boulder, Long Beach, Newport, Washington, Hoboken, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Lausanne and Seattle- including songs form their at that point unreleased major label debut Candy Apple Grey (Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely, Hardly Getting Over It and Sorry Somehow). It's thrilling stuff, life affirming and exhilarating to listen to to forty years later, transcendent even. You can hear it all at Bandcamp. Husker Du can never reform- poor Grant died in 2017 aged fifty six. But we can remember them through these recordings, a band full of life. Bob Mould has recently reformed Sugar for some live shows next year. But that's another story. 

A Good Idea

* This version of Something I Learned Today is one I found on the internet years ago, remastered and with the bottom end boosted. I can't remember who did this and its entirely unofficial- it does demonstrate that if Greg Ginn ever allowed someone to remaster the Husker Du SST back catalogue it would be a very worthwhile exercise.  

Newsun

Pandit Pam Pam's latest album, Newsun, came out last Friday. The ten tracks on Newsun are an ambient treat, a beguiling and hypnotic blend of field recordings and ambient synth sounds, analogue and digital merged and layered. The opener, Diogo Crying, starts off with the sound of Eduardo's infant son and the wind and then piano chords gradually work their way in. Jun 14th is lovely experimental ambient (and coincidentally my daughter's birthday). Halfway through a drum machine pitter- patters in as gentle guitar chords descend. Khords has reverb FX, synths and street sounds- traffic, voices, the outside world and music brought together. 

Lullaby For Lara is the sound of being half asleep, with repeating melodies dancing about. Closer, Peter and Beijo all sound like ideas that became sound sketches and then became tracks- there's an immediacy to them and the sense that you're listening to the world passing by. The album's final track is also the longest, Pascoa, almost eight minutes of gorgeous, slowly unfolding ambience, music that captures the passing of time, daybreak and sunrise. You can listen and buy Newsun at Bandcamp. 

Monday's Long Songs

Sewell And The Gong's Patron Saint Of Elsewhere is one of my most played LPs of this year, a beautifully lightfooted, reflective collection of instrumentals finding a sweet spot somewhere in the middle of folk, Balearic and cosmic ambient. Quiet Storm, one of the album's seven tracks, has recently been released as a pair of remixes. Manchester's Ruf Dug, DJ, producer, radio show host and label boss, turns in a wonderful six minute and forty eight seconds long version, beautifully weighted ambient with some deep bass and a bell. A vocal sample warns of the perils of anger and its power to cause division. 

After that there's an even longer Chris Coco remix, nine minutes of slow motion Balearica with bubbling bass, storm clouds and thunder, chanting, acoustic guitar and eventually- wait for it- a massively slowed down shout of 'Can you feel it?', borrowed from Mr. Fingers, that sent shivers up and down my spine the first time I heard it. 

Get the remixes and the original at Bandcamp. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Bunnymen

I've been thinking about an Echo And The Bunnymen mix for ages without committing. Part of me just wanted to do the first four albums, the original line up of McCulloch, Sergeant, Pattinson and De Freitas, from Eric's to Ocean Rain. Part of me wanted to just sling together my favourite Bunnymen songs (more or less the same thing actually). Part of me wanted to do just B-sides and album songs. These things may still happen. But I enjoyed the pair of New Order mixes I did earlier this year where I started with a New Order song and went where it suggested, taking in solo songs, remixes, covers, edits and songs that sounded New Order- esque- so I used that as a guide and started a Bunnymen mix in a similar vein. There are edits and solo songs, B-sides and singles, outliers in the Bunnymen world. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Bunnymen

• Into The Seventies
• Bedbugs And Ballyhoo (Single Version)
• Never Stop (Discoteque)
• BOTDH Peza Edit
• Thorn Of Crowns (Go Home Productions Remix)
• Lover Lover Lover (Indian Dawn Remix)
• The Killing Moon (T- Rek's Desert Disco Dub)
• Weird Gear

William Alfred Sergeant is Echo And The Bunnymen's guitarist, a sometime solo artist, memoir writer and all round good egg. In 2020 he released an an album of instrumentals called Things Inside. Into The Seventies was the opening track, a three minutes of finger picking and drones that sounds like the soundtrack to a late night TV programme. His side project with Les Pattinson, Poltergeist, released a fine album too, Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder), which I should have included in this mix. 

Bedbugs And Ballyhoo was originally a B-side to Bring On The Dancing Horses, a shimmering Bunnymen pop song with a jazzy, groovy B-side. It was re- recorded for the so- called Grey album, their fifth and self- titled album in 1987 (and then released as a single by WEA but I think everyone had pretty much given up on that album by that point). Ray Manzarek of The Doors plays keyboards. Bedbugs And Ballyhoo (along with The Game, Lips Like Sugar and one or two others) are proof that they could have made a really good album out of those songs if they'd not been falling out, had been more arsed and not smothered the songs in late 80s sheen. 

Never Stop is a 1983 single, a massive Bunnymen moment, released to coincide with gigs at the Royal Albert Hall- 'lay down thy raincoat and groove' they instructed. Strings, Ian doing his best Henry Fonda 'Good Gawd' impression and lyrics attacking Thatcherism. Will's bursts of guitar are pretty good too. Discoteque is the 12" mix and the rhythm section really could lay down their raincoats and groove. 

Peza is a DJ, producer and remixer/ edit artist. His version of Bring On The Dancing Horses is a 2019 nu- disco edit that doesn't too anything too radical but keep the song streamlined for the dancefloor. Dancing Horses is brilliant, shimmering 80s alt- pop.

Go Home Productions is/ was the name of Mark Vidler's remix/ edit/ mash up outfit- I featured quite a lot of his stuff back in the early days of this blog and he's been doing his thing since 2002. His unofficial version of Ocean Rain's Crown Of Thorns found its way to the band who liked it so much they put it out themselves. By contrast with Peza, Go Home Productions does monkey around with Thorn Of Crowns, completely reconstructing it, leaving Ian's C- C- C- cucumber, C- C- C- cabbage C- C- C- cauliflower malarkey on top. 

Ian left the Bunnymen and went solo in 1989. Hi first solo lp was Candleland, a low key and somewhat out of step album for 1989 but it's rather wonderful in its own way. His second solo album was 1992's Mysterio which was lead by a cover of Leonard Cohen's Lover Lover Lover. This remix, the Indian Dawn Remix, was by Mark 'Spike' Stent and is very 1992. He went on to work with the reformed Bunnymen on 1999's What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?, the Bunnymen reduced to just Ian and Will. Les left after realising that the things he grew frustrated about with Mac in the 80s were still frustrating and causing arguments in the 90s. 

The Killing Moon is perhaps their best known song- I'm sure it's their most streamed. It gained a whole new life after being included on the soundtrack to Donnie Darko in 2001. It is a superb song,both Ian's timeshifting, romantic lyrics and the swooning 80s post- punk/ psychedelic music. Something For Kate's cover and this dub disco remix came to me via its appearance at an ALFOS. Both Something For Kate and T- Rek are Australian and this cover/ remix is a bassline led, thumping nine minute gloom romp. Lovely. 

Weird Gear is from Everyman And Woman Is A Star, the 1991 album by Ultramarine with lyrics from a Kevin Ayres song, sung by Brendan Staunton and with strings sampled from The Cutter, a 1983 Bunnymen single/ highlight, high drama and urgency, happy losses and drops in the ocean. 

Soundtrack Saturday

As a child in the 1970s I was pretty much raised on TV Westerns. My Mum was/ is a huge fan and they were on television all the time. With fewer channels but also a smaller back catalogue of programmes, repeats of 60s films and TV shows was a way for air time to be filled cheaply. My childhood TV and film memories are a blur of cowboys, the prairies, Plains Indians, gun fights, saloons, wagon trains and the theme tunes connected to them. Rawhide was one of my Mum's favourites, a black and white show that ran from 1959 to 1965 and featured a young Clint Eastwood. The theme tune, sung by Frankie Laine, the life of the cowhand depicted with some realism, is a staple...

Rawhide

The Hollywood Westerns films had big themes. The Magnificent 7 seems to have been on a permanent loop of Saturday afternoon TV, the all star cast riding in to help out a village of Mexicans and save them from bandits. John Sturges' 1960 film, with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen (who disliked each other apparently) plus Charles Bronson, James Coburg, Robert Vaughan and Horst Buchholtz, never fails to bring about a Proustian Rush, and Elmer Bernstein's theme tune is epic Western personified...

The two big Western TV shows were Bonanza and The High Chaparral, seemingly on loop on the BBC. Bonanza was my Mum's favourite, those Cartwright boys making a living out west for fourteen seasons and 431 episodes, from 1959 through to 1973. Adam was eldest Cartwright boy. Make of that what you will. At least I wasn't named Hoss. Or Little Joe. The theme tune is a twiddly joy. 

The High Chaparral was a rival studio's challenge to Bonanza's weekly TV 60s supremacy in the States, with Big John Cannon and his family trying to make a go at ranching in Arizona, in Apache territory. The Native Americans were not always portrayed as sympathetically as they should have been in either series but in The High Chaparral they sometimes got the upper hand and Big John's disagreements were sometimes with the army whose treatment of the Indians was much worse. Big John had more of a live and let live attitude. David Rose's The High Chaparral theme tune is cut from similar cloth as the Bonanza one (both were orchestrated by Rose)... 

We had one of those Great Western Themes albums that knocked around by our Dansette when we were children along with some Beatles singles, Baron Knights 7"s, a compilation of 60s hits played by top London studio session musicians (the first pop songs I can remember were on this- Windmills Of Your Mind, Get Back, Harlem Shuffle and The Boxer are the ones that stuck with me). Those Western Themes albums were massive charity shop fodder, along with Tijuana Brass, marching bands and Paul Young, but I don't own one now. Maybe I should hit the chazzers and find one. 

In 1977 Star Wars came along, the 1960s Star Trek were early evening TV gold and in 1978 a friend passed me a copy of Starlord, the British sci fi comic that later merged with 2000AD. Both had a kind of sci fi realism/ dystopia, horror and social comment mixed with science fiction and fantasy and from that point, science fiction began to replace the Western. 

The Universe Smiles Upon You

Nothing says Friday like a porcelain Victorian statue in a spa town pump house of a mermaid riding a dopey looking sea creature. Am I right?

Given the ongoing binfire of politics at home here it the UK and abroad it was cheering this week to see the result of the mayoral election in New York. The victory of Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan born Muslim elected on a platform of rent freezes, universal childcare and free bus travel, is a lovely thing to see- and the fact he did it by sticking a pair of (metaphorical) middle fingers up to Trump even more so. It all put me in mind of this Dean Wareham song from 2021...

The Past Is Our Plaything

Meanwhile Khruangbin, ten years on from their debut album The Universe Smiles Upon You, have suddenly (yesterday) released a new version of that album, the ten tracks re- recorded and re- sequenced, new versions of old songs, the funky, mainly instrumental, gentle psychedelia of the three- piece out as The Universe Smiles Upon You ii. It's at Bandcamp. By coincidence I've recently gone back to last year's Khruangbin album A La Sala with this song especially standing out, May Ninth on November Seventh- and if that doesn't bring a little ray of summer sunshine into dark and gloomy November nothing will. 

May Ninth

That Khruangbin track may well be in my record bag tomorrow as I make my way up to Todmorden for another Flightpath Estate DJ outing at The Golden Lion. The line up is us, Steve Cobby and then A Love From Outer Space (Sean Johnston's autumnal ALFOS at The Golden Lion is legendary). Since we accepted the gig real life has intervened for some members of the Flightpath Estate DJ team so we are down to a bare bones, reduced squad tomorrow- mainly me flying solo with hopefully Dan turning up to bring some dub. If you fancy some afternoon/ early evening sounds with a pint, I'm on from 4- ish, playing the kind of stuff you hear here day in, day out. 

Last time we DJed there I threw Martin completely by leaving him to follow this Joe Strummer B-side, from the 1989 Island Hopping 12". Mango Street is a largely instrumental extended version of the song with spoons percussion, catgut guitar, whistling and Strummer at his most chilled out and playful. 

Mango Street

Vampire

This came out a week ago, in time for Halloween so I'm a week late but better late than never- and I guess there's no such thing as late for the undead. OBOST's three track EP Vampire is led by the title track and is filled with spooky noises- owls hoot and creatures crawl- but the music is a delight, alt- pop/ electronic synthwave with a lovely laid back vocal from young Bobby Langfield. 

Even better is the Blood Dub, a stripped back, darker and weirder version that sounds like something prowling in the woods after nightfall, insistent synths and bass, everything growing in intensity and becoming increasingly hypnotic. You'll have to invite him in. 

A third track, Keep Your Eyes Shut, is so far gone that its difficult to tell what's real and unreal- a soundscape backing of noise and screams, gurgles and something descending down a lift shift with random bursts of voices from American TV. Something wicked this way comes. 

You can get the EP Vampire at Bandcamp.

When I was a teenager I read Stephen King's Salem's Lot and it coincided with the 1979 David Soul version for TV being shown. I don't know if I had an overactive imagination but it got to a point where I could only read the book during daylight hours. The nightwalking vampires that terrorised the town of Jeruslaem's Lot in the novel had me scared stupid and I don't think I was easily spooked- I was reading 2000AD and Starlord as an eight year old and they both contained some horrific storylines not least Fiends Of The Eastern Front (actually that one did spook me). By coincidence while channel surfing late one evening at the weekend I happened upon an episode of the David Soul TV version of Salem's Lot and it brought it all back....

Boudicca

Justin Robertson's Five Green Moons album Moon 1, out a year ago, was a Bagging Area 2024 favourite. Happily Five Green Moons returns for late 2025, this time with Brix Smith on board with a new track Boudicca- named after the Queen of the Iceni people of South Eastern England who led a major uprising against the conquering imperial forces of ancient Rome. 

Dub is still very much the foundations of Five Green Moons along with some post- punk dread and some weirded out, wired folk. Justin's calling it pastoral dub which definitely fits. There's an album to follow at the end of the month and if it's all as diverting and enjoyable as Boudicca we'll have another Five Green Moons album soundtracking the end of a calendar year. 

Justin and Brix have crossed paths before. In 2022 Justin's Deadstock 33s and Brix collaborated on Brix Goes Tubular, a Bandcamp digital only EP, Brix's vocals on to of a rubbery bassline, post- punk/ dance sound. The dub version stripped it back and added some bleepery to produce Caribbean sounding dub.

Brix Goes Tubular (Dub Version)

Tremorous

Daniel Avery played New Century Hall on Friday night, Halloween, the same day as his new album Tremor was released. Tremor is a bit of a departure from the ambient/ acid/ techno he's known for and which has been present on some of my favourite albums from recent years- 2018's Song For Alpha, 2020's Love + Light and Illusion Of Time, 2021's Together In Static and 2022's Ultra Truth. That's quite the run of albums. Tremor brings a huge new sound, guitars and early 90s industrial rock and guests including Alison Mosshart from The Kills. His set on Friday night starts with the Tremor sound a d a full band, Daniel centre stage behind a rack of kit, guitarists and bassist to the left and a very loud drummer stage right. 

The first part of the set is songs from Tremor, Greasy Off The Starting Line (the Alison Mosshart song) among them, the vocals played from recordings. It's a huge sound, the band have mastered the tensions and dynamics, Daniel playing ominous synth sounds and then the three musicians suddenly crashing in as one, producing an enormous, pile driving sound, the intensity and power of Nine Inch Nails but without the frontman. It's a maximalist minimalism, just four people making a massive noise. It's impressive if a little alienating, the spotlights shining bright white beams of light into the blackness.

After a clutch of songs from Tremor the band disappear and Daniel switches things completely and it becomes more like a DJ gig, swerving into the areas he's best known for, peaky acid techno, 808s and synths, the backlit stage suddenly a club and the crowd moving. He cherry picks moments from his albums, short blasts of acid, occasional dropouts to ambient synth interludes and then crunching electronic drums hitting back in. 

The third part of the gig sees the band come back onstage and a warmer full band sound- there's a lovely ambient piece and then the 80s alt- pop of Rapture In Blue, the most accessible song on Tremor with Cecile Believe's vocals (again from tape) filling the room.

The stage lights are red now and it's fully gig territory and a short run of songs take us to the finale, Drone Logic from 2013's album of the same name, his debut and the one that for some of us was a re- entry point back into techno. Played live Drone Logic's acid squiggle bassline is a living, breathing thing, a monster (on Halloween appropriately enough) and the synths and 808 bounce around the wooden paneled modernist hall. 

Drone Logic

November

This rainbow appeared when I went to the cemetery yesterday to see Isaac, a full arch overhead- it was nice for a moment, this natural display lighting up the grey skies overhead. I try to go every weekend and at least pop by, leave some flowers and say hello. These small acts of remembrance have become important and it feels OK now, funnily it actually feels like we're going to see him in a way. 

November is a fucker. Isaac's birthday is the 23rd (he was 23 when he died and would have been 27 this month had he lived). He died a week after his birthday on the 30th November 2021. Those two dates, so close together, make November really difficult. Last year, the third anniversary, was as bad as the two previous ones- oddly, the actual days themselves weren't too bad- we went to see him and then went and did something with the day that seemed to be fitting. But the build up to his birthday, the next three weeks, and then the week between the two- they're really hard and I think we can all feel that coming again now the calendar's ticked over into November. The day after the anniversary of his death it's December with everything that that month brings. 

I was hoping that this year might be slightly better, a little easier but at the same time I'm not expecting it to be. A friend with experience in these matters but a good few years ahead of us said to me recently that, 'everyone assumes grief is linear and it most certainly isn't'. Which is very true. I'm also in a new workplace where people on the whole don't know my story yet- it just hasn't been easy to drop it into conversation so far- and that adds a new dimension to November. 

As ever music helps. Here are some November songs. 

I can't remember who tipped me off to Bathhouse by Steven Leggett. It came out in 2018, an ambient/ neo- classical, electronic tribute to the Turkish baths in Newcastle- upon- Tyne. Andrew Weatherall played some of it on Music's Not For Everyone so maybe it was one of many hundreds of Weatherall tip offs. 

It's a beautiful album, very much a singular piece of work. You can get the whole thing digitally at Bandcamp. November is the album's penultimate track, it fades in slowly with found sounds (recorded in Crete) and drones and then cello. There's the low end rumble of a single dull thudding drum and the sound of water lapping against the sides of the baths. The ambient sounds and musical instruments drift in and out, the drum comes and goes, and there's the swell of something choral. Quietly stunning. 

November

The only other song I have in front of me with November as its title is a 2009 Echo And The Bunnymen B-side, the flipside to Think I Need It Too (from the album The Fountain). Ian McCulloch had been recording with three musicians in London, trying to do something different. The results still sounded like the Bunnymen so Ian invited Will to go into the studio and they worked on the songs that became The Fountain. The Bunnymen duo of 2009 do indeed sound a little re- invigorated by this and their song November is decent enough. 

November

There are other November songs- November Has Come by Gorillaz, Vashti Bunyan's Rose Hip November, Sandy Denny's Late November, Tom Waits' November, The National's Mr. November and Folk Implosion's Fall Into November could all find a place here but instead I'll go wth the latest in Richard Norris' ling running series of monthly ambient releases, Music For Healing. Richard releases a new twenty minute track at the start of each month. The latest one which arrived in my inbox on 1st November was written by Richard in the aftermath of his bandmate Dave Ball's death, using the synths and instruments that the pair of them used in The Grid- a Minimoog, some Roland, Oberheim and Waldorf machines and was recorded at Richard's studio in Lewes. Deep Down (In B) is most certainly a memorial for Dave, a musical eulogy. You can listen to it here.  

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

One more cover version Sunday mix then I'll leave it alone for a while. I've been finding cover versions in all sorts of places since I started the first mix four weeks ago, songs springing to mind at random moments. Most of the ones I've chosen do something with the source material, take it somewhere else emotionally or stylistically. Some rip the original to shreds, some pay their respects but still tear it up. Some nod their head to their influences or pay something back. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

• Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End
• Spiritualized: Any Way That You Want Me
• The Kills: Pale Blue Eyes
• One Dove: Jolene
• Galaxie 500: Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
• John Cale: All My Friends
• Monkey Mafia: As Long As I Can See The Light
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker

Sonic Boom formed Spectrum after Spacemen 3 split up and his cover of Daniel Johnson's True Love Will Find You In The End is a gorgeous, angelic take on the song. Released in 1992 as a single and later included in two versions on a Sonic Boom/ Spectrum compilation.

Two years earlier Jason Pierce/ J Spaceman flew the Spacemen 3 coop first, releasing the first Spiritualized single, a cover of The Troggs 1966 single. Jason doesn't radically alter it but he makes it a Spiritualized song all the same. 

The Kills cover of The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes is gloriously ragged and fuzzed up, the guitar stuttering and ripping a hole in the speaker while Alison gives deadpan vocals. It was a B-side to their 2012 The Last Goodbye single.

One Dove's dubbed out, trippy reggae cover of Dolly Parton is a blast, Dot's beautifully off key vocals perfect for the band's blissed out but slightly on edge comedown re-imagining of the song. It came out as one of the B-sides to the 1993 single release of Why Don't You Take Me.

Galaxie 500 recorded several fantastic covers- their take on New Order's Ceremony may be the best NO cover ever recorded. Their cover of Jonathan Richman's Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste is superb, Jonathan's ninety second original stretched to to seven minutes, a thrilling Galaxie performance, the rumble of drums and bass matched by Dean's trebly, overdriven guitar. They only existed for four years, 1987 to 1991, but what a great band they were. 

John Cale covered LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends for LCD's own release of the single back in 2007- it came out as the B-side on 7" along with a sister 7" that had  Franz Ferdinand cover of the same song. Cale's version, piano, clipped krautrock guitars and his lived in, baritone voice give James Murphy's song a new dimension- when Cale sings, 'where are your friends tonight?', it conjures all sorts of imagery. 

Monkey Mafia's cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's was a 1998 single, a late 90s revisiting of a 1970 song, a call out to the weary travelers and wanderers, a song about going home. Pre- millenial tension?

Raz and Afla's cover of Aphex Twin's Windowlicker came out this year, a fantastic synths and percussion Afro- electronic floor filler- well, I can imagine some floors that it might fill. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Jack Kerouac's On The Road was finally turned into a film in 2012 by Walter Salles (who had previously made The Motorcycle Diaries, an account of a youthful Che Guevara based on Che's book about travelling round South America). Other people had shown an interest in making a film out of On The Road- Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights back in 1979 and attempted to start shooting in 1995 but abandoned it. Before that Kerouac himself wrote to Marlon Brando to do it. Brando never replied. There was interest from Gus van Sant with Ethan Hawke and Brad Pitt lined up to play the main roles but nothing got off the ground. 

Coppola eventually hired Salles and Salles started shooting in 2010 with Sam Riley as Sal Paradise/ Jack Kerouac and Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty/ Neal Cassady. Riley had played Ian Curtis in Control, the Joy Division film. Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, Steve Buscemi, Kirsten Dunst and Elizabeth Moss were all singed up, so it's an all star 2010s cast. The film looks good, the cinematography is good, the world of late 1940s USA and Mexico looks authentic, the attention to period detail is spot on. It feels like the 1940s, you can almost smell the cigarettes and the sweat, the grease of the engines, the tarmac, the streets of Denver, Jack's boots...

Much of filming was down on the run, on location, Salles in a car with a handheld camera alongside the car with Sal/ Sam and Dean/ Garrett inside. Hedlund described it as 'guerrilla filming' which sounds like it should be exactly what On The Road needs on the big screen. Despite this, there's something at the heart of the film that never quite connects, it never catches fire in the way it should. Hedlund is great as Dean as is Kristen Stewart as Marylou. Sam Riley's Sal/ Jack is decent if too much on the sidelines at times, not involved enough. As a film it looks good and some of the scenes work but overall it's too polite and doesn't capture the energy of the novel. Still, I liked it enough when it came out- I went on my own to a daytime screening at the Cornerhouse and have seen it at least once since then on DVD. 

On The Road is probably unfilmable really- the narrative, such as it is, doesn't really fit the standard three act arc and a version of On The Road that was entirely Kerouacian would be an impressionistic arthouse blur of road, poetry and jazz. 

The soundtrack though is very enjoyable, nineteen tracks that work really well as a whole piece- which is the sign of a good soundtrack. There are some period pieces (Slim Gaillard, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Son House), some instrumentals by soundtrack composer Gustavo Santaolalla and two minutes of Kerouac reading, mumbling, from the novel. 

Sweet Sixteen is fifty seconds that opens the soundtrack, the cast singing in a car, the sound of rubber tyres on tarmac and engine noise, a scene setter for the album. 

Sweet Sixteen

Roman Candles is  one minute twenty two seconds of rattling percussion and jazz piano from Gustavo Santaolalla, named for Kerouac's famous description in the novel- 

'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles'

Roman Candles

Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker made Salt Peanuts in 1941, a bebop tune written by Gillespie with the vocal interjection of the title surrounded by trumpet, piano, double bass and Parker's alto sax. Charlie Parker was one of the key inspirations for Kerouac's writing, the reason he got the legendary roll of paper to feed into the typewriter so he could type without having to stop. 

Salt Peanuts

Son House's Death Letter Blues is a postcard from the distant past, Delta blues sung and played by one who lived it. Heavy. 

Death Letter Blues

'I don't think anyone can hear me, can you hear me now?', Kerouac mutters at the start of this, before finding his rhythm, 'New York, 1949...' and starts narrating the road trip and the search for Dean's father which is what Dean/ Neal is looking for all the time- an absent alcoholic father- and the perpetual motion that is at the heart of the novel. As a result the two minutes of Kerouac reading from On The Road on the soundtrack are an affecting and effective way to end it. 

Jack Kerouac Reads On The Road

The film and the novel both end with the unfinished search and Jack's reflection, back in New Jersey...

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”