Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was A very small object. It's centre.

I went all atomic with Quando Quango and Mark Kamins, Juan Moreno, and Massive Attack, all loosely tied together by Carlo Rovelli and quantum physics. Out in the Bagging Area community there were the usual array of fantastic suggestions- Newcleus from Michel Houellebecq's Petit Mort, Suzanne Vega from Trail Of Bread, They Might Be Giants from Rol, Chapterhouse and Badly Drawn Boy from Al G, Soft Cell from Chris, The Incredible String Band from Ernie and sneaking in at the end Mrs G with Tinie Tempah with a tribute to stars and teenagers. 

Here's Chapterhouse's very small object, swirling shoegaze from 1991.

Pearl

This week's card says this- Change instrument roles

The Roland TB- 303 is a bassline synthesiser, produced by the Roland Corporation in 1981 and designed to replace the bass guitar and to accompany the 808 drum machine. It was considered a commercial failure and discontinued in 1984. 

Over in Chicago a group called Phuture had a 303 and had been seeing what they could do with it, what the instruction manual didn't tell them. By abusing the machine they discovered they could do much more than make a synthesised bassline- they could change the sound completely, making a squelchy, liquid, otherworldly sound that became the foundation stone of what a couple of years later became known as acid house. 

Acid Trax

Phuture were DJ Pierre, Spanky and Herbert Jackson. Marshall Jefferson helped out with the production of  Acid Trax and in getting it released. Phuture had in turn built on the house sound that DJ Ron Hardy had been playing at Chicago's warehouse parties, the mayhem of those parties Hardy DJed at and the thump of the rhythm and the effect it had on the crowd. The acid squelch took it up to another level. When it was released in 1987 it made its way to the UK, to London, Manchester and Nottingham. That squelch, that distinctive, futuristic, face melting sound that warps its way through Acid Trax is what happens when someone changes instrument roles. And kick starts a revolution. 

Nashville's Luke Schneider has taken an instrument usually associated with country and western and the Grand Ole Opry, the pedal steel guitar, added some FX and changed the pedal steel's role completely- in Luke's hands the pedal steel is an ambient instrument, layers of drones and ringing sounds, an enveloping soundscape. This is from 2020's Altar Of Harmony, as good a place to start as any. 

Mundi Tuum Est

Feel free to drop your own responses to Change instrument roles into the comments box. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was You can only make one dot at a time. 

This made me start joining the dots between One Dove and Dot Allison, Arab Strap, Wire and Dot Dash, Ry Lichtenstein, The Jam and Pete Wylie and Ariadne's Labyrinth. From the wider Bagging Area community came these dots- C with Angines de Poitrine, Ernie with The Blue Aeroplanes ...And Stones, Al G and Jonathan Richman and Vincent van Gogh, Craig with Hot Chip's Over And Over, Noone and Les Rallizes Denudes, Rol and The Teardrop Explodes, the Swede with The Beat and Ranking Full Stop, Walter with !!! and Chris ZenArcade with some lysergic dots and E.D. 209's Metre and that Robocop sample...

This week's Oblique Strategy card is this- A very small object. It's centre.

My knowledge of physics is fairly limited. Last year a friend lent me Carlo Rovelli's Helgoland,a  very readable account of the story of quantum physics. I still couldn't explain even in the simplest terms much about quantum physics but I enjoyed the ride. 

I do know that atoms are extremely small and are the basic particles that make up everything. At the centre of an atom is the nucleus (which must therefore be smaller than an atom- right?). Atoms are so small we cannot see them, a million times smaller than the breadth of a hair. Coincidentally (and I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that nothing about this series is coincidental, it all seems to be connected), earlier this week I was wandering around the campus at Manchester University where I photographed the Humanities building, a rectangle of concrete opened in 1970. It is the picture at the top of this post. It is just round the corner from the Rutherford Building, which contains the room in which in 1917 Ernest Rutherford split the atom* and so created the modern field of nuclear physics (I once went on a course in the exact room where Rutherford made his discovery). 

Sixty seven years later, also in Manchester, Factory Records released FAC 102, Atom Rock by Quando Quango.

Atom Rock

Quando Quango were a dance act somewhat ahead of their time, Mike Pickering channeling electronic music from New York and Chicago into mid- 80s Manchester along with Gonnie and Reinier Rietveld. They formed in Rotterdam in 1980 and then relocated to Manchester in '82 when the Hacienda opened. Mike Pickering's role in modern Manchester and Factory cannot be overplayed. 

Atom Rock is a light on its feet slice of 1984, pioneering dance music with jazz and Latin influences worn on its sleeves, produced by Be Music (Bernard Sumner and Donald Johnson of ACR). That jangly, funky guitar riff is a moonlighting Johnny Marr (the birth of Electronic, Marr and Sumner's late 80s band, is this record). It's one of those songs that made Factory such an interesting record label in the mid- 80s. 'Fela Kuti meets Kraftwerk somewhere between Rotterdam and Manchester', said Gonnie of the band's sound. 

A year later there was a Mark Kamins remix, Kamins putting his Roland 808 through its paces (Kamins was the man who launched Madonna)...

Atom Rock (Mark Kamins New York Remix)

Juan Moreno's Atomism Theory came out in 2024, an eight minute ambient piece that actually sounds like it could be the sound of atomic particles and nuclear fission.

Atomism Theory

And in a nice link to Carlo Rovelli's Helgoland, in 2009 Massive Attack released Heligoland (both named after the same piece of land, an archipelago in Germany). The first single from the album was Splitting The Atom, with Horace Andy on co- vocals and Damon Albarn on keys. 

Splitting The Atom

I have several other atom/ atomic songs but I'll stop there. Feel free to split your own atoms in the comments box or make any other responses to the Oblique Strategy card- A very small object. It's centre.

* Apparently 'splitting the atom' is a poor choice of words for what Rutherford actually did. The University of Manchester's website says that Rutherford was ''the first person to create an artificial nuclear reaction... now described as 'splitting the atom' in popular accounts''

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them. 

This took me to the Beastie Boys and their embarrassment at Fight For your Right, a song which defined them in a way they did not like. It led us to Paul's Boutique and the 90s Beastie Boys so it all turned out OK in the end. The Bagging Area OS squad played a blinder with the following- Johnny Cash and A Boy Named Sue (Ernie), Are We Not Men? by Devo (Anonliz), Slade's How Does It Feel (Jake Sniper), Elvis laughing his way through a performance of Are You Lonesome Tonight? at Vegas (C)...

... Magazine's A Song From Under The Floorboards and Radiohead's Creep (Trail Of Bread), The Animals' Story of Bo Diddley (Al G), Half Man Half Biscuit's Petty Sessions (Rol), and Feel Good Hit Of The Summer by Queens Of The Stone Age, Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana and Prefab Sprout's From Langley Park To Memphis (Chris ZenArcade).

There was an interview with David Byrne this week at The Guardian where he was asked if they used the Oblique Strategy cards in the studio when Talking Heads worked with Eno. Byrne said 'The box of cards were present. I don’t know if they were ever really used, but they contain clever ideas, to help you break out of any ruts or ingrained thinking.' 

Avoiding ruts and ingrained thinking, this week's Oblique Strategy suggestion is this- You can only make one dot at a time. 

As a massive fan of One Dove and Dot Allison, one Dot is all we need.

Fallen

Fallen originally came out on Soma, a Glasgow based record label. One Dove were a trio, Dot Allison, Ian Carmichael and Jim McKinven. When the group signed to Junior Boys Own, an enconter with Andrew Weatherall on a boat party in Rimini led to him producing their album, fresh from his successes  with Screamadelica. Weatherall's version of Fallen lifted it to new heights, Dot's voice over the fractured intro, gasps and timbales, 'I don't know why I'm telling you any of this, one thing is don't ever tell anyone I told you this, don't save me, forgive me, I was only thinking of you... just you'... and just like that anyone hearing it was hooked.

After One Dove folded Dot released a solo album that was trailed y this gorgeous piece of mid- 90s soul/ pop... 

Mo' Pop

The same album, Afterglow, had this song on it, Message Personnel which was remixed by Arab Strap, who slow it down and take the blissed out pop of the original and make it typically something a bit darker...

Message Personnel (Arab Strap Remix)

I think Kevin Shields is on guitar on that one too. I could go on posting Dot Allison tracks all day but I'll stop there.

Wire's 1978 debut had the song Dot Dash on it, two and a half minutes of post- punk brilliance and there's a guitar band from Washington D.C. named after that song who put out this in 2018 on an album called  Proto Retro...

World's Last Payphone

Dots also make me think of the printing process for comic books, the four colour process, using small dots of colour to create shades. Roy Lichtenstein took comic book imagery and dot printing and blew them up for his version of Pop Art, most famously with Whaam!

Paul Weller had a Whaam! Rickenbacker guitar which he used in The Jam and which I've seen in an exhibition but can't find my photo of it. Here's Paul with it...

Pete Wylie, a Bagging Area hero, had a Pow! guitar...

That guitar made a prime time Top Of The Pops appearance in 1986 when Pete's single Sinful hit the charts and his friend Josie Jones had the privilege of playing it (special mention for the dancing nuns, The Sisters of The Anfield Road)

Sinful is an all timer for me, one of those songs that I can always go back to and if forced to make a list of my X number of favourite songs, would absolutely be on it. 

Sinful (Tribal Mix)

Recently I was sent an EP by Ariadne's Labyrinth which is on my list of releases to write about at greater length but Eno's card and this track, Terminal Dot, came together at the right time- Terminal Dot fuses classical violins, a lovely string arrangement, with some thumping beats and distorted bass, a collision or rave and classical that works really well. 

The portrait of the woman at the top of this post was above the fireplace in a pub we were drinking in, after the Protex Blue gig in Sheffield last weekend. I don't know who she is but she's definitely had enough of the person painting her or boring her with their constant banging on. Withering disdain. 

Anyway, feel free to drop you own suggestions to You can only make one dot at a time in the comment box. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame.

Which led in a round the houses kind of way to Half Man Half Biscuit's Eno Collaboration from 1997, Pet Shop Boys in 1987, Talking Heads and Johnny Marr in 1988, and Bob Dylan with The Band back in 1971. 

The joy of this series is in the comments box. Last week's suggestions from the Bagging Area Oblique Saturdays community took in Cowboy Junkies doing Sweet Jane (thank you Walter), Nick Drake's Bryter Later (Ernie, muchas gracias), Aztec Camera's Just Like Gold (courtesy of the shape shifting but definitely human LizLozLaz, and thanks to C for her questions about his comments), Matt Berry's cover of the Blankety Blank theme tune (thanks to Al G and Mrs G), Rol who offered Jason Isbell's 24 Frames, John Cage's 4' 33'' (ta The Swede) and over on social media Chris who jumped from Les Dawson to Andrew Weatherall via Field Of Dreams. 

At some point there's an Oblique Saturdays mix/ compilation/ box set and your names are all on it. 

Just Like Gold

Roddy's never re- issued (to the best of my knowledge) the two singles Aztec Camera did for Postcard, never included them on a any compilations. His view is they are best as they were, a pair of 7" singles from 1981, the magic found solely in those artefacts.  

This week's Oblique Strategy from Mr Eno and Herr Schmidt is this- Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them. 

I can see how a band or musician in the studio could approach this. Take the mistake or the part that makes you cringe (a vocal yelp maybe or a hackneyed chord sequence) that you want to cover up or remove and make it the new centre of the song/ track/ recording. 

I found it more difficult to apply the suggestion to songs to post here and spent some time while commuting to and from work thinking about it. I don't buy into the Guilty Pleasures thing much- you shouldn't feel guilty about liking any piece of music. If you like it, you like it. The fact that someone else doesn't is just that it all comes down to taste. 

Eventually, this song came to mind...

Fight For Your Right

The Beastie Boys themselves became somewhat embarrassed by the success of this song, the fourth single from their debut Licensed To Ill. They became even more embarrassed, annoyed even, by the fact their audience were taking the song seriously, as a statement of fact. They spent a long time trying to distance themselves from it. One way or another it led them to the sampledelic brilliance of Paul's Boutique though so maybe it was worth it. 

Everything about Fight For Your Right is amplified, from the opening guitar power chord and the shout of 'Yeahhh!', the instruction to 'kick it!' and then the riff, Rick Rubin turning everything up as loud as it will go. And then there's the lyrics....

I played Fight For Your Right while DJing at a friend's wedding reception, many many years ago. The groom's mother loved it, pogoing round the venue's dance floor,among the rest of the party rights fighters. 

As a Saturday fourth of July bonus I'm posting this, Galaxie 500 back in 1990 with a song that is just wonderful in every way. 

Fourth Of July

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Revaluation (A Warm Feeling)

My responses was Saint Etienne's revaluation of late 90s/ early 00s pop into their 2021 album I've Been Trying To Tell You (with Jane Weaver on board on remix duties) and Taking Heads way back in 1978 with New Feeling. 

The Bagging Area community came up with these: Walter with The Beastie Boys and Paul's Boutique; Ernie with Van Morrison's Warm Feeling; Rol and The Smith's Paint A Vulgar Picture; Al G and The Avalanches; Chris with Killing Joke; and Ardliz with a twenty minute Julian Cope extravaganza, Planetary Sit In, that you should know if you don't already...

This weeks' card says this- Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame

This is the first time I've turned an Oblique Strategy card over and felt that maybe Mr Eno and Herr Schmidt are taking the piss a little. 

Maybe it's time for this...

Eno Collaboration (Remix)

Half Man Half Biscuit back in 1997 on their voyage to the bottom of their road.

'Brian's not at home, he's at the North Pole but if you'd like to leave a weird noise'

Going back to the card and the suggestion that I make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame made me think about sleeves and artwork, pop music presented as high art- the Pet Shop Boys have been doing that since the mid- 80s but I wouldn't call their music blank, defitnely not the imperial phase they went through from '87 to '92. 

Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat...

Left To My Own Devices 

I wondered about bad music in good sleeves and, I suppose, the idea that Eno and Schmidt are hinting at; re- framing nothingness as a masterpiece. 

Talking Heads (them again) final album Naked came in a sleeve that played with this idea, a painting of a chimpanzee holding a flower with a heavy gilt frame around it, as if taken off the wall of a gallery. I don't think making Naked was a particularly happy experience for the band, they all knew they were splitting up. Guest stars abound- Mory Kante, Wally Badarou, Kirsty McColl and Johnny Marr among a cast of dozens. On (Nothing But) Flowers Marr plays genuinely brilliant, inventive African hi- life guitar, freed from straitjacket of The Smiths to do whatever he wanted. Meanwhile David Byrne sings about nature reclaiming the cities, a Pizza Hut all covered in daisies...

(Nothing But) Flowers

In 1971 Bob Dylan presented his masterpiece, a song that first appeared on an album by The Band, Cahoots, and then on the second volume of his Greatest Hits (a very odd selection of songs sequenced strangely too in a will this do? sleeve). 

When I Paint My Masterpiece

It's a typically laid back early 70s Dylan song, something quite ordinary in a way- ordinary for him I mean, it's not what I'd describe as blank but equally it's not the match of the songs from his 1964- 1966 purple patch and it's not a Blood On The Tracks song either. Having said that it's vivid and fully realised and streets ahead of some of the stuff he put out on Self Portrait. 

It was a song that Dylan discarded and then went back to, reappearing in his Never Ending tour setlists. When asked about it in an interview in 2020 Dylan said this-

'It's grown on me... I think this song has something to do with the classical world, something that's out of reach. Someplace you'd like to be beyond your experience. Something that is so supreme and first-rate that you could never come back down from the mountain. That you've achieved the unthinkable. That's what the song tries to say, and you'd have to put it in that context. In saying that, though, even if you do paint your masterpiece, what will you do then? Well, obviously you have to paint another masterpiece'. 

Feel free to put your own responses to Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame in the comment box. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Ghost echoes.

It led me to Patti Smith's book about her young life with Robert Mapplethorpe and to Circle Sky's Ghost In The Machine. The Bagging Area Oblique Squad struck gold with Ghost Box and Dudgrick Bevins, Clientele, Lee Perry and Mouse On Mars, Model 500, Prince Far I, The Specials, Blur and Screaming Soul with Adrian Sherwood. Thank you Chris, Ernie, Rol, Khayem, Mr Ed, Al G and Ghostly Liz. 

Here's some Prince Far I from 1976, echo laden dub produced by Joe Gibbs in Kingston, Jamaica.

Under Heavy Manners

Today's card is this- Revaluation (A Warm Feeling)

A revaluation is to take something and increase its value, to reassess the value of an asset. In 2021 Saint Etienne took some samples from a specific time and place- late 90s and early 00s UK the first term of the Blair government- from a variety of unlikely and uncool sources- Honeyz, Natalie Imbruglia, Lighthouse Family, Tasmin Archer, The Lightning Seeds and Samantha Mumba- and made a concept album about memory, loss, nostalgia for the recent-ish past, a life before the social media age. Was it really a golden age? Saint Etienne seem to be asking or is it a trick of memory? I'm not sure they answer the their question. All the song were named after race horses that won on the day of New Labour's 1997 election victory. Pond House, Little K. Penlop. Broad River. 

Whatever we may think about the good things Tony Blair and the Labour government achieved in their first term- and there were many achievements- they pissed it up the wall with the invasion of Iraq and every time now Tony Blair opens his mouth his utterances surely cause an angel to die. 

Saint Etienne's album played around with all of these things and had a sense of melancholy about it but Pete and Bob really wrote some tunes as well, laptop beats, off kilter loops and samples, found sounds and modern 21st century production. Blue Kite takes ages to build, loops and woozy synths, the dull thud of a kick drum- a revaluation of late 90s/ early 00s pop and urban sounds into something ethereal and dreamlike. 

Blue Kite

Penlop sampled Joy by The Lightning Seeds, Ian Broudie's CD age stadium indie- pop revaluated into woozy, gossamer ambient pop. A remix EP (available only from Rough Trade I think when buying the album back in 2022) further played around with the source material- the samples and the Saint Etienne songs with Vince Clarke, Daniel Avery and Jane Weaver providing the revaluation. Jane Weaver's slow motion ambient/ folk is a low key marvel. 

Penlop (Jane Weaver Remix)

'The name of this song is new feeling... and that's what it's about'...

New Feeling

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Emphasise difference.

I responded to this with Iggy Pop's journey from 1973 to 1977, from Death Trip to Lust For Life and with The Clash who went from White Riot in 1976 to Death Is A Star in 1983. 

Someone pointed out this week when commenting on the race riots in Southampton and Belfast that they didn't think this was the kind of White Riot Joe Strummer was talking about which is indeed true. Joe would have been appalled by the rise of far right politics in the UK. But I digress...

The Bagging Area OS squad came up with some great replies emphasising difference- Martin Carthy covering Slade, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood's very different voices, Thomas Dolby and Prefab Sprout, Talk Talk, Cindytalk, Rodney Allen's Happy Sad, Paula Abdul and a cartoon cat...

... Elvis, Propaganda, Donny and Marie Osmond, Tonio K, and Boogie Down Productions. Thanks everyone- Chris, Walter, C, Khayem, Ernie, The Swede, Jase, Al G, Rol and Beerfueled as ever for your considered contributions.

This week's card says this- Ghost Echoes.

Just a few days before I turned the card over I finished Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids. It was published in 2010 and I've no idea why I only got a copy recently but I'm glad I did. It's a beautiful, powerful and poetic account of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti promised Robert she'd tell his story as he lay dying from complications due to AIDS. She attempted to do this with The Coral Sea but was often unable to get through a reading of the poem. Twenty years after his death, she felt able to write their story down. Her use of the written word is beautiful, as you might expect- she's a wordsmith if nothing else. The book is gripping, open and honest, with versions of their two childhoods and then their chance encounter in New York. She writes about her move to New York as a nineteen year old, an intense and slightly damaged young woman in love with Arthur Rimbaud, inspired by The Doors and Bob Dylan. Her early life in the city is a life of penury, of living hand to mouth and sometimes sleeping in doorways. Eventually she meets Robert (he rescues her from a predatory middle aged man who has taken her out for a meal and now expects something in return) and they live together as lovers and as artists, a completely bohemian life, inspiring each other. Robert is clearly struggling with his sexuality during this period and eventually they split but remain together. Their move to the Hotel Chelsea and the people they meet there changes both their lives and their relationship and their art. Just Kids tells their story up to the release of Horses, Patti finding her calling as a poet and then merging poetry with rock 'n' roll- and then to Robert's death in 1992. 

The copy I have has extra material at the book, and Robert Mapplethorpe's ghost is present there in photos and drawings, in poems and art. He haunts the pages as he undoubtedly still haunts Patti. In a sense though, in the pages that make up the bulk of the book, the story of Robert and Patti, he is very much alive; she brings him (and a lost world, New York in the late 60s and early 70s) to life. In the book, after speaking to a very ill Robert on the phone in 1992, a conversation she knows will be their last, she wakes up a few hours later and intuits his death.

Land (Part One: Horses Part Two: Land Of A Thousand Dances)

There is no shortage of songs with the word ghost in the title- step up The Gun Club, Andrew Weatherall, The White Stripes and Tegan and Sarah, Fine Yong Cannibals, The Fall and R. Dean Taylor, Daniel Avery, Broken Chanter, The Jam, Reverb Delay, Kristen Hersh, The Orb, Burning Spear, The Replacements, The Vendetta Suite,  Denise Sherwood, Hollie Cook, Trentemoller and The Style Council among others.... on and on we could go. 

This 2019 song from Circle Square though seems the one that has both ghosts and echoes contained within, Richard Norris and Martin Dubka's Ghost In The Machine,  a voice trapped inside a machine, echoing on and out for as long as the machine is plugged in.

Feel free to drop your own Ghost echoes into the comment box. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was What is the reality of the situation?

My Oblique responses were a new song from Mike D and The Aloof from 1994. The Bagging Area Oblique squad came up with some excellent suggestions. ilradz4evuh suggested a slew of Happy Mondays songs, all benefiting from the input of a producer (John Cale, Martin Hannett, Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, and Sunny Levine and Howie B). Al G suggested Liverpool's The Real People (a band I saw twice back in the day, once in their home town and once at G- Mex supporting Pixies). This is the song Al G proposed, from The Real People's 1991 self- titled album...

The Truth

Rol went with Soul II Soul and The Beautiful South. Ernie plumbed for Gil Scott Heron's B Movie. JC came up with The Jam and Crass (a second Oblique Saturday showing for Crass) and Edinburgh's Sons Of The Descent. Over on social media Chris threw African Head Charge and Professor Stretch in. 

The variety of responses and the sheer range of songs thrown up by a short Brian Eno penned cryptic remark is ace. 

This week's Oblique Strategy card says this- Emphasise differences.

In 1973 Iggy Pop had a third roll of the dice with The Stooges, now Iggy and The Stooges. The monstrous groove of the original band had become something more akin to hard rock with the addition of new guitarist James Williamson. The failure of the first two albums, the debut and Funhouse, had seen the band spiral into chaos and addiction. They broke up, Iggy was on smack, Dave Alexander was an alcoholic. Singing as a solo artist with Colombia he moved to London with Williamson to make an album. Once there they failed to find a rhythm section that worked and so they flew former- Stooges the Asheton brothers over, with Ron reluctantly accepting he'd play the bass. With Bowie producing they recorded an album- Raw Power. 

Raw Power is a high octane blast of, well, raw power. From the opening frenzy of Search And Destroy it rattles and shakes, roars and thunders, proto- punk, one of those albums that inspired a thousand others. It ends with Death Trip...

Death Trip (1997 Iggy Pop remix)

'Sick boy sick boy going wrong/ Memory losing grip/ Girl I wanna take you out with me/ Come along on my death trip'

Iggy was on a one way trip at this point, heading towards the exit door. A death trip.

Incidentally, the version above is from Iggy's remixed/ remastered 1997 version, an opinion splitting version. Bowie's original 1973 version was often criticised for being muddy and unclear. Iggy redid it, in an attempt to compete with late 90s rock radio, everything pushed into the red but clarified for radio. Lots of people hated the new version- both Asheton brothers for two, Robert Quine and Don Fleming for two more and David Bowie himself. 

The Iggy mix does emphasise the differences, the distortion is audible but the instruments are separated and punchy. For two generations brought up on Bowie's 1973 mix though the wound up tension and ferocity of the original would always be the one. 

From Death Trip in 1973 to Lust For Life in 1977. 

Lust For Life

In between Iggy had finished off the second version of The Stooges on tour, the band and a bunch of bikers coming to blows while the band played (captured on Metallic K.O.). Iggy's drug issues deepened and he checked himself into a mental institution. Bowie rescued him, took him on the Station To Station tour and the pair then relocated to West Berlin in an attempt to wean themselves off their respective drug addictions (Bowie cocaine, Pop heroin). I guess it made some sense at the time but West Berlin was one of the strangest places in the world in 1977. Going there to get off drugs was a brave decision. It paid off. The made two of the best records of Iggy's and David's careers. Of anyone's careers in fact. The Idiot and Lust For Life (both should really be seen as part of Bowie's Berlin trilogy).

The road from Death Trip to Lust For Life is in itself an exercise in emphasising differences. Bowie and Pop were too, Bowie cerebral and arty, a megastar, a life as a work of art while Pop was a washed up rocker, an exercise in living as hard as you can all the time, primal.

'I'm worth a million in prizes/ I'm through with sleeping on the sidewalk/ No more beat my brains/ With liquor and drugs/ I got a lust For Life'.

Another way of emphasising differences is to look at where a band starts and where they finish. In the seven years between 1976 and 1983 The Clash went from this...

White Riot

...to this...

Death Is A Star

I'm not sure many bands ever traveled as far musically and stylistically as The Clash. Strummer, Jones, Simonon and Headon emphasising the difference, between White Riot and Death Is A Star, between ferocious two chord punk and impressionistic cinematic modern jazz. 

Feel free to drop your own emphasising differences suggestions in the comment box.

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Humanise something free of error.  

My reactions to this were Farley Jackmaster Funk and Daryl Pandy's Love Can't Turn Around and Kurt Vile. From the Bagging Area Oblique Saturdays Squad came the following- Ebony Steel Band covering Kraftwerk (Ernie), Daft Punk's Human After All (Al G), anything by The Fall (JC), King Davis and The House Rockers and We All Make Mistakes (Rol) and R.E.M.'s Everybody Hurts (Walter). Here's Mark E. Smith and the 1979 iteration of The Fall with a tale of pharmaceutical misadventure.

Rowche Rumble

Today's Oblique Strategy card is this- What is the reality of the situation?

What is the reality of the situation? didn't do much for me at first, an oblique strategy that left me unresponsive. Maybe it was the heat, but it just didn't spark much in me. Eventually I got to this- the reality of the situation is that this is a music blog and part of what it does is help spread the word about new music. Mike D, former Beastie Boy and now solo artist, has released another single- What We Got, a song that harks back to the Beastie Boys sound of Check Your Head and Ill Communication but also sounds like something fresh and new. 

What we got? 'Retired MC/ Need a Plan B', Mike raps.  

What is the reality of the situation? also took me to this.

In 1994 The Aloof released their debut album Cover The Crime, a dub- techno lost classic by a group made up of two Sabres Of Paradise (Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns), a Red Snapper (Rich Thair), Ricky Barrow and Dean Thatcher. The third track on the album is this one...

Society

The vocal, a robotic/ reggae call and response, worked its way to the front of my mind while I pondered what to do with this Oblique Strategy card.

'Society... this is... reality... this is...society... this is... reality...'

Nine minutes of thundering drums, breakbeats, sirens and mid- 90s dub techno tension. 

Feel free to make your own responses to What is the reality of the situation? in the comment box.

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Don't break the silence.

My responses to this were A Life Of Silence by Scott Fraser and Timothy J. Fairplay plus Simon and Garfunkel, Bill Drummond's No Music Day and Mark Peters. The Bagging Area collective were prompted to suggest Enjoy The Silence by Depeche Mode (this had several suggestions), Elliott Smith, Delirium, Bjork's It's Oh So Quiet, Durutti Column, Crass' Sound Of Free Speech, Kate, Julian Cope, The Silence, Ranking Dread, John Cage, The Delgados, Deep Purple and Kula Shaker, and Fugazi. That list is a radio show/ mix tape in itself. Thank you to Jez, Beerfeuledlad, Chris, C, Rol, Japsikeliz, Ernie, hsd, JC and Walter. 

This week's Oblique Strategy is this- Humanise something free of error.

It didn't spark much in me at first, few initial responses which is what often happens when I choose a card. I can see how in the recording studio a band/ artist could apply that suggestion- mess it up, put the human element in, put  mistake back in that you took out earlier. 

Then I thought about house music and those early 80s records (and many made sicne) where the music is totally flawless in terms of being computer assisted. Programmed drums, sequenced basslines, Midi, synths and keys playing perfect electronic notes. And then an unmistakably human vocal on top that took the robotic/ programmed element and humanised it, something like this endlessly brilliant slice of 1986 Chicago house....

Love Can't Turn Around

Farley Jackmaster Funk and Daryl Pandy, Daryl being the very human vocalist.

I also then thought of this song by Kurt Vile, Bassackwards, a nine minute long opus from 2018 where the music is free of error- acoustic guitars, harp and drums all locked in, loose but controlled psychedelic folk-rock with little bursts of perfectly deployed backwards guitar and feedback and on top Kurt's vocal, very human and real, a long sigh in the face of existential dread. 

Bassackwards

The video is peak 70s beach nostalgia. 

I typed Humanise something free of error into Google and found a book by that title by Sarah Piegay Espenon, a visual research project about climate change and man- made weather modification. I imagine she took the title from Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategies. One of the reviews says that the book is 'an oblique response to... issues of power and left opened visual associations along the thin line between peaceful and hostile usage of geoengineering' (read it here and see some of the photos) which sounds like it very well fit in with some of the things Crass were concerned about in the late 70s and early 80s. 

Feel free to leave your own Oblique suggestions in the comment box. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Is there something missing?

I went for Todd Terry's 1996 remix of Everything but The Girl's Missing, Dub Syndicate, Joy Division's transition into New Order, Durutti Column, R.E.M. and The Clash. The Bagging Area Oblique Saturdays squad went into overdrive and came up with late period New Order without Hooky, The Verve without Nick McCabe, Elvis Costello, Janis Joplin (whose vocals were missing from a song she was supposed to record the day she died), Julian Cope and Peggy Suicide, The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, Wire, The Stranglers, Tindersticks, The Bad Seeds, Andrew Weatherall's Music's Not For Everyone radio shows, Athletico Spizz and R. Missing. Thank you Chris, Beerfueledlad, Rol, Khayem, C, The Swede, JC and Walter. 

Peggy Suicide Is Misisng closes Julian Cope's 1992 opus Jehovakill, a forty two second burst of notes and noise and Cope, the Archdrude, singing, 'mother, mother, mother...' 

Peggy Suicide Is Missing

This weeks Oblique Strategy card says this- Don't break the silence.

At first I thought I'd turned a repeat Oblique Strategy card but on checking it just seemed familiar- I've had both Tape your mouth and Do nothing for as long as possible before, both of which at first felt like they come from a similar place. I wondered if I should choose again but then the word silence prompted me and this came to mind...

A Life Of Silence (Timothy J. Fairplay's Fall Of Shame Remix)

Released on Andrew Weatherall's Bird Scarer Records back in 2012, a vinyl only 12" series that ran to just seven releases, Tim (Andrew's engineer in the studio in the early 2010s and his partner in The Asphodells) remixed Scott Fraser's A Life Of Silence. Scott was one of the Scrutton Street Axis, one of several artists who took a room in Andrew Weatherall's Scrutton Street bunker complex near Brick Lane in London. They all had to vacate eventually as the forces of free market capitalism decided that an underground bunker complex containing several DJs, musicians and producers making relatively small scale music aimed at a few hundred souls was an inefficient use of property. 'Artists', Andrew said at the time, 'are the vanguard of gentrification'.

Tim's remix is a beauty, a nine minute electronic excursion into early New Order/ music for the Cold War territory, the chuggy drums, Hooky- esque bass, choppy guitars and cosmische synths all conjuring 21st century acid house and images of Warsaw Pact maneuvers, West Berlin and early 80s Manchester. Maybe that's just me. 

I could have left it there. Don't break the silence by adding to A Life Of Silence. There's loads more songs in my collection with silence in the title: The Asphodells only album had One Minute Silence on it,a  John Betjemen inspired lyric (also released for RSD as a vinyl only 12" with a Wooden Shjips remix); I've recently been reviewing and enjoying the new album by Lines Of Silence; Depeche Mode enjoy their silence; Television Personalities had an angry silence; Daniel Avery is Out Of Silence, Justin Robertson has a Cup Of Silence; and Duncan Gray has an imperfect silence. 

More conceptually I then thought of Bill Drummond, never a man to shy away from something grand and important. In 2005 he declared 21st November as No Music Day, a day of silence to draw attention to the cheapening of music as an art form.

'I decided I needed a day I could set aside to listen to no music whatsoever. Instead, I would be thinking about what I wanted and what I didn't want from music. Not to blindly – or should that be deafly – consume what was on offer. A day where I could develop ideas'. 

A day of silence in other words. He chose 21st November as it is the feast day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. 

Cecilia

Simon And Garfunkel's Cecilia, a hit from 1970 with home made, improvised percussion, banging a bench and looping it at a party then recreated in the studio with a piano stool and guitar cases. 

Bill promoted No Music Day for a few years with some take up in the UK press, BBC Scotland and further afield (Sao Paulo in Brazil and Linz in Austria both joined in). 

I don't know how much No Music Day achieved but like many of Bill Drummond's schemes, the concept is the thing. He does something and then he moves on. If music was being cheapened as an art form in 2005 it's even cheaper now- Spotify, Tik Tok et al and advertising use music as content, little more than the backing track to the product they are selling. Spotify's rates of pay for musicians are appalling. Mark Peters, a guitarist from Wigan whose music I've featured here a good few times, recently found out that a piece of his music was used by Facebook in India and had been streamed over 26 million times. For this he received a payment of £40. 

Mark's most recent release is Shadow Quarter, available at Bandcamp, four songs each one done in two versions. 

Feel free to make your own Don't break the silence suggestions in the comment box. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do.

I opted for a JFK response, his 1961 speech about doing things not because they are easy but because they are hard. Steinski and Mass Media, The Wedding Present and Lou Reed all provided me with Kennedy themed songs. 

The Bagging Area community came up with some inspired choices- PTVL went for Genesis P. Orridge with Richard Norris and Dave Ball as Jack The Tab, arguably the UK's first acid house record, Ernie went for Lowell George and Little Feat, Al G with Mansun, Rol (arriving late after some serious jet washing) with The Walker Brothers and Walter with Nick Drake and Vini Reilly.

This week's Oblique Strategy cards reads thus- Is there something missing?

A obvious choice and one which has been in my mind recently is this...

Todd Terry's remix of Missing was everywhere in 1996, inescapable and irresistible, a crossover hit that deserved to be massive. Missing is a mood in song form. 

I also thought of Dub Syndicate's 1985 album, the mighty Tunes From The Missing Channel, Adrian Sherwood and Style Scott's hugely influential dub album that opens with Ravi Shankar Pt. 1 and with Jah Wobble appearing too, goes about pushing dub into sci fi/ ambient dub territories.

Out And About

But there's more to this Oblique Strategy stuff than just going with the most obvious, word related choices. 

Is there something missing?

Stephen Morris, drummer in Joy Division and New Order and authentic nice chap, has described the three surviving members of Joy Division in the pub after Ian Curtis' funeral. They sat their nursing their pints, not knowing how to talk to each other about death, suicide and loss, young men on the cusp of something big that has been wrenched away from them. A planned American tour cancelled. The second half of 1980 suddenly looking very different from what they envisaged. 

'See you on Monday then', one of them said as he left. 

'Yep, see you on Monday'.

Because they didn't know what else to do, they reconvened at Joy Division's rehearsal space in Little Peter Street and tried to make music as a trio. In Jon Savage's oral history, This Searing Light, The Sun And Everything Else, they each talk about the difficulties of making music with something (or someone) missing. Ian Curtis, frontman and lyricist, the object of attention at gigs, 'one of those channels for the gestalt' (said Martin Hannett), the intense and distinctive singer who set them apart from their peers, was gone. It was more than just missing a singer- he was a mate too and he was the rehearsal room ears and the editor. When the band jammed, Ian would pick out the parts that were good, get them to play that bit but put it with this bit and repeat it. 

They struggled on obviously- we all know the story. Ceremony (the last Joy Division song) and Movement (the last record they made with Martin Hannett). Movement is a sound, post- punk songs with a Hannett tone, but it lacks tunes. Apart from Dreams Never End (sung by Hooky ironically), nothing on Movement sticks in the memory for long. It's an album I have to play to remember what it's like. 

Dreams Never End

In 1981 they appeared on Granada TV, sonically moving forward with Gillian Gilbert on board but visually, physically, they all behave like there's still something missing. This clip has them playing, tentatively, five songs from Movement and Ceremony. The crowd, all local fans, look like they know this too. There's an absence, the band and the audience both feel it. 

They got there in the end of course. Discos in New York and Everything's Gone Green showing them a way out. 

Everything's Gone Green

Vini Reilly, mentioned above, had his own response to the missing boy...

The Missing Boy

'There was a boy/ I almost knew him/ A glance exchanged/ Made me feel good/ Leaving some signs/ Now a legend'.

Other bands have struggled with missing members. Is there something missing?

In 1998 R.E.M. tried to regroup following Bill Berry's decision to leave the group (a brain aneurysm onstage during the Monster tour being a key part of his decision). Bill admitted last year in an interview that he 'didn't regret it at the time but... sort of regretted it later'. Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck experimented with vintage synths and drum machines and eventually made Up but it nearly broke them. Bill Berry wasn't just the drummer, he wrote songs too- the beautiful Perfect Circle for one and worldwide smash Everybody Hurts for another. Without Bill they were destabilised, nothing worked the same way. Michael Stipe memorably but none- too- convincingly commented, 'a dog with three legs is still a dog'.

Daysleeper

In 1985 The Clash, or what was left of them, released Cut The Crap. Topper Headon had gone in 1983 and Mick Jones was sacked by Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon (and Bernie Rhodes) in 1984. 'We fell to ego', Joe remarked. This Is England may well be up there with the rest of Joe's songs but the much of the rest of Cut The Crap most definitely has something missing. Mick Jones. Topper Headon. 

This Is England

Strummer's 1985 state of the nation address evokes strikes, unrest, police brutality, unemployment, divisive right wing politics, war in far off places, poverty, racism, protest, marches, football and asks 'when will we be free?'. 

Feel free to drop your own responses to Is there something missing? in the comment box. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Short circuit (if eating peas improves virility, shovel them into your pants). 

I responded to this fairly instantly and without much lateral thinking going on- Fred Wesley and The JBs and their 1973 single More Peas, and Secret Circuit's Jungle Bones from 2012, two dance tracks forty years apart. There was more going on in the comments box. Lizarus suggested musical nonsense and the 'wilful horny chaos' of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Keith offered The Spitting  Song, Ernie went for Groin Strain and Keith Hudson,  Rol opted for Goober And The Peas and Chris went with Natural Life's Natural Life. All of which led me back to I, Ludicrous and their Preposterous Tales. 

This week's card says this- Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do.

It made me think of a famous John F. Kennedy speech from 1961, ''We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." 

Maybe it was the recent Artemis space mission, maybe it's because I've recently taught a lesson on the space race and The Cold War, maybe its just an oblique connection. What Kennedy was saying is the opposite of Eno and Schmidt's advice but I guess the point of the Oblique Strategies is you go where you with it, you follow the suggestion. In this case it took me here- Steinski and Mass Media in 1986. 

The Motorcade Sped On

More details just arrived... Mrs Kennedy jumped up, she called 'oh no'... The world is very different now... The energy, the faith, the devotion... Oswald has been shot!... The motorcade sped on...

From there it was a short hop to The Wedding Present in 1989...

Kennedy

Have you lost your love of life? Too much apple pie. 

From that to this, a Lou Reed song from his 1982 album The Blue Mask. I'm not sure this counts among Lou's best work. Last year I did an irregular series where I worked my way through his solo back catalogue and found a lot to enjoy in the 1970s but the 80s was slim pickings until New York in 1989. This isn't the best song on The Blue Mask but it's not the worst either. 

The Day John Kennedy Died

Feel free to make your own suggestions and responses in the comment box. Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do...

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy was- Tape your mouth.

I plumbed for the recently released Tom Waits and Massive Attack single, Boots On The Ground, a song I've returned to many times since, Tom Waits' mouth taped, both the disgust in his delivery and his words and the sound of him breathing. 

There were as usual some excellent suggestions from the Bagging Area massive- Cryptoliz opted for the Bulgarian State Television Female Choir, as beloved by 4AD's Ivo Watts- Russell and as heard here singing Erghen Diado. 

Rol went with Radiohead's Gagging Order, Ernie with Julie Fowlis and Joe Dolce and Al G with Deerhunter.

This week's Oblique Strategy card is this- Short circuit (if eating peas improves virility, shovel them into your pants)

Sound advice from Eno and Schmidt. 

Pass the peas. More peas. Fred Wesley and The J.B.s. 

More Peas

I dunno if Fred Wesley and The J.B.s' peas improved their virility or indeed if they shoveled them into their pants but this is very much music that struts, 1973 funk that could potentially cause accidental pregnancies. 

This is an ALFOS favorite, one I've heard go off in The Golden Lion, courtesy of Secret Circuit. Maybe not virile but definitely sexy. 

Jungle Bones (Tiago Mix)