On Sunday I spent much of the day in converted industrial spaces at art and music events. The afternoon event was organised by Dave Haslam, the man near the centre of much of what has been happening here since the mid 1980s. He's recently written a short book about Haring and, with the exhibition at the Tate Liverpool running at the same time, put together some events to celebrate Keith's life and to raise some money for AIDS and art charities. The venue was Fairfeld Social Club, a large, double arched space underneath the railway at the back of Piccadilly Station- a really good use of a post- industrial space with a very welcoming feel. There were DJs playing 1980s New York tunes, live music from a singer called Husk, an In Conversation With... Q and A with Samantha McEwen (who met Keith at college and shared a flat with him in NY in the early 80s), a recreation of Keith Haring painting Grace Jones (minus both Keith and Grace but with willing stand ins and it wasn't warm in there so hats off to the Teneille ), live painting in the style of Keith Haring by graffiti artist Boo Whorlow, an auction of the paintings and a Haring t-shirt and some energetic and passionate live poetry.
This is Grace Jones from her 1981 album Nightclubbing and a track which speaks for itself.
Warp are celebrating thirty years of releasing records. One of the releases for this landmark is Aphex Twin's Peel Session from 1995, four tracks from Richard D. James including this one...
Making music that is weird or odd is relatively easy. Making music that is weird or odd and also shot through with brilliance and sounds genuinely timeless is less easy. Slo Bird Whistle sounds like nothing else and if you have a cat is likely to sent him/her on edge too.
Top- the field at Serre, the Somme, where 585 men out of the 700 Accrington Pals who went over the top on 1st July 1916 were killed or wounded in the first twenty minutes of the battle.
Bottom- the view towards the British lines at Beaumont Hamel, as seen from the German front line. The Newfoundland Regiment lost 700 men on the same day as they tried to cross the ground in the centre of the picture.
I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the way in the last few years the poppy has been politicised but remembrance is important. I also think as a nation we need to find a way to move forward from the world wars of the Twentieth century. There is an unhealthy obsession with aspects of them in some areas of British and English life.
This is new from an ambient/drone outfit called Private Mountain. Just A Strange World is seven minutes of immersive, melancholic noise and beautiful swirling soundscapes. The track Private Mountain that follows it is similar but twice as long and with water and birds.
It is time once again for our monthly sojourn to Music's Not For Everyone, Andrew Weatherall's regular two hour trip through dub, pysche, cosmische, techno, chugg and all points in between. 'The usual gubbins' as Weatherall himself puts it. This month's, especially the second half, is as far out and esoteric as it has ever been. The tracklist is here.
Thirty years ago today the Berlin Wall began to crumble. The exodus of thousands of East Germans had begun in the summer as Hungary relaxed its travel restrictions following Gorbachev's softening of the USSR's position, not least his economic decision to start pulling the Red Army out of the satellite states. Many East Germans realised they could travel to Hungary from Dresden and from Hungary westwards to The F.R.G. On the night of the 9th November 1989 the East German government, faced with a losing battle and mounting civil unrest lifted the their own travel restrictions. A bemused official at a press conference, when asked when the freedom to travel from East to West Berlin came into effect, shuffled his papers, shrugged and suggested from now. Crowds began to gather at the wall and pass through the border points without any kinds of checks. Guards looked on but did nothing. More and more people arrived. Some climbed the wall. Some danced on top of it. West Berliners arrived with hammers and chisels and started taking chunks out of the wall. East Berliners flooded into the western side of the city and filled the bars. Euphoric crowds partied through the night. Berlin had been divided by the wall since August 1961. Over 130 people were killed trying to cross it. Watching these events of November 1989 live on TV was bizarre and sticks in the memory as one of the seeming certainties of life vanished.
The Berlin Wall is littered through pop culture. Bowie and 'Heroes' and Iggy at Hansa in the shadow of the wall, Johnny Rotten in Holidays In The Sun 'I gotta go over the wall/please don't be waiting for meeee', Keith Haring painting the western side of it, West Berlin's isolation and interzone status, acting as a magnet for all sorts of outlaws, artists and reprobates- Einsturzende Neubauten, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. On the eastern side of the Wall life was more dangerous especially for those who chose a non- conformist lifestyle. There's a set of photographs here of East Berlin punks, photographed, arrested, beaten and harassed by the Stasi for their dress and haircuts.
The pictures above are from my visit to Berlin a few years ago. The section of wall with the graffiti on it, the only real length of wall still sanding in the city centre, is poignant- 'Astrid,maybe some day we will be together'. Checkpoint Charlie is more of a tourist trap but worth a visit. The line the Wall took is laid into the streets in Berlin so you can follow the route it took but it's difficult to visit today and picture the city of the 70s and 80s, divided in two, with watchtowers, the death strip, machine gun posts and roads stopping suddenly, bisected by a concrete Cold War boundary marker.
This is from a series of remixes and re-edits released on the legendary Trax label, classic Chicago house music redone for the 2010s. Bring Down The Walls by Robert Owens, re-edited by Leo Zero.
Two songs named after famous people from the late 80s indie world for Friday, tributes of kinds to Brian Rix and Charlton Heston.
The Brilliant Corners came from Bristol and were one of the quintessential jangle- pop, C86 bands. Their 1987 single Brian Rix became a millstone for them in many ways but is a classic of its kind and full of self- deprecating humour. Jingle jangle guitars, sweetly sung, four four snare, and this verse...
'Don't be so worried, we won't get caught
They won't be back until eleven o' clock
We fumbled around in front of the budgie
She started to laugh, 'Well what's so funny?'
It's just you remind me of Brian Rix
When you pull your trousers down
It sends me in fits'
Brian Rix was an actor and manager, a man famous for West End farces. He became a campaigner for disability rights following the birth of his daughter, born with Down Syndrome. Later on in his life, as Lord Rix, he campaigned for the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia. He died in 2016.
In 1988 Stump released a single called Charlton Heston. Stump, with former members of Microdisney in their ranks, were a little more experimental than The Brilliant Corners. They were the archetypal touring indie group of 1988, always on the road, often in either the NME, the Melody Maker or both and appearing on The Tube more than once. Charlton Heston reached the dizzy heights of number 72 in the real charts, novelty indie almost- frog chorus, twangy guitar and the line 'Charlton Heston/put his vest on'. The lyrics are based on Heston's performance as Moses in The Ten Commandments. Until recently I hadn't heard this song for roughly three decades. Singer and lyricist Mick Lynch sadly died of cancer in 2015.
Charlton Heston was a Hollywood legend and an influential right wing activist. He abandoned the Democrats in the 60s to become a Republican and then an avid supporter of Ronald Reagan. He was elected five times as President of the NRA. Heston famously made a speech to fellow gun owners at the NRA national conference, waving a rifle above his head on stage, and challenging Al Gore by shouting 'I'll give up my gun when you prise it from my cold, dead hands'. This was one year after the Columbine High School massacre. he repated the line at the end of his annual speech for several years afterwards.
Better to remember Charlton Heston in Planet Of The Apes, a film packed with genuinely great moments, not least the final scene. 'You maniacs! You blew it up! Dam you! Dam you all to hell!'
Songs named after famous people number 3. In 1987 The Replacements released Pleased To Meet Me, an album with some great songs marred by some bad production. Lead Replacement Paul Westerberg got some kind of wish fulfilment here, recording a song in tribute to one of his heroes , Alex Chilton, who returned the favour by playing guitar on the song Can't Hardly Wait.
'Children by the million
Sing for Alex Chilton
I'm in love
with that song'
Westerberg's song is a song about being in love with a band and we can all identify with that. Alex Chilton wrote September Gurls so he pretty much gets a free pass from me.
While we're here the version of Can't Hardly Wait, recorded for the 1985 album Tim, but not used is to these ears superior to the one on Pleased To Meet Me. I've posted it before but it's worth a repost. Bob Stinson's guitar is electrifying, far more so than the later, sweeter, version with horns. This version makes some clear allusions to suicide in the lyrics, removed from the '87 one which was turned into being a song about touring.
I'm not an Arsenal fan- my allegiances are with Manchester United- but I have an admiration for Tony Adams, the Arsenal and England centre back, twenty two years with one club and club captain for much of that time. The sort of player you'd like in your team. He had well documented problems with alcohol and at times has the look of a man who has been hollowed out on the inside.
In 1999 Joe Strummer put out his first album with The Mescaleros, Rock, Art and The X Ray Style. After his self declared Wilderness Years, roughly spanning the break up of The Clash and this record, Rock, Art... was a comeback, an album that was confident and coherent, Joe back at the top of his game lyrically and vocally with a sympathetic band and top class collaborators. The opening song is named after the Arsenal man (and as far as I know Strummer was a Chelsea fan, for his sins). Tony Adams starts with a burst of static, some squally guitar and tom toms and then Joe on the mic 'late news breaking, this just in...' Joe goes on to describe a power cut in New York over a Clash- like groove, reggae guitars and saxophone. The chorus is a rousing 'Hey hey the morning sun/Has anybody seen the morning sun?' Tony Adams
In typical Joe Strummer style the song drags in all sorts of pop culture and apocalyptic imagery, funky Broadway, a solar flare, Tony Bennett, the search for a phone, dead men, debris and party hats. No clear reference to Tony Adams. When I saw him at Manchester Academy touring this album, a raucous and heady gig with Clash songs causing mass celebrations, Joe introduced this song by asking us to put aside our tribalism and rivalries and appreciate the man of the song's title. Which we did. Adams had published his autobiography Addicted the year before and it was this acclaimed book, the story of Tony's life long struggle, that struck a chord with Joe.
“England is used to worship a brand new band every now and then and throw them away into the ten following minutes. England is used to get rid of these kind of people, that’s disgusting. That’s a vicious behaviour but symptomatic of one certain illness which corrupts the UK. I’ve written one song about that which is called “Tony Adams”: No one in this fucking country rose up when he was denied the England armband, whilst he was winning his own fight against alcoholism. People might imagine footy is mundane, sometimes mundane stuff are important. We need people like Tony Adams.”
I picked up Robert Forster's autobiography Grant And I, his memoir of his life, his time as one of the two songwriters and frontmen in The Go- Betweens and friendship with the other one, Grant McLennan (who died at the early age of forty eight in 2006). Forster is a witty, reflective and very literate writer and he describes the birth of the group and their subsequent trials and tribulations- critically lauded albums but very few sales- in a breezy but detailed manner. The 1980s and it's insistence on big studios, big producers and drum machines doesn't come out of it well, several albums full of fine songs being scuppered. His writes vivid portraits of London in the mid 80s and of the music and social scenes in several Australian cities.The chapter at the end of the first half where he deals with the band's breakup is open and honest about his and Grant's reasons and mistakes (especially when telling Lindy and Amanda, the other band members, one of whom was living with and in a relationship with McLennan who then regrets this and pays for it for some time afterwards).
Early on in the band's history Robert writes a song called Lee Remick, a tribute to the American star of Days Of Wine And Roses, The Omen and Anatomy Of A Murder, and it's clear this song is a breakthrough for him, a love song written by someone who at that point hadn't been in love, a love song for someone he doesn't know, his feelings projected onto a film star. The music, folky post punk crossed with 60s bubblegum, is stripped back, taut and amateurish and all the better for it. It's clearly indebted to Jonathan Richman and The Monkees. The Go- Betweens pressed up 700 copies on 7" released by Australian label Able in 1978, which are worth a small fortune now. The subject of the song, Lee Remick, owned three copies of the single, one sent to her by Forster in 1979, another he gave to her in 1988 and a third bought by the production team when she appeared on an Australian chatshow.
The book cost me a fiver in the Waterstones sale, five pounds well spent. You can barely get a pint for a fiver in some parts of town now.
Then I got thinking about songs where the title of the song is the name of a famous person. Sadly The Wedding Present's George Best album doesn't count as it's an album not a song and the boy Gedge didn't include the word William in the title of his song Shatner. But I've got a couple of others which I'll put up over the next few days.
On 1st November 2018 Underworld decided to launch a year long project called Drift. They would create and publish music and film for a year, putting the results online every Thursday. Fifty two episodes with no clear plan or destination, just the freedom of 'let's see what happens' with the self imposed deadline to do it regularly and often. A bit like how I see blogging. Rick and Karl have just made the whole thing available digitally, a seven CD box set, a seventeen track Blu- Ray with the pick of the films and an eleven song sampler/best of. This one, Tree And Two Chairs, came out back in August, a thirteen minute glide with jazzy keyboards and a saxophone swirling around over a very Underworld rhythm, a sense of space and of floating.
Ambient music from Nashville, not the kind of music you necessarily expect to find coming from Nashville, which makes this even more of an unexpected treat. Rich Ruth composes his music at home, minimalist and repetitive, improvisational, drones and synths, beautiful melodies riding over the top. While recording the album he was held at gunpoint outside his house and carjacked and when he went back to finish the record found that he was pouring his trauma and emotions into the songs. What was deeply unpleasant for Rich has resulted in an exceptional album, out shortly physically and already available digitally at Bandcamp. In places Calming Signals is quite unsettling, dissonant and discordant. In others its more soothing and chilled. The track below, Coming Down, a lush, building piece really starts to soar when the ecstatic saxophone floats around over the top.
A double celebration for us today, two parties, both with their origins in November 1969. The magazine covers above all date from fifty years ago- Cosmopolitan asking whether you'd rather be his wife or his mistress, Vogue leading with winter fashion and beauty and tarot cards for good measure and Popular Science with jet-packs.
This afternoon we are at a party for my parent's fiftieth wedding anniversary, who got married fifty years ago yesterday. I came along in May 1970- it was quite late on when I worked out the maths on that. Then tonight we are at a friend's 50th birthday party- his birthday was yesterday as well so he was born as my Mum and Dad tied the knot. Here we all are half a century later.
1969 in song gives so many opportunities but I'm going for this from The Stooges, the high octane, electrifying, wild, end of the decade brilliance that opens their debut album. Ron Asheton's wah wah guitar intro and the single hammer bang drum lead in Iggy's 'well alright' and then the group swing in bludgeoning the speakers, Iggy reeling off his stupidly clever lyrics about being twenty two and having nothing to do- meanwhile Vietnam burns and tears the USA in two, Nixon is in the White House, the FBI declares war on the Black Panther Party, Northern Ireland simmers with discontent, men walk on the moon, the hippie tribes gather at Woodstock and the Isle of Wight, the Stonewall riots mark the birth of the gay rights movement, the Manson Family commit mass murder, a coup in Libya brings Gaddafi to power, Brian Jones drowns at Pooh Corner, William Calley is charged with murder following the massacre at My Lai, Scooby Doo, Monty Python, Sesame Street and The Clangers all debut, the USA and USSR meet to talk about nuclear weapon reductions and the year ends with Rolf Harris at the top of the UK charts. 'Oh my and a boo hoo'.
The press didn't take to The Stooges debut album. Rolling Stone said it was 'loud, boring, tasteless, unimaginative and childish'. The Village Voice called it 'stupid-rock'. In retrospect however those criticisms (apart from the bit about it being boring which it clearly isn't) make it sound utterly perfect.
Not very long ago Boris Johnson said the United Kingdom would leave the European Union- no ifs, no buts- on 31st October 2019 and that he would rather be 'dead in a ditch' than ask The E.U. for an extension. Today is 1st November 2019 and unless I'm mistaken the UK is very much still in the E.U. An extension was asked for and granted, extending membership into next year. I think it's very unlikely we'll see the Prime Minister face down in a ditch today. It's not nice to wish death on anyone- and I'm not saying I wish Johnson dead- but he raised the stakes with his use of language, he made the rash promises and here we are, still in the E.U. Johnson is a proven liar, a racist, a homophobe, the PM who illegally prorogued parliament, who insulted the memory of murdered MP Jo Cox in the Commons... the list of his failings goes on and on. Frankly, a ditch is too good for him.
Half a world away in Chile protesters have been taking to the streets in their thousands, rising unhappiness with the political and economic situation, deep disillusionment with their government (led by a billionaire President), the increased cost of living and widespread inequality. Chile is one of the most unequal countries on earth with millions of citizens frozen out. The protests turned violent with the arrival of riot police, the subsequent deaths of at least eighteen protesters and reports of human rights abuses by the security forces. A few days ago the above picture appeared, hundreds of protesters with guitars joining the thousands already on the streets and then the massed ranks of guitarists singing a song written by Chilean poet and singer Victor Jara.
The song is El Derecho de Vivre en Paz (The Right To Live In Peace) and the sound of the umpteen strummed guitars, the multitude of voices and doleful, haunting melody is a sound to behold. Guitar army, this machine kills fascists, the people united can never be divided et cetera.
Victor Jara said his songs weren't protest songs but revolution songs. He was a poet, activist, singer, director and member of the Chilean Communist Party who played a major role in establishing the New Chilean Song movement, a upsurge in Chilean folk and popular music in the early 70s. In 1973 Allende's government was overthrown by a right wing coup, supported by the US government, and Augusto Pinochet (friend of Margaret Thatcher) was installed as dictator. On 12th September Jara was arrested and with thousands of others rounded up and held in the Chile Stadium in Santiago. The guards smashed his hands and fingers up and then asked him to play the guitar for them. Shortly after he was killed by a shot in the head and then forty bullets fired into his body. His music was banned by the regime, the master tapes burned or confiscated. Victor's widow Joan distributed his music around the world, publicising his songs and work. That crowd in Chile recently, a new generation of protesters, using his song and words and tune, shows the power of song and music and inspiration they can bring.
In 1980 The Clash released Sandinista!, six sides of vinyl containing the most varied output of their career (and any other band's career for that matter). Side 4 has possibly the best run of songs on the whole triple disc set, opening with their sublime, rollicking cover of Police On My Back, the murky rock reggae of Midnight Log and The Equaliser, the lilting, anti- war The Call Up and then the final pair of Washington Bullets and On Broadway. Washington Bullets tells the story of imperialism from Cuba in 1959 to the Sandinistas of the Nicaragua that gave the album its name, taking in the American backed Bay Of Pigs invasion, the Dalai Lama, the Chinese mistreatment of Buddhist monks, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the murder of Victor Jara, Strummer half singing, half talking the words 'As every cell in Chile will tell/ the cries of the tortured men/ remember Allende and the days before/ before the army came/ please remember Victor Jara/In the Santiago stadium/ Es verdad those Washigton bullets again'.
Moon Duo arrived on stage on Tuesday night at the Dancehouse, taking up their places inside the four-sided tent set up for them to perform inside, Ripley with guitar stage right in jeans, t-shirt and trucker cap and Sanae Yamada stage left behind a rack of keys and synths, in silver smock and black PVC trousers. Behind them drummer John Jeffrey, long haired and channelling the motorik beat of Klaus Dinger but faster and louder. At the back of the stage three projectors throw films, patterns, colours, shapes, roads, tower blocks, snowstorms and fractals onto the trio as they play, an intense and stunning lightshow. The strobe flashes away and at times the backlighting throws up Moon Duo in silhouette, on the screen at the front, giving the impression of two Moon Duos playing at once.
During the dozen or so songs they barely look at the audience, instead locked into each other and the groove. The synth chatters away between songs, the sounds of birdsong and crickets. John Jeffrey triggers the drum machine and then piles in on the live kit and they're off, Sanae filling the venue with drones and noise, synth bass and texture and the drums powering forward, glorious repetition. Over the top Ripley finds the space to glide over the top, his guitar playing alternately Stooges like riffs and dripping, molten solos. The twin vocals are smothered in reverb. Opener Flying kick starts the evening, a half paced shuffle with spacey, cosmic synths. Most of the rest of Stars Are The Light, released just a few weeks ago, is aired, the drones, melodies, phased vocals and the lightshow bouncing round the stage and the room. The dreamy Lost Heads is a psychedelic delight, The World And The Sun is way out, up into the rafters and into the sky. Centrepiece to the set is the epic White Rose, the ten minute highlight of 2017's Occult Architecture Vol 1, a synth driven, dark ride into the night, a menacing and ferocious slow burn. The main set closer Sevens is half Hendrix and half Neu! Ducking under the back wall of the tent the Moon Duo trio return for an encore finishing with their cover of Alan Vega's Jukebox Babe, a two note synth bump and grind, guitar lines fired off as Ripley croons the pared back lyrics. Sometimes the most memorable gigs take place at the weekend, everyone fired up by the freedom from work and lubricated, singing along. Sometimes though they can take place on a cold and sober Tuesday night, tucked away in small art deco theatres away from the bigger, brighter lights. Moon Duo are on fire at the moment, playing to small audiences and showing the possibilities of music that dates back decades but is still just up ahead. If they're playing anywhere near you, go see them. White Rose
The fourteen tracks that make up King Tubby's 1975 album Dub From The Roots came as some kind of epiphany to me back in the 90s. Spread across two sides of vinyl the album showcases Tubby's skills and prowess at the mixing desk. The whole album is swamped in reverb and delay, a wash of sound effects with the bass riding on top or underneath). Drums and percussion bounce around, flourishes of organ and guitar drop in and out. Rimshots ricochet between the speakers. Backing vocals get pushed up front briefly. Timeless, outer space music.
Andy Bell, guitarist in Ride, is on a creative streak. Not only have Ride put out a new album this year and Andy released his dreamy, cosmic GLOK album but he's now put out a 7" single under his own name as well. Plastic Bag is four minutes of introspection and beauty- some ambient noise, Eno-esque piano, slowly drifting, delicate vocals and a guitar line carried in from over yonder. Sounds like it could play over the end credits of a film as the road and the hills recede into the distance and the screen fades to black. Magical.
The single is only available as part of a singles subscription club through Sonic Cathedral. £100 gets you a series of limited singles released between February and December this year. It's here. All depends on how flush you're feeling.
Monday morning, back to work and deep into the gloom now as the clocks went back on Saturday night and the sun goes down in the afternoon now. Here's something to ease the pain. This is Manifesto by Shape Of Space, a track that is a 'Balearic chugger of the highest order' to quote the duo that made it. Having bought this and listened to it multiple times over the last few days I can confirm they are correct.
There's a film channel on Freeview called TCM which shows a random selection of movies. Recently I noticed that they were scheduled to show The Bog Sleep and The Maltese Falcon so set the box to record both. I was a big fan of film noir back in the 80s and early 90s, watched both these films and others, especially those with Humphrey Bogart in them. I read some of Raymond Chandler's novels. This week there was a night when everyone was out and I settled down to watch The Big Sleep.
Bogart plays a private detective Phillip Marlowe hired by General Sternwood to settle a problem with some gambling debts one of his daughters (Lauren Bacall) has accrued. Carmen (Bacall) wants to stop him. She suspects that what her father really wants is to find Sean Regan, who vanished in mysterious circumstances a month earlier. From there on in the plot thickens to involve a bookseller, some blackmail regarding indecent photos of the younger Sternwood daughter, a very flirtatious scene in the bookshop and implied sex, a casino belonging to Eddie Mars, several visits to a house where the body of the bookseller Joe Geiger is found, a beating for Bogart, some resolution of plot issues, Bogart and Bacall suddenly falling in love and the death of Eddie Mars, shot by his own men when Bogie tricks him into going outside. All good film noir stuff.
The film was made during the war- there are a few wartime moments such as a female taxi driver and poster of FDR- but its release was delayed until 1946 so the studios could rush release all the war films they'd made. It was criticised on release for being difficult to follow and confusing. Marlowe sometimes makes deductions that aren't shared with the audience. The death of chauffeur Owen Taylor is unexplained. It's not especially confusing but there is a lot of back and forth, people going to and from places rapidly. There's little character development, it is all plot. And it does look old- really old. But Bogart and Bacall are superb, the lighting is dramatic, there's a grittiness about it that appeals and script is witty and fresh. Everyone, Bogart especially, smokes constantly.
A couple of pop culture things leapt out. Firstly the line 'now wait a minute, you better talk to my mother', taken by Coldcut, who have been posted here several times this week now, and used in their 1987 remix of Eric B and Rakim's Paid In Full. Paid In Full (Seven Minutes of Madness Mix) was a pioneering example of the art of the remix, a record that gave Eric and Rakim a hit, spliced in vocals from a recent hit from Ofra Haza and introduced the world to the much used 'This is a journey into sound...' sample.
When Marlowe (Bogart) visits Eddie Mars' casino Vivian (Bacall) is singing (backed by The Williams Brothers including Andy). The song is And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine, a jazz song written by Stan Kenton. One of the lines she sings refers to a girl being 'a sad tomato'- the lines go 'she's a sad tomato/she's a busted valentine'.
In 1994 Michael Stipe would use the same line in R.E.M.'s Crush With Eyeliner, a line that has always jumped out at me as being such an odd expression. I've no idea if Stipe got it from The Big Sleep or from a different version of the song but it seems reasonable to assume he watched the film late night on tour in a hotel room. Stipe follows it with 'she's three miles of bad road'.
Finally, as this picture shows, the younger of the two Sternwood girls must have been one of the inspirations for the look Ridley Scott gave Sean Young in Blade Runner (Martha Vickers, second right).
That's your lot from The Big Sleep. Next stop for me is to watch The Maltese Falcon, a film and book that from memory are far more confusing and difficult to follow than The Big Sleep.
I've posted this before, Sensurround's 1992 progressive house single Blind Faith, a record made by a group containing John Robb (then stepping outside the punkier environs of The Mekons). The 12" had a 7" mix and this one by Dean Thatcher, a dreamy, chunky, chuggy piece of early 90s progressive house.
When John Robb, Andy Piper and Patrick Simons originally recorded Blind Faith they constructed it around some rather well known samples- the rain and piano from Riders On the Storm, the mellotron from Strawberry Fields Forever, a blast of feedback from the intro to I Fee Fine- and for obvious reasons the samples were removed from the finished released record. But thankfully someone has uploaded the original version to Youtube so we can enjoy it in all its unofficial, 60s pilfering glory.
This song came my way recently on social media, one I'd long forgotten about, and was surprised I'd never posted before- in fact I've not posted anything by the band before. Les Negresses Vertes were a Parisian group who formed in 1987, a bunch of friends fired up by punk and a musical stew of influences that used to be called World Music. Accordion and acoustic guitars, brass, percussion, various members singing vocals, an upbeat busking style, bags of energy and very much their own thing. In 1988 they released an album called Mlah which was well received and which I had a copy of on cassette. Later on, in 1993, a collection of remixes was released, which is where they crossed back into my life and record collection, an album including remixes by Massive Attack, Gang Starr and Norman Cook and this one by William Orbit. If truth be told, the William Orbit one doesn't quite do what I thought it might at the time, no liquid, skyscraping, electronic journey into the cosmos, but it has definite off kilter charm, some very persuasive rhythms, buckets of joie de vivre and is, dare I say it, quite Balearic.
The Keith Haring exhibition at Tate Liverpool is a worth a visit if you're in the North West of England, a really well put together collection of his work, from his early chalk on paper art to large pieces on tarpaulin and the huge, thirty foot long mural Matrix (a section of which is above). I was a big fan of his cartoon/graffiti/comic book art in the mid to late 80s and seeing it all close up was exciting. Liverpool has changed so much since I was a student there in the late 80s/early 90s, the city centre transformed (like so many other cities) but it also still feels like Liverpool, a city with a definite sense of place and its own culture.
Back in 2017 Mark Lanegan collected the remixes commissioned for his album Gargoyle. Among them were two remixes of Beehive by Andrew Weatherall, a version of Nocturne by Adrian Sherwood and this one by Pye Corner Audio. I must have overlooked this one at the time- when I pulled the record out recently I couldn't recall anything about it which was a mistake- this is dark, electro- noir with Lanegan's voice surrounded by a storm of drums and synths. Old Swan is an inner city part of Liverpool, a mainly streets of terraced houses. I don't know if it has anything to do with Mark Lanegan's Old Swan- coincidence probably.
Some lifestyle advice from the inside of a toilet door in one of Manchester's pubs, the promotion of mood altering substances along with some criticism of one of the city's best known sons.
Not related but here's some more Scandi-disco from Lindstrom. Blinded By The LEDs, a single from last year, starts out dark and spaced out. The disco drums power it forwards before it all goes a bit prog. The ending comes dramatically, the lights going out, leaving you wanting it all to start up again. Lindstrom is a master of this kind of thing, makes it all seem so easy and has a back catalogue littered with jewels. His new album, a four track, recorded live in one take, synth and drum machine banger, is out now too- On A Clear Day I Can See You Forever can be bought here.
Coldcut released Autumn Leaves in 1993. Mixmaster Morris remixed it into Balearic ambient bliss- waves lapping on the beach, strings and slow motion bleeps and then a vocal floating in on the breeze, 'but I miss you most of all my darling/when autumn leaves start to fall'. Autumn Leaves was written in 1945 by Yves Montand and Irene Joachim, a jazz and pop standard recorded by a host of artists from Nat King Cole to The Everley Brothers, Doris Day to Bing Crosby.
Then I remembered the photo I took and used for a blogpost last year and thought it would be perfect for this song. Round here the leaves have started to fall this last week, covering the pavement with faded greens and browns, rusty yellows and golds before the rain and feet turn them all to mush.
October half term. A week off for me (or wee calf in the punchline to Drew's joke on Twitter last week). Monday's long song this week is less a song, more a mini- mix courtesy of Coldcut and The Orb, who spend fourteen minutes and twenty six seconds with each other's record collections, tracks and samples live on the air at Kiss FM, New Year's Eve 1991. Coldcut were just getting their Ninja Tune off the ground, The Orb were about to take off.
There's all sorts going on in here, opera, cockerels crowing, thumping rhythm tracks, voices dropping in and out of the mix, Denise singing 'rama lama lama fa fa fi, I'm gonna get high til the day I die', Neil Armstrong's famous line as he steps down the ladder on to the moon, the vocal line from Roach Motel's Movin' On. Sampledelic fun for your Monday morning.
In 1987 Dinosaur Jr released their second album, a definitive set of songs called You're Living All Over Me. Over at a website called Classic Album Sundays my friend Ian says 'If ever you encounter someone telling you that Dinosaur Jr’s best album is something other than 1987’s You’re Living All Over Me, be assured that they don’t know what they’re talking about. There was a blinding light and a parting of the clouds when this one arrived. It is one of the high watermarks of post-hardcore underground American indie rock.' You're Living All over Me is a definite step on from the punk of the early and mid 80s, taking rock's past (the 60s and 70s) and speeding it up, making it looser and messier and adding the assault of hardcore. The singing was something else too, a different approach, none of the certainty and bark of the punk singers- J Mascis drawled over the top of his group's perfect blend of noise and melody. Album opener Little Fury Things hits hard as soon as the needle finds the groove, a salvo of drums and then wah wah guitar riding over the sludgy noise, some screaming, and then suddenly everything snapping into clarity at thirty seconds.
Little Fury Things At the end of the decade Dinosaur Jr signed to a major and released The Wagon (they'd already put it out with Sub Pop in 1990). The Wagon was the opener on Green Mind, their first without bassist Lou Barlow. The Wagon is a blast, a shockwave sent straight up your spine, pummelling guitar and drums and J sounding like he just got out of bad and stumbled to the mic. The Wagon
New from Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros and the perfect way to pick yourself up on Saturday, Chateau Comtal is nine minutes of kickdrum, fuzzy bass, tom toms, feelgood chords, wiggy synths and driving electrical impulses. Impossible not to enjoy. Takes you away. Uplifting. New favourite track. And so on.
It's out on a compilation on Monday called Wonder Stories Compilation Wonder Buds Vol 2.
Coming out hot on the heels of his latest album Rainford, recorded with dub supremo Adrian Sherwood, Lee 'Scratch' Perry has now put out a dub version of that album, with some new Scratch- Sherwood tracks, titled Heavy Rain. If all that weren't enough the new album has a collaboration with Brian Eno, Here Come The Warm Dreads, a dubbed out Eno version of the track Makumba Rock. And that is your Friday soundtrack and earworm ordered and booked.
The early 80s back catalogue of Simple Minds continues to reveal new wonders to me. I've said before that my prejudices about Jim Kerr's band were formed in the mid to late 80s when their wind swept stadium rock did nothing for me. But in recent years I've had my head turned, first by Theme For Great Cities and then its parent albums Sons And Fascination/Sister Feelings Call. Over the last eighteen months I've picked up various Simple Minds records second hand, albums and singles. Then JC at the Vinyl Villain undertook a weekly trawl through the singles and B-sides of the group released between 1980 and 1984, a series of blogposts and comments that educated and entertained me while filling in umpteen gaps. This one has really struck a chord with me in recent days...
Riding in a fantastic backbeat and then covered in New Wave synths, the playing on this, the synth lines and jagged guitar fills, all sound weirdly contemporary to me. Jim Kerr's vocal stylings date it a little and it does sound in debt to 1977- not the '77 of the Sex Pistols but the '77 of Kraftwerk, Berlin, Iggy, Bowie, The Idiot and Low, Mittel Europa- but John Leckie's production keeps it really fresh, remarkably so for a record made in 1980. New Warm Skin was a B-side, the flip to single I, Travel. There was no room for it on the album Empires And Dance, a record I found in a stack in a second hand shop last week.
In a record shop at the weekend they were playing Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. The long fade in, the electric organ chords and then the horns and strings sound-tracking the streaming tears of Broken Heart stopped me in my tracks.
Cool Waves followed and sounded immense. When I came home I played this, which is cut from similar cloth and is almost weightless and achingly beautiful.
Back in April I discovered one of the best albums of 2018, Mark Peter's instrumental tribute to north west England, an eight song record called Innerland, a journey through the landscape and place names of this part of the world. I've been coming back to it regularly ever since. It fits in really well with Richard Norris' pair of Abstractions albums, sundry Durutti Column records, Pye Corner Audio's last couple, the new one from GLOK and The Orb's early 90s ambient dub masterpieces. Mark has just released Innerland in a new form, stripping the drums and percussion off and leaving just the guitar parts, the synths and the keyboards. It's gorgeous, magical, transporting, very autumnal and somewhat haunting too. I wish I'd been on to it when it was released in a very limited 250 run on vinyl.
People coming away from Convenanza a few weeks ago were typing in feverish tones about the last song played on the Saturday night, eight minutes of intense, slowly building, euphoric, tranced out bliss from Belgium. This is it, Hellish Imp by Cabaret Nocturne, currently available form Bandcamp for the sum of €2. Hit the play button on the player below and you're away somewhere else entirely, somewhere far away from a dull Monday morning in Ocotber in Brexit Britain.
Yes, it's that time of the month again, the time when the temple of gnostic sonics opens its doors, the mid- month excursion into the record bag Andrew Weatherall has dragged along to Hackney. Music's Not For Everyone. The end times sound. This month's tracklist is here. Craig Leon, Sordid Sound System, Moon Duo, The Golden Filter, Big Youth, King Tubby, Bush Tetras, Duster and Jake Xerxes Fussell all feature.
A bonus feature for Sunday, a rockabilly, blues, garage, rock 'n' roll set Weatherall played at Red Rooster Festival in Suffolk back at the end of May.
A reader request today from someone called Boshed who found my Hidden Library post from 2012 and asked if the songs could be re- uploaded. First some background. Back in the early 21st century Andrew Weatherall had a short run of limited 7" single releases under the name Hidden Library. At the time there was a Rotters Golf Club website with a virtual club house you could explore and poke around in using your mouse and dial up internet connection. In the library there was a secret door which took you through to the hidden library from where a pair of singles could be ordered, limited to 500 copies. They were among the first things I ever bought off the internet and my ineptitude meant that I bought two copies of one of them and couldn't work out how to change my order. This was in the days when Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood were deep underground, making seriously purist electronic music. Breakbeats via turntables and laptops, abstract electro with a heavy whiff of skunk in the air.
The first single, Hidden Library 001, doesn't exist. Apparently it was mispressed and binned. Weatherall has said on the radio that he has a couple of OK copies that he'll sell on the internet when times are hard. The first release was Hidden Library 002. Both sides of the single are untitled but written and produced by Weatherall and Tenniswood.
Hidden Library 003 was a cover of Hawkwind man Robert Calvert's 1985 song Lord Of The Hornets. Both sides of the single are credited to Jnr. Poon. Eventually it came to light that Jnr. Poon, who made only these two songs, was Duncan Gray and Jim Wren. Duncan Gray has recently been releasing a slew of excellent, long chuggy monsters, some of which have been posted here and here.
Lord Of The Hornets is a buzzing, wired, electronic killer of a track, worth the price of admission alone.
The B- side is scratchy and dusty with a stark drumbeat, sounds a bit like it was recorded in an underpass beneath a dual carriageway at night, and has Weatherall on distorted spoken word vocals. Unfortunately the use of the word 'retard' really hasn't aged well.
Today's post accidentally fits in really well with David Byrne's ideas about finding vocals and using them in new musical places (see yesterday's My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts post). A while ago someone somewhere, sorry I can't remember who, posted two Orbital tracks both released in 1990, one the B-side to Chime and the other a remix of that B- side from the Omen 12". Deeper and 2 Deep take the voice from a relaxation tape, designed to help people who were unable to relax or get to sleep, calm down and chill the fuck out. A warm, calming voice appropriated by the Hartnoll brothers and laid over some techno. Knowing, ironic, a bit trippy. 'Close your eyes and relax...'
I put both versions onto a compilation CD along with other similar stuff and found that they sounded really good driving to and from work. Thankfully they didn't cause me to relax so much that I fell asleep at the wheel. That would not have been relaxing.
Also from 1990 and in the same ballpark is this from Ed Ball's Love Corporation- sparkling, inventive acid house with a vocal found on a New Age, meditation tape, remixed by the King of Shoom Danny Rampling. 'Close your eyes and begin to breathe slowly and deeply...'
In 1981 David Byrne and Brian Eno released an album which they'd been working on since 1979. It still sounds remarkably fresh today, even if some of its key features and devices have become pop culture cliche- ranting evangelical preachers and TV announcers. I remember buying My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts in the late 80s and finding it bewitching and startling then and on Side A as funky and rhythmic a record as any contemporary ones. Eno and Byrne relied on some happy accidents, syncing up found voices with tape loops, dropping in rhythm tracks recorded using boxes and plastic containers as drums, recording people off the radio, but they also had some serious, heavy duty rhythm sections at their disposal too, Chris Frantz, Prairie Prince, Bill Laswell and Busta Jones. The opener was/is this one, a song that explodes out of the traps, bursts of bass and guitar and loops, ominous and tense but definitely capable of causing some shapes to be thrown.
Byrne was into the idea of the songs having vocals but not having to write any lyrics. As a vocalist he found he was expected to express himself through the words to a song. What he says he often found was that the music and the lyric triggered the emotion in him rather than the other way around. Using sampled and recorded voices (and this was pre- sample clearing days, which held up the release of Bush of Ghosts), voices where the speaker was already expressing high emotion such as preachers, in a different context, dropping them into music they'd already recorded, took the original voice and vocal elsewhere. This became standard, the sampling of voices and using them in dance records, but it's pretty forward thinking here.
Side B is less voice focused and more moody, ambient and less based around rhythms to make the listener move. In 2008 a re issued CD version came with seven extra tracks. The running order and track selection of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts changed several times during its conception and according to Byrne's liner notes any of the extras could have made the final release if they hadn't been constrained by the limitations of vinyl's running time. This one starts with a burst of noise, silence and then a fade in, percussion, a repeated bass riff, a distorted noise, chimes and what could be a cuckoo clock. Short but intriguing. I wonder if the title refers to the then balance of power within Talking Heads and their producer (Eno and Byrne versus Weymouth, Frantz and Harrison).
