Moving Further Away

A humdinger of a Weatherall remix that appeared on a very pricey Horrors vinyl box set from 2012 for Thursday. The drum machine wheezes away, a bleepy arpeggio repeats and builds, and the Farris chorus part comes in and out. Hypnotic.

Moving Further Away (Andrew Weatherall remix)

I would pay good money for a Weatherall remix of Beyonce.

Performance

This Happy Mondays performance of Performance on Tony Wilson's late 80s, late night Granada tv show The Other Side Of Midnight is jawdropping. Firstly because of the insistent, scratchy funk that the musical Mondays have dragged out of some unholy swamp. Horse's guitar playing is particularly good- horrible but good. Secondly because of the terrace chic of sweatshirts, trainers and baggy jeans, previously unthinkable for an indie band or a Factory records band but soon to be the default dress for a generation. Thirdly because of Shaun's glasses. But mainly, fourthly, because of Shaun and Bez's performance- a chemical analysis of Bez would reveal him to be at least 73% ecstacy at the point of filming. Shaun may be a pill or two behind him. They own this. They make it their own.

Dance To The Beat Of The Drum

Do you want a download of the Andrew Weatherall remix of Julian Cope's fictional 1989 baggy band Dayglo Maradona? For free? (the 12" white vinyl is strictly limited. Obviously). If the player below doesn't work you can get it here. Eleven and a half minutes of big drumbeats, piano, Cope's intermittent vocals and general '89 vibes. 'Rock section...rock section'.

The track is the musical spin off of Cope's soon-to-be-published 'time-shifting gnostic hooligan road novel' One Three One. I'm not going to attempt to summarise the plot.

Airborne, Travelling

We got back from camping tired but largely dry having had a cracking weekend in the Ulverston area, no wifi, no signal. My hay fever went a bit mad last week and I felt really shitty on the Friday night but recovered to enjoy Saturday. It was not even spoiled that much by listening to England lose to Italy on a tiny radio while sitting around a camp fire. Next stop- defeat to Uruguay, followed by defeat to Costa Rica. Drew- I have no expectations of England winning at all. And in a way, I don't mind, if they at least play well while losing.

Ellis Island Sound's Regions album is one of my favourites of this year, along with the ones from Pete Molinari and Hollie Cook. Regions is laid back, funky and from somewhere midway between krautrock and Afrobeat (or an English version of those). The lead single Intro, Airborne, Travelling had a couple of remixes. This one by Scott Fraser (from Mr Weatherall's Scrutton Street axis) toughens it up and stretches it out.

Intro, Airborne, Travelling (Scott Fraser Remix)

Eleven

We are camping in the Lakes tonight, for child number two our daughter ET. It is her eleventh birthday. Somehow we have managed to combine going to a campsite on top of a hill with England's first game in the world cup (at eleven pm). Hopefully we will find a pub nearish to the campsite. Otherwise it's everyone round a small transistor radio annoying any campers who want to get to sleep.

This rather good electronic song by Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros came out on a compilation called Correspondent a few months back. I'm guessing the title refers to when it was recorded, a year ago today.

14.6.13 here

Today is also the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Bunnyman and Sex God Pete de Freitas, killed on his motorbike in Staffordshire. His last public appearance was in the video of this Julian Cope song. There's a very good article in the latest Mojo magazine about him. He was one of a kind.

Absolutely

In 1966 Bob Dylan was so hot he could toss off songs like this as album tracks. And he looked like the coolest man on the planet.

Absolutely Sweet Marie

Brazil Two

Mark from Cooking Up A Quiet Storm has compiled a Brazilian themed mix to celebrate the big kick off, taking suggestions from contributors and bloggers. My contribution was this morning's Os Mutantes song. There are nineteen more in the mix which you can find here with the tracklist or you can listen below. All the artists are Brazilian, including Gilberto Gil, Sergio Mendes, Astrud Gilberto, Jorge Ben and Pele. Goooaaaalllll!

Tropical Truths - compiled by the Quiet Storm Family by Cooking Up A Quiet Storm on Mixcloud

Brazil One

Yay! The World Cup kicks off today, all the way from Brazil. Nothing the current art department produce gets anywhere near the poster that advertised the 1950 tournament (also in Brazil) but never mind. We may also have to ignore a) FIFA's absolute corruption b) protests from the locals about the cost c) the poverty in the favelas just a stone's throw from the stadia d) the likelihood that England will be knocked out by the end of the group stage; then we may be able to enjoy a festival of football. Tonight, Brazil versus Croatia.

From 1968, Brazil's own psychedelic protest group and the mind blowingly good Os Mutantes. Just listen to that fuzz guitar and that tropicalia backing.

A Minha Menina

Love For Sale

I've been playing Pete Molinari's latest album a lot recently. It came out last Monday and it's still revealing its charms on a daily basis. Theosophy is his fourth lp and, put simply, it's his best collection of songs, recorded and mixed really well. Some of this must be down to the production and mixing skills of Andrew Weatherall and Tchad Blake. There's nothing here that isn't retro, defiantly retro, and the songs sounds like they could come from anywhere between 1955 and 1966 but that doesn't detract from an album that I'm loving from start (Hang My Head in Shame) to finish (Love For Sale). This is that album closer, lightly 1966 psychedelia in tone, which rattles along with double tracked vocals, a smashing slide guitar part and some funny noises appearing here and there (Weatherall's input possibly). Have a listen and then go and buy your own copy on cd or vinyl at Cherry Red Records. I'm awaiting my vinyl copy.

Love For Sale

Rise And Fall

I found this excellent documentary on Youtube over the weekend, The Rise And Fall Of The Clash, directed by Danny Garcia and co-written by Mick's schoolmate (and subject of Stay Free) Robin Banks. The footage and talking head interviews are fairly standard but within this film lurks some awkward and uncomfortable truths. The title is a bit of a misnomer- it's about the fall of the band rather than their rise and the aftermath of their gigs at Shea Stadium where they seemed to have cracked the US with a hit lp (Combat Rock) and a pair of singles (Rock The Casbah and Should I Stay Or Should I Go?). The causes of the fall are pretty well known- Topper's sacking, Joe's insistence on bringing Bernie Rhodes back as manager, Mick's timekeeping, the internal and political contradictions of being famous and successful versus being a political band who started out in a squat- but this film has some insightful interviews with some of the main players and bystanders- Mick Jones himself, Pearl Harbour (Paul's girlfriend at the time), security man Raymond Jordan, Terry Chimes/Tory Crimes, Viv Albertine, Tymon Dogg, Mickey Gallagher and Vic Goddard. The cast are divided about Bernie Rhodes, central to the story and the split- some think he's an anarchic genius who gave The Clash an edge they needed. Some think he's an enormous bellend.

The second half of the film is where it becomes less well-known and more compulsive. The story of The Clash Mk2, without the sacked Mick Jones and with three new members- Pete Howard, Nick Shepherd and Greg 'Vince' White. The treatment these three got was, to be frank, appalling and how Joe and Paul went along with it is jaw dropping. Vince White deserves some kind of award. Joe and Paul then go onto to record and then leave to Bernie to finish and mix the Cut The Crap album, a record largely expunged from the official histories of the band. Grim, uncomfortable and fascinating stuff. Even if you've little interest in The Clash or think you've seen enough Clash documentaries, you should set aside ninety minutes for this.

Fade Away Again

After The Slits broke up Ari Up sang maybe her best vocal take on this 1981 New Age Steppers cover of the Junior Byles song Fade Away (posted recently both here and at Jim McLean's Rabbit). New Age Steppers were Ari, dub maestro Adrian Sherwood, his Creation Rebels and a rotating cast/collective of like minded musicians.  They were also the first release on Sherwood's On-U Sound label- some of their dub is deliberately harsh and abrasive, confrontational. Fade Away is a dubbed out delight from start to finish.

Fade Away

I Heard It Through The Bassline

The Bagging Area Slits-fest continues with this astonishing piece of live footage from Berlin in 1981, playing Man Next Door- freeform dub live with The Pop Group's Bruce Smith on drums, Neneh Cherry on backing vox and dancing and Ari, Viv and Tessa in full effect for eight minutes. There really was nothing else like them.

Man Next Door was originally a John Holt hit, based on a Dr Alimantado song, based on a Dennis Brown song.



As an extra I've been hammering this recently, their cover version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine (B-side to Typical Girls). It is the best dub-punk cover, bar none, and I have posted it before but it bears repeating. Tessa Pollitt's bassline is out of this world- as Ari Up sings 'I heard it through the bassline'

I Heard It Through The Grapevine

You Never Called, I Waited For You, But These Rivers Of Suggestion Keep Dragging Me Away

It's something like that. One of the joys of early R.E.M. is that everyone hears what they think they can hear.

Michael Stipe has just announced that he's releasing his first post- R.E.M. music, a soundtrack to a friend's film. Most of the world will probably do little more than shrug. They carried on far too long, almost nothing after New Adventures In Hi-Fi sticks in the memory and they began to have an air of pomposity which became offputting. So it's funny to watch a clip like this one, live on the David Letterman show in 1983 playing Radio Free Europe and So Central Rain, when they were a frenetic, Wire-y, mumbling, American post-punk band dressed in second hand clothes. And then to shed a little tear.

D-Day

It's worth remembering that seventy years ago today the Allies launched the D-Day landings, putting 150 000 men onto the beaches of Normandy to push the Nazis out of France. The average age of the soldiers was twenty two, so most of the surviving veterans today are in their nineties. By the time of the next significant anniversary there won't be many of them left. And they did something that successive generations, like us, haven't had to do, which we possibly take for granted.

Photographer Peter Macdiarmid has created a set of Then And Now photos, superimposing photos of Normandy in 1944 over pictures of the same places in 2014. They are very affecting. Here are two of them.

I can't think of any particularly appropriate music to go with this.

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 149

Another punk/rockabilly cover version for you, thanks to reader David. The Polecats have been rocking out of North London since 1977 and according to a well known online encyclopedia were still touring Europe, Japan and the US in 2012. Their line up included Boz Boorer, long time one of Morrissey's bequiffed lieutenants. Here they tear into Buzzcocks.

What Do I Get?

Edit: Yes, I am an idiot. I have just published this tonight, Thursday. Sack the blogger.

Wide Open Road

The Triffid's 1986 song Wide Open Road is a few years after yesterday's Wild Swans song and from the other side of the world but seems to be cut from similar cloth. It's a big break up song, a tearjerker, less claustrophobic than The Revolutionary Spirit, but it has a yearning, outward-looking, questing feel in common. The Triffids were just one of several Aussie bands in the 80s who were pulling all the stops out.

Wide Open Road

Revolutionary

There's something about this song, The Revolutionary Spirit by The Wild Swans, that could somehow only have been made in Liverpool in 1982, something essentially early 80s scouse about it. The Wild Swans were the baby of Paul Simpson (pictured above with flat cap, neckerchief and Telecaster). Paul's led three different line ups of The Wild Swans over the years but there's something really special about the first line up. Isn't it often that way? The Revolutionary Spirit was paid for, produced (in mono) and drummed on by Bunnyman Pete de Freitas and is a yearning, heart felt, uplifting, post-punk masterpiece. It was also the last record released by legendary Liverpudlian independent label Zoo.

The lyrics are a mini-epic in themselves, starting with these opening lines... 'Lost in the delta of Venus, lost in a welter of shame'... and a chorus that takes it further still... 'All is quiet where angels fear, Oh my blood relations the revolutionary spirit is here'. William Blake eat your heart out.

Label owner Bill Drummond reckoned it was the best thing Zoo put out and he might be right. Bill Drummond often is.

The Revolutionary Spirit

Bottom Dub

I was listening to this in the car at the weekend- The Legendary Skatalites In Dub, wherein The Skatalites get mucked about with by King Tubby. The car isn't the ideal place to listen to dub, too much of the subtlety and the bass gets lost, but it was a lovely day and it sounded really good. This track in particular, with it's beautiful bassline, was superb.

Bottom Dub

Brown Rice

I read about this in Viv Albertine's book and went straight to Youtube to listen to it. Brown Rice is the opening track off Don Cherry's 1975 lp. Aside from some skawking horn bursts it's not really jazz at all, jazzy but something else. Jazz experts may disagree. There's a hypnotic eight note bassline, some 'world' instrumentation and Don whispering something that sounds like a child's rhyme. Very floaty and entrancing.

Brown Rice

Clothes Music Etc

Viv Albertine's autobiography, Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys (out now) is a brilliant read- frank and fearless and written very much in her voice (you can hear it clearly throughout). The mid-to-late 70s take up an appropriately large proportion..... Sex Pistols, The Clash, Malcolm, Subway Sect, Don Letts, Johnny Thunders, Chrissie Hynde et al but it is Viv and The Slits who are at the heart of the book and the spirit of those times as seen through her eyes- provocation, feminism, empowerment, guitars, dressing and how to present yourself but also the upfront sexism/misogyny they faced from within the music industry (from the local pub scene upwards), hostility from members of the public, violence, confrontation, spitting, and overarching it all the desire to do and be different. There's also stained jeans, periods, sexually transmitted diseases and a sympathetic portrait of Sid Vicious. At the time of writing I'm only half way through it, so haven't got beyond the split of The Slits yet but it's a compelling read.

Not at all Typical Girls.