I know nothing about this track apart from the fact that it was released in the states on the Sepia label and I'm guessing here, but it wasn't exactly yesterday. I know nothing about the artist Al Gardner either apart from another track he recorded called Watch Yourself.
It is, however an absolutely cracking piece of soul.
I'm off to Amsterdam with work for 2 days of coma inducing Power Point presentations, so no post until Friday which may be late unless I do it tonight
If you're looking for the Weatherall mix of Compulsion, don't bother it appears that Heavenly, or Doves or somebody objects to me posting it.
Now I can understand if I'm posting something which is readily available that may stop people going out and buying the physical product but a single sided promo which by it's very definition, I shouldn't have been paying a tenner for, is another matter. I just don't understand the reasoning here.
Perhaps some one would care to enlighten me. Answers to the usual places.
Any way here is another Weatherall mix for your delectation.
After this weekend's Fallfest, final tally, the first 14 albums, it is time for something a little bit soulful and there isn't a hell of a lot more soulful than Charlie and Inez Foxx.
10 albums in and I had to bail out, the mutterings in the house were not good and having to take to my bed with a bad case of d&v, not brought on by the listening to The Fall, I hasten to add, meant that my mind was not completely on the project. I think that I may try to do the other 17, a couple of albums a day and then a few on Wednesday while traveling to Amsterdam.
Here is something slightly different from the Dirty Edits Volume 1 cd, a Pilooski edit of a track I had never heard before from and artist I was oblivious to, Michael Bundt.
A quick search of the interweb and I found out that Herr Bundt is a German musician, who was in a duo called Siruis in the early 70s before going solo and releasing 3 what could be termed "krautrock" albums. Today he is a composer and producer living in Mannheim.
This weekend, I will be mostly listening to the Fall.
The Fall Forum decided that this weekend would be the inaugural International Fall Album Listening Party. The idea is simple, listen to all 27 studio albums in order of release over the space of a weekend. 6 tonight, 10 tomorrow and 11 on Sunday. At the point of posting I'm half way through Dragnet, the second lp and not terribly good. I have been surprised at how good Live At The Witch Trials sounded, an album which I'm not overly keen on either. Tonight for me will be the most difficult listen as these albums with the exception of Grotesque After The Gramme and Hex Enduction Hour are the ones I listen to least.
By the end of the weekend I will probably be a blithering wreck, or L will have divorced me due to mental cruelty.
I will not inflict more Fall on you but be prepared for a gem or two that I have forgtten about but will hear over the coming couple of days, next week. You have been warned.
Instead here is the latest installment in the Touched By The Hand Of God series. Here is Weatherall's remix of the Doves Compulsion which I got from Discogs this week.
It was during 1987 that I started to notice House music in a big way. Most of my mates couldn't be bothered with it at all and a few people I knew were really hostile towards the music.
As I've said before, trying to get your hands on the stuff was an expensive and time consuming business as the 12" singles were all imports and there weren't any real specialist record shops at this time, well not in Glasgow that I knew of anyway. I used to have to be quite discerning as to which records I bought because at the time I was labouring on a building site in order to save to go to Uni that September.
During this time I started to notice compilation albums Such as the Jack Trax and House Sound of Chicago series appearing which kind of eased the pressure on my budget and also meant that those elusive rare imports could now be found on 1 double album, what's more it was the full 12" version that would appear on these albums not edits half the length of the original which became the norm a few years later.
I have already posted a good few of these early tracks such as Move Your Body, Promised Land etc and really don't want to be accused of repetition although they are all that good that they deserve to be heard on a weekly if not daily basis.
Today's track, You Used to Hold Me by Ralphi Rosario and sung by Xaviera Gold was originally released on Hot Mix 5 records in the US. I had it on a compilation until those nice guys at Track Records re-released it in 1989.
I think that this is the best thing the Charlatans did, well apart from Indian Rope and the single also had one of my favourite covers. Christine Keeler was quite lovely.
The single was released in 1997 and got to number 16 in the UK charts.
I make absolutely no apologies for posting this, in my defence, however I will cite Gary Mulholland in his forward to his excellent Fear Of Music, the follow up to This Is Uncool.
"Music is a social thing, based almost entirely around dancing, copping-off, drugs that make you love each other, romance and the belief that if you just shake uncontrollably to this beautiful noise in a room full of beautiful people right now, then your lousy job/debtproblems/marriage/friendships/life will simply cease to be. Until the next beautiful noise begins, or the dream ends. This is what pop does for us."
Thinking of the Sugababes always reminds me of that episode of Only Fools And Horses where Trigger is talking about having the same brush for years although it had, had 3 new heads and 2 new shafts or something.
Think yourselves lucky I nearly posted Las Ketchup, which I know at least one friend would have approved of.
ps I have no idea if that picture is of the current line up or not. I suspect not. It is easier to keep track of members of the Fall.
I absolutely loved this record until some twat named Dario G decided to sample it in a third rate sub rave piece of pish and totally ruined it for me.
That was until yesterday when it popped up on the iPod and I felt that sort of warm, fuzzy feeling that I used to feel when I heard it. Never got into anything else by the band.
Can't for the life of me recall anything else the band ever did, apart from a pretty pointlesss instrumental version of Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want This Time which was used in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Ed over at 17 Seconds has got the year off to a flying start with his 17 Seconds records off shoot The latest release from which is a 5 track ep from The Factory Kids and a cracking bit of indie/shoegazing it is too. The ep is available to download from all the usual suspects and it is really worth it. My only gripe being that there is no physical product but that's down to me being an old git.
A little bit of Northern to brighten up the start of the week.
Tommy Ridgley was a well known R&B singer from New Orleans, who started off recording for Imperial records in 1949 and also recorded for Decca, Atlantic and in the 60's for local New Orleans label Ric. He kept performing right up until his death from lung cancer in 1999.
My Love Gets Stronger, is a classic mid tempo shuffler, released on the International City label. If you were looking to buy the track on 7" you would need to have more than 500 quid spare, as it is extremely rare and sought after by collectors.
Today I'm not planning on doing much, as I'm off to Belfast tomorrow, which means a 04:30 am rise in order to get the flight.
I think that a bit of ambient is the order of the day. It may also help me keep calm while reading all about that self-righteous, money grabbing, liar Blair's evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry in the Sundays. I will try to resist reading but as someone once said resistance is futile.
At the tail end of last year you couldn't pick up a music mag or surf the net without the South West London band being mentioned. I had decided, in a rather reactionary way without even the merest evidence that they were just another bunch of teenagers from London hyped up to be the next big thing and duly made the decision not to even listen to them. All the talk of "music to listen to on night buses in London" didn't help. Could someone please tell me what is so fucking special about buses after dark there opposed to anywhere else? Or is it just something that music journalists, too middle class or too frightened to actually get on a bus after dark, think is the epitome of cool.
Anyway, when I did actually get round to listening to the band, I realised what people were going on about and after buying the cd and flogging it to death have come to the conclusion that most of the hype is justified. It sounds as good to these provincial ears in either the car, aeroplane or else where as I presume it does on the night bus, having never, ever been on one I must admit that the joy that you get while listening to this album on one is mere speculation on my behalf.
I have been listening to the cd heavily for the past month or so and today became the proud owner of the album on 200gram vinyl, which comes with a bonus single sided. 12" remix of current single VCR. As this vinyl is strictly limited and the mix allegedly, exclusive, I have no qualms about posting it here.I should point out that the remix is not a patch on the original, I think that they should get a certain Mr Weatherall in next time, not that they need him, as all of the tracks on the album are excellent as they are.
If you don't own the album already you should go out and buy a copy immediately, as it is the best thing that I have heard since the last best thing that I heard, which was probably the Withered Hand album, although there are absolutely no similarities other than they are both brilliant.
Like yesterday's track, today's post sees me looking back to Aberdeen through rose tinted spectacles or vague memories half remembered through an MDMA fog.
The Pelican Club was a very different beast from the Mudd club, not much in the way of indie played in the basement of the hotel Metro, the emphasis was strictly on the ability of the music to make young, mainly white and in those early days, studenty types move in a what was mostly, very self conscious, for want of a better word dancing. As mentioned before the music policy was a mixture of funk, soul, hip-hop, early house and on occassion Go-Go. I definitely remember dancing to today's tune there.
I have posted on Go-Go and Trouble Funk before and won't bore you with the details. The only thing I will add is that the guy who first introduced me to Trouble Funk had just came back from spending the summer in the States and when I thought about it the other day was actually a bit of an arse. He had returned with this mid-Atlantic accent and all these American mannerisms which when I look back were a bit much for a boy from that well known 'hood just up the Moray Firth from Inverness. Suffice to say "if he were chocolate he would have ate himself". I do however owe him a debt of gratitude for lending me Say What (Live In London) and also Eric B & Rakim's first album.
Beaver Patrol is not one of the most enlightened records in my collection. However compared to some of the stuff my mates in Aberdeen were listening to at the time such as 2 Live Crew and Schoolly D it could have been a feminist anthem.
This track takes me back to the Mudd Club on Monday nights in Aberdeen during 87/88 where this kind of thing was heard all the time.
I quite liked Pop Will Eat Itself or the Poppies as they were known. The name comes from an article by David Quantick in the NME about the band that would become Carter USM.
PWEI started off as an indie band but soon became influenced by hip hop and traveled the same road as Age of Chance using drum machines and samplers as well as the conventional instruments. I have to admit that I prefer Age Of Chance, however the Poppies did release a few classic singles, Beaver Patrol, a cover of Sique Sique Sputnik's Love Missile F 1-11, Def Con 1 and Touched By The Hand of Cicciolina, a tune which tries to lobby for an Italian porn star turned politician to be the person who presents the World Cup to the winning team at Italia 90.
For nearly twenty years I thought that the poppies had written Beaver Patrol. I found out a couple of years ago that the track is in fact just another of their cover versions. It was originally recorded by The Wide Knights in 1965, an American garage band from the Pacific North West.
I'm not sure whether it is the right thing to do, to post music for today's memorial but this just feels appropriate.
I'm going to Amsterdam next month with work and know that I will make the time to go round Anne Frank's house again and will come out of there with the same feelings of anger, sadness and disgust I've left with on my previous visits there.
Haven't had anything by Mr Weatherall for a while, although he has been popping up all over the shop recently.
Here is a track that I first learnt of from Nolan over at Castles In Space just before Christmas. It is part of a Manic Street Preachers remix project, Cooking, Cleaning and Flower Arranging and on the strength of the Weatherall mix, I had to order a copy of the very limited (300) run of vinyl. Due to the Christmas holidays and the fact that Rough Trade don't send confirmation emails, I had to sweat for nearly 2 weeks before knowing that I had a copy when the postie delivered it.
There are some great tracks on the album by the likes of The Fuck Buttons, The Horrors and Underworld. Can't tell you how different they are from the originals as I got bored of the Manics years ago and haven't heard the recent album but not many of the tracks on the double vinyl sound that much like the earnest Welsh rockers.
On the evidence of Weatherall's recent mixes, 6 mix appearances and last couple of albums he is on top form again and long may it continue. Not sure about that 'tache tho'!
By 1987, apart from the odd exception I had pretty much turned my back on music made by spotty boys in anoraks with guitars from Manchester, Glasgow and such places (for a year at least). I was searching out records with a 4/4 beat and big bass lines, the bigger the better.
Along with the change in style also came a change in format, instead of the 7" single and album, most of the music I was buying had to be purchased on 12" single or you would end up with an extremely unsatisfying edit of the track. The change in format meant that record buying became more costly as 12" singles were inevitably more expensive than singles and got more expensive as most of the house sounds around at the time could only be purchased on import.
At this time I never noticed any elitism in the scene as was rife within the Northern Soul circuit. This was probably due to the fact that at this time in Glasgow and Aberdeen we just appreciated any good record with a beat, at the Pelican Club for example you heard everything from Philly and Northern Soul, through Hip Hop and Go-Go to the ever improving House sounds of the time. If there were any scensters I certainly wasn't aware of them.
I can't remember if Jingo was approved of by the House cognoscenti, however I for one loved the track. It was written and produced by John "Jellybean" Benitez.
Benitez started off as a DJ with stints at Electric Circus and Studio 54, before picking up the residency at Funhouse.
Soon after he became an in demand remixer with credits like African Bambaataa's Planet Rock and Walking On Sunshine by Rockers Revenge. Around this time he became romantically involved with Madonna and ended up remixing most of the good tracks on her first album. This in turn led to more work remixing middle of the road soul such as Hall & Oats, George Benson and Whitney Houston.
He released his first album in 1987 which apart from Jingo is actually a rather dull affair and I didn't follow his career any further.
MP3 files are posted for a limited time so people can make up their mind if they want to buy vinyl and/or cds from artists who in my opinion are worth listening to.
If you have any objection to these sample tracks being posted then email me and I will take them down which would be a shame as other music obsessives may remain ignorant of these great tracks
