Friday 28 September 2018

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance



Back to the old school this week, some simple but incredibly effective breakbeat from back in 1992. I saw on the Piccadilly Records website that this is getting a reworking for the RAVE revival that is apparently happening at the moment, no me neither which got me digging out the original which I believe still works perfectly well. Not my go to music back in the day but a very good alternative now and again.

In football news, Airdrie were fucking woeful last Saturday and still remarkably managed to get a one each draw. They will need to up their game considerably to get anything away from home against league leaders Arbroath. We shall see.

Have a good weekend people.

Awesome 3 - Don't Go

Wednesday 26 September 2018

Dale Barclay



Really sad news today regarding Dale Barclay from the Amazing Snakeheads, it has been announced that he has died from the brain cancer that he was being treated for. Thirty two is no age at all.

The first time I saw the Amazing Snakeheads was downstairs in Nice N Sleazy in Glasgow and I couldn't work out whether they were actually a band or just a few pished guys who had taken over  the stage and nicked the instruments from the band gfor a laugh but there was something in the performance that intriqued me and got a hold of Stiff who never missed a performace when they played Glasgow. The next time I saw them was at the launch of there first single where by the looks of it they gave half of the single out to mates and punters for free. The performace that night was absolutely brilliant but also wild. Sadly I only got to see them once more before the band were no more. In Dale Barclay they had a unique and very charismatic front man. Dale once said in an interiew that touring could be tough "but it's never as tough as going to work on a fucking building site in the winter". when not fronting up The Snakeheads and then later And Yet It Moves Dale was a stone mason.

RIP Dale

The Amazing Snakeheads - Testifying Time 

Am I Here? Of Course I Am, Yes



I was driving down to Leeds on Monday afternoon for work and there was nothing on Radio 4 so I fired up the Touch on shuffle. About five or six songs in, "Fast Blood" from the Midnight Organ Fight came on and after about thirty secods I found my eyes welling up and started to cry, tears streaming down my face and I thought that I was going to have to pull over.

I was surprised by my reaction, as firstly,  I thought that I had come to terms with the death of Scott Hutchison, About six weeks ago I was able to play the Midnight Organ Fight in it's entirety, prior to this every time I had tried to listen since May I had found it too difficult and had taken it off knowing that the further it wenbt on the more painful it would be.

The other reason I was surprised was that it was Fast Blood that had brought this reaction, I'm not saying that it isn't a great song but it's a track which had never made me overly emotional previously unlike, Head Rolls Off, My Backwards Walk or Poke all of which would lead to me at least having a lump in my throat even prior to the tragic events that unfolded earlier this year. But on Monday that intro, the bit when the drums break in and Scott's yearning vocal just hit me like a steamroller and by the the time the oh, ohs came in I was wrecked!

I began to wonder,  that if this is how it feels like for someone who just knew Scott through his music, how must it feel, for his friends, band members and especially his parents and brother Grant who I'm sure will never get over this tragedy.

Frightened Rabbit - Fast Blood (Live At Urban Outfitters: SxSW 2007

The picture above is from Electric Fields at the end of August where on the Friday night the song below was played over the PA on the Main Stage at 19:45 which was a rather emotional affair but not quite as much as the tribute at Belladrum, a festival that the Frabbits had played regularly,  where The Midnight Organ Fight was played in full.

Frightened Rabbit - The Loneliness And The Scream

Remember talking helps.

Monday 24 September 2018

Monday's Long Song



A few months ago I posted "Do Your Thing by Isaac Hayes ans the Swede happened to comment that he thought that it might be a good idea if we all posted a long song on a Monday. I quite liked this idea and during my time in the wilderness, the Swede's comment popped into my head a couple of times and so at the weekend I thought why the hell not. I love a piece of music that goes on for a while, years of training with all the hippy stuff and then Weatherall, the Orb etc. So prepare yourself on a Monday for tunes that outstay their welcome and leave you think at the end, well that's at least ten minutes of my life that I will not see again. Or you could just not bother.

In 2016 through Pledge Music, the Raveonettes came up with a novel idea, you could pledge your money for their new album either on cd or vinyl and each month you would receive one track per month in your in-box as an MP3 and at the end of the year the full album in the format that you pledged for,. It didn't quite turn out like that as the album eventually appeared at the end of April 2017, by far not the most delayed PledgeMusic album that I have waited for, that accolade would go jointly to  SLF and The Orb.

What the hell has this got to do with long songs you may ask as all Raveonettes tracks are usually short, sharp noisy affairs. This is true but the final track which appeared in my inbox in December took me by surprise, a 12 minute tune by the Raveonettes, shurely shome mishtake? On when you listen to it, it's definitely Sune and Sharin but somewhat extended and with keyboards. Personally I love it, the album is patchy and due to the manner in which it was produced rather disjointed but on the whole it was a worthwhile experiment, although a pretty dark one.

The Raveonettes - Pendejo

Friday 21 September 2018

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance



In tribute and on the back of SA's post on Rachid Taha I had intended on posting  a 12" single I have from the man from back in 1993 but I haven't gotten round to ripping it yet so here's something that has been posted a couple of times but still sounds absolutely astounding to me and am not ashamed to say  it reduced me to tears the first time I heard it and still makes me pretty emotional.

(Who?) Keeps Changing Your Mind was first released on Strictly Rhythm records in 1993. It has been subsequently re released a few times with new mixes, none of which are a patch on the two mixes on the original twelve, the mix posted is the Night mix.

I once played this with the Fire Island's mix of Regret and Pete Heller's Big Love  and by the end the dance floor was full of people with huge grins on their faces having a ball, due to the quality of the music not my mixing skills I hasten to add.

To paraphrase Mike Skinner, with a big bag of pills and music like this blaring out of a PA, we could probably end all wars.

Back in the third tier of Scottish football, Airdrie have not made a great start to the season although they are sitting third in the table. The worst game so far would have had to have been against Raith Rovers at home when the Diamonds were cruising, three / one up with three minutes to go when the Rovers pulled another back. You know this isn't going to end well, Raith scored twice in stoppage time to give them the win. What made it worse was I had to drive JC to Motherwell to get his train, as he had came through to Lanark in the morning for a catch up and a lift to the game.

Tomorrow they are at home to Dumbarton and I will be hoping for better. Leo has given up and will be attending junior football, watching Lanark United, he has been invited to the match as part of a friend's birthday celebrations. I just hope he does not find it more entertaining than what he is used to at the Excelsior.

Have a good weekend people.

South Street Player - (Who?) Keeps Changing Your Mind

Wednesday 19 September 2018

Magic Potion



This was going to be a post on a mod/Freakbeat single that I eventually got my mitts on, on lovely 7" inch vinyl a few weeks ago after being on my wants list for years, sadly not the original which would have set me back a good few hundred quid, if I could have found one. The one I got is a repressing of dubious legality I assume but the sound is very good and I'm not averse to owning a bootleg or two. As I said I was going to post it but it appears that I already did last February, it can be found here if you're interested. Old age doesn't come itself as they say.

Instead here is an altogether different beast originally from 1969, a piece of psychedelia from Putney South London. The Open Mind had been going a couple of years pripr to releasing Magic Potion, the band's second single. The time spent hanging around with Jimi Hendrix and Soft Machine obviously rubbed off on them, what with the fuzzed out guitar, drug related lyrics the tune is very psychedelic. The version posted is the Soundhog re-edit from 2013 which takes the track further out there and giving the track a Hawkwindy feel for me

The Open Mind - Magic Potion (Soundhog edit)

Monday 17 September 2018

You Don't Care



Pervis Lee was a popular singer in the 1960s and 70s in his native Chrlotte, North Carolina where we could be found plying his trade at Country Clubs and private parties. From what I can gather from checking out the two albums he released on local label, Snyder Album Co,  he didn't pin himself down to one style, singing Gospel, Soul, Jazz and R&B. The track I am most familiar with is a rather brillianr piece of bass and sax driven soul called You Don't Care which found it's way onto Soul playlists and as a result was released as a limited 7" by the Austrian label Record Shack in 2014. The single has two versions of the song, the full version and a shortened edit where the sax solo and run out has been shortened. A bit overpriced at the moment, the cheapest on Discogs priced at £67.15 which seems excessive for a record released 4 years ago but that's the vinyl market at the moment, utterly baffling as I have found when cataloguing my records in Discogs database.

Pervis Lee - You Don't Care