Dead Crow Blues

This dropped into my inbox today and I really like it.

Baby

This song has featured here before but it was over a year ago and I think it deserves another airing.

It's also not a bad way to start off a new working week.

Gal Costa is a Brazilian singer, hugely popular in her homeland and if the price of lp's on ebay are anything to go buy highly regarded here also. She also became something of a political activist and had her music censored.  This track was on her eponymous solo album released in 1969 and that folk is all I know about her.

Gal Costa - Baby

Marguerita Red

Some more beautiful mellow music from the east coast of Scotland this Sunday. This week the tune comes from the bard of the East Neuk, Kenny Anderson better known as King Creosote.

The track comes from  the 2005 album KC Rules OK

King Creosote - Marguerita Red.

Green Eyed Loco Man

There was a rather good documentary about Mark E Smith repeated last week on BBC4. Although I have watched this programme many times, it was only last week that I picked up on the bit near the end when he talks about the crowd and says "I ain't bothered about the crowd. The crowd don't interest me" pretty strange comment from a man who makes his beer money from the folk in the audience who go to see him.

Those who can remember my rant about the Edinburgh gig earlier this year will recall how he fucked off after 25 minutes never to return. But I think that, as with much of what MES says, it should be taken with a pinch of salt, as I have seen him at times be influenced by the crowd and on 2 occasions even interact with them!

I wish that the Fall were touring up here soon.

Here is a track from the second last Peel Session from the Fall broadcast on the 13/03/2003.

The Fall - Groovin' With Mr Bloe - Green-Eyed Loco Man

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance

About the tail end of 2002 beginning of 2003 I stopped seeking out new dance music. It wasn't a conscious thing but I think that somewhere in my brain I had decided it was time to grow up and be an adult and I think that I equated dance music and the fun to be had listening and dancing to repetitive beats while of your nut or sometimes not with being young, free and responsibility lite all of which I was becoming increasingly aware no longer fitted my profile.

If I heard a tune somewhere that I liked I would buy it, however this was an increasingly rare event. At the moment I'm trying to wrack my brains and find something outstanding from 2002/2003 and can't think of anything. Also I would no longer spend hours in specialist dance shops listening to the latest batch of white labels and deciding which ones were worth my heard earned cash.

This state of affairs continued for a few years until a younger colleague at work,  whom I had been recording what she so charmingly referred to as "those old tunes" ie anything from before the year 1998 to her, gave me a loan of the latest mix cd she had bought. I took it home and decided to listen to it, I had already persuaded myself that it would be rubbish but when I put it on I was more than pleasantly surprised what I heard had me jumping about the room and turning up the volume until L was yelling "turn that bloody racket down".

The cd was It's Only A Mixtape Vol II mixed by Paul Jackson. I hadn't heard of the DJ or any of the artists or tunes in the mix before but it was the best and livliest thing that I had heard in a long time and the following Monday at work I was asking Cheryl if she had any more like it and so my re-induction to dance music began and I've not looked back since.

Here is one of the tracks from that mix that I subsequently sought out and bought.

Rob Hawk & Mysoul feat. Leanne - So Shock-In!

Silence Is Golden . . . Pish!

I was in Nottingham today for work, well I went down last night but decided instead of getting the flight back up this evening and having to endure the madness that would have ensued trying to find a road home that wasn't either closed or full of the faithful on their way back from Bellahouston park, I decided to drive up the road which I calculated would take me less time. For once I made the right decision and made it up the road in four and a half hours.

The hire car, however didn't have mp3 connectivity and so for the first hour or so I decided to drive in silence. Something I never do.  For a while it was quite refreshing only me and my thoughts for company but then I started to get bored and put on Radio 4, however during possibly the worst afternoon play I've ever heard it was back to the silence as I just couldn't bring myself to listen to Radio 1 and I'm not old or wacky enough to listen to Steve Wright.

It's at times like these I realise how much of an unhealthy reliance I have on popular music in general and my white branded MP3 player in particular.

The Clash - If Music Could Talk

Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid

I was going to have a rant about something that is going to make my life difficult later this week but have thought better of it and decided to heed the words of Ketty Lester.

Wise words from 1964.

Ketty Lester - Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid.

Real Gone Kid

The first time I saw Maria McKee live I realised that the singer with Lone Justice was nuts but in a good way the second time I saw her she came across all Diva-ish which was strange as she was playing King Tut's, not the Royal Concert Hall. I don't know what had happened during the intervening 15 years but after her performance that night I wasn't persuaded to go and see her again and on her subsequent 2 visits to Glasgow that I know of I had no desire to attend.

The first Lone Justice album, at the time was absolutely amazing, it was country but not Country if you know what I mean. I remember it being described as cowpunk somewhere. Even the fact that Bonzo raved about the band didn't put me off. It was an album that I played over and over again and have had to replace a couple of times after lending it to people and never getting it back.

The follow-up album, Shelter released the following year in 1986 was a huge disappointment. It was over produced with all the rough edges which made the debut so good all polished away and there was the use of drum machines and synths when none were needed, in other words very mid eighties. It is not an album that I have returned to very often.

After the poor reception to the album McKee broke up the band and decided to go it alone and in 1989 released a solo album which was a return to form with a couple of lovely ballads, a gorgeous cover of Richard and Linda Thompson's Has He Got A Friend and the brilliant Drinking In My Sunday Dress, which I had to buy the cd as well for as it wasn't on the vinyl. The album not only shows that McKee had a fabulous voice but how talented a song writer she was as well, not on a par with Roddy Frame but then again who is.

McKee to date has released another 5 solo albums but for me none are on a par with either the first Lone Justice album or her first solo effort, in fact I took the 4th one back to Fopp I was that disappointed in it and din't even bother with the 5th one.

Here are a couple of tracks from that first solo album.

Maria McKee - I've Forgotten What It Was In You (That Put The Need In Me)

Maria McKee - Drinkin' In My Sunday Dress

And here she is on the Whistle Test with Lone Justice from 1985, magic.

Sometimes I Feel So Lonely

I sort of lost interest in Primal Scream after the Vanishing Point album. I still bought the albums but not with the same vigour or with the anticipation which filled me before the releases up until that point. I also became selective in buying the singles from that point on. I think that the last one I bought up until the release of the single posted was Kill All Hippies.

I don't know why I lost interest in them, it wasn't a concious decision although all the bollocks that Bobby Gillespie started spouting did get on my goat a bit.

I have tried to listen to Exterminator, Evil Heat etc but they just don't grab my attention the way the earlier albums do. I know people who rave about these albums but I just can't seem to see what they are going on about. There are great individual tracks on them all except in my opinion Beautiful Future which has no reedeming features at all, unless you count Weatherall's excellent remix of Uptown, only available on the 50 quid a throw, limited vinyl version, or white label 12".

Sometimes I Feel So Lonely, from the 2006 Riot City Blues album,  is a quite lovely ballad that harks back to the likes of Star and I'm Gonna Cry Myself Blind.

Primal Scream - Sometimes I Feel So Lonely

Jam On The Mutha

There is a worrying trend over at one of my favourite sites and from a man who should know better.

Ctel over at AcidTed has been posting some dodgy remixes of 70s and 80s soft rock. After his post on Friday featuring Foreigner's Cold As Ice, I jocularly commented what next a techno version of Boston's More Than A Feeling.

To my horror about ten minutes ago while checking to see what new stuff Ctel had posted I was confronted with, yes a bloody dance remix of More Than A Feeling. I tried, as instructed to suspend my prejudices and just listen to the track for what it is but I couldn't.

The chords transported me back to a rather awful time in the 80's when Miami Vice ruled,  all of the geezers in Lanark wanted to be Crockett and dressed in single button jackets with sleeves rolled up and slip on shoes with no socks. These guys would congregate in a particularly tacky pub called Flicks which was all shiny chrome and mirrors and would drink Shlitz. This is where the link with Boston comes in, as More Than A Feeling was used in a particularly successful ad campaign, well here it seemed anyway,  for that watery and tasteless brew as it became the beer of choice for the geezers with the permed mullets and dress jackets.

I had to delete the track after 3mins 24 seconds as I couldn't take any more.

Here is the only 'successful' dance cover I know of, of a soft rock classic and as it was on Wau Mr Modo I always suspected was rather tongue in cheek, either that or the Doves they were necking were that bit stronger than the ones available up North.

It was always a laugh dropping this in the pub where I used to dj as you would be guaranteed to have at least one aging rocker come up and tell me that it was sacrilege and I should take it off immediately.

Jam On The Mutha - Hotel California (Ibiza 90 mix)

Jam On The Mutha - Hotel California (Intru-mental)

A Small Stretch Of Land

A beautiful song for a Sunday, nothing more need be said.

If you don't own anything from Meursault, you can sort yourself out here.  You really should you know.

Meursault - A Small Stretch Of Land

Fever pt 2

A few weeks ago when I posted the Lulu Rouge edit of I'm Shakin' I said that Little Willie John was responsible for the first recording of the Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell song Fever. Well, I've evntually got my hands on a copy of the reprint from those great guys at Fat City.

Although it doesn't smoulder in the same way Peggy Lee's version does it has replaced that one as my favourite rendition of the song.

The b side is none to shabby either.

Little Willie John - Fever 

Little Willie John - Uh Uh Baby

Just Because

It's one of my favourite songs and I'm feeling a bit melancholic this evening, must be the gin.

Then again it may have something to do with staying along the road from my student digs last night in Aberdeen. Or I should say where my student digs once stood and which Stuart Milne has pulled down and erected some of the most awful flats for DINKYs that I have ever seen and which certainly don't blend in with the surroundings.

I wonder how he got planning permission for them?

Elvis Costello & The Atractions - Alison

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance

Today's track come courtesy of a remix project that came out on Honest Jons in 2008.

Lagos Shake brings together Moritz Von Oswald, Diplo, Mark Ernestus and other dance producers who take tracks from the Lagos No Shaking album by legendary Nigerian drummer and musician Tony Allen and remake and remodel them into something quite different to great success. I don't think that there is a dud track on the album. The album is worth buying for the cover art alone, here.

The posted track has founding father of techno, Carl Craig turn the track Kilode into an 8 1/2 minute dance classic.

Tony Allen - Kilode (Carl Craig remix)

It's On

I bought the first Flowered Up 12" single on the strength of an article in The Face that I've mentioned before and the fact that they were signed to fledgeling Heavenly records whose previous release had been St Etienne's Only Love Can Break Your Heart which blew me away . I absolutely loved the single at the time and listening to it earlier on, I still love it. It may not be as epic as Weekender but all the elements were there in that first single.

Here's the other side which doesn't get an airing too often, not quite sure why.

Flowered Up - It's On - Sonia

Gone With The Wind Is My Love

I can't seem to get away from northern soul at the moment. On the long drive to and from Dundee today every second song seemed to be a up beat soul tune. And if it's not soul then it's music with more than an acknowledgement to the sound of young America, check out today's post at The Vinyl Villian for what I'm going on about.

Here is another belter from 1966.

Rita & The Tiaras - Gone With The Wind Is My Love

Only The Strongest Will Survive

I only bought this single on the strength of the remixers if the truth be known.

I was never a big fan of Ride so when I heard that Andy Bell had formed a new band that were also signed to Creation I had little more than a passing interest in the fact.

A couple of years later while perusing the racks somewhere I came across a 12" single by the band in the bargain bins, flipped it over and saw the names Farley and Heller and decided to take a punt on it, after all it was only a quid and Farley and Heller more often than not would produce something worth listening to.

The track is pretty good but messers Farley and Heller produce a lazy remix which more than harks back to 1991, not a bad thing but just lazy. All that is missing is the sample "that's beautiful, that's really beautiful."

Hurricane #1 - Only The Strongest Will Survive

Picture The Scene

There's a lot of northern floating about at the moment with Mr H and Simon both posting a couple of class tunes today.

So in the absence of anything better to post here is a blue eyed soul track which has featured here before but this time it's from the excellent, Night Owl compilation on Joe Boy which came out to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Wigan Casino. The packaging of the cd was rather novel at the time as it came attached to a 7 inch single of the song Night Owl performed by Roy Hemmings which I realised tonight I have never played.

The introduction at the start of the song is by Dave Evison who used to DJ at the Casino and played the last ever record there.

Tony Galla - In Love

Comet Gain

I only became aware of Comet Gain about 4 or 5 years ago when somebody gave my a mix cd with Don't Fall In Love If You Want To Die In Peace on it. I immediately needed to find out more, so after consulting the web I realised that they had been releasing stuff since 1994. 

Why had I never heard of this band before? They deserve to be a lot better known than they are.

I started to try and get hold of some of their output, which was not easy or cheap for that matter as they have released quite a few ltd 7" singles which don't turn up for sale very often on ebay and is not the kind of thing that you will find in many second hand record shops. They have released 5 studio albums and a couple of years ago they thankfully released a compilation album, Broken Record Prayers which gathered together some of the old singles, As and Bs, together with session tracks and some new songs. If you wish to find out more this would be a very good starting point.

Jack Nance Hair was first released as a single on the Mei Mei record label back in 1998.

Comet Gain - Jack Nance Hair

Rebel Soul . . . Living, Loving, Overdubbing

To Live And Die In The Airport Lounge

Back from Madrid and saw basically nothing of the city at all which really pissed me off.

I spent more time yesterday wandering around airport terminals spending money that I don't have on non necessary items and rather outstanding cocktails.

During all this wandering and non essential shopping I realised that ironically for someone who hates flying and does not do it ever, for non work travel I seem to spend an inordinate amount of my time either in tin tubes or bloody airports usually a lot longer in the later.

Yesterday I was in the coolest terminal building I've ever been in, Barajas Terminal 4, it was like something out of Bond movie,  all shiny chrome and glass and underground trains.

I never find these places pleasant because at the back of my mind there is always the realisation that in the near future I am going to be flying. If, as was the case yesterday, there are no work colleagues to meet or meetings to attend at the other end I find a bar or back in the good old days go to the business lounge and proceed to get pished. Yesterday, however I found myself just walking about looking at nothing in particular and having a not so disagreeable time.

Then it was on the plane to London and Terminal 5, where the contrast couldn't have been more marked, crowed, noisy and frantic.  I have heard people raving about Terminal 5 but it's nothing special. I did have possible the best Bloody Mary I've ever had there but that was about it.

Anyway, by the time I rolled off the plane at Glasgow I was feeling no pain and the resentment of having to spend part of my weekend in a meeting and then travelling had nearly disappeared. Then it was through arrivals to be met by L shaking her head as it was apparent that I was more than half gassed.

My Teenage Stride - To Live And Die In The Airport Lounge.