Friday 29 May 2020

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance





I will never fathom why, Summer Dreams the best track from Skream's debut album was left off of the vinyl version and I must admit I was vexed at the time and still slightly peeved that I have to dig into the cupboard to play it. Small inconvenience for a track this good I know but still these are the petty things I used to fixate upon before the days of a global pandemic and living in a country run by an elite that seem to be intent in killing off all of those that can't contribute to adding to their wealth and if a few of those are killed off too so be it as there are plenty more willing to doff the cap and do as they say, as long as fast food restaurants are open and the Premier League continues to make money for Russian Oligarchs, American Billionaires and Middle Eastern Royalty.

Have a good weekend and stay safe people

Thursday 28 May 2020

The Society



The Society were a bunch of mid to late teenagers who played covers at dances around Lakewood Ohio in 1966 and 1967. Two members of the group wrote a couple of songs which they intended to record in the hopes of landing a record deal and so in June 1967 the group went to Cleveland Recordings and cut the two tracks. The A-side You Girl was a "fuzzed out blaster" and the much more brooding and moody Lonely on the flip. For some inexplicable reason there were no takers for these two excellent garage tracks which subsequently languished in the vaults until they were unearthed and released as a 7" single on B-W records last September.

The Society - Lonely 

Wednesday 27 May 2020

A Day To Be Remembered




A Lovely Day Tomorrow is a collaboration between BSP and the Czech band The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa. The track is one of three tracks on a cd released only in the Czech Republic to celebrate that country's entry into the EU. It was made available in limited quantities in the UK during BSP's 2004 tour and also via the band's website.

The song deals with the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia and one of the architects of the "final solution") at the hands of 2 Czech agents on this day in 1942.  The names Joszef Gabcik  and  Jan Kublis should be celebrated by all democrats the world over today.

The cd was limited to 1942 copies for obvious reasons.

British Sea Power Allied With The Ecstacy of Saint Theresa - A Lovely Day Tomorrow

Monday 25 May 2020

That Hits The Spot



The good people of my favourite record shop Monorail music tweeted this beautiful cover version earlier and it was just what I needed. KC can certainly cover a classic

Monday's Long(ish) Song



I didn't have the inclination yesterday to think about anything for the blog after watching that pathetic excuse of a man that now has the job he has dreamed about his entire life but has found out that he is extremely shit at it,  lie to the nation on TV and spent the rest of the day seething and spotting the ISS and the support vehicles. I missed the shooting star but did catch one last week. The night sky when able to be seen is a joy at the moment what with the ISS passes, Mercury and Venus being visible and the sliver of a crescent moon last night was lovely but I digress.

My rage had abated a bit earlier until I found out that Bawjaws unelected SPAD  who is actually running the UK has decided to address the nation later on today. So it looks like we have now become a lot less than a democracy and are really no better than Russia, Brazil and Venezuela which is ironic as we were told that that is what we would have become with Corbyn in charge. Lucky escape that was, eh?

This clip of Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart live on KEXP temporarily brought the blood pressure back down.




Monday 18 May 2020

Monday's Long Song



Come Down To Us was the third track on the Rival Dealer ep released in December 2013 and was the only release by Burial that year but what a release. The three tracks clock in at 28 minutes in total and all three have an anti-bullying theme running through them. All three tracks are great and ideally should be listened to as a whole but also stand up as single tracks. There really is no one like Will Bevan when it comes to making these atmospheric, dreamlike broken beats tunes that really hold your attention and draw you right into the story.

Burial - Come Down To Us 

Friday 15 May 2020

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance



I don't have a lot to say as not a lot is happening and it's best not to start on the farce that Scottish Football has turned into when there are no old firm games for the nutters in charge to focus on.

Here's a fine slab of deep Scottish techno to get your lugholes round.

Stay safe and have a good weekend people

Slam - Chasing Shadows

Thursday 14 May 2020

I Never Gave Up



Inspired by a post a couple of weeks ago, I spent the Sunday after listening to the Chumbawamba records that I own and even dug out the early live bootlegs and demos that I found in the cupboard in the middle of the stairs. The records and cds have stood the test of time pretty well and sadly many of the topics that the Chumbas railed against back in the 80 and 90s are still extremely relevant today. The tapes unfortunately I found mostly unlistenable due to their extremely no-fi nature, which is strange as I have memories of playing these often, either my old Panasonic Ghetto Blaster was of superior quality to my current system or my ears weren't so concerned about fidelity back then.

One album that surprised me was Slap! which I thought of all of material that I have would have dated as it was the band's early foray in the use of samples and beats. The album was also a bit of a change in attitude for the anarchos from Leeds in that it was more celebratory than accusatory in tone, especially in the track Rappoport's Testament: I Never Gave Up. I'm not sure that many bands would even attempt to put an account of someone's experiences in Auschwitz but that's exactly what Chumbawamba have done here, Valerio Rappoport was an inmate of the death camp and his testament was captured for posterity in Primo Levi's book Moments of Reprieve, where he states that if Levi survives Valerio then he must tell the world ". . . I did not weep or ask for pity. If I meet Hitler in the next place I will spit in his face and I'll have every right to, because he didn't get the better of me"

Chumbawamba - Rappoport's Testament: I Never Gave Up.

Tuesday 12 May 2020

None Of This Was Written In Stone



I was listening to The Book of Traps and Lessons earlier on and although I knew it was coming and was waiting for rush of emotions that the piano and words trigger in me every time, however tonight it nearly finished me.

Surely in the words of another poet from the not to distance past, a change is gonna come. We can but hope.

Monday 11 May 2020

Betty Wright R.I.P.




21/12/1953 - 10/05/2020

Fuck, another one gone and far too soon.

Betty Wright - Man Of Mine 

Monday's Long Song



London Overgrown is an ambient concept album released in 2015 with the premise that some cataclysmic event has taken place and London is devoid of human life and nature has taken over. I know, the subject matter is a bit off under the circumstances, however the music I find is extremely soothing and not at all angst inducing, especially the opening track, Oceanic II. The album was the third in the series Cathedral Oceans and for me is the best of them, that's not to say that the others aren't worth giving some attention either.

John Foxx -  Oceanic II

Sunday 10 May 2020

Little Richard



05/12/1932 - 09/05/20

2020 is beginning to feel like 2016 on steroids with the amount of deaths in the music business.

I first really became aware of Little Richard when I was twelve or thirteen. At the time I had become quite obsessed with Jimi Hendrix and had taped a documentary that had been aired on BBC2 which I kept returning to. There were a few scenes that stay with me from that documentary, the black and white footage of Hendrix doing a live version of Johnny B Goode, the Monterey Pop footage and the shall we say flamboyant appearance of Richard Wayne Penniman pronouncing "he was a star, when I got him he was a star" at the time I found it hard to get my head around Hendrix playing guitar a for one of the inventors of rock and roll, the music just seemed so different.

Over the years I have learned to appreciate the justfied self proclaimed "Innovator, Originator, Architect of Rock n Roll" (for some reason a lot of folk seemed to be reluctant to acknowledge his contribution) from A Girl Can't Help It, one of the most essential rock n roll songs, especially the slowed down studio re-recording which adds to the sexuality of the track through to the more R&B, Soul recordings for Okeh from the mid 60s but that's about where I stop. His influence can be seen all through music from James Brown and the JBs through the Heavy Metal of the late 70s and early 80s . Bon Scott and the Young Brothers being big fans and I am sure that Freddie Mercury watched quite a few Little Richard performances and made notes and do we even have to mention the sadly departed Prince Rogers Nelson.

Rock and roll and music in general would have been a lot duller without the extrovert from Macon Georgia

Rest easy Richard



Little Richard - Get Down With It  

Wednesday 6 May 2020

Two TV Sets and Two Cadillac Cars



After yesterday's post it was inevitable that today I would go back to the source. Rock and Roll was first released on the final Velvet Underground album, Loaded, however it had been played live frequently and  originally put to tape the previous year. Here is the Matrix Tapes version.

The Velvet Underground - Rock and Roll (Live)

Tuesday 5 May 2020

Sacrilege?



This came up on the iPod thee other night when I was out for my daily constitutional and I had forgotten just how good it was. I baulked when I first saw this mash up, no way could you mix the Velvet Underground with Christine Aguilera and also throw The Communards into the mix at the end , it would just be a disaster. But my lack of faith was totally unfounded as Mark Vider pulled it off, if you didn't know the individual tracks there would be very little likely hood that you would not believe that this was one composition and not the result of splicing three together.

Go Home Productions - Girl Wants

Monday 4 May 2020

Monday's Long Song



I really don't want to think about the mistake that I made in 2003 when I foolishly sold a shit load of dance records but I have been going through my much diminished Mo Wax collection over the past week. Two records which I had the intelligence to keep were the La Funk Mob releases on the label, MW 017 and MW 023 both double packs one 12" and 10". La Doctoresse was the lead track on the first of those releases, Tribulations Extra Sensorielles, a laid back groove with a soulful vocal sample and some lovely bongos, standard stuff for Headz back in the day. The blurb on the back of the record  states
"Mo' Wax enters '94 with more hard abstrack musical science via France's top beat headz - La Funk Mob (producers of M.C. Solaars and featured on Jimmy Jay's Les Cool Sessions). This E.P. kicks pure Diggin in the crates instrumentalsbeatz, flavaz, a couple of hard Klub trax, a crazy mad jazz house fusion and a classic mad jazz house fusion and a classic slice of head shit. Anyway just check it! Mo'Wax 'til infinity

I couldn't agree more but wish that they had checked the spelling. I loved all this stuff during the mid to the late 90s.

La Funk Mob would go on to be better known as Cassius.

La Funk Mob - La Doctoresse