Paul Haig Day and His Lordship's Birthday

Today at a lot of the blogs listed down the right hand side, you will find tracks by Paul Haig/Josef K, this is because for the second year running these bloggers have decided to recognise Paul Haig, who gave support to JC of the excellent Vinyl Villain blogspot when he was getting all of the bother from Blogger and those DMCA gits.

Not being a huge fan of Mr Haig's output I decided not to get involved. However I do think that it is my duty to make people aware of what's going on and that not all artists are complete tossers a la Fergal Sharkey.

I am not sure that when it comes down to it any artist has clout with the c--ts who are arbitrarily taking down posts.  When I got a similar take down notice,  I got a very appreciated email from the manager of the band (Doves) who was none the wiser than me as to why it had been taken down as he was unaware of anybody from the record company or indeed the band who had complained about my insignificant little post.

I had not intended to comment on the problems with Blogger and the faceless bean counters, however last night I found that a further 2 sites which I visited, albeit infrequently, Moody Places and Madchester Rave On have been shut down.

I think that it is only a matter of time before all of the music blogs which post any copyrighted material for which they don't own, no matter how old or unobtainable the tracks are will be closed down on Blogger. I have already taken steps. Just after North Country Bhoy made the move to Wordpress, I registered Across The Kitchen Table there, so if one day this blog disappears just go to wordpress or add this link to your favourites and you can keep up with my pish there.

Anyway, today is also special for another reason. You all thought that the saviour's birthday was the 25th December, however you and the rest of the world have been mistaken. The saviour was actually born on the 6th April  1963 and to mark this momentous occasion, Ctel, Swiss Adam and myself are posting something by the great man.

But here in lies the problem. Over the past couple of years, Ctel, STX, Moggieboy and to a lesser extent Swiss Adam and myself have posted most of the remixes and a lot of Sabres of Paradise, Two Lone Swordsmen and solo stuff. So what to post?

I decided that I would go for an album track from one of the Sabresonic albums. So I sat down and listened to them both yesterday and at the end of it still couldn't decide. But what I did realise is that both of these albums are truely wonderful and should be listened to more frequently by me than they are.

I could have posted one of the versions of Smokebelch II, sometimes I think that the original version gets overlooked due to the brilliance of David Holmes reworking. Or the wonderfully scary Clock Factory. But in the end I decided on a belter of a track from Sabresonic II.

If you don't own either of these albums you need to get over to Discogs and get yourself sorted right away. For the recent output of both the 2 Lone Swordsmen and Weatherall's solo stuff visit The Rotter's Golf club here.

I still have dreams about  a Weatherall/Fall collaboration.

Sabres Of Paradise - Inter-Lergen-Ten-Ko II

Paul Haig Day

When JC first mooted the idea of Paul Haig day, I liked the idea but thought that the possibility of me making a worthwhile contribution was nil, as I have to confess that the majority of his music passed me by.

Over the last week I have been wondering why this was and still haven't come up with a plausible explanation. Sure, when Joseph K were kicking about I was still at primary school but I'm sure that the band's records would have been in S's brothers collections, something I forgot to verify with one of said brothers when I met him at the weekend. Orange Juice and Aztec Camera were label mates at Postcard, both of whom I love so I am at a loss as to why I didn't get into them.

The first memory I have of hearing Joseph K would be around 1985, 2 guys, Mill and G that I kicked about with, both of whom had older brothers who sported quiffs and were the epitome of "indie" at that time, would mention and play tracks by the band but it just didn't grab me in the same way as, say, the Mary Chain or Friends Again. I liked what I heard I just didn't seek out the records, partly in retrospect I think due to the rarity of the vinyl.

I don't know about where you come from but being a 15/16 year old in Lanarkshire in the 80's our weekends revolved round somebody's parents being away, them deciding to have a party and our exploits in trying to secure a carry-oot in order to attend the bash.

After a few of such events we realised that the people who had these nights, mostly had a terrible taste in music and we would end up listening to crap from the likes of Duran Duran. I have vivid memories of Peter Gabriel's So and Talking Heads Little Creatures being ubiquitous at these nights. So we decided to take our own records not only whenever we were invited to these parties but also when we weren't but were aware that somebody had an empty.

On one of these occasions Mill decided to raid his brother's collection and take along his prize Joseph K singles. Which girl he hoped to impress with these singles is anyone's guess, as let's face it the main reason to take your own records to parties was to show how "cool" you were in order to impress a member of the opposite sex with your taste enough that you got a winch and to walk a girl home.

Anyway on this occasion Mill's attempts were fruitless and he decided to go home with his records via the park. Being rather the worse for wear probably due to Buckfast and his tendency to narcolepsy he decided to have a kip on a bench. After a snooze he headed home.

The following afternoon when totally compos mentis he realised that he had left the Josef K singles in the park. He went back, however the singles were nowhere to be seen. I am not sure now if he fessed up to his brother or not but I think he did and got a kicking for it.

Anyway, that is my rather convoluted and not totally relevant contribution to Paul Haig Day and this is one of the singles that went missing that night.

Josef K - Chance Meeting

If you like what you hear you can buy the Josef K compilation Entimology here. Go on give some support to one of the good guys.