In Honour of the Passing of Mrs T...

2013-04-17 by Hal Berstram

Morrissey – Margaret On The Guillotine

I think it’s fair to say that few musicians are as polarising as ex-Smiths lead singer and long time soloist Morrissey. There seems to be relatively little middle ground – people either love the guy or think he is a piece of shit. This is from his first solo LP “Viva Hate”, released in 1988 when Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister, and really sums up what a substantial part of the British population felt at the time. And probably still do. It’s not a great song, but then I get the feeling it wasn’t meant to be.

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Song for a man found in a car park

2013-02-06 by Hal Berstram

Billy Bragg – Richard
Following recent electronic explorations it’s Back to Basics with perhaps the best songwriter of the 1980s. Billy Bragg appeared in 1983 with the extraordinarily titled mini-LP Life’s A Riot With Spy vs Spy on ex-Pink Floyd manager Peter Jenner’s Utility records, repackaged with second album Brewing Up with Billy Bragg on the soon-to-be-ironically titled Back To Basics a couple of years later, in which form it remains available. Soon to be ironic because Bragg was – and is – partial to a left-wing song; whereas the phrase “Back To Basics” was taken up in the early 1990s by the UK’s Conservative Prime Minister John Major, with farcical results.

The first two Bragg albums feature just voice and electric guitar – with songs recorded just as he played them in his one-man live set of the time. With the sound stripped down that far, everything hinges on whether the songs are any good, and fortunately Billy had some of the best ones going: pretty much everything on the debut is a classic – “The Milkman Of Human Kindness”, “A New England” (covered soon after by Kirsty MacColl) and “The Man In the Iron Mask”. The next album went ever better IMHO with songs like “It Says Here” (an attack on the Murdoch-dominated right-wing UK press), “Love Gets Dangerous”, “From a Vauxhall Velox” and “This Guitar Says Sorry”.

So why “Richard”? Mainly because the skeleton found in a Leicester car park has been identified fairly conclusively as that of the infamous King Richard III of England, whose death brought to an end the Wars of the Roses and led to the formation of the Tudor dynasty. Richard was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, but outrageously, historians never realised before that the battle was fought in a car park. But now we know better.

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Dave's First

2013-01-20 by Hal Berstram

David Bowie and the Lower Third – Can’t Help Thinking About Me

As a long-term David Bowie fan, the last few years have seen pretty lean pickings. Bowie had a hectic schedule in the early 2000s, with two pretty good albums in quick succession – Heathen and Reality, and a lot of touring. That era came to an end after he suffered a heart attack backstage after a gig in 2004, and since then he’s hardly been seen in public.

So it was a pleasant surprise, to say the least, when I heard that Bowie had released a new single, “Where Are We Now?” It’s a pleasant enough downtempo listen, very much in the mould of his 1999 LP “hours…”, but I wanted to take you back almost 50 years to Bowie’s first ever solo release under the Bowie moniker (previous to that he was recording under his real name David Jones but was suffering confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees). For this release, inexplicably, he’s backed by “The Lower Third” – what kind of a name for a backing group is that? Sounds like a school class.

“Can’t Help Thinking About Me” is probably the best 1960s single not to become a hit, although there is stiff competition from the High Numbers (aka The Who)’s debut single “I’m The Face”. Classic mid-60s pop and very economical with it, clocking in at under 2-and-a-half minutes. He even namechecks himself, ferchrissakes… “my girl calls my name… Hi Dave!” and also “Question Time” is mentioned, 13 years before the programme actually started on the BBC. This is a bloody time traveller record, and a stunning debut. Sadly Bowie abandoned the mid-60s pop-mod sound soon afterwards, although he continued to be informed by the mid-60s all through the 70s (most obviously on Pin Ups, although arguably the whole Ziggy Stardust thing was just mid-60s beat group rock with the guitars turned up well loud. But then all the best early 70s glamrockers were in that zone (Bolan, Slade, etc.)

Not sure if this is currently available on CD but it’s pretty easy to get 2nd hand or with a Spotify search. My copy came with one of those free CDs that you get with Mojo magazine – this one was called “Maximum ‘65” and was just about the best CD that Mojo has ever put out, worth several times the cover price of the mag in my book. Probably appearing at a charity shop near you as we speak.

More unusual Bowie gems and related stuff over the next few weeks. Dust off the pinstripe suits…

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"Raucous, monotonous heavy metal..."

2013-01-11 by Hal Berstram

Paris – Religion

2012 saw far too many great musicians kick the bucket, and one of those was ex-Fleetwood Mac lead guitarist Bob Welch. Welch
held Mac together between its two most commercial periods – the late-60s blues-rock phase with Peter Green and the late-70s mega-successful California phase with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. He was on 5 Mac LPs between 1971 and 1974 but then left because he felt the group wasn’t getting anywhere and he wanted to try something with a heavier sound – and promptly formed the hard-rock trio Paris with bassist Glenn Cornick (an early member of Jethro Tull) and drummer Thom Mooney.

Paris’s eponymous 1975 debut LP owes a huge debt chucks out the soft-rock stylings that Welch had spent 4 years cultivating with the Mac and instead presents a studio-slick approximation of the Led Zeppelin sound, although with less raucous vocals. It’s an all-time classic, which was not well received by the Rolling Stone Record Guide (1979 edition):

“Paris was raucous, monotonous heavy metal… self-righteous songs and noisy playing.”

But remember that this was the same publication that gave the first 4 AC/DC albums zero out of 5 stars and you’ll realise just how wildly off-beam these guys were.

Paris sadly only lasted 2 albums (and their 2nd LP, the bizarrely titled Big Towne, 2061 was a lot less heavy than the debut, although still good) but at their best they were up there with Zeppelin, Sabbath, The Groundhogs and UFO as fine practitioners of 70s metal. Pass the Flying V! And RIP Bob Welch – a sadly missed rocker.

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Alboy's Best of 2011: #3

2012-04-12 by The Mighty Alboy

Ghost Poet – “Survive it”

Just a beautiful track this, from South London (Tooting Bec!) lad Obaro Ejimiwe, aka Ghost Poet.

If you havent got his LP peanut butter blues and melancholy jam, then you’re missing out- like Ghost Poet missed out on the Mercury Prize in 2011. Shoulda been his…

Cool video too:

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Alboy's Best of 2011: #9

2012-03-21 by The Mighty Alboy

LCD Soundsystem- “I Can Change” (London Session)

Thought this was from 2011, but dammit, it was released in Nov 2010.

This is just a great tune- James Murphy’s lyrics are splendid, and musically it’s highly reminiscent of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (who are still going, can you believe?). This from the London Sessions recordings, which are particularly fine- found it hard to choose between this and all my friends.

2011 was a poignant year for LCD Soundsystem. Frontman James Murphy had turned 40, and he had previously said “I’ll just do this until I’m 40, and then I’ll do something else” which he duly did- so 2011 saw LCD play their last gig- at Madison Square Garden NYC. The place was packed out, and a friend of mine told me he left at the end of the set to beat the rush. This was after the first hour or so- only to find out on the way home that the show had gone on for another two hours. Strictly no re-admissions, unfortunately…

Here’s a live performance of this tune on Jools Holland

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Love is Everywhere

2012-03-19 by The Mighty Alboy

Pharoah Sanders – “Love is Everywhere”

A beautiful piece of melodic free jazz here from Sun Ra protege Pharoah Sanders, from the 1973 (very good year) love in us all album.

I first heard this on a madlib blue note mix years ago, but only sourced the track thanks to the magic of Shazam. Damned clever stuff.

So I never heard it in its full 19’54” glory. Showing more of the influence of John Coltrane, less of the more difficult Sun Ra- though he’s in there too.

Hope you enjoy.

Next up- my long awaited “best of 2011”. Didn’t want it to get lost in the flurry of retrospectives in January

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Happy Birthday Mr Bowie

2012-01-08 by Hal Berstram

David Bowie – John I’m Only Dancing (Again) 1975

Sorry for prolonged absence from this blog… I’ve returned to mark the occasion of David Bowie’s 65th birthday with a little tune from 1975, which (I think) was an outtake from the sessions for Young Americans. It’s essentially a funk remake of the 1972 single “John I’m Only Dancing”, and the basic musical structure was used with different lyrics and an additional main two-chord theme as “Stay” on Bowie’s 1976 Station To Station LP.

“John I’m Only Dancing (Again) 1975” was issued as a single in 1979 (in 7” and 12” versions – the version uploaded here is the 7 inch mix, largely because I didn’t have any mp3 copy of the 12 inch mix to hand, and my old 12 inch single of it is in storage at the moment). The 12” version was also an extra track on the early 90s CD reissues of Bowie’s back catalogue on Rykodisc (sadly the newer EMI reissues don’t have any extra tracks on them). I own it on an early 80s compilation called (strangely enough) “Rare Bowie” from which I might post another oddity soon…) Anyway I am to be more active here this year, so see yon soon.

note: the mp3 file begins with about 5 seconds of silence due to poor editing by me. Sorry.

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Nexus 21 - Real Love(Obsession) [1990]

2011-12-22 by T Pot

Just digging through my old CDs. Found this old one from Network Records 1990. ‘Real Love’ by Nexus 21.

Quite a nice old skool cut. Nice strings.

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Completely awesome

2011-09-09 by The Mighty Alboy

Tune Yards – “Lions”

Am at a bit of a loss selecting the genre categories on this one, so I’ve just gone for “completely awesome”.

The Tune Yards- Merrill Garbus.

Kind of hard to describe, so you’ll just have to listen to it. Drums, bass, vocals- she has the most incredibly dynamic range, a voice of amazing subtlety and power- and of course, ukelele’s.

Not usual fare for DC but I stumbled across this on the weekend, and I’ve been listening to everything i can get my hands on all week, and it’s been a brilliant melange of lo fi pop, hip hop, indie, funk, african (and usually I instinctively mislike anything that could be described as “fusion”). Guess you’d have to say challenging too, cos it’s pretty in your face, a lot of it.

This is from the first album Bird Brains, released in 2008 originally recorded on cassette via a dicatphone (seriously), but then remastered still lo fi via a single mike and using top quality open source recording software Audacity when Tune Yards signed to 4AD- good to see they still have their ears out for great new music (even in DC’s appear to be 3 years out of date). New album who kill came out in April and is equally awesome.

So I thought it was all rather nicely produced in a garagey studio, in a lo-fi sounding kind of way, but there’s no chance it could be done live, with all the overdubbing and complicated progness of some of the tracks.

But lord was I wrong about that…

Just looked up some of the tracks on YouTube, and it’s live- the overdubbing and looping is all done ingeniously live, and the performance is draw-dropping. Just being able to sing and play the drums at the same time (see J Live below) is amazing, but- and it’s not so surprising, as she was formerly and may well still be a puppeteer- Merrill Garbus is something else.

[And that’s not to mention the bass player (Jermaine- sorry, Nate Brenner- also amazing)]

Check the performances below.

Seriously.

A puppeteer pulling strings of a different kind out there.

Absolutely no idea where the lyrics or the melodies come from, but sure it’s all way deep. And it’s Jazz, man…it really is!

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