In the Kingdom of the Bland...

...James Blunt is King.

Well, according to Mr HMV anyway, who has done his usual trawl of the end of the year 'best of' lists from the mags and papers, compiled a 'best of the best ofs' list, and compared it to the top ten best selling records of the year. Here's how they rank:

Critics Top 10

1 The Arcade Fire: Funeral
2 Gorillaz: Demon Days
3 Kanye West: Late Registration
4 Sufjan Stevens: Illinoise
5 Elbow: Leaders of the Free World
6 Antony & The Johnsons: I Am a Bird Now
7 The White Stripes: Get Behind Me Satan
8 Franz Ferdinand: You Could Have It So Much Better
9 Kaiser Chiefs: Employment
10 MIA: Arular

Top Selling Albums of 2005:

1 James Blunt: Back to Bedlam
2 Coldplay: X & Y
3 Robbie Williams: Intensive Care
4 Kaiser Chiefs: Employment
5 Westlife: Face to Face
6 Gorillaz: Demon Days
7 KT Tunstall: Eye to the Telescope
8 Eminem: Curtain Call - The Hits
9 Kelly Clarkson: Breakaway
10 Katie Melua: Piece by Piece

For my own two pence, I think the critics have been over generous to Franz Ferdinand and the White Stripes, who seem to become more toothless with each release. Overlooked LP of the year is A Certain Trigger by Maximo Park, which has had the most play in this house - or maybe it's just the only one that me and the Helster can agree on. The Elbow LP is great, and we are hoping to see them at Rock City in the new year. And who is Kelly Clarkson anyway??

Miss Otis Regrets

Neu!

I downloaded this LP, the first album by Neu! about a year ago, and have listened to it on and off without paying it much attention beyond the opening track Hallogallo. I've played it all the way throught twice tonight, and it's bloody fantastic. Much of what is passed off as Krautrock is very very tiresome, but Neu are out on their own. Must have been great to see them live.

elsewhere, the mags are trotting out yet more best of 2005 music lists, and it seems to be a toss up in the main between Anthony and The Johnson, Gorillaz, and Arcade Fire. I've tried with Anthony, but I just don't get it, I've heard a lot of the Gorillaz LP on the 2005 cdrs, likewise Arcade Fire, sounding good.

A few tracks sticking out for me which I had missed this year so far but which have turned up on the cds from Graham and Jim - 'I Burn Today' from Frank Black's solo LP, and 'The Well' from the Smog album. will have to pick up both records in the new year when I have some spare cash.

The Heavy Heavy Monster Sound

Went to see Madness on Monday night, at Rock City. Part of the 25th anniversary of the country's stickiest shit hole, apparently.

They were tremendous, it was bedlam, and they did all the old stuff. Not many bands had a better run of singles, and they weren't all Baggy Trousers jolly-ups either - loads of Madness songs are very dark and bleak, which is of course fine by me.

The sax player, name escapes me, climbed to the top of the PA , but down his horn, and made as if he was about to leap into a suddenly wary crowd. There's no way he's going to jump, no way - oh look - he's jumped. I thought he would have broken his spine and taken out a few aging mods with him, but no, apparently he was fairly unscathed, and eventually reappeared on stage more or less intact.

'You Call Glastonbury 'Glasto'...

...you'd like to go there one day.
When they've put up the gun towers
to keep the hippies away'.

Anyway - that's off the new Half Man Half Bisuit lp, Achtung Bono. Still doing it for me, 20 years on.

Those best of the year lists are starting to pop up in the mags, and a depressing quantity of them are dribbling hyperbole all over the Magic Numbers. Grown men reduced to tears at gigs, well crafted tunesmithery etc etc. Over-rated bland out toss I'm afraid.

We're already dead, but not yet in the ground

Saw John Cale on 'later' the other night, bashing away as if his life depended on it. He's 63 or something. I hadn't heard any of his solo stuff, apart from Songs For Drella with Lou Reed, and the Bill Bragg cover version of Fear (Is A Man's Best Friend). Anyway, bought the new one on spec, and it's pretty good - especially 'Perfect', which he did on Later. Better is the album 'Fear' from 1974, which I downloaded but will pick up from Selectadisc.

Angry old man shouting and beating the fuck out of a geetar, just the job at the moment.

best of 2005 cd is finished - wedding present, cale, fall, arctic monkeys, stones, malc middleton, martha wainwright, sufjan stevens, cuban boys, blind boys of alabama, x-press2, alabama 3, maximo park. i think that's about it...

Lucifer Over Lancashire

This is very odd, there's a BBC football programme on something called BBCi (some kind of sub-ether wave band as far as I can tell) which is broadcast on Saturday afternoons for people who care rather too much about football. Anyway, bless them, they got Mark E Smith in to read the classified football results last week. If you have more bandwidth than sense, you can watch him in action here.

The same link has a clip from the recent channel 4 prog about John Peel's record box, with some more good Fall stuff. MES is quoted as saying 'you should never meet your heroes', whilst Billy Bragg is of the opinion that 'you should never meet Mark E Smith'.

A Creature Void of Form

Just back from seeing Dylan at Nottingham Arena. I'd heard that the venue wasn't quite as soulless and alienating as most other stadium gigs, but this proved not to be the case - it's a shed.

Anyway, Dylan was on tremendous form, his band these days are pretty much a straight up Blues / R'n'B / Swing band, and some of the interpretations of older tunes were majestic - there was a fantastic slow blues version of It's Alright Ma, and a mesmerising Blind Willie McTell. Times like this, the band sounds a lot like the Bad Seeds - a good thing.

It's best to approach Dylan live with a healthy scepticism and a readiness to be disappointed; on the evidence of tonight he was on his best behaviour, appeared to be enjoying himself, and even gave a straight version of Like A Rolling Stone full of feeling and (almost) all the right notes.

Maybe it was all down to a first time in Nottingham, wanting to impress, and a willingness to play up to the recent hype around the No Direction Home documentary and the paperback version of the Chronicles...either way, a night to remember.

set list:

1.	Maggie's Farm
2.	The Times They Are A-Changin'
3.	Lonesome Day Blues
4.	Love Minus Zero/No Limit
5.	It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
6.	Under The Red Sky
7.	Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
8.	Blind Willie McTell
9.	Highway 61 Revisited
10.	John Brown (acoustic)
11.	Floater (Too Much To Ask)
12.	Honest With Me
13.	Masters Of War
14.	Summer Days
	(encore)
15.	Like A Rolling Stone
16.	All Along The Watchtower

Sacrifice Is Going On Tonight

Apparently, 2005 is the 25th anniversary of NWOBHM.



You don't need me to explain what NWOBHM is, do you? The New Wave of British Heavy Metal, as typified by bands like Saxon, Iron Maiden (especially the pre-Bruce Dickinson line up) Girlschool, Motorhead, Diamond Head, etc etc

Now, some of these bands were inexcusably terrible. Some of the records are bloody good though! In a very silly way, maybe, with a lot of songs about motorbikes, denim, leather, living after midnight and touching each other's bottoms etc...tunes like Running Free, Breaking The Law (YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIIIIKE!!) Please Don't Touch, Wheels of Steel...
Amazingly, lots of these bands are still about, schlepping around Europe on the metal nostalgia circuit, and good luck to them say I.

Twisted

"For whatever reason you refuse to feel this space we're in,
to know its insanity, really know it,
whatever your particular anaesthetic is,
that you hold on to so desperately,
the thing I mean that makes you think you know who you are,
whatever that thing is you allow to keep you sane,
your ace in the hole,
the pscyhe that keeps you from trying to guess at what your pimp has in store for you,
whatever keeps you from screaming out at this very moment in absolute and sheer horror,
whatever you fuck your brain with,
whatever that is,
whatever that is,
it's a lie.
It's a lie."

alabama3

albums of the year

just picking over the tracks that might end up on my best of 2005 CDR...

It's been a year of good tunes featuring on otherwise disappointing albums, eg Teenage Fanclub, Beck. Plus, having become an iPod owner this year, I am losing the discipline to sit and listen to one LP from start to finish. The tempation is to skip about between favourite tracks, without devoting the time to properly get inside a whole record.

Anyway, my cdr will eventually feature the likes of The Fall (there's a surprise), Malcolm Middleton, Maximo Park, Martha Wainwright, Sufjan Stevens, Elbow, Seth Lakeman , Alabama 3, Arctic Monkeys, etc etc many other too tedious to list.

Last year, judging by most people's final 'best of 2004' cdrs, the most popular LPs were by Nick Cave, Morrissey, and Franz Ferdinand...it'll be interesting to see if anyone runs away with it this year.

Gut of the Quantifier

The Fall were good - not as blinding as earlier this year at the same venue , but still good. I think that's partly because in March I would have been impressed if MES had lasted longer than 10 mins, such was the man's reputation at the time, but the band is young and plays very tight garage R'n'R...good stuff.

Another English eccentric, Ray Davies...I am enjoying the Kinks 'Village Green Preservation Society' which I've never heard before. I only have one Kinks LP which isn't a 'greatest hits' which is pretty shameful really as I reckon RD to be, on his day, the equal of Lennon and McCartney and Townsend in the Greatest English Songwriter stakes.

Ears still ringing from the Fall, I laid off the iPod today...

Well it's lonesome in this old town...

...everybody puts me down..

Out to see the Fall tomorrow night, hoping that Smith doesn't implode with whisky and bile as he apparently has been doing on a few nights of the current tour. He's gone and cancelled most of the remaining provincial gigs except Nottm and Wolves -burning out already?

Started the Peel biography this weekend, you can hear him speaking each line...very good and very funny, but incredibly sad - he clearly was expecting to live a bit longer than the end of the next sentence.

Strolling Bones

Not heard the new album yet, and to be honest the sensible reaction to a new Stones record is a weary shrug of the shoulders, and a safe assumption that it will be a a bucket of bollocks.

However - opening track is a blinder, and I only know this because I saw it on young person's beat network MTV2. 'Rough Justice', not quite as dirty as Stray Cat Blues from 30 odd years ago (no WAY you could get away with lyrics like that these days) but still pretty sleazy. A pretty tune, and a charming sentiment.

Mick Jagger is 91.

Double Albums - why?

With the new Kate Bush (you wait 12 years for an album, and when it arrives - it's a double) record on the horizon, time to reflect on the truly essential double LPs which wouldn't have been better honed down to a single - here's Graham:

I honestly find it hard to think of a double album which wouldn't have been better off editted onto one disc (with the possible exception of Quadrophenia and the Wall - but they're operatic so maybe they can be let off). Even London Calling - when was the last time I actually got as far as Train in Vain?

I would weigh in for 'Exile on Main Street' and the White Album as being worthy of 2 discs, though I am scratching my head to think of any others...'Blonde On Blonde', 'Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus'...

I would love to say 'Zen Arcade' and 'Warehouse:Songs and Stories', both by Husker Du, but to be honest I just don't have the stamina for more than side one of each. If we are allowing live albums, I'm having 'It's Too Late To Stop Now' by Van Morrison, and Queen Live Killers (which apparently isn't very 'live' at all...but it's good fun.

Kids Today

The Arctic Monkeys, new single out now pop pickers.

Does it for me. So much hype around this band, but on the strength of this record (which I bought! From Mr iTunes!) it seems deserved.

Sometimes A Light Don't Shine

Saw the Alabama 3 in Wolverhampton last night, good venue and a marvellous gig which saw me go 'down the front' for the first time in at least a decade.

Tour diary from the Spirit Of Love in today's Independent.

50 Bands To See Before You Die

More no brainer list nonsense - this time from Q magazine, via this Wikipedia article.

I've seen 10 out of the 50, which bearing in mind several are DJs (hmm, stretching the concept of 'band') and several others are dead, I reckon is not too bad. Out of the Top 10, I've seen Kraftwerk, the Pogues and The Fall. Would love to have seen AC/DC or The Who...

Dutch Peel show online

I can't remember how I happened upon this, but it's a show from 1986 which Peel did for a Dutch radio station - the first 5 mins are in Dutch, the rest is the man himself and some great records (Husker Du's version of Ticket To Ride?). Click 'uur1' on the page, it's streaming audio.

I Can Hear The Grass Grow

Still thrilling to the breathless rush of Fall Heads Roll.

Meanwhile, in other news, I have hacked the dvd player to play multiregion discs...meaning that I can finally order Dylan's 'Don't Look Back' on dvd, unaccountably unavailable in this country.

Album of the Year

Hard to imagine anyone besting Fall Heads Roll as LP of the year - it's bleedin demented and rocks out like the olden days. Picked it up during my lunch hour - a tenner from Selectadisc! - the gigs will be terrific. Maybe the version of Blindness is not quite as unhinged as the Peel sessions version...but the version of I Can Hear The Grass Grow is much better - SAVAGE!

Fall Heads Roll

New album out on tomorrow, contains the epic Blindness, the best thing they have ever done.





I can't get my eyes checked
My blues eyes can't get checked
I'm only one leg
I said to poster, "When's the curfew over?
I said, "Blind man, have mercy on me."
I said, "Blind man, have mercy on me."
Blind man have mercy on me
Oh Great One I am a mere receptacle
The egg tester for your sandlewood and over asserted roots

In dark green
Blind man have mercy on me
I got a metal leg - truth
Flat is the evil of Calvary and cavalry

and if you can make any sense of that, you're a better man than me...

Witness The Pitness

MC Pitman - sorry to go on, but this bloke is bloody hilarious.

'brother, let's do this right -first we'll drink tea, and then we'll fight'.

he's mentioned in Wikipedia, it seems shock horror that he may not in fact be a real miner.

Not this old rubbish again

BBC 6 Music have asked their listeners to nominate the most over-rated albums ever made...and these are the lucky winners.

1. Nirvana - Nevermind

2. Coldplay - X&Y

3. The Libertines - The Libertines

4. Oasis - Definitely Maybe

5. U2 - The Joshua Tree

6. Radiohead - OK Computer

7. The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

8. Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

9. Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks

10. The Smiths - The Queen is Dead

Now, whilst I am more than happy to see Radiohead and the bleeding Libertines on there, and Coldplay of course, the rest of the records on this list are classics of one sort or another. Except for U2. The Queen Is Dead is one of the best records ever made by anyone, as is Pet Sounds. Sgt Pepper is ok I suppose, but it wouldn't distress me if I never heard Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds ever again. Suede - overrated almost beyond reason. A good guitar player, that's about it. Prince - a couple of good singles over 10 years ago, the rest is bobbins. Almost anything that ever won the Mercury Music Prize - a hallmark of over-ratedness.

meanwhile, this guy is a genius.

I used to care, but things have changed

The Independent has listed the top 20 Dylan albums, as part of the current Zim frenzy ahead of the Scorsese documentaries next week. Hard to argue with, but difficult to rank - Blonde On Blonde is usually voted top, but I can't decide between Highway 61 and Bringing It All Back Home. The latter was the first Dylan album I owned - I bought it on cassette from a second hand shop in Portsmouth. At the time (age 16) I was graduating from heavy rock and the likes of Pink Floyd, the Doors, etc etc. To hear a line like

' Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.'

was just electrifying. Certainly more so than, say, Ummagumma. About which I'll say no more.

Anyway, plenty of Dylan gubbins going on at the Indie, including the boy Kershaw talking about the 'Judas!' accuser at the Free Trade Hall in 1966.

I was a miner

I once met Billy Bragg at a signing in Selectadisc. He was very genial as I remember, and he was concerned that because he only had a black felt tip pen, his signature on the black sleeve of the Days Like These EP I had just bought would be pratically invisible. You can just about see it, if you angle the record to the light and squint.

The only other signed record I own is Something Else by The Kinks. Ray Davies did a book signing at Virgin when I was in charge of the book dept, and he cheerfully agreed to sign Kinks paraphernalia as well as his autobiography. Apparently he was suffering from a particularly bad ear infection at the time, and this formed the basis of my one and only conversation with a song writing legend:

Me: 'How's the ear Ray?'
Ray: 'Not too bad thanks.'

The Heavy Metal Umlaut

I stumbled across this waste of cyberspace today through a link on the 6 Music website: a history of the umlaut in Metal (those two dots over the second 'o' in Motorhead, for example.

Apparently, "The umlaut in Motörhead was contributed by the graphic designer of the band's first album cover. In the words of Lemmy, Motörhead's front man: "I only put it in there to look mean."

Motorhead are the obvious umlaut users, but here are many more - Blue Öyster Cult, Spinal Tap (the umlaut is over a consonant- nice!), Amon Duul, Husker Du (although I think their umlaut is actually legit, and anyway they aren't metal).

It also includes this terrific exhortation from an old Hawkwind album (which to my shame I still own...)

"TECHNICIÄNS ÖF SPÅCE SHIP EÅRTH THIS IS YÖÜR CÄPTÅIN SPEÄKING YÖÜR ØÅPTÅIN IS DEA̋D"

Motely Crue - there's another...

A Day In The Life

Q magazine has printed a list of their top ten british songs of all time:

1. A Day In The Life - The Beatles

2. Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks

3. Wonderwall - Oasis

4. God Save The Queen - Sex Pistols

5. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

6. My Generation - The Who

7. Angels - Robbie Williams

8. Life on Mars? - David Bowie

9. Sympathy For The Devil - Rolling Stones

10. Unfinished Sympathy - Massive Attack

it's voted by a panel of 'industry experts' rather than the likes of you and me.

The Kinks need to be in any list of quintessentially English acts, andWaterloo Sunset is one of my favourites. A Day In The Life is very English, but we could equally choose other Beatles tunes like In My Life, or Paperback Writer, or almost anything from Revolver or Rubber Soul.

Wonderwall has been lambasted elsewhere on this blog, and I'll say nothing about Robbie Williams, but it's good to see Unfinished Sympathy on there - that's a timeless, classic record.

Two possible omissions spring to mind straight away - Ian Dury (pretty much anything by him, but let's say Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick) and Common People by Pulp. I would have thought Pink Floyd were another archetypal British group, and there could also be some two tone ska on the list, eg Baggy Trousers by Madness or Ghost Town by The Specials.

What about Kate Bush? Wuthering Heights is another record which owes nothing to the 12 bar American R&B heritage and could only have come out of this country.

There really should be some Smiths on there too...The Queen Is Dead:

"I said Charles, don't you ever crave
To appear on the front of the Daily Mail
Dressed in your Mother's bridal veil ?"

Seven Songs By Sunset

John Shuttleworth's finest hour.

I Am a Bird Now

Anthony and the Johnsons won the Mercury Music Award, watched by me and the Helster in something of an alcohol and pizza induced fog.

I've tried with the album, admittedly not very hard, but I haven't really clasped it to my bosom as such. We were rooting for Maximo Park, but it seems that white boys with guitars are currently persona non grata down at Mercury Towers.

But, if a 6 foot 4 cross-dressing ex-choirboy can win, then there strikes a blow for diversity.

No Direction Home

Everything's going Bobular - the soundtrack to the Scorsese doc is out today (and it's great), then the film over two weekends at the end of the month, then the man himself in November.

The soundtrack has some terrific stuff - 'Maggie's Farm' at Newport in 1965, which apparently drove Pete Seegar so demented he picked up an axe, and ran amok in the crowd, slaughtering beatniks at every turn. Those are ELECTRIC INSTRUMENTS! GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY!

'It Takes a Lot To Laugh' appears in speeded up (in every sense) incarnation, and there's a lovely tune called I Was Young When I Left Home which I'd never heard of before.

There are alternate versions of two of my favourites - 'Don't Think Twice', and 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue' - not better than the originals, but sufficiently different to be fascinating in a way that many other artists' outtakes and studio floor sweepings are not. For one thing - Dylan is clearly still writing lyrics while recording early versions of some songs - Tombstone Blues and Baby Blue are both abbreviated compared to the versions we already know.

The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Shake 'em On Down

RL Burnside, RIP. Saw him at the Maze a few years back, he was tremendous. Why use 3 chords, when two or even one will do?

Got this from the bbc website:

"After growing up in the Mississippi Delta, Burnside moved north to Chicago in the 1940s, but came back south after his father and two brothers were killed in the city.

He returned to a country living, and served six months in jail after shooting a man Burnside said was trying to turn him out of his home.

"It was between him and the Lord, him dyin'," Burnside remarked in a 2002 New Yorker article.

"I just shot him in the head."

I got two heads

D. Wayne left the hospital
After being operated on
Couldn't walk, couldn’t even talk
When they asked his story, he had to get out both his hands
So he signed this song to me
I hope you understand

I got two heads
I'm gonna bang my heads together
I got one leg
I'm gonna hop to heaven’s door
I got three eyes
I'm gonna pluck one out for Jesus
And I ain’t gonna have no troubles anymore

The Daily Telegraph Guide To Punk

'Britain's Best Selling Quality Daily' has finally decided to publish a guide to what the kids call 'punk rock'.

Some good choices - Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, and some bobbins - Generation X, Killing Joke. And no mention of any of the American bands which kicked things off - Ramones, NY Dolls, Television etc.

So for no reason other than pointless male list mania, I include my own personal punk top 10. Hey readers! why not do the same?

1. The Ruts - Babylon's Burning - this is the best 'getting ready to go out and drink beer' record ever made. The bass player Segs is now in Alabama 3, singer Malcolm Owen OD'd, which was careless.

2. The Sex Pistols - Bodies - the scariest intro of any song ever, and some great swearing. 'Fuck this and fuck that, fuck it all and fuck her fucking brat' full glorious lyrics here.

3. Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen In Love?

4. The Clash - I Fought The Law - cover version, the original was by one of Buddy Holly's Crickets. Best bit is the 6 rim shots on the line 'robbing people with a BANG BANG BANG six gun!'

5. The Only Ones - Another Girl, Another Planet

6. The Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop -hey ho! let's go!

7. Television - Marquee Moon. 10 minutes of guitars and cadillacs and graveyards.

8. Elvis Costello - Oliver's Army. a dead ringer for the king of Belgium.

9. Jilted John - Jilted John - where John Shuttleworth started....

10. Ian Dury and the Blockheads - What A Waste.

Ex-Bay City Roller in Drugs Shame

Well apart from Pete Bleedin' Doherty there are few enough decent sex and drugs and rock n roll scandals in these Coldplay times, so it's good to see some hot cocaine action from Bay City Roller heart throb Les McKeown.

Apparently dear old Les has been rumbled for masterminding a rather crap cocaine scam...good grief, can a man not be left alone to make a living? The bbc website helpfully points out that 'The Bay City Rollers shot to fame with hits such as Bye Bye Baby and Shang-A-Lang in the 1970s.'

Burst Noel

I don't know what's happened to me -I've bought another cd, the third in two weeks. Malcolm Middleton, ex Arab Strap, a band about whichI know nothing, a miserabilist classic. One of the top 3 lps of the year so far...
He was at the Summer Sundae at de Montfort hall this weekend just gone - I missed him, but caught Patti Smith and The Wedding Present and Jackie Leven and The Earlies, all of whom were terrific, and what a great festival...

Blow it out of your ass, needle dick

some recent albums which I've actually paid for - drastic I know.
Seth Lakeman - the token folkie at this year's Mercury Music awards. Recorded in his brother's kitchen. Fiddles at the ready...
Micah P Hinson - The Baby And The Satellite...lo-fi predecessor to the second best album of last year.
...and an illegal pre-release download of the new Elbow cd, Leaders Of The Free World...sounds fantastic, includes potential track of the year Station Approach.

in other news...retro pie-eaters the Magic Numbers have stormed off Top of The Pops, on the suspicion that Richard 'Snowblind' Bacon accused them of being fat. Apparently, what he said was they come from ' a fat melting pot of talent'. Well, it got them more publicity than a TOTP appearance would have achieved...

Coming up - Patti Smith live at Summer Sundae - the Fall and Alabama 3 returning to Notts for the second time in a year...

last night, the Muffin Men - Zappa tribute at Rock City, featuring bona fide ex-Mother Of Invention Jimmy Carl Black - older than my dad, apparently.

freak out!

Wreckless Eric - genius

Clive sent me a link to Wreckless Eric's website, where he let's off rather a lot of steam about Glastonbury and Live 8, and the size of Elvis Costello's arse, amongst other things.

"The only bit of Live 8 that made any sense to me was the Who's performance. They played Who Are You? with the faces of world leaders flashing up behind them and followed it with Won't Get Fooled Again - one of the best records ever made - meet the new boss, same as the old boss - right every time. And they didn't say anything in between. Everybody else made speeches - the idiotic boy Barbie Doll singer in Razorlight came out with the amazingly erudite: 'we're here to make poverty history, right?' which got him a lot of applause and made him look really good even though, if this was real life, he wouldn't make it fronting a Stooges tribute band.

The cause is a worthy one but the intention to 'Make Poverty History' is utterly naive. It's about as realistic a possibility as smashing capitalism. Capitalism is at the root of third world poverty. Poverty is a necessary side effect of capitalism - the accumulation of wealth and the creation of an underclass. Without poverty there can be no wealth.
A leading botanist recently claimed that if every nation on earth lived as well as America and Great Britain it would take three planets to sustain us. So there's the answer, and try telling this to Chris Martin, Bono, Sting, Madonna and co - let's Make Wealth History."

full bile-drenched diatribe here.

sufjan stevens

bright eyes

antony and the johnsons

Half Year Top Ten?

Graham signs in with his albums of the year so far...

"I know this is a bit americana/emo oriented...but here goes

• More Adventurous - Rilo Kiley
• Illinois - Sufjan Stevens
• Live at the Filmore - Lucinda Williams

• I'm Wide Awake It's Morning - Bright Eyes
• Dimanche a Bamako - Amadou & Mariam
• Funeral - Arcade Fire
• I am a Bird Now - Antony & The Johnsons
• Cuts Across the Land - The Duke Spirit
• Government Commissions - Mogwai
• Minimum Maximum - Kraftwerk

Can't squeeze in The Magic Numbers, Ali Farka Touré And Toumani Diabeté (haven't listened to it enough yet), LCD Soundsystem (2 great tracks, but a lot of filler), Ry Cooder, Gorillaz, Eliza Carthy

Albums I should have listened to more than once or twice: HAL, Mercury Rev

Albums I should have bought by now - Martha Wainwright, Teenage Fan Club

Album I'm most looking forward to: Madness - The Dangermen Sessions"

Gimme some money

This is interesting - according to HMV, this is the increase in album sales for key artists appearing at Live 8 on Saturday:

1. Pink Floyd - Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd - 1343%

2. The Who - Then and Now - 863%

3. Annie Lennox - Eurythmics Greatest Hits - 500%

4. Dido - Life for Rent - 412%

5. Razorlight - Up All Night - 335%

6. Robbie Williams - Greatest Hits - 320%

7. Joss Stone - Mind, Body and Soul - 309%

8. Sting - The Very Best of Sting & The Police - 300%

9. Travis - Singles - 268%

10. Madonna - Immaculate Collection - 200%

Quite why anyone still wants to hear records by Annie Lennox is a worry to me, and the same goes for Dido - the blandest voice in pop EVER. Those Razorlight kids were having fun - shirts off, swearing, everything! And it must have been way past their bed time.

Anyway, good old Uncle Dave Gilmour out of Pink Floyd says that artists and record companies should be donating the extra royalties from post Live 8 sales to charity. Good for him. Should be interesting to see if anyone agrees with him - Pink Floyd are already as rich as Croesus and can afford to make such grandiose gestures, but I'm not sure Johnny Razorlight or whatever the fuck he calls himslef will be quite so benevolent. He's probably already spent the extra cash on fizzy pop and sherbert.

I'm learning a grudging respect for Alex Petri Dish in the Grauniad:

"For all the fuss about the lack of black faces on Live 8's bill, rapper Snoop Dogg somehow contrives to seem incredibly inappropriate. He never mentions the concert's aims, preferring instead to raise the watching world's awareness of Snoop Dogg. "Wave your motherfucking hands in the air," he yells. "Wave the motherfuckers like you just don't care." Given that caring is rather the point of Live 8, this suggestion seems unsuitable at best."

two sevens clash

punk rock

track by mogwai, with spoken words from Iggy Pop

I'll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dillitantes and ah... and ah... heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it and it's a... it's a term that's based on contempt, it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism and everything that's rotten about rock'n'roll. I don't know Johnny Rotten but I'm sure... I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did.
You see, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius, myself . And that music is so powerful that it's quite beyond my control and ah... when I'm in the grips of it I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Have you ever felt like that? When you just couldn't feel anything and you didn't want to either. You know? Like that? Do you understand what I'm saying sir?

Don't mention the war

Geldof wants all his Live8 stooges to stay on message and not upset George Bush by criticising him or the Iraq War from the concert stage - this from the Telegraph this morning.

"The musician who was reportedly warned by Geldof to "stay on message" was anxious not to be identified."

I wonder who that will be. Didn't think Billy Bragg had been invited...

another band with an umlaut in their name, joining the ranks of Motorhead and Husker Du...

classic rock that rocks

A few tunes I've been enjoying (or chucking on the reject pile) over the last few days and weeks...

Kershaw was good this week, and through him I have picked up on this lot - The Heartless Bastards. They are on Fat Possum records, who specialise in the sort of down home old style electric country blues - RL Burnside etc. I guess with a name like that they aren't exactly loaded with commercial potential, but the record kicks ass, as I believe our American cousins like to say.

Having read loads of raves about Nine Black Alps, I downloaded their new one. It's bobbins, derivative Nirvana-lite. Much better is the Maximo Park album, although I guess they are just as deriviative in their way...XTC are never far away at the moment.
Been digging out some old stuff too...A Tribe Called Quest: 'Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm' which is a ridiculously cumbersome title for a good record...always preferred them to De La Soul when it came to 'daisy age' rap or whatver the NME was calling them at the time.

Nick Lowe's The Impossible Bird is two albums before The Convincer. Contains The Beast In Me and another rare example of someone who just makes better and better albums as they grow older.

one last thing, Formed a Band by Art Brut, is piss funny and a good tune, by smart arse London types, album called bang Bang Rock n Roll...

that's me gone

Soul On Ice

This radio station was named Kowalski,
In honour of the last American hero to whom
Speed means freedom of the soul.
The question is not when he's gonna stop,
But who is gonna stop him...

"Coldplay? Indie Bed Wetters..."

From Graham:


Mitch Benn and the Distractions: Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now.

www.mitchbenn.com

Cruel, but very accurate spoof on the free CD with this months Word.

"This could be Embrace, Keane or Snow Patrol. Thirteen Senses sound like this as well I'm told".

Is It Rolling Bob?

Looks like Geldof had second thoughts about the number of African acts involved a the Live 8
shindig, at least according to this from the Independant.
on top of that, give the man a Nobel Peace Prize - he's got Pink Floyd back together! They have been scowling at each other for twenty four years...never thought that we'd see them on the same stage again.
Finally, Destiny's Child have split up - now that is a shame as I had a very soft spot for Bootylicious and Independant Woman. Charlie, how'd your angels get down like that?

More Bollocks

article in the Grauniad this morning listing the alleged 25 Most Depressing Songs.

Oddly, the Crazy Frog is not featured. It does have room for John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, Billie Holiday and Kenny Rogers, amongst others. In fairness, it doesn't include ususal suspects like The Smiths, Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake.

I always thought that the song reputed to be the most depressing ever recorded was 'Gloomy Sunday - Overture To Death'.

"two people shot themselves while listening to a gypsy band playing the tune. Several others drowned themselves in the Danube while clutching the sheet music of "Gloomy Sunday". One gentleman reportedly walked out of a nightclub and blew his brains out after having requested the band to play "The Suicide Song"... Few people who have ever listened to the melody and lyrics fail to confess that it has a horribly depressing effect."

Minimum - Maximum

Kraftwerk...Terrific live LP...if that isn't a contradiction in terms. Saw them at the Royal Festival Hall last year, Neon Lights on this album is from that show.

'I'm the operator with my pocket calculator... squink squonk...SQUAAAANK'

Shore Leave

Well with buck shot eyes and a purple heart
I rolled down the national stroll
And with a big fat paycheck strapped to my hip sack
And a shore leave wristwatch underneath my sleeve
In a hong kong drizzle on cuban heels
I rowed down the gutter to the blood bank

I'd left all my papers on the ticonderoga
AndI was in a bad need of a shave
And i slopped at the corner on cold chow mein
And shot billards with a midget until the rain stopped

And i bought a long sleeve shirt with horses on the front
And some gum and a lighter and a knife
And a new deck of cards, with girls on the back
And i sat down and wrote a letter to my wife

Alabama Rama Lama

The new Alabama 3 album is out. After a few listens it's growing on me, but it's not their best. The gig last week was terrific though, and the bootleg remix album is often better than the original.

Live 8

Andy Kershaw is upset that there is only one African artist appearing at Live 8 (Youssou N'Dour in Paris).

I didn't realise that the Pope was invited, it must be in recognition of the catholic church's pioneering anti AIDS work in Africa. Er, perhaps not.

Don is into Vampirism

Spare a few moments to cast your eye over this.

Remember kids - rock n roll is the devil's music, and no good can come of it.

Safe As Milk

Out to a gig tonight, the Magic Band - minus Captain Beefheart, who is apparently holed up somewhere in the Mojave desert, in ill health.

His erstwhile band are in terrific form, with a set list from Safe as Milk to
Ice Cream For Crow...and an audience full of freaks old and young.

So that's me on the last bus from town, just out of the shower with a stray can of Red Stripe retrieved from the fridge, a few tunes before bed, then Alabama 3 on Thursday - testifying with Mr Bond and Mr Penco...

Bollocks

Have a look at this. 'Wonderwall' is voted best ever song ever in the world by some cloth-eared baboons down at Virgin radio. According to some sappy DJ:

"It is the perfect song to stick your arm around your mate and sing out at the top of your voice after a few beers".

Is it really? And that's the criteria for a great song isn't it? I'm always singing along to it after 12 pints of wifebeater down the local. In reality, it's the perfect song to stick your arm round the DJ's throat and throttle every last breath out of the bastard.

The most perfect pop single

The most perfect pop single

"It might be interesting to find out what the august readership of Ice in the Cider think of as the most perfect pop single of all time. I'm not speaking of obscurities. I'm not even speaking necessarily of good records. I'm talking about pop, and pop singles at that.

My two pennorth would be The Who's "I Can't Explain" or the Spice Girls and "Wannabee".

There's more to life than books you know

"The safest general characterization
of the European philosophical tradition
is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato"
A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929


Most of what passes for the modern indie rock music tradition is little more than a series of footnotes to Morrissey and Marr.

Graham is tripping on the Pet Shop Boys:


"I seem to be getting in touch with my gayer side. Purchase of the latest in the admittedly mixed, though occasionally brilliant, Back to Mine series - a 2 disc offering from the Pet Shop Boys - started it. Maybe a bit closer to being an "Under the Influence", there's a distinct PSB feel to a lot of it. As Mojo put it, "Chris Lowe's choices pack in torrid druggy disco then get tired and emotional and puts Dusty on". Neil Tennant's is an altogether more interesting mix of classical, ambient and lounge. One of the better in the series. Not quite up with the Talvin Singh or Death in Vegas mixes, but no complaints.

And caused me to dig out the old Discography compilation for a long drive through France & Belgium this week. Maybe they were too mainstream to ever be cool, but they were out on their own at what they did - West End Girls remains one of the best singles of the 80's; It's a Sin is even better.

Also got the Antony and the Johnsons album; quite unlike anything else around. For Today I'm a Boy is already on my shortlist for the my 2005 mix."

Isn't going home a low and lonely ride?

Here's an obscure classic for you, courtesy of Jarvis Cocker on Desert Island Discs.

Dory Previn was an early 70's singer songwriter in the Scott Walker, Marianne Faithfull, lavishly orchestrated torch song vein, with very dark lyrics. Mr Cocker picked Lady With The Braid for his desert island, wonderful stuff.
I picked it up for £6 on eBay, after trawling town with no joy anywhere.

Most of William Burroughs' books are pretty much unreadable, except the more autobiopgraphical stuff like Junky and Queer. His spoken word recordings are terrific though - this here is a weighty 4 cd box set of monotone croaking, every home should have one. Spare Ass Annie is also fantastic - Uncle Bill collaborating with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprosy. 'Words of advice for young people? If you do business with a religious son of a bitch, get...it...in...writing...

sunny spring day list

The man Mr Alex has some summertime recommendations for you...
he 'works from home', y'know...

Its sunny, I'm working from home and I've got the window open. Me and the rest of Sherwood have been mostly listening to:
Mark Holis (anyone else ever get into this? - it was a solo effort from the late 90s. Sparse in a good way!)
The Zombies - Odessy & Oracle
Early Verve (man called sun! ooh, that stuff was great)
Dub Side of the Moon
Mingus Ah Um
Dirtbombs vs King Kahn (Dirtbombs half only OK dispite fantastic 2 bass, 2 drummers line up they toured with last year, King Kahn stuff great: garage rock with a horn section)
Joanna Newsome (although she does indeed sound like a baby duck, and I can't decide whether it's great or awful - probably both)

Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice

sometimes, after a long and tiresome day, with a glass of red and headphones, Deep Purple really hit the spot.

Beasts In The Field

a sensitive piece about animals in song, from Dan:

Ever since the dawn of music - by which I mean popular music, I mean rock
and roll and it's descendents, not some dreadful folk music of a kind only
played now by white people with dreadlocks - songs have been written about
animals.

Elvis famously and uncharitably compared his significant other to
a "Hound Dog", the Beatles sang of our feathered friends in "And Your Bird
Can Sing", even everyone's favourite hymenopteran-named gun-toting fruitcake
got in on the act, when Adam and the Ants released "Ant Music".


So, what animals are the most popular in popular music? Cats get a number
of references: "Stray Cat Blues", "Stray Cat Strut" - there must be something
about stray cats - dogs have "Old Shep", but precious little that comes to
mind. "Martha My Dear" by the Beatles - another animal related track by the
coleopteran foursome!

Primates are not to be missed- "My old man's drunker
than a barrel full of monkeys", sang Elton John in "Saturday night's alright
for fighting". What does this mean? Are monkeys routinely kept in barrels?
Are monkeys in barrels more likely to drink than those free to roam? What
kind of barrel? A barrel of beer? No wonder the monkeys are famously roaring
drunk. The Beach Boys sang about a "Little Honda" which was "more fun than
a barrel full of monkeys". Again, the monkey / barrel theme.

The Kinks drew the whole thread together, saying "Compared to bugs and the spiders and flies,
I am an apeman", although Ray Davies does not comment as to his location
vis a vis any barrels in the vicinity, or his state of inebriation.

GG Allin, the greatest American poet of the 20th centuary, referred to animals several
times in his collective works, most memorably perhaps in "Fucking The Dog".
This is a tender reflection on the fact that all those around him have human
partners but due to his habits (including al fresco defecation, sticking
bananas up his bottom and dying of a drug overdose) and the fact that he
had perhaps the smallest documented penis in the history of the world, GG
had no such human partnerships and so must take solace in the beasts in the
field.

Re-issue! Re-package! Re-package!

Courtesy of Sean - a doctor writes:

"Seen this?

Channel 4 - 100 Greatest Albums

Radiohead's number one, obviously and wrongly, and Dido's No Angel comes higher than anything by Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk, Talking Heads, Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy, James Brown or Elvis Presley.

Oasis come higher than anything by The Beatles!

Madonna and Guns N'Roses come higher than Revolver or The White Album.


amazing..."

Nigel knows he's happy

Downloaded plenty of XTC over the weekend, stroppy early stuff, and late period psychedelia, both terrific. Hearing lots of echoes of them in Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs etc.

More unlikely Zappa feminist fan worship here (from the Independant, via Graham). Germaine is not the first person I would have taken as a hard core Zappa freak...

Also found the time to have a proper listen to the Rough Trade 2004 best of mentioned further down this page - £10 for the double cd in Fopp. Throbbing Gristle look like a bunch of laughs.

The meek shall inherit nothing

just follow the magic footprints...



an unexpected Zappa fan writes..

Buck 65

Well, it turns out they (or he) are Buck 65 (nice website) and there is a new CD out - a compilation I think, called 'This Right Here Is Buck 65'. And, as is usually the way with these things, I expect everyone else has already heard of them...

Hang The DJ

This will only be useful to you if you happen upon this post with 6 days of me writing it, but it's worth going here to listen online to last week's Andy Kershaw prog on radio 3. It's a compilation of his best sessions from 2004, so you get Half Man Half Biscuit, Apache Indian and the Reggae Revolution (at WOMAD this year), Kevin Coyne, some people who may or may not be called Buck 66 but were tremendous either way. And all kinds of other thrills and spills, to be sure.

And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead

I don't know anything about these lads, other than they are from Texas, and they have one of the most ludicrous names in rock.
I have checked the internet for some pearls of wisdom:

Yes, it’s howlingly pretentious, but it’s also admirably distinct from the frat-boy nu-metal which currently passes for US rock. As the title track opines, “"It’'s so fucked these days, we don'’t know who to hate and who to praise".

”
Which is kind of what this blog is all about, so that's nice .

..And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead is an Austin, Texas based psychedelic folk rock band originally formed sometime during the waning days of the Russian Revolution. Bringing pure fucking rock and roll to the deepest depths of your musically tormented soul.

well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

England 2 Colombia 0

Joint nomination from Graham and me...Triple CD of the best of Kirsty, decent price, much like the Nick Cave compilation the other week.

Woke up this morning, found myself dead

Chris and Lisa want you to hear the new album by junkie punk blues duo The Kills - 'No Wow'.

Good news! David Gedge has been dumped again - hence there is a decent new Wedding Present LP on the shelf - a bit like Dave...Jim recommends 'Take Fountain'. Cheer up Dave, it might never happen. Oh, it has already...

And take your fleecy jumper you won't need it anymore
It is in the car boot moving away
'Cause where you are going clothes won't help
Stay at home with TV set

Be my toy
Come on have a bet
We live on blood
We are Sparta F.C

Etiennesque French Loungecore

Mr Lex has some treats for you, and a way out of the Everything But The Girl abyss:

"And if Graham is looking for a dignified way out of Everything But The Girl mood cul-de-sac, can I recommend the new Emiliana Torrini album, Fisherman's Woman. Surprisingly good folky effort from the lady who wrote "Slow" for Kylie no less! Should fill the "tasteful backgound noodling" category for a while without straying too close to "coffee table". To be supplemented with Nouvelle Vague, which is an album of Etiennesque french loungcore covers of late 70s / early 80s faves such as Guns of Brixton, (This is not) A Love Song, and Too Drunk To Fuck. Marvo."

Mr Lex

Rough Trade

More from Graham, new RT compilation of their best stuff from last year:

"And on the subject of compilations - those good people at Rough Trade Shops have finally got around to releasing Counter Culture 2004 roughtrade.com They've been doing the same thing as us for the past 3 years, and lets face it, they listen to a heck of a lot more new & obscure music than normal people. 49 tracks for £11. 2 discs, one quiet, one loud. Includes tracks from two of my albums of the year - Jolie Holland's Escondida, and The Go! Team's Thunder, Lightning, Strike - and one of Tom's - Micah P Hinson - amongst many others. Love the Cocorosie and Candy Staton tracks. Nice unusual jewel box and very good sleevenotes too if that sort of thing matters to you."

Exile on Haddon Street

Despite a desultory response fom the OCC massive, here is the first dispatch of CDs gathering dust in my inbox. Anyone else out there who is sufficiently moved to lift a jaded finger and share their iPod playlist with us all - do it now! Go on, do it!

First up, Mr Graham Ward:

Rilo Kiley, Bright Eyes, Willy Mason. Also the new Queens Of The Stone Age.

Graham is interested to hear from anyone with information about a 12 Step Programme to detox himself from Everything But The Girl.

Meanwhile...in the secluded towers of the Nottingham Evening Post, Mhairi V is on the blag. This time the record company freebie is the new Nick Cave B-sides and rarities compilation, which is unsurprisingly titled 'B sides and Rarities'. Contains an old B-side with the promising title of 'Cocks ' n' Asses'. A triple CD, no less.

Since reading Head On/Repossessed, I've been dabbling with Julian Cope - a man who took to LSD like a duck to water and has emerged decades later as maniac with an irrevocably damaged taste in trousers. Luckily, he has made some terrific records along the way - get Peggy Suicide from Mr Amazon for three quid.

and that's yer lot. Bang me a mail and I'll keep this sorry parade as updated as poss...