If 6 was 9

Listening to a lot of Hendrix at the moment, not sure why. I've had odds and sods of his for years, on dodgy old tapes mostly, but I've never heard the original albums all the way through.

I think he's another of those artists who it's easy to think that because you've heard all the hits so many times, there's no need to stick on a Hendrix CD at home, because it's all been absorbed by osmosis - but when something like 'If 6 Was 9' crops up on the soundtrack to a film (is it Easy Rider?) then once again you are knocked out by the guitar. Heard 'Little Wing' tonight for the first time in ages, I think I last heard it on a double live album which I lent Mike Slats in 1990 and have not seen since.

I used to have a book called Encyclopoedia Metallica, which I bought at the Virgin Megastore on Commercial Road in Portsmouth. (I bought 'Sonic Attack' by Hawkwind on the same visit). This work of metal scholarship contended that the whole genre of heavy rock commenced with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Cream. They played massively amplified blues rock, but I guess there were other founding fathers like the MC5 and the Stooges, but I'm not going to start that debate.

Anyway, according the the Encyclopoedia Metallica, these two giants at the top of the metal family tree spawned Deep Purple, Led Zep and Black Sabbath, who in turn begat Judas Priest and UFO, who then sired the NWOBHM bands like Iron Maiden and Saxon. Simple! the whole story of Metal in three or four generations!

I wish I still had that book, there was a great photo of one of the dudes from Lynyrd Skynyrd looking particularly stupid, which made me and Ady laugh. There was a forward 'written' by Biff Byford from Saxon (once a guest lecturer at Newark tech, fact fans), where he urged the reader to 'Keep The Faith!', ie to listen only to true Metal. Ady and I kept this up for a little while until the Velvet Underground and the Doors appeared, courtesy of Southwell record library, and suddenly metal seemed a bit limiting...

Post Reformation TLC

A brighter than usual start to the working week - there's a new Fall LP out today. Picked it up in Selectadisc and am on my second trot through it on headphones, safely out of the way of the Helster, who is not a fan...

On the strength of the first couple of listens, it's not as good as 'Fall Heads Roll' or 'The Real New Fall LP' (MES is getting very self-referential in his old age - one of the tracks on this album is called 'Fall Sound'), but it still rocks in the right places.

It's too bloody long though - there's 10 minutes of drivel called Das Boat which must have taken as long to write as it did to record, and one or two other inconsequential tunes which add little to the overall effect, but I guess that's what Fall LPs are supposed to be like...

It's tempting to believe the rumour on the excellent Fall fansite that the 'TLC' in the album title stands for 'treacherous lying cunts', in reference to MES's erstwhile guitarist/bassist/drummer, who quit on him mid-tour in the US last year, apparently tiring of his lager and sulphate shenanigans and habitual bad behaviour, including assaulting a member of the support act with a banana -the 'systematic abuse' described on the closing track, perhaps...

Something I learned today

the late lamented Husker Du

Kerosene around

First day of Feb, and with it, my first alcohol since new year's day.

Despite being sober for January, I managed to get out to a few gigs - Robyn Hitchcock, Ginger, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, and the Supersuckers.

Gig-going without beer is weird - and cheap - but these four were all great nights out. I would have fancied a few beers with the Supersuckers though; pretty much everyone else in the place (Fibbers in York) was trashed.

Bonnie Prince B was excellent, far better than I expected, much more rocking and less maudlin strumming than I feared. I like the new LP, but I'm not too familiar with his other stuff, and apart from a couple of covers I knew none of the tunes from the first hour of the set. Sign of a good gig, you have not heard the material before, but you are grinning to yourself thinking 'this is bloody good'...

So I'm sipping on a warm ale, got Big Black on the headphones, it's good to be back..