Being Human for a while

Ady and I went to one of the gigs of the year last night, Rachel Unthank and the Winterset at the Maze in Nottingham. Saw them earlier this year at Green Man, but they only had a half hour slot, so it was great to see them do two 45 mins sets last night.

The Maze was hushed, and the sound was terrific. The Winterset's songs are often very stark, both in terms of arrangement and subject matter, but they are very good at breaking the tension between numbers and there was a lot of banter. Couldn't help observing that Becky Unthank must have been the youngest person in the room by quite a distance...

They played most of The Bairns, plus a few from Cruel Sister, and the cover of today I Am A Boy, which was OK but not as good as their own material, or their cover of Sea Song by Robert Wyatt.

So Ady and I had two or three beers, said hi to Rachel and Belinda, (I bought a copy of her EP), and I reckon it was the best gig in Nottm this year since Robyn Hitchcock in January...
(photo by Jim, from the Reading gig)

More pointless list bollocks

The Guardian is currently running a list of the '1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die'.

They claim to have listed not the Greatest Albums in The World Ever, but a list of interesting and often over looked classics which steers clear of the usual suspects like revolver, Pet Sounds, etc. There's a lot of bollocks on there, for instance I think I can quite happily reach the grave without crossing paths with the Girls Aloud album, but it is quite a good cross-genre list, with plenty of jazz, reggae, and 'world music'.

Anyway, I got to thinking about which 10 LPs I might advise someone to hear before they go south for good... It's a bit like Desert island Discs, where they give you the collected works of Shakespeare, and the Bible - on my list you have already got the collected works of Bob, The Beatles, the Stones etc. Maybe you don't want them, I'll let you swap them for the collected works of Throbbing Gristle, or whoever...

So in no particular order:

1. Micah P Hinson and the Gospel of Progress - a refreshing and dark take on the old singer songwriter schtick.
2. Teenage Fanclub -Grand Prix . Brilliant guitars and songs, feelgood stuff never outstaying its welcome.
3. AC/DC - Powerage. Great riffs and great lyrics - the best songs about cars and girls since Chuck Berry.
4. Henry's Dream - Nick Cave. The one that got me into Mr Cave. 'Papa Won't Leave You Henry' is a great 'track one side one'...
5. Dub Gone Crazy - Various Artists (mostly with King Tubby) the best dub album money can buy...
6. The Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God. One of the top 3 albums of the 80's...coming up three's boys...
7. Mississippi John Hurt - The 1928 Sessions. I used to work in a pub where they played this record to clear people out after last orders...
8. Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones. Not many other early 80's albums sounded like this rambunctious collection of sea shanties, laments and random gargles.
9. John Prine - his first album, blue collar American poetry. Springsteen could only dream of being this good.
10. Johnny Cash at San Quentin. This one is in the Grauniad list, but never mind...every home should have one!

I guess that's rather a lot of blokes with guitars, but there you go...

Black plastic please

I went shopping for vinyl yesterday.

It's surprising how much stuff is available on the old format, rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated. By the time I left Virgin eight years ago, vinyl was pretty much stiff in terms of LPs, but 12 singles were going strong and were hailed as being the 'saviour of vinyl'. In the meantime, 7 inch singles have become trendy, and various reissue lables like Simply Vinyl have sprung up to cater for what seems to be quite a healthy market in classic LPs on ye olde black plastic. Added to which, plenty of new releases are given a run in the LP format, eg the Arctic Monkeys. And it's not your imagination or wishful thinking - vinyl sounds better. Certainly miles better than mp3 - the sound quality of Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' download was shoddy (hard to gripe though, I only paid £1 after all...).












Walking upstairs in Selectadisc, you are surrounded by racks of vinyl of every category, new and secondhand. I had a nose through the new release section and picked out the new Burial album and the new Iron & Wine ('Carousel' is a definite track of the year). On Ady's advice I sought out Aphex Twin's 'Selected Ambient Works', which is deleted on CD but happily available in remastered form on double LP.

It felt absurdly good to leave the shop with a weighty 12 inch size carrier bag in my hand...the magic of picture inner sleeves, lyric sheets, textured covers etc all came back- LPs ar just so much more satisfying in every way, and I feel a bit of a twat for sticking to CDs for so long when I have a perfectly serviceable turntable gathering dust, and a shop like Selectadisc on my doorstep.

I Wanna see my Freaks

Out to see the Acid Mothers Temple last night in Birmingham with Ady and Mick. They usually play the Social, but have skipped Nottingham on this tour, so we drove over to the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath, a good pub with a decent sized room upstairs, good sound too, and the expected 98% male audience...


AMT are a band of hirsute Japanese gentlemen who make an absurdly psychedelic racket which Ady and I first encountered about 5 years ago at the Social - we saw the poster for the gig, thought it looked ridiculous, and decided to go. It turned out that Julian Cope had come along for the ride, apparently he is a big AMT fan, and during the encore he loomed about the stage in an orange jacket and green leggings, just happy to be joining in the general cacophony. It was a good night, we had no expectations and the band were terrific - very loud and repetitive, with songs interspersed with throat singing, which broke up the relentless guitars.

Last night they were OK, certainly not as good as that first time, but still entertaining.