The next paycheck and the next little drink

Belated account of recent gig attendance...

At the fag end of October, Clive and I attended the Islington Academy for the reunion of The Godfathers; sharp suited out of date psychedelic RnB south London types. I last saw them at Rock City at least 20 years ago, it was a cracking night. Mr Norman and I were anxious that they would be able to live up to their reputation now they must be in their late 40's, early 50's. Last year the Only Ones made a fairly convincing stab at a comeback, and have since disappeared again, and it remains to be seen whether this reunion is doomed to a similarly short lived fate.

Happily, the Godathers rocked as loud and hard as the old days, and they did seem fairly well preserved too - the odd paunch and balding pate, but which of us is untouched by the passing of time? They did all the old favourites, This Damn Nation, I Want Everything, and my personal highlight Walking Talking Johnny Cash Blues. A ripping night out, and I hope the renaissance continues for a proper tour.

Next outing was to Troxy in east London in the company of Graham and the Helster to see Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. Splendid venue - a slightly jaded art deco bingo hall, very much suited to the stylings of Mr Cave. After enduring 20 odd minutes of what was very convincingly one of the most grindingly terrible support bands I have ever seen, we repaired to the merchandise stand and purchased a Nick cave tea towel, embroidered with the lyrics to The Mercy Seat. One of the less predictable merchandising opportunities, along with my Primal Scream 'Kill All Hippies' coffee mug.

Anyway...the gig was terrific, the atmosphere was good, enlivened by many drunken Australians. They played the pick of the new album, though nothing from the Grinderman incarnation, which was a little disappointing but I did see them do the whole album at ATP last year. They finished with Stagger Lee, a fantastic night.

Next up was last Friday's testifying with the Alabama 3 in Leeds Academy. Refreshed and energised by one or two libations in the pubs of Leeds, I was looking forward to this gig very much...and after loitering about at the sidelines I found myself making a bid for the front when they struck up 'Cocaine Killed My Community'. Even though the Mountain of Love was missing, the sound was great, the Reverend was behaving himself, and it was another splendid evening's devotions, even if they didn't play Mao Tse Tung Said.

Money doesn't talk, it swears

I called into HMV in Mansfield at lunchtime today to pick up the latest installment of Dylan's Bootleg Series.

Collating outtakes, unreleased versions, and live tracks from the period covering Oh Mercy and Modern Times, there are some great tracks. The double CD was £15 - there is a 3 disc set costing something like £90, which seems somewhat excessive - more annoyingly it seems not to have turned up on the torrent sites yet. There are few artists whose latest offering I will go out of my way to buy on the day of release, but Dylan is one.

The cynical pricing of the full set is
depressing, and I doubt I'll be alone in combing the net for a dodgy download version in the coming days.

I've also ordered the new LP by Neil Halstead, on the strength of the terrific tracks to be heard on his MySpace.

Via the generous folks at eMusic, I have been busy downloading - paid for! - albums by The Bug, TV On The Radio (didn't get on so well with that one), Steinski and Bomb The Bass - yet another album featuring Mark Lanegan, the man must never have a day off.

Give me convenience or give me death

iTunes has been upgraded and now features a gizmo called - with characteristic understatement - Genius. This allows the user to select a tune, click a button, and be presented with what is allegedly a playlist of similar songs by similar artists, in a similar genre. This works pretty well, and I have already created a few playlists which have dragged out forgotten pearls from the darker corners of my iTunes library...Cold Blooded Old Times by Smog being one of them.

This morning, I hit 'Boys Are Back In Town' by Thin Lizzy, and the Genius device felt it necessary to include Toni Basil's 'Mickey' amongst more predictable fayre from Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Led Zep, etc. Now, I have been a big fan of Mickey more or less since it came out, but I am mystified at how it could be slotted beside hairier and noisier tunes like Immigrant Song.

There are certain artists it seems to have a particular fondness for - Fleet Foxes are thrown up time and again, making me wonder if a less random element of selection is at work...

In The Night Garden

Not been sleeping too well lately - toothache. I got to thinking about what I might include on a soothing soporific night time play list. Nothing that's just ambient floating synths, but lullaby type tunes which would help subdue screaming dental nerves. Turns out it's also a mighty good selection to ease the fevered brain before starting a working day.

Let me walk you through my dreamy sleepy night garden...

1. Let It Flow - Spiritualized

Narco dreams ahoy! Nice repetition, and away we float.

2. Ghosts Of Saturday Night - Tom Waits

This is from the boozy piano balladeering days, before he reinvented himself as a skronky amalgam of Howlin Wolf and Capt Beefheart. Beautiful lyrics, though I'm still trying to work out what 'Adam and Eve on a log' are...you can sink 'em down straight...

3. Lull III A Minor Place - Rachel Unthank and the Winterset

A brief interlude during the Bairns album, appropriated from Will Oldham

4. Planet Caravan - Black Sabbath

This one is wedged somewhere in the middle of the Paranoid album, which also included Iron Man and War Pigs. This track is very far removed from the riffarama for which Sabbath are justly renowned. Almost lounge jazz in fact, with a woozy treated Ozzy vocal. Like, mellow...

5. Night Bus - Burial

A dark and rainy ride on the last bus home.

6. It's A Fine Day - Jane

I dug this up on a Cherry Red records compilation, but I do have the original 7" single downstairs. Yes it's twee, but I've always been fond of it, lyrics about not sitting in fields...

7. Untitled I - Calexico

From the soundtrack to Dead Man's Shoes

A bit sinister, this one.

8. Afterlight - Clayhill

Cheating now, this one is also taken from the aforementioned soundtrack. I really love Gavin Clarke's voice, from the Sunhouse record up to Keys To The Kingdom from last year's UNKLE album.

9. Trouble Will Soon Be Over - Blind Willie Johnson

'Christ is my burden bearer, he's my only friend'...not sure why I thought this would be good bed time listening, but it's one of Blind Willie's less bone chilling numbers, and the sentiment that 'trouble soon be over, sorrow will have an end' is a comforting one as we head towards:

10. Harp For My Sweetheart - Archie Bronson Outfit

Less a lullaby, more a bloody billet doux. 'Nine cold crimes in the night'...

11. Horizons - Genesis

Immediately precedes Supper's Ready on the Foxtrot album, a track which I would have liked to have included on this playlist were it not 23 minutes long.

12. Go Your Way - Anne Briggs

Stark English folk, another break up song.

13. John Wayne Gacey - Sufjan Stevens

Hmm..this one won't give anyone sweet dreams.

14. I Keep Havin' These Dreams - Micah P Hinson

From his new record, adding some fiddle and strings to the mournful baritone and precise finger picking. Like Gavin Clarke, a splendid voice which deserves to be more widely heard. Given the funereal nature of much of his material, it probably won't be.

15. This Side Of The Blue - Joanna Newsom

Still gorgeous, despite being stuck over a mobile phone ad.

16. Acid Food - Mogwai

A gentle meditation with a country twang, and even lyrics!

17. I - Aphex Twin

OK, I lied about the ambient swooshing

18. George - John Metcalfe

From the Late Junction compilation, every track of which was an undiscovered treat when I first heard it.

19. Couldn't Love You More - John Martyn

20. Day Is Done - Nick Drake

Two 70's classics to send us off into the arms of Morpheus

Steal a car to drive you home

Teenage Fanclub's LP Grand Prix was overshadowed on its release by What's The Story (Morning Glory) by their more boisterous label mates Oasis. Both bands were happily and avowedly in thrall to influences from the 60's and 70's, but it's the Fanclub who I return to again and again.

Fuzzy guitars, perfect choruses featuring gorgeous harmonies - splendid tunes, and not a dud on what for my money is the best album ever released on Creation. Their breakthrough LP was Bandwagonesque, which music journos liked to compare to Big Star, and which undoubtedly has the stamp of Alex Chilton running through it, but the first influence that came to me when I got my 7" of What You Do To Me home was Neil Young. The rambling, scuzzy, melodic guitar lines sounded right off Ragged Glory (another fabulous guitar album), and one of the best tracks on Grand Prix is named Neil Jung.

Grand Prix sounded instantly classic when it appeared at the height of Britpop, fighting for attention with releases like the aforementioned Oasis album, and others from Supergrass, Elastica, and PJ Harvey. Play it alongside chumps like the Kooks, Razorlight, and all the other indie boy chancers cluttering up the charts these days and it sounds impossibly exciting.

Left of The Dial

Tonight's album is Let It Be by The Replacements. I've had this cd for a few years, and to be honest I haven't played it much, until recently when I was reading about the band in the excellent Our Band Could Be Your Life, by Michael Azerrad. This book is a terrific account of the US hardcore punk underground scene, 1981-1991. There are chapters on Black Flag, Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Minor Threat, Big Black, it's a fantastic read. It really sent me back to a lot of albums which I haven't played for a long time, including this one here by the Replacements.

Let It Be contains at least two bona fide classic songs which make it worth hearing for them alone - I Will Dare, and Unsatisfied. The Replacements played a sloppy, liquored up rock n roll, and along with Husker Du were a big influence on a lot of power pop bands which came after them, and who watered down their sound into a more commercially palatable brew. Original guitarist Bob Stinson is dead, his brother Tommy is in Guns n Roses, and what Paul Westerburg is up to I don't know. Let It Be has some brilliantly aching songs about being young, drunk and mixed up, sung in Westerburg's raw and ragged yowl.

When I Take My Medication...

Pure Phase - the second LP by Spiritualized, about whom I have eulogised several times already. Coming between Laser Guided Melodies, and Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, Pure Phase makes good use of bluesy, repetitious space rock, with constant allusions to very heavy drugs....quelle surprise.

Interviews with Jason Pierce tended to focus on 'are all the songs about smack?', pretty much until he nearly died of double pneumonia between finishing the recording and the release of Songs In A&E. He always claimed that the songs he sang did not necessarily depict his own lifestyle, and would get very shirty when people surmised that lines like 'When I wake up in the morning I take my medication / and spend the rest of the day waiting for it to wear off' might suggest that he spent a lot of time lolling around doing heroin. Hmmm...Jason, I think you protest too much.

He could have been mainlining Ovaltine for all I care, as long as he puts out records as gorgeously intoxicating as this.

My Wife Died in 1970

Proving that the CD selection on this blog truly is random, we find ourselves debating John Shuttleworth Live.

As I hope you are aware, John is a versatile singer songwriter from Sheffield, South Yorkshire. He lives with his wife Mary, his son Darren, and his daughter Karen. He's managed by his next door neighbour and sole agent, Ken Worthington.

This live cd features some of his finest songs to date, and some of my personal favourites: Modern Man, Save The Whale (its hump, its fins, its tail), and Shopkeepers in The North, to name but three. John's material focusses mainly on confectionary, shopping, DIY, his Austin Ambassador Y Reg, his family, showbusiness and the environment. John's best tunes often feature the Fun Rhythm, which goes down especially well in old people's homes and hospices.

To give you a feel for the treats in store, here's John with an early classic, Incident On The Snake Pass.

Up Front and Down Low

Teddy Thompson's third album, a clutch of classic country cover versions. A lot of people turn queasy at the thought of country music, assuming it to be rhinestone-studded kitchy bollocks about truck driving and divorce. These people are Wrong. Country music is great.

If you do feel uneasy about song titles like Walking The Floor Over You, I'm Left, Your'e Right, She's Gone, or indeed the promising sounding The Last Word In Lonesome Is Me (sadly not included on this album) then Teddy Thompson might be a good place to start. His version of George Jones' She Still Thinks I Care is splendid:

Radio One, you stole my gal...

...but I love you just the same!

There's not much left to say about Hendrix which hasn't already been said. This compilation of live BBC sessions is a terrific introduction to the man's music, including an hilarious Radio One jingle and plenty of cover versions, from Muddy Waters to The Beatles, Howlin' Wolf, and Lieber and Stoller. For someone who took popular music to places it had never been before, Hendrix was not slow to recognise his influences, most famously during this clip from the Lulu show in 1969, with his tribute to the recently disbanded Cream.

Alex B bought this album before me, when we were living in Hull, where there were two Hendrix tribute bands before the whole tribute band thing took off.

Hendrix's guitar appeared to be an extension of his body; music just seemed to drop off him. I don't have any of the origianl albums, just an old cassette of the singles ond B sides, and this CD of BBC sessions, but to me that's the essential Hendrix, and even though I might only hear him once every couple of years, it's always electrifying. No one has come near to redefining the sound of the guitar the way he did.

In my rock 'n' Rolls Royce with the sun roof down

Tonight's random selection is courtesy of Jim - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, by AC/DC.

I think this is their second or third album, depends on whether you count an early compilation which came out in Australia...either way, it's classic AC/DC - sleazy Bon Scott lyrics over gritty Angus Young riffs. To misquote Dr Johnson - a man who is tired of AC/DC is tired of life...

There is no Bon Scott era DC album which is not worth owning. I think my favourite is Powerage, which has an edge of melancholy alongside the smut, and the lyrics are fantastic. Only Chuck Berry has written better songs about cars, girls and drinking. The first two Brian Johnson LPs are also good, especially Back In Black, but to be honest they have been pretty mediocre since then. Which isn't to say that I would pass up the chance to see them live; and with a new LP on the way maybe I'll get the chance.

Dirty Deeds has a mixture of schoolboy sexism (Big Balls was not a serious contender for an Ivor Novello award), hard riffing rock (Rocker, Problem Child) and the sublime Ride On, which is unlike anything else they recorded, a soulful slow blues. Would love it if they had made a whole LP of this kind of stuff.

The Stone Roses

Tonight's randomized selection is the Stone Roses. I remember being in the Admiral Rodney (a pub, not a sailor) aged about 19 and a friend of Dan's was back from his first term at Manchester Uni, and he was raving about a band called the Stone Roses, who were going to be huge, etc etc yawn...and so it came to pass.

I was ambivalent about them until Fool's Gold came out; I bought the 12" and then belatedly bought the album, looking forward to their new stuff which if FG was anything to go by would be funky and rocking...

As any fule kno, the much mooted 'new stuff' took 5 years to emerge, and turned out to be a fairly passable Led Zep LP which betrayed the cocaine ingestion of its creators almost as blatantly as Black Sabbath Vol 4.

Never saw them live, perhaps a mixed blessing, given that Ian Brown's pitch is notoriously unreliable, but Ady saw them a couple of times and said they were great.

Someone once said of Rod Sewart, 'never was such a great talent pissed up the wall on such rotten material', (or words to that effect), and it's tempting to cast a similar accusation at the door of the Stone Roses - only Mani went on to anything really worthwhile, anchoring Primal Scream.

Listening to the debut album again, there are undoubted moments of greatness (and plagiarism - ironic that Mani should eventually join the band who's Velocity Girl was ripped on She Bangs The Drums) but there were albums around at the time which I still prefer - by The La's, Shack, and Happy Mondays.

I may be hungry, but I sure ain't weird

Taking a random dive into the murky waters of my cd collection, the Helster came up with Safe As Milk, by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Released in 1967, and featuring a young Ry Cooder on guitar...

Clive bought me this album for my birthday one year, and whilst it took a little while to clutch it to my bosom, it's now one of my favourite Beefheart albums, and an interesting record to compare with other 1967 releases more typical of the prevailing flower power times - Piper At The Gates of Dawn, or Sgt Pepper, for example.

On the terrific opener, Sho Nuff 'N' Yes I do, the good Captain (Don Van Vliet to his mum) claims to have been 'born in the desert, came on up from New Orleans'....and then the band crashes in, led by Cooder's slashing slide guitar...

It's marvellous stomping electric R'nB, with heavy influences of Howlin Wolf, Elmore James, and Muddy Waters. Some people are frightened away from Beefheart by the skronk and honk of Trout Mask Replica, but Safe As Milk is a pretty conventional blues rock album - well, conventional in Beefheartian terms anyway...

Beefheart retired to paint in the Mojave desert in the 80's, but in recent years members of the Magic Band reconvened to play some of his old tunes. I saw them twice, at the Rescue Rooms, the first occasion being one of the finest gigs I have been to - the band were just sensational, and clearly relished the chance to play this frenzied, crack tempo music for folks like us who missed out first time round.

Take Me To The Other Side

Spent the bank holiday weekend amongst the 'haircut kids on the indie rock underground', at the Dot To Dot festival at various venues in Nottingham. I was mainly interested in seeing Spiritualized, so anything else half decent was a bonus. To be honest, there didn't seem to be a great deal on which actually was half decent - I wasn't bothered about Dirty Pretty Things or The Holloways, and Saul Williams was disappointing because of the unintelligibility of his lyrics. Great headdress though...

The Shortwave Set were OK, but since they arrived late they only had time for about 15 mins. Time came for the main event themselves, and I was hoping that the dodgy sound which marred the otherwise excellent Two Gallants would be sorted out for Spiritualized, but it wasn't great to be honest.

I enjoyed them, especially when they decided to crank it out with Come Together and Take Me To The Other Side. The set list was a strange choice too - heavily weighted with tracks from the unremarkable 'Amazing Grace' album, and criminally there was only one song from 'Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space'.

There were a few tunes from the new LP 'Songs in A&E', which is lining up to be my favourite album of the year so far, and certainly the best Spz album since 'Ladies and Gentlemen...'

Too Much Too Soon

The New York Dolls.  I first heard them on some old TV compilation of 70's clips, lumped together with The Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, the old CBGBs NYC punk thing.  There's a famous clip of them lurching through Jet Boy on the Old Grey Whistle Test, after which Bob Harris sniggers 'Mock rock!', after a shambolic performance during which any of the band looked likely to trip over their high heels and crash into the camera man.

At face value, it's curious as to why the Dolls are held in such high regard compared to some of their contemporaries.  Their sound is not a million miles away from the glam rock of The Sweet, T Rex, Slade, or the Glitter Band; bands which shared their sartorial flamboyance and chant-a-long choruses.  David Johannson and Johnny Thunders came on like Mick and Keith let loose in a charity shop after emptying their big sister's make up box.  The cover of the debut LP is just brilliant, they look like a bunch of elderly pre-op transexuals after a night on the town...

There's a fantastic documentary about bass player Arthur Kane, and the reunion of the New York Dolls which was brought about by Morrissey's Meltdown festival in 2004, and Robyn Hitchcock's song NY Doll is a very affecting tribute.

The haircut kids on the indie rock underground

The Helster and I are back from a weekend in Cambridge, where we saw the Broken Family Band play a ridiculously intimate gig at the very friendly Portland Arms. The 'gig room' is a very small annexe of the pub which would make the Basement at Rock City seem like Wembley Stadium.  Support was from John Smith, who rose above his nondescript nomenclature to woo us with some John Martyn / Tim Buckley-esque acoustic stylings, including a cracking cover of No One Knows by Queens Of The Stone Age.

Anyway, the BFB's were bloody fantastic - plenty of new tracks from the as yet unrecorded new record, and the proximity of band and audience made it feel as the we were in their front room being treated to a few new tunes.  And I think it was a first for me to attend a gig where the lead guitarist left the stage for a pee, returned with beers for his colleagues, in time to join in with a solo at just the right beat.  Go and see them!

Life is very long, when you're lonely

By the time The Queen Is Dead came out, I'd cottoned on to the Smiths.  At first, I took a look at Morrissey on the Top Of The Tops and declared him a gawky twit who couldn't sing.

It was Johnny Marr who made it click for me, his guitars came from somewhere around Roger McGuinn and Keith Richards, but sounded so original.  It was easy to brand the Smiths as purveyors of miserable bedsit doom and gloom - this was to overlook the humour of tracks like Frankly Mr Shankly, and the lyrics of the title track of The Queen Is Dead.

Of all Morrissey's 'cover stars' from the Smiths records, this one is my favourite - Alain Delon from some French film or other, I'm sure you could look it up if you are that interested.  He looks about ready to feel 'the soil falling over my head'... 

Another lost pleasure of vinyl was those little messages which were sometimes etched into the run out grooves - my copy of The Queen Is Dead says 'Them was rotten days...'

There's kerosene around

I never owned the vinyl version of Atomizer by Big Black, but I've a got CD version which includes the most of LP plus a couple of 12" singles.  Great cover, a shame they didn't reproduce it on the CD, which is called Rich Man's Eight Track. The charming legend on the inside booklet reads something like 'you dumb pussies can all suck our cocks'.  I bought it in a second hand record shop on Newland Ave in Hull, where the proprietor would take advantage of a north facing shop front by placing seed trays in the window alongside the old Status Quo and Gillan albums.

Atomizer is in no way an easy listening record, but it contains at least three electrifying tracks which make it worth the price of admission: Jordan Minnesota, Kerosene, and Bazooka Joe. I would love to have seen them live, I don't know if they ever came to the UK, but a double bill of Big Black and Husker Du would have been terrific.

Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell

Thought I'd kick off what will inevitably be a series of fatuous reflections on my favourite album covers with a dissertation on Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges.

The cover photo was taken by Mick Rock, famous for his images of Bowie, Syd Barrett, and Lou Reed.

The first time I encountered this record was through a Woolworth's advert sometime in the 1970's or 80's.  It featured a family Christmas scene, the kids were ripping open their gifts, and a wholesome looking 15 year old unwrapped an LP sized package to reveal James Osterberg and his dead-eyed gaze, leaning on the mic stand in what is now an iconic pose.  This was perhaps 10 years after the LP's original release, so we can only assume that Woolworth's advertising department employed someone  who cared rather more about degenerate rock n roll than they did about shifting units for Woolies.  I went through a phase of assuming that I had imagined this advert until meeting Clive, who had the same memory. Unless we are both deluded - a possibility - then it must have happened...

Raw Power was something of a comeback for Iggy, who had crawled away bleeding from the original Stooges with no record deal and a satchel full of mental health issues and drug problems.  Bowie produced the LP in London, and the famously abrasive, slashing guitar was played by James Williamson - one of rock's great lost architects.

Iggy looks as though he wants to steal your drugs and fuck your sister, and let's face it kids - this is what we want from our rock stars.  Since rock and roll became a career choice, we are stuck with the dreary likes of Chris Martin and James Blunt, and Iggy himself heads off for the panto circuit with the reformed Stooges.  We shall not see his like again.

You Didn't Ask About The Broken Family Band

The Helster and I have booked tickets to the Broken Family Band in Cambridge in April, it's a Friday night and we'll stay for the weekend. It's not often that we both get excited about the same band, but we're really looking forward to this.

Monday sees a clutch of interesting new releases this year, for me anyway. There's the new Nick Cave, Billy Bragg, and Malcolm Middleton. The Cave record is getting raves everywhere, and I'm intrigued to see if he can improve on Abattoir Blues. have to say I wasn't immediately won over by the single.

The Middleton LP is a mini album of a few originals and three cover versions, including an old Madonna tune. It will be worth getting hold of just for Blue Plastic Bags, and Total Belief, two new songs which he was working on when I saw him last year. I know he's a miserable sod, but there's a deep vein of self deprecating humour in the lyrics, and he's a hugely under-rated guitarist. He's coming to Nottingham in April, solo I think, another gig to look forward to.

I've been delving into Malc's history and listening to some Arab Strap too. Those are some grubby records...