I tell you, things aren't quite the same...

Sitting in front of the computer on Sunday night, aimlessly clicking around on social media, notification came via Rolling Stone of the death of Lou Reed. Reaction was predominantly shock, and a refusal to accept the news, as it was then unconfirmed by other news agencies or sources close to Reed himself. This duly arrived within an hour or so, and my Twitter feed was converted into a streaming eulogy in tribute to a true original the like of which we are unlikely to see again.




Adrian or I borrowed a Velvets LP from the library, I can't remember which one, it might have been White Light White Heat. It was very much a gateway album to noisier territory than the prog and classic rock and NWOBHM stuff we were at that time obsessed with. From the Velvets you went into the Stooges, the MC5, Bowie, all the US pre-punk and CBGB acts, and then home to more contemporary stuff like JAMC, Smiths and Primal Scream. Adrian embraced all this earlier than me; I took a detour via the Doors and spent a year or so listening almost exclusively to old blues records before starting to buy up the Velvets and enjoying lyrics about scoring drugs, incomprehensible S&M type encounters, and strung out love songs like Pale Blue Eyes.

Ady reckons that after a while he had listened so exhaustively to the Velvet Underground that he had absorbed them into his bloodstream, his DNA, and there was no need to actually play the records again...Of course, what happens when an artist dies, everyone starts listening to the old stuff again - on Sunday night I played Sister Ray twice in a row, and thrilled at the relentless repetitious noise, at the same time recognising again how many bands took that template and ran with it for decades afterwards.

My favourite Lou Reed record is a toss up between the third Velvets album and the collaboration with John Cale in tribute to Andy Warhol, Songs For Drella. Listening to Transformer this evening, it sounds like a pop album rather than a decadent paean to subversive sex, heroin, and horsing around with David Bowie.  

Sweet Jane is another favourite, I just love the way he sings 'suitcase in my heeeeand'.

His delivery (I hesitate to use the word 'singing') is great on this track, it lifts a simply chorded song into something really exciting and special:

Bless The Weather

I'm still not sure how it happened but yesterday morning I was able to download, via Google Play, the new John Martyn box set, The Island Years - for £1.27. That's 259 tracks across 17 CDs, something of a bargain. I noticed a couple of tweets suggesting that Play.com, Google Play and a couple of other download retailers were offering the box set, which is on Amazon at over £150, for less than the price of a pint. 

I assumed that it was one of those periodic listing errors by the website which would prove to be null and void in the event, but no, all tracks duly arrived and I'm now listening to Bless The Weather, one of many John Martyn albums I've never heard. I've previously stuck to what I assumed was pretty safe territory with him - Solid Air, One World, and Live At Leeds, that's it. 



By the time I got to see John Martyn live, it was 2007 and he'd had his legs amputated and cut a slightly befuddled figure, clearly seeking direction from bandmates about set list etc, but when he sat and played he was mesmerising. Here's a link to the first part of the BBC documentary from a few years ago, which was interesting enough but gave little clue about the real person. 

And we dance to the music, and we dance

At a book signing last year I asked James Fearnley if as a writer in The Pogues he felt intimidated by Shane MacGowan. His memoir Here Comes Everyone is a vivid retelling of life with the Pogues and their bibulous singer and principal songwriter. Whether Phil Chevron felt a similar burden from comparison with MacGowan I don't know, but after recording Thousands Are Sailing I hope he felt the equal of his more celebrated bandmate.

Seeing the Pogues live half a dozen times in the last 25 years, 'Thousands' was always special, even when it was MacGowan, lyric sheet in hand, who was slurring the lyrics if Chevron was too ill to appear. A yearning tribute to the Irish diaspora and their new lives in America, the song is moving but unsentimental, especially when MacGowan was extemporising the lyrics: 'In Brendan Behan's footsteps, I spewed up and down the street'.

So I'm sad to hear of Phil Chevron's death today, and I'm playing If I Should Fall From Grace With God, remembering the gigs and the beery Brixton chorus, Thousands Are Sailing:

Talking With The Taxman About Hookworms

I spent a happy hour, on and off, listening to a Radio 4 podcast this morning. The series looks at classic albums and the artists who made them, usually from a distance of 15 - 20 years. 

I bought Talking With The Taxman About Poetry when it came out, from a shop in Newark long gone, called Inner Sleeve. It was a few weeks before I left for university and I was - still am - a big fan of Bragg. So listening to the man reminisce about the circumstances, political and personal, around the recording of this album was delightful to me. 

I felt the emotional intensity of Levi Stubbs Tears in a way which I don't remember when I first heard it. For me it was always the relationship songs which hit hardest with Bragg, which isn't to overlook the likes of To Have And To Have Not or Between The Wars. The Saturday Boy, The Warmest Room, and Greetings To The New Brunette are all terrific pop songs from an artist often brushed over as a one-note political balladeer.

So I'm at home with a cup of tea - listening to the album for the first time right through for years, and fretting again about whether it's worth scouring the new releases pages of the heritage rock mags and the social media feeds of all manner of record labels, blogs, review sites in search of a release half as diverting as the aforementioned Bragg album, or Hatful Of Hollow, or Maxinequaye, or Bandwagonesque or any number of other records which now seem very long in the tooth but which repay any number of repeated listens. I am sceptical that the latest neo-psych CD currently being drooled over online will be played more than once or twice. Trust me, I've had a desultory flick through Fuzz, by Fuzz, and it was very underwhelming.

Can it be anything else? Coming as it does many decades after those unsurpassable early Sabbath albums, as well as all the other cooler than cool touchstones that the bloggers like to froth about - Blue Cheer, in this instance. If you can only talk about a record in reference to other records, well, that's a bit of a dead end isn't it? It's hard not to sound churlish here; I've spent a good part of this year listening to the kind of psych rock which is currently, and briefly, one assumes, in vogue - the undisputed highlight being the Hookworms album. At least they impart a fresh intensity to the genre, they are not stoned noodlers, there are no side-long jams or recycled fuzzy riffs disinterred from the early 1970s (although I detect a fondness for Hawkwind, which the band denies). Instead they lock into a ferocious punch and groove on the album opener Away/Towards - genuinely, I think the best album opening track I've heard for years - yet they have a lightness and imagination sufficient to carry off slower numbers like In Our Time.

Answering my own question, yes there are new albums being released which are absorbing, exciting and rewarding, the Hookworms debut 'Pearl Mystic' being an example. My problem is sifting them out from other far more mediocre fare which receives breathless plaudits from reviewers who are either still in short trousers or who have difficulty distinguishing between music which is genuinely diverting and that which is serviceable but pedestrian.

Here's Leeds' finest filmed in their studio:

if charlie parker was a gunslinger,there'd be a whole lot of dead copycats: Ray Harryhausen dies at 92

if charlie parker was a gunslinger,there'd be a whole lot of dead copycats: Ray Harryhausen dies at 92: Stop motion master Ray Harryhausen stares down one of his creations. I think I speak for all the Gunslingers when I say there goes a big ...

Favourite tracks of 2012

Time for the obligatory end of the year run down of my favourite tracks from 2012. This is a necessarily partial list, I decided to leave out songs from some of the more familiar albums of the year which I enjoyed a lot - Dexy's, Alt-J for example, in favour of a list which maybe works a little better as a mix tape. that's the idea, anyway.

First up, Bob Mould - The Decent. It's been a while since I bought a Bob Mould record, his most recent solo stuff has either left me cold or passed me by, but this track from his album Silver Age rocks like the best of Husker Du / Sugar.



Apparently hailing from a neglected hamlet in darkest Sweden whose denizens still follow some kind of voodoo worship (viz. the colourful imagination of the press release authors, one assumes), come Goat. A terrific album of fuzzy Afro Kraut psych. If I was feeling churlish I would say it was constructed very deliberately to appeal to a certain type of jaded muso much like myself; be that as it may, it's still a thrilling record. 



We booked Stealing Sheep for the Southwell Folk Festival two years running when they were still in their fuzzy felt folk incarnation. This year they have broken out in full guitar toting psychedelic mode, good to see them getting plenty of recognition.

Stealing Sheep - Shut Eye



I admit to finding this track via a mid-year list in the Guardian - oh, the shame. It was their jazz album of the year so far, by Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca, this is a lovely track:

Roberto Fonseca - Bibisa



Hookworms are from Leeds, they play regularly and I have contrived to miss them at every opportunity, something I must put right in the new year. This track is from a split 7" release with Kogumaza on the Gringo label from Nottingham, it's splendid psych drone and bodes well for the album which is due next year.

Hookworms - Form and Function



Earth played the Brudenell Social Club on my birthday this year, it was a super night of slow stretched out hiss and drone. The album Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II probably edges it for my favourite of the year. 

Earth - His Teeth Did Brightly Shine



I can't remember how I happened upon this track, it may have been via the excellent Norman Records. In all honestly I think the recording goes back a couple of years, but who cares. Featuring the metronomic Jaki Liebezeit on drums, Magnetik North - Dr ön In Koln.

http://magnetiknorth.bandcamp.com/track/dron-in-k-ln 

Definitely an album which you have to be in a certain mood to enjoy / endure, The Seer by Swans is  pretty intense and I'm looking forward to seeing them for the first time next year.

Swans - Lunacy



More motorik Krautrock throb and drone,this time from the West Country of England rather than downtown Dusseldorf: Beak - Yatton


Lau had previously left me fairly cold, but Race The Loser is a fantastic record which combines folk with influences of electronica and modern composition (whatever that it is) and it completely comes to life on stage.  



Patti Smith played in Leeds this September and was magnificent, the new material blends very well with the best of her back catalogue. The first half of the album is fairly straightforward, then later on things stretch out and get more experimental, I love it.



Field Music released another terrific record, Plumb, after the double album Measure in 2010. We saw them at the Brudenell and again at Green Man and on both occasions they were outstanding, probably my favourite live act of the year. Crunchy and melodic, stuttering time signatures, the acceptable face of prog!




And that's it. Yes it's a bit droney / psychey / krauty, that's what I've enjoyed most this year. No acoustic guitars or miserable singer songwriters! I think there's been some growth..

The smell of whiskey burning

It's been a busy couple of weeks for live music, Thursday night was Steve Earle at the Irish Centre in Leeds. 


It galls me to report that the first time I saw Steve Earle was with Jim in 1987, when we were 19. I still have the ticket. That was before his (that's the artist, not Jim) jailing for heroin / crack / firearms offences, after which - for me - his songwriting really took off and he recorded a sequence of fantastically immediate records which mixed bluegrass, folk, country and psychedelia. In all honesty I have lost track of his recent albums but I was looking forward to seeing him play with a band for the first time since at Cambridge Corn Exchange which must have been about 10 years ago.


The Irish Centre is a terrific venue, intimate and atmospheric, and I was struck by the fact that Elaine and I were clearly younger than most of the audience - I guess the audience has aged with Mr Earle. He has a crack band with him at the moment, including a terrific guitar player called Chris Masterson , as well as his current wife (the uxorious Mr Earle has been married seven times), Alison Moorer.


It's odd - the first half dozen tunes were unfamiliar to me, presumably being drawn from the later albums, but after 30 minutes or so he played 'My Old Friend The Blues', which I found very moving for reasons which escape me right now. It's not a tune which has hitherto made me misty-eyed in any way, but something about it on Thursday made me come over all emotional. 


Friday night we scarfed a quick curry after work and beetled off to see Ewan McLennan, at the Grove in Leeds; apparently one of the oldest folk clubs in the country. The Grove is a perfect pub - a bit grubby, but very friendly and with fantastic beer. It has a warm fug of conviviality, and the atmosphere in the back room for the gig was very jovial. 


We booked Ewan for the Gate To Southwell Folk Festival three years ago, he was so good we invited him straight back; he's a terrific singer and a very good guitarist, he reminds me of Dick Gaughan. At a time when politically motivated singers and musicians are hard to find, Ewan is combining his own excellent songwriting with a refreshing choice of covers, whilst nailing his political colours to the mast in a way that few of his contemporaries seem to be doing. More power to him.

Reformation, Post TLC

Mere days after attending the worst gig of the year at the hands of The Fall, last night we witnessed the same band perform indisputably the best gig of the year, at York Fibbers.


Where Wednesday's incarnation was drunkenly shambolic and horribly off the pace, last night was focused, punchy, and thrilling. It is doubtless infuriating that Mark E Smith can turn himself on and off at the cost of his loyal audience's goodwill and patience, but last night The Fall delivered a breathless set of driving garage rock which gripped from the start.

Having been let down so miserably in Leeds earlier in the week, expectations were admittedly low but it would have counted as a terrific gig whatever the preconceptions. Reformation was a particular standout but there were also ripping versions of Nate, Psykick Dancehall, and Strychnine.

Prog, Strangeness and Charm

I've been buying up quite a bit of old vinyl this year, mostly from the splendid market at Tynemouth station, where there are usually a couple of record stalls worthy of a good browse. Cheap too, £3-4 usually for a reasonably well looked after LP. I've picked up copies of albums by Kate Bush, Frank Zappa, Yes, Genesis, Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, Jelly Roll Morton, and best of all Alex Glasgow. Should have perhaps anticipated that, being in the North East. There were a lot of old Lindisfarne and Tygers of Pan Tang albums too, if anyone's interested...

Anyway, it did strike me as ironic that a couple of these LPs were replacements for copies which I had owned and then ditched or sold as a stupid and callow youth. During a gradual period of musical revisionism, I persuaded myself to disown certain records by artists of the Prog Rock genre - which I am now busily reacquiring in Oxfam shops and market stalls across the land. There were a few records I hung onto during this musical Night Of The Long Knives - all my Pink Floyd stuff, a couple of Jethro Tull albums, and the Genesis live album from 1973. Other works by ELP, Marillion, Yes etc were handed over in a shame faced fashion to those arbiters of musical coolness on the counter at Selectadisc, where they were exchanged for a few quid to be spent on whatever C86 release was out that week.

It's not only vinyl copies of these previously rejected records which I have been buying again; I recently ordered from Amazon a double expanded CD of Hawkwind's marvellous Space Ritual. It's terrific stuff, maybe you have to be in the mood, but they were doing very similar things to German groups who became far more feted than themselves, in the cosmic / space rock genre. Or indeed Spacemen 3, who came a few years later and did a similar churning two chord drone with obvious debt to Hawkwind. I saw them at Hull Adelphi in the late 80's and a remember thinking 'hang on, these are just like Hawkwind!'

It's a truth universally acknowledged, in this house anyway, that a lot of the prog bands were huge influences on punk. Van Der Graaf Generator, King Crimson, Yes, and some of the more angular underground stuff too. Then there's the prog / folk crossover which is all sorts of cool these days but has been found to be equally risible down the ages; Comus and Roy Harper spring to mind, along with anyone who thought it was a good idea to keep playing for longer than three and a half minutes and to tinker with song structure, arrangement and instrumentation and lyrical influence.

I haven't undergone a wholesale rehabilitation; I'm not about to put aside three hours to listen to an ELP box set, or to make an apology for Tales From Topographic Oceans, but I have enjoyed revisiting a lot of this kind of stuff recently, with the benefit of a few years distance from the indie Year Zero when I turned my back on almost all of it. In a year when King Crimson have turned up in sample form on a Kanye West record and been covered by The Unthanks, maybe the prog rehabilitation is complete.

Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room

I took myself to see The Fall last night, in a basement venue within the student union at Leeds University. I have been to gigs on my own before, once in 1984 to see Marillion, and once in the 90's to see Dick Gaughan, but this was the first time for a good while.

Last time out, only 18 months ago, The Fall were serviceable: not a classic night, but they were OK, entertaining. The two occasions before that they were terrific - mesmerising even. Loud, repetitious, exciting. Last night was a far less edifying spectacle, Smith appearing to be completely pissed and barely capable of grasping the mic stand. The current band is tight and energetic, and reports of the new 'Ersatz GB' album are largely enthusiastic. A pity then that the live performance last night was so depressingly shambolic.

Still, Jamesie and I are off to York to see them on Saturday night, so maybe we will witness something different again.

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.