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.