LEWIS FUREY
Lewis Furey's first 2 albums - Lewis Furey (A and M 1975) and The Humours of Lewis Furey (A and M 1976) are two of the most overlooked albums released on a major label. They have yet to get the retooled for a new generation overhaul of a Michael Chapman or a Marcos Valle. I think this is because of their singularity and being so dense and multi-faceted beardy twenty-something's can't put them on in the early hours to zone out to. He also didn't die young or descend into anonymity, and has had success in, it appears, French and Canadian theatre and cinema since then. There's no romantic backstory, only two early seventies albums frozen in an aspic spotlight. (Actually there is a third, which I've never heard and only ever seen once. The few tracks off it I've heard don't quite cut it as much for me.)
The eponymous first, with it's Warholesque cover designed by Bob Lack occupies a dilapidated inner-city boho-zone between Transformer and Berlin. Apparently Lewis attended evening sonnet writing soirees with Leonard Cohen (They would go on to co-write a musical "Night Magic"in 1984) in Montreal. Apocryphal maybe but the songs display a poet's attention to detail. The album is produced by Cohen's producer at the time, Jon Lissauer, and Lewis, a classically trained violinist, played on Cohen's New Skin for the Old Ceremony. The call and response backing vocals recall the aural template Leonard eventually took to the enormo-domes of the world in his seventies and the songs portent Lewis' future in musical theatre. Weimar decadence and Brecht were more present in the early 70's than now - think Bowie's Baal and Dirk Bogarde movies- and Lewis tells his story songs as though Joel Gray had made a solo album. It's all doomed glamour, hissing gas taps, regret. The subject matter is amour fou, his world a scuzzy demi-monde of drunken debauchery, double-cross and despondency. "Closing The Door" is one of the great kiss-off songs, the lyrics honed, concise, stiletto-sharp. I love "Lewis is Crazy", because he clearly is and he clearly isn't. I've put up a link to "Louise" which seems to feature his future wife, Carole Laurie, in a slink on, slink off part.
"The Wire" included this album as one of the hundred records that changed the world, though no-one was listening. I don't think it changed anything, no-one was listening and no-one followed in it's footsteps, but that only highlights its singularity.
Someone must have had faith because the second album was recorded in London with Roy Thomas Baker, riding the success of Queen's early kitsch n stink metal. I see that one blogger calls it a glam album, and that never crossed my mind for decades, but it's true. There's a camp theatrical excess that was missing from the debut which is a touch Sparks, a touch Cockney Rebel. Where the debut was if not singer-songwritery then grounded in tin pan alley and chanson, Humours stages the songs with an overblown production, whispered asides and a strutting peacock androgyny that must have insinuated itself into a select cadre of record collections. Tom Robinson did a cover version, years later Celine Dion - deny the camp quotient if you dare. In my callow youth I included "Who's Got The Bag" on disco compilation tapes. Some have commented on the distinctly louche, gay feel to many of the songs - cruising the park cause you're fresh out of chicken, indeed! - but it's the camp androgyny of Roxy Music and Lou Reed, you can't pin it down or pigeon hole it. It knows how clever it is.
I recently bought a second copy as I'd not seen one since I bought it over 30 years ago. This says to me it's a record that people hold on to, that inspires loyalty but also resists proseltysing. Lewis has gone on to have an arty career in film, music and stage. I'll just point you to his website which has interesting interviews and articles from the 70's and to his own website, a swish affair with video's he's directed of other artists, including Carole Laurie, Celine Dion and Julio Iglesias !I like the one with Emmanuelle Beart called P'tit voleur. They don't have the tightly formed intensity of the first two albums though there's the mix of poetry song and performance that whilst more mainstream still has something individual stirring there. If you're intrigued you can also buy the albums. Here's a taster of The Humours of Lewis Furey...
Wednesday, 25 September 2013
Friday, 14 June 2013
Album Review: The National - Trouble Will Find Me (reblogged from Villainous Folk)
Here it is, Trouble Will Find Me. My most anticipated and indeed one of the most anticipated albums of the year. The album was never actually planned as such, as the band were planning to have a four year break after the breakthrough commercial success of High Violet which placed The National near the top of the old guard of indie rock - this record however truly establishes them as at the top of their game, that very few bands can compete with. The relaxed composition of this album doesn't exactly break the mold of The National's style but refines it, showing a band slightly less ill at ease with their success. Having said that, the old insecurities still remain as Matt sings of the skeletons beneath his skin and the the trials of life.
For fans of: The Antlers / Sharon Van Etten / Interpol / St Vincent / Arcade Fire
The album starts with a good indication of what is to follow; I Should Live In Salt, contains Matt's vocals straying higher than he has before and feels relaxed, sonically rich and lyrically more personal. On the subject of the album's lyrics, although they are not the best Matt has written, such as those on High Violet and Alligator and Boxer, they are certainly more personal and indeed more relatable - something the band is often targeted on, by writing about the day to day trials of middle aged, middle class men; however the lyrics can resonate with anyone and so often you can find a line that just captures a certain moment in your life then your own words never could. Here Matt's writing is at its peak in songs such as Pink Rabbits, Don't Swallow The Cap and This is The Last Time.
Similarly the vocal melodies are not as insatiably catchy as in High Violet but have a much greater variety such as coupling Matt's vocals with those of Annie Clark and Sharon Van Etten and the mass vocals of Sea Of Love which capture and energy not felt since tracks such as Abel or Mr November on Alligator. The versatility of Matt's own vocals is also tested more than in previous albums, showing its not just 'more of the same'; with his deepest rich baritone of Demons to the floating higher vocals of Pink Rabbits.
This album is all about subtlety, the overall timbre and feel of the record is a rich, dense and lush sound which seamlessly integrates electronic elements such as synths and drum machines with the natural elements of acoustic accounts and the intricate drumming of Bryan Devendorf. These lush soundscapes are best seen on the comparatively stripped down tracks of Slipped and the album's outro Hard To Find. The subtlety continues in the small changes to tracks that just lift them into something more interesting and compelling; for example the 7/4 time signature of Demons, the up tempo shift in Humiliation and also the mini outro of This Is Not The Last Time.
Many of these songs also draw from much of The National's previous work. For example; Fireproof could easily be on Boxer, This Is The Last Time has echoes of Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers, Sea of Love has a big Alligator vibe and energy to it, and Pink Rabbits could sit among the best of High Violet. This gives the album not quite a compilation feel but one that makes this album possibly the most self-assured and coherent example of 'what are The National.'
Its clear this album is very good, not only does it have the trademark gravitas and class that The National have brought to their last three albums, its is still accessible to all National fans and indeed anyone who has just discovered them. This is not boring, middle aged man music but a down to earth, rivetting, intimate and at moments even sublimely profound collection of songs that are some of the best anyone could hope to hear.
What is perhaps most startling is that the National seem to be a band that can do no wrong, after the slightly lackluster debut, every album since has been very good, the last four albums of Alligator, Boxer, High Violet and Trouble Will Find Me have been exceptional, the antithesis of one hit-wonder indie bands and pop acts at the mercy of the music press. This album is a refinement of everything The National have done so far, drawing upon aspects of all of their best works to create an album which although admittedly is not their best album, it does not need to be anything groundbreaking and showcases exactly why the band is one of the best indie-rock bands of the 21st Century and how there is no one close to matching the consistently brilliant calibre of music that they do.
9/10
Key tracks: Don't Swallow The Cap // Pink Rabbits // Sea Of Love // Graceless
The National are also playing venues in the UK for touring the album. I managed to get tickets for the Manchester gig at the 02 Apollo which sold out in about 20 minutes! There are still a few tickets left for the London shows and are certainly worth the money. I will also do a review of the gig in Manchester in November.
Sunday, 21 April 2013
BECK AND BOWIE
Just as Beck seems to be getting sick of being Beck, Bowie returns from his New Berlin(domestic bliss or post-illness depression, who knows?). Their parallel lines are all chicanery and diversion.
Mr Beck, who changes hipster cap more frequently and drastically than Mr Bowie changes fedora, is trying on new hats, in the manner of the council estate aesthetes who tried on androgyny and glamour way back whenever. Whatever the hat, though, no-one finds Beck weird. Hmmmm.
Exhibit one; Sound and Vision. Beck is the Hip-hop Mozart. Even in his 40's he looks like a sprightly teenager. So he accepts the patronage of the Lincoln Motor Company, they bask in his cutting-edge bricolage, he gives them 10 minutes of Bowie's Sound and Vision re-imagined. Intellectually I like it, other bits of me, not so sure. It starts as a real time imitation of a cut-up remix, like a John Zorn contracted cut and paste or a cartoon soundtrack, before the song emerges, to some relief, from this fug, becoming some reverie about the gift of sound and vision. Not sure about the gospel choir though - a bit Jools Holland. Beck has produced a lot of music over the years, and like an old junkie it takes a lot of raw stuff to give you that buzz again. Also better if someone else pays the tab.
I wonder whose portrait Beck will sit below in his comeback video, like Bowie in Where Are We Now, with it's picture of William Burroughs and the Dame, referencing the Old Writer in exile in Lawrence, Kansas with his lover/agent and his cats. The scientologist from Silverlake has got his Dad in to arrange Sound and Vision, his grandad was in the Fluxus movement alongside Yoko Ono. Maybe a picture of John lennon baking bread in the Dakota Building?
Exhibit two:Partch; Beck let this audio-collage out some time ago. Like a lot of great music, it's virtually unlistenable. I read somewhere Beck denies it's connection to the Heath Robinson of the american avant-garde. Pure diamond bollocks.
Exhibit three; Beck the producer. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore, Stephen Malkmus - all decent enough records, but give me Modern Guilt anyday. For all Dangermouse's trademark tags and squiggles it's the best Beck record in years.
Exhibit four; Beck's Record Club. You could access this on his website, then it's all over the net. The Velvet's and Leonard Cohen album's are fine, but Yanni and INXS?! The boy had been supping too much Contrary Hipster Juice. The idea is fair enough- young marrieds can't get out what with the cost of babysitters, so they go down the home studio with their mates and knock up impromptu versions of their favourite records. We've all done it, if only in our minds. The results are out there, floating round like tin-cans, downloaded with less and less frequency.
Exhibit five; Beck remixes Phillip Glass. This is the one I've listened to the most. It's got that ineffable quality, it hints at something without saying it. (It also links up my intellectual conceit in this piece, nodding to The Low Symphony that Phillip Glass did some years ago.) Whereas the Glass piece of orchestrating electronic mood pieces ended up as airless as a white painted loft, Beck's electronic reimagining of an orchestral piece has some of the barrio brio of his best stuff.
Exhibit six; The Beck Hansen Reader The one where he is most present yet totally absent. Only muso's will actually buy the sheet music, but this great idea works. I've listened to the version I downloaded by The Portland Cello Project, and there's good songs and great lines in there. The best lines are when he amplifies the mid 60's Dylan beat poetry, the worst is when he goes all show-tune. Nonetheless, Beck should, like, go totally punkrock, destroy his concept and show all the youtube nohopers what an real pro can do with such great songs as Don't Act Like Your Heart Isn't Hard and America, Here's My Boy, or even We Wear Cloaks, and put his own versions out now. We get it. Don't be so precious. Milk it a bit. Better still, follow up Modern Guilt the traditional way. Now there's an original concept.
Just as Beck seems to be getting sick of being Beck, Bowie returns from his New Berlin(domestic bliss or post-illness depression, who knows?). Their parallel lines are all chicanery and diversion.
Mr Beck, who changes hipster cap more frequently and drastically than Mr Bowie changes fedora, is trying on new hats, in the manner of the council estate aesthetes who tried on androgyny and glamour way back whenever. Whatever the hat, though, no-one finds Beck weird. Hmmmm.
Exhibit one; Sound and Vision. Beck is the Hip-hop Mozart. Even in his 40's he looks like a sprightly teenager. So he accepts the patronage of the Lincoln Motor Company, they bask in his cutting-edge bricolage, he gives them 10 minutes of Bowie's Sound and Vision re-imagined. Intellectually I like it, other bits of me, not so sure. It starts as a real time imitation of a cut-up remix, like a John Zorn contracted cut and paste or a cartoon soundtrack, before the song emerges, to some relief, from this fug, becoming some reverie about the gift of sound and vision. Not sure about the gospel choir though - a bit Jools Holland. Beck has produced a lot of music over the years, and like an old junkie it takes a lot of raw stuff to give you that buzz again. Also better if someone else pays the tab.
I wonder whose portrait Beck will sit below in his comeback video, like Bowie in Where Are We Now, with it's picture of William Burroughs and the Dame, referencing the Old Writer in exile in Lawrence, Kansas with his lover/agent and his cats. The scientologist from Silverlake has got his Dad in to arrange Sound and Vision, his grandad was in the Fluxus movement alongside Yoko Ono. Maybe a picture of John lennon baking bread in the Dakota Building?
Exhibit two:Partch; Beck let this audio-collage out some time ago. Like a lot of great music, it's virtually unlistenable. I read somewhere Beck denies it's connection to the Heath Robinson of the american avant-garde. Pure diamond bollocks.
Exhibit three; Beck the producer. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore, Stephen Malkmus - all decent enough records, but give me Modern Guilt anyday. For all Dangermouse's trademark tags and squiggles it's the best Beck record in years.
Exhibit four; Beck's Record Club. You could access this on his website, then it's all over the net. The Velvet's and Leonard Cohen album's are fine, but Yanni and INXS?! The boy had been supping too much Contrary Hipster Juice. The idea is fair enough- young marrieds can't get out what with the cost of babysitters, so they go down the home studio with their mates and knock up impromptu versions of their favourite records. We've all done it, if only in our minds. The results are out there, floating round like tin-cans, downloaded with less and less frequency.
Exhibit five; Beck remixes Phillip Glass. This is the one I've listened to the most. It's got that ineffable quality, it hints at something without saying it. (It also links up my intellectual conceit in this piece, nodding to The Low Symphony that Phillip Glass did some years ago.) Whereas the Glass piece of orchestrating electronic mood pieces ended up as airless as a white painted loft, Beck's electronic reimagining of an orchestral piece has some of the barrio brio of his best stuff.
Exhibit six; The Beck Hansen Reader The one where he is most present yet totally absent. Only muso's will actually buy the sheet music, but this great idea works. I've listened to the version I downloaded by The Portland Cello Project, and there's good songs and great lines in there. The best lines are when he amplifies the mid 60's Dylan beat poetry, the worst is when he goes all show-tune. Nonetheless, Beck should, like, go totally punkrock, destroy his concept and show all the youtube nohopers what an real pro can do with such great songs as Don't Act Like Your Heart Isn't Hard and America, Here's My Boy, or even We Wear Cloaks, and put his own versions out now. We get it. Don't be so precious. Milk it a bit. Better still, follow up Modern Guilt the traditional way. Now there's an original concept.
Sunday, 24 March 2013
JIM O'ROURKE RECOMMENDS
We all like lists. Here's one Jim O'Rourke made on japanese vinyl fetishist site I stumbled upon recently. All cut-out classics, no doubt.
Andy Pratt- Self Titled (2nd album)
Billy Nicholls-Love Songs
The Humours of Lewis Furey
Billy Merrit-Special Delivery
David Ackles-Five and Dime
Rupert Holmes-Widescreen
Of these in the Cultureberg vault, the Lewis Furey album is to be discussed in my soon-come Lewis Furey opus. I dug the vinyl out for research purposes and it only underlined what a work of under-rated genius it is. I also was surprised that I paid £1.79 for it in 1978. My student grant must have been overly generous. Watch this space.
Ackles' Five and Dime never struck me like his first album or American Gothic, but, thanks for the prompt, I'll dig it out.
Rupert Holmes. I've got Widescreen somewhere. Never found it as cinematic as Partners In Crime,which is a record which forms a new genre, somewhere between Billy Joel and Robert Altman. Anyone who can write songs as cringeworthy yet classy as Escape (The Pina Colada Song), Him or Parners In Crime desrves their place somewhere in the pantheon. Slightly above Chris De Burgh and licking Warren Zevon's boots, maybe.
I've got another Andy Pratt album, Shiver In The Night. His aesthetic seems close to the Jim O'Rourke of Bad Timing and the Loose Fur albums. I'm sure this 2nd album is lying doggoe in some charity shop, it's corner snipped, it's vinyl crackly and a Help the Aged 99p sticker curling at the edges, waiting for a bloke of a certain vintage to take it home, place it on the overpriced turntable like some creaking priest and drop the needle to the vinyl, hoping for a half-hearted epiphany.
We all like lists. Here's one Jim O'Rourke made on japanese vinyl fetishist site I stumbled upon recently. All cut-out classics, no doubt.
Andy Pratt- Self Titled (2nd album)
Billy Nicholls-Love Songs
The Humours of Lewis Furey
Billy Merrit-Special Delivery
David Ackles-Five and Dime
Rupert Holmes-Widescreen
Of these in the Cultureberg vault, the Lewis Furey album is to be discussed in my soon-come Lewis Furey opus. I dug the vinyl out for research purposes and it only underlined what a work of under-rated genius it is. I also was surprised that I paid £1.79 for it in 1978. My student grant must have been overly generous. Watch this space.
Ackles' Five and Dime never struck me like his first album or American Gothic, but, thanks for the prompt, I'll dig it out.
Rupert Holmes. I've got Widescreen somewhere. Never found it as cinematic as Partners In Crime,which is a record which forms a new genre, somewhere between Billy Joel and Robert Altman. Anyone who can write songs as cringeworthy yet classy as Escape (The Pina Colada Song), Him or Parners In Crime desrves their place somewhere in the pantheon. Slightly above Chris De Burgh and licking Warren Zevon's boots, maybe.
I've got another Andy Pratt album, Shiver In The Night. His aesthetic seems close to the Jim O'Rourke of Bad Timing and the Loose Fur albums. I'm sure this 2nd album is lying doggoe in some charity shop, it's corner snipped, it's vinyl crackly and a Help the Aged 99p sticker curling at the edges, waiting for a bloke of a certain vintage to take it home, place it on the overpriced turntable like some creaking priest and drop the needle to the vinyl, hoping for a half-hearted epiphany.
Monday, 4 February 2013
Rewriting rock history: Small Town Talk
"Mojo covers a lot of the music they (Let It Rock) championed in the early seventies - obscure American funk and old country records that have never gone away, the likes of Bobby Charles. You think to yourself "These records can't have sold more than 50 copies" and "How come I know all 50 people who bought them?" David Hepworth in In their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press by Paul Gorman.
This illustrates to me why you shouldn't trust rock history written by journalists as little as political history written by politicians. If this was Why I Love The Inkies on BBC 4, I'd shake my head and go Naaww, it wasn't like that. Here's a few anecdotes to fill the picture out a bit.
1. The Radio.I have a clear memory of listening to the Saturday tea-time soul show on Radio 1 (though I am actually less clear of the day,time and dj) and hearing Small Town Talk by Bobby Charles, and thinking, I'll pick that up if I see it. I never did pick it up, but that's not the point. Curatorial Culture is full of Peel Rhapsody, but us younger kids remember the breadth of variety of day time radio, the same show playing The Chi-lites 'The Coldest Days of my Life' - Parts one and two!- and all sorts of singer-songwritery sugary spume on Noel Edmonds. The tyranny of the playlist was not yet on the horizon and diversity was mainstream not niche.
2. Record Shops. Small Town Talk was, as you probably know, on Bearsville Records, linked to Albert Grossman's Woodstock area empire. I never picked it up but most record shops had second hand racks or cut outs for the Strapped for Cash. So I was the proud owner of Felix Cavaliere's 'Destiny', 'Runt' and 'The Ballad of Todd Rundgren', all on Bearsville. I don't think I have knowingly ever met anyone who owns the former, though there was a bit of a Todd underground in our school and I remember selling my spare copy of The Nazz' 'Hello it's me' to Neil Thomas. The view that minority tastes did not osmose up the M1 is metrocentric and blinkered.
I would nominate Virgin Records in Birmingham as the apotheosis of the record shop circa 1974-75. You could slump on old chairs or a sofa and sample whatever took your fancy through headphones - sorry,man, "cans"- at earsplitting volume, even if the choice was John Prine's 'Sweet Revenge'. I could never succumb to the listening post of recent years just as I resent Amazon directing me to similar purchases. I remember browsing the racks in Virgin listening to Nils Lofgren's Official Bootleg, a record they couldn't and wouldn't sell cause it was hip and scarce and unavailable. I remember being impressed merely reading the lyrics on the sleeves of Greetings from Asbury Park and Nighthawks at the Diner, the latter a double import and alluringly out of reach, long lines of beatscreed from the very demi-monde Let It Rock and Zigzag were writing about. One last Virgin records anecdote. When I moved to Sheffield in 1976 I was talking to the guy behind the counter about Big Star. I'd picked up No1 Record as a cutout but couldn't get Radio City, another minority taste LP whose influence is inversely proportional to it's availability at the time. A week later I picked up the C90 that the guy had offered to record at home for me, with Radio City topped up with choice bootleg cuts of Tom Petty and suchlike. Now That's What I Call a Music Shop!
3 Home Taping Saved the Music Business. Then, as now, people defined themselves by their cultural choices. You had to search for the Good Stuff, and even the cost of a blank tape meant you had to exercise some discretion, the records you taped didn't suffer from the disposability and replenishability of the download. It took some effort to home tape, in real time of course, Todd Rundgren's Utopia, the longest LP of the day. Anyone who hometaped the triple LP Yessongs had to be so dedicated as to be certifiable. If someone had had Bobby Charles' Small Town Talk I'd have taped it. Some month's ago I downloaded it. I haven't listened to it yet, though a couple of weeks ago came across Yvonne Elliman's version (not bad, but not a patch on Rick Danko's).
4 The NME. I may be special pleading from my own experience here, but the NME was a broad church which preached from a position of proseltyising polygamy. Every Thursday, but every Wednesday in The Smoke. The revisionists would have the period down as greatcoated grebos versus Bowie Roxy, but taste hadn't ossified into tribal conformity in my corner of the Black Country, or elsewhere. Look at the NMEs of the time and you're struck by the fluidity of the culture, as though everything was up for grabs. There's far more country rock, far more blue eyed funk like kokomo or Moon, far more progjazzrock like Egg or Billy Cobham. You could buy it in every newsagent (I bought Veedon Fleece, the NME and Che Guevara's 'Guerilla Warfare' all from
Dillon's the newsagents on Brook Street, Rugeley - What's that about Small Town Talk?) They were broadcasting something, not narrowcasting.
5 The Library. Fill in a card at the branch library next to my old primary school with selections from the roneo'd catalogue and you could borrow and tape Forever Changes, Mythical Kings and Iguana's, the listenable bits of Self Portrait, Poco's Deliverin', Grievous Angel, We're only In It For The Money. Someone at Head Office (no pun intended) was mixing Lord Reith with the NME reviews pages. One day I heard Blonde on Blonde, Horses and the Velvet Underground (a budget compilation) all for the first time. The conduit to the spring at Culture centre was on the rates. When I moved to Sheffield, their library, or my borrowing from it, reflected the Cabaret Voltaire meets Rare and Racy sound smorgasborg of the time and place - Steve Reich, Sun Ra, Keith Jarrett. Nowadays the local library charge the ratepayer £1.50 per CD loan, as though in deference to outmoded copyright laws and The Cultural Health and Safety Committee. The key thing was, unlike downloading, was The Delay, sometimes weeks or months. As any fule kno, delay leads to anticipation, frustration and desire, immediate gratification to regret.
And my point is? Something about reclaiming the reality of life's diversity that some would claim for their clique. The hip were out there, as they still are, looking for the Good Stuff. There's people worth seeking out who are giving the nod to the wise, and generally speaking, unlike journalists, they pay for their records.
Any road, here's Bobby Charles, for all the Small Town Talkers..
This illustrates to me why you shouldn't trust rock history written by journalists as little as political history written by politicians. If this was Why I Love The Inkies on BBC 4, I'd shake my head and go Naaww, it wasn't like that. Here's a few anecdotes to fill the picture out a bit.
1. The Radio.I have a clear memory of listening to the Saturday tea-time soul show on Radio 1 (though I am actually less clear of the day,time and dj) and hearing Small Town Talk by Bobby Charles, and thinking, I'll pick that up if I see it. I never did pick it up, but that's not the point. Curatorial Culture is full of Peel Rhapsody, but us younger kids remember the breadth of variety of day time radio, the same show playing The Chi-lites 'The Coldest Days of my Life' - Parts one and two!- and all sorts of singer-songwritery sugary spume on Noel Edmonds. The tyranny of the playlist was not yet on the horizon and diversity was mainstream not niche.
2. Record Shops. Small Town Talk was, as you probably know, on Bearsville Records, linked to Albert Grossman's Woodstock area empire. I never picked it up but most record shops had second hand racks or cut outs for the Strapped for Cash. So I was the proud owner of Felix Cavaliere's 'Destiny', 'Runt' and 'The Ballad of Todd Rundgren', all on Bearsville. I don't think I have knowingly ever met anyone who owns the former, though there was a bit of a Todd underground in our school and I remember selling my spare copy of The Nazz' 'Hello it's me' to Neil Thomas. The view that minority tastes did not osmose up the M1 is metrocentric and blinkered.
I would nominate Virgin Records in Birmingham as the apotheosis of the record shop circa 1974-75. You could slump on old chairs or a sofa and sample whatever took your fancy through headphones - sorry,man, "cans"- at earsplitting volume, even if the choice was John Prine's 'Sweet Revenge'. I could never succumb to the listening post of recent years just as I resent Amazon directing me to similar purchases. I remember browsing the racks in Virgin listening to Nils Lofgren's Official Bootleg, a record they couldn't and wouldn't sell cause it was hip and scarce and unavailable. I remember being impressed merely reading the lyrics on the sleeves of Greetings from Asbury Park and Nighthawks at the Diner, the latter a double import and alluringly out of reach, long lines of beatscreed from the very demi-monde Let It Rock and Zigzag were writing about. One last Virgin records anecdote. When I moved to Sheffield in 1976 I was talking to the guy behind the counter about Big Star. I'd picked up No1 Record as a cutout but couldn't get Radio City, another minority taste LP whose influence is inversely proportional to it's availability at the time. A week later I picked up the C90 that the guy had offered to record at home for me, with Radio City topped up with choice bootleg cuts of Tom Petty and suchlike. Now That's What I Call a Music Shop!
3 Home Taping Saved the Music Business. Then, as now, people defined themselves by their cultural choices. You had to search for the Good Stuff, and even the cost of a blank tape meant you had to exercise some discretion, the records you taped didn't suffer from the disposability and replenishability of the download. It took some effort to home tape, in real time of course, Todd Rundgren's Utopia, the longest LP of the day. Anyone who hometaped the triple LP Yessongs had to be so dedicated as to be certifiable. If someone had had Bobby Charles' Small Town Talk I'd have taped it. Some month's ago I downloaded it. I haven't listened to it yet, though a couple of weeks ago came across Yvonne Elliman's version (not bad, but not a patch on Rick Danko's).
4 The NME. I may be special pleading from my own experience here, but the NME was a broad church which preached from a position of proseltyising polygamy. Every Thursday, but every Wednesday in The Smoke. The revisionists would have the period down as greatcoated grebos versus Bowie Roxy, but taste hadn't ossified into tribal conformity in my corner of the Black Country, or elsewhere. Look at the NMEs of the time and you're struck by the fluidity of the culture, as though everything was up for grabs. There's far more country rock, far more blue eyed funk like kokomo or Moon, far more progjazzrock like Egg or Billy Cobham. You could buy it in every newsagent (I bought Veedon Fleece, the NME and Che Guevara's 'Guerilla Warfare' all from
Dillon's the newsagents on Brook Street, Rugeley - What's that about Small Town Talk?) They were broadcasting something, not narrowcasting.
5 The Library. Fill in a card at the branch library next to my old primary school with selections from the roneo'd catalogue and you could borrow and tape Forever Changes, Mythical Kings and Iguana's, the listenable bits of Self Portrait, Poco's Deliverin', Grievous Angel, We're only In It For The Money. Someone at Head Office (no pun intended) was mixing Lord Reith with the NME reviews pages. One day I heard Blonde on Blonde, Horses and the Velvet Underground (a budget compilation) all for the first time. The conduit to the spring at Culture centre was on the rates. When I moved to Sheffield, their library, or my borrowing from it, reflected the Cabaret Voltaire meets Rare and Racy sound smorgasborg of the time and place - Steve Reich, Sun Ra, Keith Jarrett. Nowadays the local library charge the ratepayer £1.50 per CD loan, as though in deference to outmoded copyright laws and The Cultural Health and Safety Committee. The key thing was, unlike downloading, was The Delay, sometimes weeks or months. As any fule kno, delay leads to anticipation, frustration and desire, immediate gratification to regret.
And my point is? Something about reclaiming the reality of life's diversity that some would claim for their clique. The hip were out there, as they still are, looking for the Good Stuff. There's people worth seeking out who are giving the nod to the wise, and generally speaking, unlike journalists, they pay for their records.
Any road, here's Bobby Charles, for all the Small Town Talkers..
Saturday, 2 February 2013
Villainous Folk: EP Review: Jonny Quits and EP Launch Preview
Villainous Folk: EP Review: Jonny Quits and EP Launch Preview: Jonny Quits are an Alternative-Rock band formed in North London but the twin brothers in the band Jon and Chris Beagley soon migrated up ...
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Don't Freak Me Out
I came across this when ploughing through The Unsorted in the Cultureberg Vault. Jimmy was a Liverpudlian musician whose only Lp was a result of the patronage of Maurice Gibb, Lulu and Robert Stigwood. On the cover he looks like the mid point between Chas and Dave. The music reminds me of Randy Newman's take on 'Gone Dead Train' on the Performance soundtrack, barrelling along on 88 percussion keys. His vocal is Randyesque, but irony free, with a similarity to Terry Allen on Lubbock (on Everything). A bit of research (Okay, googling) reveals he toured as support to Emerson, Lake and Palmer (unimaginable) and the Bee Gee's. He preferred the latter experience. I read his Myspace page which has a detailed, atmospheric and interesting biography/autobiography, full of close calls with career breaks and rubbed shoulders. There's a contemporary cutting there in which the journalist likens him to "a fat John Lennon". Worse things to be. What might spark a reissue (I could find no trace of one) is the presence of John Bonham on 2 tracks, including the title track linked to below. They sound on vinyl to be well suited; to read the article on Jimmy's myspace page, they both seemed to like a drink as well. Also on there is Peter Frampton and the aforementioned Gibb brother, whose production company Moby (not that one) Jimmy was signed to.The LP was released in the States as Paid My Dues, another of the better tracks. There's a few tracks that veer into sentiment like Sweet child of Mine (not that one), but it's mostly earthy rock and roll with no frills but with grit and a surfeit of feel. Jimmy disappeared back to family in Liverpool but he paid his dues and he made a good LP which has stood the test of time. Here's the title track -
Saturday, 12 January 2013
SILENCE
About the time Morrisey put a picture of Charles Hawtrey onto the cover of The Very Best of The Smiths' he said something like "Charles Hawtrey's silence surpasses Garbo's" or words to that effect. He was absolutely correct. Charles Hawtrey gets a name check from the Beatles, is more sexually ambiguous than Garbo and more of Morrisey's hetero fanbase will have seen the Carry On films than will have seen The Blue Angel. I was brought to pondering on this when two recluses popped up this week.
No 1: David Bowie. I came home from work on what I didn't know it was his birthday and watched the video which (as it said in The Times, something like, arrived unheralded in the night like snow). Everybody has a view. It's profoundly moving. At one point Bowie was ubiquitous to the pointof invisibility - nobody cared. He re-entered the public world and retained his dignity - enhanced it. The song reminds me of 'Heroes', and not for the Berlin references, but for its existential honesty. Its Georges Melies meets Ashes to Ashes meets End of the Pier meets Lindsay Kemp meets Edwyn Collins. I really don't want to watch it again as it must diminish the experience, like watching Harry Lime appear out of the dark on watching The Third Man for the second time. It's here anyway, and if you've not seen it...
No 2: Mark Hollis. Slighty less noticeably got a mention in Uncut, as he has directed the track listing of the new Talk Talk compilation, which seems to be less synth pop, more bucolic epiphany post-rock. Co-incidentally, there'd been a mini season of Talk Talk on the Cultureberg stereo, especially the Mark Hollis solo album. No wonder he has been silent. If you go from The Colour of Spring, through Spirit of Eden, Laughing Stock and The solo album there is nowhere left to go except some synthesis of silence and inarticulate spirituality. Which, to me, is David Bowie, in a dark blue T-shirt, looking out at the world through the camera.
No 1: David Bowie. I came home from work on what I didn't know it was his birthday and watched the video which (as it said in The Times, something like, arrived unheralded in the night like snow). Everybody has a view. It's profoundly moving. At one point Bowie was ubiquitous to the pointof invisibility - nobody cared. He re-entered the public world and retained his dignity - enhanced it. The song reminds me of 'Heroes', and not for the Berlin references, but for its existential honesty. Its Georges Melies meets Ashes to Ashes meets End of the Pier meets Lindsay Kemp meets Edwyn Collins. I really don't want to watch it again as it must diminish the experience, like watching Harry Lime appear out of the dark on watching The Third Man for the second time. It's here anyway, and if you've not seen it...
No 2: Mark Hollis. Slighty less noticeably got a mention in Uncut, as he has directed the track listing of the new Talk Talk compilation, which seems to be less synth pop, more bucolic epiphany post-rock. Co-incidentally, there'd been a mini season of Talk Talk on the Cultureberg stereo, especially the Mark Hollis solo album. No wonder he has been silent. If you go from The Colour of Spring, through Spirit of Eden, Laughing Stock and The solo album there is nowhere left to go except some synthesis of silence and inarticulate spirituality. Which, to me, is David Bowie, in a dark blue T-shirt, looking out at the world through the camera.
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Friday, 4 January 2013
DVD: CSNY Deja Vu
Easy Rider on the tour bus, Neil Young as Bernard Shakey directs this tour film of the wizened and whiskery super-group taking a bunch of anti-war songs (Neil's 'Living With War' album plus Ohio, Find The Cost Of Freedom, For What It's Worth etc) across America. It's surprising in a lot of ways , but what's not so surprising is that the music is pretty slapdash. Not slapdash in a Time Fades Away manner, more in a drums like dustbins and four guitars sludge manner. At one point the portly Stills puts his foot on the monitor and falls over, though he gamely continues soloing and laughing. As the film progresses the music thins out, gets a bit better and the film gets a lot better.
The point seems to be that The Over The Hill Gang are using their 60's peacenik cartoon persona's to give their audience a different message from the US media's. The Shock Jocks who make irony-free appearances make Beavis and Butthead look like Noam Chomsky. When Neil on a TV talkshow starts into Let's Impeach The President he seems to know the hosts cut to the adverts is semi-jokey, semi-panic. Half the concert audiences seem to be that disenfranchised minority, old liberals who were appalled at Vietnam, sitting atomised in front of their TV's thinking, Where's the Protest This Time?
The best element of the film is when it gives a voice to the survivors , veterans and families of Iraq casualties, in a way that is open, candid and democratic. Often confused and tolerant, often angry and disappointed, they have the gritted jaws of the duped. Neil has been returning to the veteran since Lookout Joe on Tonight's the Night, but this is more multilayered and democratic. They thought they were going to Iraq as The Magnificent Seven not The Dirty Dozen, but, tellingly, they're not the ones streaming out of the show in Atlanta flipping Neil the finger, their singing along " Let's impeach the president for lying." The most surprising thing is that it seems the 4 veteran musicians seem more in tune with the American heartland than their politicians. Deja Vu? Waging heavy peace?
The real star of the film for me is Stephen Stills, who looks like a Pixar animation in a huge Hawaiian shirt all odd facial tics and nervousness, but whose low-key support for veteran Congressional candidates at barbecues and on the stump is old fashioned but (as we learn at the end) successful. Graham Nash is played by Paul Whitehouse as Angry Greyhaired Internet Warrior. David Crosby is quiet, way off stage right and Neil Young is driving the thing forward even when he's not there.
The film ends with an Iraq veteran riding his Harley down a secluded road. Unlike Easy Rider, there is no van load of hayseeds appearing out of the blue to blow him away. Nothing that melodramatic. All the violence has happened a long way away and some time ago. He's been had and he's living with war.
The point seems to be that The Over The Hill Gang are using their 60's peacenik cartoon persona's to give their audience a different message from the US media's. The Shock Jocks who make irony-free appearances make Beavis and Butthead look like Noam Chomsky. When Neil on a TV talkshow starts into Let's Impeach The President he seems to know the hosts cut to the adverts is semi-jokey, semi-panic. Half the concert audiences seem to be that disenfranchised minority, old liberals who were appalled at Vietnam, sitting atomised in front of their TV's thinking, Where's the Protest This Time?
The best element of the film is when it gives a voice to the survivors , veterans and families of Iraq casualties, in a way that is open, candid and democratic. Often confused and tolerant, often angry and disappointed, they have the gritted jaws of the duped. Neil has been returning to the veteran since Lookout Joe on Tonight's the Night, but this is more multilayered and democratic. They thought they were going to Iraq as The Magnificent Seven not The Dirty Dozen, but, tellingly, they're not the ones streaming out of the show in Atlanta flipping Neil the finger, their singing along " Let's impeach the president for lying." The most surprising thing is that it seems the 4 veteran musicians seem more in tune with the American heartland than their politicians. Deja Vu? Waging heavy peace?
The real star of the film for me is Stephen Stills, who looks like a Pixar animation in a huge Hawaiian shirt all odd facial tics and nervousness, but whose low-key support for veteran Congressional candidates at barbecues and on the stump is old fashioned but (as we learn at the end) successful. Graham Nash is played by Paul Whitehouse as Angry Greyhaired Internet Warrior. David Crosby is quiet, way off stage right and Neil Young is driving the thing forward even when he's not there.
The film ends with an Iraq veteran riding his Harley down a secluded road. Unlike Easy Rider, there is no van load of hayseeds appearing out of the blue to blow him away. Nothing that melodramatic. All the violence has happened a long way away and some time ago. He's been had and he's living with war.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)