Pil do "Careering" live. How cool is Keith Levene? As Annie Nightingale says, this is the most powerful performance ever on the Old Grey Whistle Test. It sounds even better than it does on Metal Box. See it NOW. The poster of this vid, digitronTV , has some other terrific vids on his youtube space; if you have a few hours spare, you could do worse than check 'em out. Some highlights are below: The Clash On Broadway [...]
Apologies for the absence. We've been out having fun, and one of the funnest things you can do when your kids are away with grandma is go to the flicks, right? Our quarterly treat came last week in the form of a visit to the excellent Cameo Cinema to see Michael Mann's latest. To say I was psyched would be an understatement, though after three months away from the big screen even Adam Sandler would have seemed like Godard. Happily, all the Michael Mann elements were present and correct. Total lack of humour--check [...]
Sasha Frere-Jones has been running a short series of record store reminiscences on his blog, some rejecting the High Fidelity staff-archetype, others claiming that it's still alive and well in Kim's , Other Music and sundry other emporia. Other posts bemoan the disappearance of the CD store in a digital age; still others claim that it had had its day what with the snooty clerks and all (I'm paraphrasing, of course). Anyway, one such reminiscence comes from Rob of Reckless Records in Chicago (but which [...]
I was expecting great things from my first viewing of TV Party , having recently read about this short-lived phenomenon; it was the NYC cable access show from circa 1980/81 that featured le tout New York at one time or another, and which was fronted by downtown scenester Glenn O'Brien . Imagine Richard and Judy programmed by Vincent Gallo with Ed Wood doing the camerawork, and you still wouldn't be close. My first exposure to it, though, courtesy of YouTube, had me slightly underwhelmed. Though it's clearly an important social document, the clip above had [...]
I promise that this isn't going to turn into a Scritti Politti blog, I really do. But just one more post. Then, after that, no more, I promise. Well, at least until August, when they're due to play in Edinburgh. But they really are dans le vent at the moment. Live dates, rave reviews, Jonathan Ross appearances ...however, the reason for this post is the very enjoyable hour I've just spent at Simon Reynold's blog , and at K-Punk and at Owen Hatherley's , where they [...]
Can I just say that Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly is a terrific band name, but one which misleads me as to the nature of their (his) music? Rather than guitary singer-songwriter stuff, you'd expect some clattering, full-on Sesame Street noise, a bit like The Go Team , no? Feel free to disagree.
Paul Morley 's new Manchester and Liverpool compilation North By Northwest dropped through my letterbox the other day, and in between the familiar (Joy Divison, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Fall, Pale Fountains) and the frankly unfamiliar (Bette Bright and the Illuminations, Spherical Objects, a solo track by a pre-Bunnymen Will Sergeant), there's a lot of stuff I probably should have heard but that has always somehow eluded me. Like Ludus. Like Care. And like Lori and the Chameleons. Label-mates of Teardrop Explodes and Big In Japan, they were signed to Bill Drummond and Dave Balfe's Zoo Records, [...]
Congratulations to John Cooper on the second issue of his terrific fanzine Scream City. 'Sfunny to think that in the days of digitisation, with most aspects of the media disappearing slowly into a stream of zeroes and ones, something made of paper, ink and staples could be so inspiring. But as Paul Morley, Mark P, Liz Naylor, Jon Savage, and James Brown (the other one) found in the past, the act
Ken Nordine 's "Colors" grew out of a series of radio paint commercials for the Fuller Paint Company in the 1960s. Yep, you read that correctly. Paint commercials. On the radio. Nordine's free-jazz concoctions worked, though, as you can hear from these few samples. They don't always evoke the particular colour, but his free association clearly hit a nerve with the listening audience, who went out and bought Fuller's paint in such numbers that they kept on commissioning these 90-second spots. The original Philips LP ran to 24 tracks, each of about 90 seconds, with names like Amber, Yellow, Ecru, [...]
Apparently, The Boom Boom Bap is "single of the decade, by a country mile" in this week's Time Out . It'll still sell bugger all, but perhaps it's for the best, as Green seems to dislike the attention anyway. If you want to buy it and risk sending him back to his spare bedroom, it comes out next Monday. Buy it here! Scritti Politti tour dates (Man, I never thought I'd get to write those words...)
Despite having the seventh worst band name in musical history*, Grandadbob, who were brought to my attention this week, are quite special and deserving of your hard-earned wodge in the next few months. To my shame, their first album Waltzes For Weirdos passed me by completely, and their second, Garden of Happiness , is due in the shops sometime over the summer. Trawling the web to find out a little more about them, I discover that they're a duo from Sheffield, that they are plying their trade at various festivals this summer, and that they're signed to [...]
Not sure when exactly Mick Hucknall and Simply Red became a by-word for naffness, and I'm really not sure it's totally deserved, either. Sure, Mick doesn't do himself any favours with his OTT dress sense, his habit of propositioning naive young ladies in the toilets of the Hacienda ("just slip yer tights off, luv"), the authoritarian streak that led to his band being summarily fired, the excruciating cover versions...and yet... The case for the defence: their cover of Bunny Wailer's "Love Fire", and its remix by Lee Perry; [...]
Annoyingly, my filesharing service is undergoing some restructuring at the moment, and files of more than 2MB can't be uploaded. Grrrr. However, I haven't been completely wasting my time recently. No, I haven't got around to regrouting the bathroom. Instead, I've been whiling away many a hapy hour at YouTube , along with millions of other sleep-deprived netizens (some 6 million within only 5 months, according to this report ). Pick of the bunch so far, and quite timely given the current adulation given to The Drift , has to be [...]
Or rather, he's back. With only their fifth album in 28 years, Scritti Politti make Kraftwerk seem like workaholics. But never mind the quantity, feel the quality; most groups are lucky to make one masterpiece in their lives, while Green Gartside (for it is he) has managed three thus far ( Songs To Remember , Cupid and Psyche 85 and Anomie & Bonhomie : we'll overlook Provision , his third album), and White Bread, Black Beer, to be released in early June, looks like it might shape up to be another, judging by the [...]
The Go-Between's frontman funeral is tomorrow.
Saw ACR last weekend at the Triptych, and a very good thing they were too, even 28 years after their debut. Though they always seemed to be operating in Joy Division's (and later New Order's) shadow, at least while they were on Factory, anyone who looked beyond the superficial similarities saw that they were their own group, not copyists. In fact, if anything, it was New Order who were often shadowing A Certain Ratio. The latter flirted with the dancefloor while New Order were still continuing Joy Division's legacy in 1981; ACR released the stunning electro epic [...]
Three weeks since the last post? Sorry, I'm slacking. But I was on holiday for part of the time; and my file hosting service was down.... Normal service will now be resumed. I had the chance to chat to my 15 year old niece while I was away, and as occasionally happens the talk turned to music. I think the last big conversation we had on the subject was a couple of years ago, when she told me about the new Liberty X single "Being Nobody", and how much she liked it. I asked [...]
Forgot to say that supporting the aforementioned Arkestra will be Edinburgh's own Fire Engines. Davey Henderson at last seems to be getting the recoginition he so richly deserves, having seen action at pop's frontline with three different outfits, all fabulous in their own way. The Fire Engines famously said "no" to Postcard Records , opting instead for Bob Las t 's Pop:Aural label; Win produced punchy power pop in a mid-80s stylee, and also provided soundtracks for lager ads; Nectarine No. 9 continue to [...]
Triptych is coming once again to Scotland, and among the audio delights is an appearance by the Sun Ra Arkestra, sadly minus Mr. Sun Ra himself who went off to the great UFO in the sky some 13 years ago. Included here is a small reminder of the genius of the Saturn-born maverick (and how many times do you get to write that?). It's a clip of the Arkestra from "Music From Tomorrow's World", an Atavistic release. Incidentally, and while we're on the subject, did you know that Raymond Baxter from Tomorrow's World was [...]
I mentioned this blog to a friend the other day, and tried to explain the "angle". You've got to have an angle, right? Not just a bunch of unrelated MP3s (though some of my favourite MP3 blogs have content where the author's (good) taste is the only unifying theme...see Spoilt Victorian Child for example). "So, your angle is rehabilitating unfairly maligned artists?" says he. "Like Guilty Pleasures , then?" Well, no, not really. The problem I have with Guilty Pleasures is that it seems to only [...]
Irk The Purists
Bison - Quill
Shinichi Osawa – Big Beach Mix 2012
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
Mr Fogg - Eleven
