When we parked Any Major Time Machine yesterday, my father had died and the beastly Roland had been shoved out of the way so that I could hold close the lovely Antje to the romantic strains of Mr Rod Stewart. As we resume our journey through 1977, we find Any Major 11-year-old becoming obsessed with music. Where the teen magazine Bravo used to be a cursory presence, it now became my bible. The posters, coming in three sizes, became subject to negotiation in the bedroom my younger brother and I shared. We had worked out a deal whereby [...]
1977 was a seminal year. In June my father died suddenly, a significant event in anyone's life. In mine, it turned things upside down (and, boy, it turned me). 1977 was also the year when I began taking pop music more seriously, beginning roughly as of September that year. Rather than music arbitrarily scoring the soundtrack to my childhood, I would to a large degree decide what music should accompany me in my youth (of course, the random selections on radio, TV, fairgrounds, school discos and so on would leave me exposed to often poisonous songs which continue to haunt [...]
After a major service, Any Major De Lorean is ready to time travel again, continuing my series of 1970s nostalgia as we wing over to 1976. As ever, the songs here are selected purely on strength of their ability to evoke my experiences of that year, much like a smell can transport one back to a certain time. So, my 1976: it was a hot summer; my brothers and I were packed off to a church summer camp (which I hated) for the first time; I left primary school and came to a school I came to despise; [...]
In the southern hemisphere, spring has sprung. It's two days before payday. I've heard the new Foo Fighters album, and like it so much it may well become my favourite of Grohl's gang (even if "Erase Replace" is crap). Payday is looming on the horizon like the sunrise after a torrid night. There are many reasons to be of good cheer. So here a few songs that cheer me up: Foo Fighters - Cheer Up Boys (Your Makeup Is Running).mp3 The post needs a theme song, and it was either David Ford's great "Cheer [...]
I have prepared a mix CD-R for a brandnew blog I'm helping with, on the theme of Halloween (I made a cover, too, to show how "creative" I am). So, get in early for the celebration of the feast day of All Saints, with all the pumpkins and trick-and-treating, even in parts of the world where there is no tradition of such things. Tracklisting: 1. Eels - Marie Floating Over The Backyard (2005) 2. Clem Snide - Evil vs Good (2001) 3. Jim Stafford [...]
When I found out a couple of months ago that Jens Lekman was going to release a new album, the butterflies in my stomach were tripping like hippies on an amphetamine-aided acid trip. I was turned on to Lekman's music in 2005 by his utterly glorious Oh Jens, You're So Silent , a compilation of EP tracks (our man has issued copious numbers of EPs). I still prefer it over his fine full debut, When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog (2004). And so I approached Night Falls [...]
And some more love for other people's blogs. As always, if your blog isn't on here but you think it should be, there will be more music for bloggers yet. And, as always, let's boost Any Minor Dude 's hit quotient, even if he is a bit lax about updating it. He put up a great new post of Khoisan cave paintings. The lad was a bit annoyed that The Guardian blogrolled my blog (on August 18), but not his... Please open links by right-clicking and opening a new window or tab; I'd hate to [...]
In an interview with Incendiary magazine in 2006, Rilo Kiley's frontwoman Jenny Lewis spoke about "selling out": " I try not to covet the music that I love, I've done that in the past, where something becomes popular and then suddenly I don't want to go to the shows anymore. I think selling out is a lewd point when the music stays the same. So if the music is pure, then why not offer it out to the people and give them something better [...]
Billy Joel is the big kahuna in the Pissing off the Taste Police stakes. I've copped hideous abuse for confessing my love for some of the music of Billy Joel, without embarrassment (because apologising for enjoying certain music is for losers). Oh, I can see why people might hate Billy Joel's music, or even the man. " River Of Dreams " and "We Didn't Start The Fire" are appalling and should never be heard again. When I say I like Billy Joel, I'm talking about his golden years, stretching from Turnstiles (1976) [...]
Richard Hawley was born into the wrong times. The one-time Pulp sideman's heart resides with the torchsong singers of the '50s and '60s, with Scott Walker and his Belgian archetype, Jacques Brel. While the likes of Rod Stewart and Robbie Williams issue campish karaoke homages (or chash cows, you decide) to the Rat Pack, Hawley has crafted an original sound that is at once nostalgic and contemporary. His songs are originals, often of such musical depth and quality that one yearns for the Capitol-years Sinatra to cover them. Curse the human cycle of ageing and death for denying [...]
Danny Baker's 1980 article for the NME about Michael Jackson, and his brothers, titled "The great Greenland mystery", may well be my favourite piece of music writing ever. The subject matter lends itself to the bizarre, of course. For the most part of this pretty lengthy article, the Jackson angle is at once central and peripheral, sometimes at the same time. The best example of that is an account of a press conference in LA, held to promote The Jackson's Triumph album (the one with the soaring "can You Feel It"). From experience I know that [...]
When Nat "King" Cole sang about those hazy, lazy days of summer, he might have had in mind my nostalgic memories of the summer of 1975 (or perhaps not, as Nat didn't know me, having died before I was born). I wonder whether I'm alone in remembering the weather of my childhood only in extremes: beautiful sunny days or lovely snow suitable for sled riding, plus some of those rainy days when it is actually fun to stay indoors. This picture of the nine-year-old Dude is a summer photo, taken upon arrival in Blåvand, Denmark. I am Any Major King [...]
1974 was the year of football. The world cup was staged in West Germany, and the host nation obligingly won the tournament, beating the Netherlands in the final. These 1o men who will always be heroes to me, plus Uli Hoeneß, who won't. I had attended my first football match a few weeks earlier (a qualification match for the newly formed Oberliga Nord); by the time Gerd Müller — the greatest centre-forward of all time — scored the winner against the Dutch, I was totally hooked on football, memorising the most useless of minutiae. The day after the final, we [...]
On Wednesday I attended Any Minor Dude 's school's Music Evening. Normally I would dread these things, despite all the loving efforts made by the teachers and pupils at entertaining the assembled parents and the occasional grandparent. Wednesday night's event was, however, very enjoyable. The hall was beautifully set up, and some of the paintings by the pupils on display were quite artistic. I was well up for the evening, because my son and his friend Thabo were in the line-up, schedulled to appear towards the end of the programme. Until then we [...]
By 1973 I could read, thanks to my Grade 1 teacher, Frau Thailer. When we returned to school for Grade 2, Frau Thailer was gone. A bit of a free thinker who probably was well into the Spirit of '68, Frau Thailer had given us sex-ed lessons, telling us that the male organ was not called a "Pipi", but a "penis", explaining in non-lurid but sufficiently clear terms how babies are made. Clearly her explanations were not so graphic for us 6-7 year-olds as to persuade us to attempt practical application of what we had learned (even at 9, we [...]
1972 was the year I became conscious. By that I mean that from age six onwards I have more of a narrative memory than from the time before. 1972 was the year I started school (getting one of those huge cylindrical things filled with sweets), became interested in the news (I remember following the Munich massacre), TV was great ( Star Trek , Hitparade , Partridge Family, Sergeant Percy , Der Bastian ), and I kicked off my fascination with the English language, thanks to the transmission of US episodes of Sesame Street (shown in [...]
We interrupt this transmission to note the fact that this blog has been blog rolled in The Guardian today, as was Mr Agreeable (who, I hope, takes greater delight in having featured in my Music For Bloggers series). Now Any Minor Dude wants to be featured in The Guardian's blog roll, too. Hey, let's show the little dude some love and click on his link.
I have mentioned that I was a music fan even as a toddler. In 1971 I progressed from being a turntable ( see here ) to DJ. On my fifth birthday (around the time the photo here of my brother, left, and me was taken), I received a portable turntable, one similar to that pictured, where the speaker doubled as a lid. A few months later I bought my first record. 1971 was also the year when I began selecting which TV programmes to watch. Bonanza was a particular favourite of mine, and I fervently watched [...]
Having revisited the '80s, Any Major Time Machine is now zapping to the late '60s and the '70s. I'll relive my formative years through the medium of music. As with the '80s series, the songs are selected not for quality, but because they can evoke memories of a particular time, much the way a smell can. This means that the quality of songs will evolve as I grew older. The first installment covers the years 1966, the year of my birth, to 1970. Thereafter we'll take it one year at a time. By all accounts, I was a [...]
Call me anal (and here we welcome and immediately say farewell to the accidental visitors from Google) and Hi-Fidelityish, but when I check if links are still alive, I make a note of how many times a file has been downloaded, partly to know what kind of music you, dear reader, have great or little interest in. I suspect that some of the least downloaded songs were overlooked first time around, and some of the most popular leeched (I mean, fucking Hinder !). Or is German right-wing singer Heino really more sought after than Crowded House's finest song delivered [...]
Any Major Dude With Half A Heart
Bison - Quill
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
Shinichi Osawa – Big Beach Mix 2012
