Baby What You Want Me To Do was written at the tail end of the 50s by blues guitarist Jimmy Reed . Download: 12-jimmy-reed-baby-what-you-wa nt-me-to-do.mp3 Not that he'd have known at the time, but Reed penned [...]
So the new Primal Scream album's here and before a note had been heard, the knives in this house were already being sharpened. From the rubbish cover that looks as if the work experience boy was given a generic shot of Bobby and 10 minutes with a laptop, to the list of cliches masquerading as song titles on the back - River Of Pain, Culturecide, Tenement Kid, Invisible City, Goodbye Johnny, Elimination Blues - I had this album down as a stinker, another one of those disappointing albums the Scream have been turning out with increasingly [...]
The Great Pyramid of Giza. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The Colossus of Rhodes. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Seven Wonders of the World . You'd think that by now, the 21st Century, someone somewhere might fancy updating that list. I think I missed the appeal when they were asking folk to write in with their suggestions for the 8th wonder, but if it's not too late, I'm putting forward the Glasgow Barrowlands for inclusion. [...]
(Subtitled What Is This Shit? ) It was those opening words of his review that got Greil Marcus fired from Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 following his slaying of Bob Dylan's Self Portrait. A hotchpotch of bewildering cover versions, syrupy reworkings of his own back catalogue and bizarre odds 'n sodds so far removed from the Bob of 2/3/4 years earlier as to place the 1970s Bob firmly in the 'has-been' category, we can, with the benefit of hindsight apprecaite Marcus' review for what it really was - a [...]
When I first picked up the plank of wood I had the cheek to call a guitar, I hadn't yet mastered changing from a D to an A and back again before I realised something was missing. I needed something, anything, to disguise the bum notes from the badly-played chords I was trying to strangle out of my instrument at parent-bothering volume through my wee practice amp. That something was the fuzzbox. What a revelation! I could play along to most of The Buzzcocks ' What Do I Get and mangle a passable version of Everybody's [...]
This Record Store Day thing really grates eh? Who's at fault? The record companies, who see the event as a way to fleece the record buyers out of every last penny they have and set sky-high dealer prices, thus forcing retailers to charge daft prices for (mainly) old records? Or the record buyers themselves, who see the event as a way to fleece less-fortunate record buyers who have neither the means required nor the availability of a local record shop to go to in order to buy what they want and are forced to take to the internet [...]
The name Television has popped up here a couple of times recently. James Brooks from Land Observations name-checked them in his Six Of The Best article and a couple of weeks ago I was comparing the laconic vocals and snaking guitar sound of Charlie Boyer & the Voyeurs latest single to that of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. All this has coincided with the old iPod (well, it's not that old - 3 and a half years - but I suppose that's ancient in tech-speak) refusing to sync any new additions to [...]
Tommy Tedesco said that. Tommy who ? Last summer I went to the Glasgow screening of the above film about The Wrecking Crew , the crack bunch of LA sessioneers who played anonymously on a whole host of things, from film and TV scores via advertising jingles to some of the biggest-selling and best-loved songs of that golden period in early-mid 60s pop music. Tommy Tedesco was a jazz guitarist, and somehow found himself part of that inner-circle of session men and women. Made [...]
According to some so-far-unconfirmed sources, Richard Hawley, in his National Health milk bottle thick Gregory Pecks and greasy collpased 1950s quiff has Sleepwalk by Brooklyn brothers Santo & Johnny Farina playing on a constant loop inside his head, and, when stuck for inspiration, reaches out and grabs whatever twangy part happens to float past and recycles it under his own name. Cleverly, he also adds his own bottom of the bottle of whisky vocals to it, but disregard them if you can and it all becomes clear. [...]
Six Of The Best is a semi-regular feature that pokes, prods and persuades your favourite bands, bards and barometers of hip opinion to tell us six of the best tracks they’ve ever heard. The tracks could be mainstream million-sellers or they could be obfuscatingly obscure, it doesn’t matter. The only criteria set is that, aye, they must be Six of the Best . Think of it like a mini, groovier version of Desert Island Discs… Number 14 in a series [...]
Focus . Surely the reason punk had to happen. They're not a band I've ever mentioned on these pages before. And they're not a band likely to ever feature on these pages again. Hoary old 70s prog rockers, with their fuzzy faces and parted-curtains hair-dos, Focus might've looked like any one of those uber-cool purveyors of the German Kosmische Musik, but they eschewed that minimal motorik groove in favour of an altogether less savoury sound . T echnically super-proficient players, Focus had an alarming tendency to fling 94 ultra-slick 2 bar arpeggios in the space where most contemporaries [...]
Over Christmas a pal on Facebook posted a video of Boogie Nights by Heatwave . With it's super-slinky bass sound and below-the-bell-bottoms baritone " got to keep on dancin', keep on dancin '" backing vocal, it's the sort of record that could have me Dad dancing for ages. (*Just to clarify - I'm not a Yorkshire man. I'm from further oop north than that - when I say me Dad dancing , I don't mean it could get my own father on his feet. Although it probably could. I mean that Boogie Nights makes [...]
Life's Rich Pageant was the first REM album I heard and, when push comes to shove, it's still my favourite of theirs. Borrowed from Irvine library and duly taped, it soundtracked much of my late teens. From Begin The Begin 's acid rock feedback 'n twang via the alt. American Rickenbacker riffage of These Days and I Believe , to the Beach Boys backing on Fall On Me and Cuyahoga , it's a terrific LP. All killer, no filler, you might say. It captures the band at the highest critical [...]
I liked tons of other contemporaries, but The House Of Love were, for me, the band that perfectly filled that post-Smiths/pre-Stone Roses void. They were terrific. A classic twin guitar and bass and drums indie rock band, they wore their influences proudly on their leather-jacketed sleeves; the twang and reverb. The stripey jumpers and black jeans. The semi-acoustic Gibsons. The rows and rows of effects pedals. The sheer bloody distorted racket they could morph into at the drop of a well-timed drum stick click before coming back as one to the melody - Guy Chadwick sooo wanted to [...]
I'm just about finished Neil Young 's autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace . It's an annoying read, but now I've come this far, I need to finish it. I love old whiny Neil, I really do, but his book goes about dispelling the myth behind the man faster than the man himself was able to hoover up the white stuff backstage during The Last Waltz . The chapters jump from one time and place to another time and place and back again with random abandon (which I don't mind) but the content therein just bores me. There's just [...]
Six Of The Best is a semi-regular feature that pokes, prods and persuades your favourite bands, bards and barometers of hip opinion to tell us six of the best tracks they’ve ever heard. The tracks could be mainstream million-sellers or they could be obfuscatingly obscure, it doesn’t matter. The only criteria set is that, aye, they must be Six of the Best . Think of it like a mini, groovier version of Desert Island Discs… Number 13 in a series [...]
Born To Be With You was an American top 5 single for The Chordettes in 1956. A largely forgotten piece of bobbysox balladeering, it's a proto doo wop, proto girl group paen to a just-out-of-reach romance, all minor key melodrama and vocal harmonies. It was quite clearly an influence on the young Phil Spector a few years later. A few short calendar years maybe, but it might as well have been several lightyears, given what happened in the intervening years betwixt and between The Chordettes and the golden touch of Phil [...]
My Dad's a banjo player. And that's not a strange euphemism for any dodgy Deliverance -influenced way of life. He's a straight-up, proper bluegrass bashin', six-fingered pickin' 'n strummin' banjo player. And quite good too. Plays in a band and everything. Which is more than I do these days. Maybe once I retire..... As a teenager when I was learning to play the cheap plank of wood and rubber band combo that passed as my first electric guitar, he'd show me how to play the chords to any number of Buddy Holly songs, when all [...]
Some of you may have read this before (2009 and 2011, to be exact). 254 years young today. I love Burns. Had him drummed into me at school. In fact, anyone who goes to school in the West of Scotland knows all about him. And as a teacher, I love banging on about him to my class. Here’s a brief potted history for any uninitiated out there… Born on the 25th January, 1759 in Alloway (now a posh part of Ayr). Scrawny boy, wasn’t expected to live long. Helped his dad [...]
Back in 1970s Scotland there was a drink called Creamola Foam . You might remember it. It came in orange and raspberry flavours and was aimed solely at children, who up until then got their fizzy fix from stealing their dad's mixers when he wasn't paying attention, before adding that same mixer to a big cup of additive-heavy, wheeze-inducing orange juice. Teeth-meltingly magic and free of faff, the instructions on the Creamola Foam tin told you simply to add one level teaspoon to a cup of water, stir and drink. [...]
Plain Or Pan?
Today I Feel I’ve Sprung A Leak
Watch Sigur Rós perform “Kveikur” on Leno
Old Photos of Football Fans from 1900–1940
video // Molly Nilsson – Dear Life
