I sold up and moved to Mars

Cunts are still

2012-01-15T20:39:00.006Z

Feeling like a hefty chill I bought a load of newspapers yesterday, one of which was The Times. I stopped reading The Times a while back when it became unbearably right wing, the final straw being a Peter Brooke's cartoon in which Alistair Darling was depicted with red eyebrows, as in like he was a communist.

As I say, I thought a big pile of broadsheets would be just the thing for a nice relaxing afternoon, I was even going to read some of them in the bath. But the whole plan came undone and I was consumed with rage when I read Giles Coren's Opinion piece, the most part of which was taken up with an attack on that graduate who's taken umbrage at being forced to work at Poundstretcher for zero pay. Previously she'd been working for nothing at a local museum but according to Giles she's got no right to expect to occupy herself with work that she finds fulfilling. According to the article, after Giles graduated he knuckled down and got a rubbish job in a clothes shop, he didn't enjoy it but apparently it taught him the value of hard slog, something that would serve him well when it came to applying for the job of restaurant critic.

Other than an awareness that Giles is the son of Alan Coren I had no idea about any other details of his life, but a comment he made about the girl attending a second rate university prompted me to check out his wikipedia entry. And what do you know - Westminster School followed by Oxford. So now, as well as being outraged by his price of everything value of nothing crassness, it's a bit of a class war thing as well.

How far up his own arse is this guy's head? For him to lecture someone on benefits with his vast experience of hardship and struggle. For that's what got him his job at The Times. It's neither here nor there that he attended one of the most expensive schools in the country, not surprisingly afterwards getting into one of the top colleges in the country. And then a coveted position in the world of journalism - absolutely nothing to do at all with the fact that his dad was a famous journalist. What a cunt.

Anyway, I've learned my lesson - never buy The Times again.

Bum

2012-01-13T17:26:00.006Z

Today, for the first time ever, I was accosted by a roving camera crew (from ITV I think they said). "At last" I thought, "an opportunity to speak out on some crucial issue". The question? Which celebrity bum did I most rate, and why? I admit I was flummoxed. After a couple of seconds' thought I apologised for not really being au fait with celebrity bums and stalked off.

I had thought of saying Pippa Middleton's, but that's only because hers is the only bottom I've heard any mention of in the media. In the end I didn't as, while I was sure it was very nice, I couldn't honestly recall if it was really my kind of bottom or not. I checked when I got back in, it isn't - not big enough. Further research on the matter revealed what my answer, had I been paying more attention, should have been: Christina Hendricks.

Happy New Year.

And we'll have it backwards

2011-12-15T15:35:00.000Z

Hearing, at around the same time, Tomorrow Never Knows and Don't Stop I remember thinking, "If I ever record an album, I'll do all the guitars backwards". I was unaware until about a week ago that such an album had been recorded by the Teenage Filmstars. (But only in 1997, conceptually I was years ahead of them.) They don't just do the guitars backwards - everything is, except the drums. It doesn't blow me away to be honest but I salute their er, indefatigability or something.

Teenage Filmstars H.U.M.

In search of space xmas

2011-12-11T22:46:00.008Z

It should be one of the hundred things you do before you die - see a Hawkwind gig. And, the other night, that is what I did.

I wasn't sure what to expect really. I've got a few of their albums and obviously I had enough faith to shell out the twenty pounds for a ticket. Chatting to one of my friends the next day he said he'd been worried we were in for a big cloud of dry ice with strange noises coming out of it. And I think that was lurking in the back of my mind.

Anyway, it wasn't like that at all. Instead it was surprisingly full on rock, a decent light show of course and, the first time I've ever seen this at a gig, a couple of gyrating dancing girls. Aside from the inevitable Silver Machine I didn't recognise any of the tunes (my request for Orgone Accumulator went unheeded). But so what. It was great. I think I'll go every year.

Newfoundband

2011-12-05T22:52:00.009Z

Thinking about all the music that's ever been released you think, "There must be tons of great stuff out there that I've got no idea about". In the past I've been vaguely aware of bands, will have heard what's regarded as their classic track or something but only come round to appreciating their full awesomeness years later.

Sometimes though you find an amazing band of whose existence, like some lost tribe in the Amazon, you'd had no inkling. This happened to me a few months back with The Young Rascals. The "Where have you been hiding this band?" is made all the better, I think, by the fact that they were pretty famous in America.

They're a bit Small Faces, starting off quite straight soul belters, then getting a bit weird and psychedelic and this tune is from round about the time they pop out the other side.

The Young Rascals Easy Rollin'

Psychedelic warlock

2011-12-03T12:25:00.015Z

Flipping through the latest Mojo I was most struck by a full page photo of Roy Wood (pg 105). I don't own any of his stuff (might put a bid in for Boulders) but that is one of the most impressive pop star get ups I've ever seen, just look at that hair. And I'd love a top like that. Not sure where I'd wear it though.

Unser Herr Nimmersatt

2011-12-01T21:15:00.015Z

There are so many great things about autumn - wearing big coats and scarves, crows cawing in bare trees, Bonfire Night, the sharp night air, massive industrial action, several family birthdays, pubs with fires and it all culminating in Christmas.

Yet another great thing about autumn is the reappearance of hearty food, food that just wouldn't seem that palatable during the warmer months. And so, in a slight change to my usual output here's a post on me making bratkartoffeln.

With some obvious exceptions I find myself drawn to German things. When I was young I used to prefer my little model German stormtroopers over their British commando counterparts, whose uniforms looked a bit scruffy in comparison. (My favourite was the one with a shiny flame thrower, what an insane toy.) This preference must have been marked, I remember my mum waking me up one morning with the words, "I've got some good news for you, you've got German measles").

But anyway, the food:

A nice chunk of smoked bacon. A tiny bit carcinogenic apparently, but then what isn't eh?

Cook for about ten minutes in a pan with a chopped onion and then put to one side.

Next in the pan, the main ingredient: potatoes. For the best results you need to have boiled them the day before and kept them in the fridge overnight, otherwise they tend to fall to bits.

Plenty of salt and pepper.

Parsley, certainly adds to the flavour and, at a stretch, one of your five a day.

I started the pan warming with a splosh of vegetable oil but round about now like to add a bit of butter.

The triumphant return of the onion and bacon.

Move it around a bit with a spatula and then just before it really starts to burn serve with bratwurst and I've been eating it with salad with tons of fresh peppers.

Danger falling stars

2011-11-23T13:42:00.010Z

In my favourite (and consequently top secret) charity shop for these things I acquired Echo & the Bunnymen's Crocodiles the other day (nice copy, original inner bag and all that). I was a bit too young (or uncool maybe) for Echo & the Bunnymen in their original incarnation, I only remember Bring On the Dancing Horses from the time, and I thought that was rubbish.

However when I got my first little record player I thought I ought to get a record to test it out and so popped round to a record shop just around the corner (the short lived Play It Again Sam, it's all about location, location, location). For some reason I picked out a 12" of Seven Seas. It's a good single but I was soon infatuated with the b-sides, acoustic versions of Stars Are Stars and Villiers Terrace (and the Killing Moon but that's not from Crocodiles).

Far better than the album versions, lots of interesting instrument choices: a harpsichord, double bass, a sitar or some other churning, ringing thing. And all somehow very autumnal (probably suggested by nothing more than the lyric about the stars shining so cold).

Echo & The Bunnymen Stars Are Stars

There was an horse in the early Seventies

2011-11-19T21:35:00.014Z

I don't go in for compilation albums much but I'm very fond of the first Greensleeves Sampler, for the very straight forward reason that it's got loads of great tracks on it (Ganga Smuggling, Dematerialize and Zungguzunngguzungguzeng for three).

Despite how wonderful they all are it's only the work of Eek A Mouse that I've investigated further, ages ago buying Wa Do Dem and then last week picking up Mouseketeer (I really liked the cover). It's never been a question of vital importance to me but over the years I'd probably pondered his funny name, but no more.

Eek A Mouse How I Got My Name

In the dark night that is very long

2011-11-14T17:13:00.013Z

For a quid I'd have bought this for the cover anyway, so imagine my delight when I saw there was a reading in anglo-saxon on there. Read along (from line 304) here.

Unknown Bard The Battle of Maldon

Outbid blues band

2011-10-24T00:28:00.005+01:00

I love it when I stumble across the original version of a track that I heard sampled as a youth, and it's even better than the track it was sampled for.

It burns me up when I get outbid on a copy of the album.

Outlaw Blues Band Deep Gully

How I sleep at night

2011-10-23T17:15:00.005+01:00

I have a couple of little notepads that I sometimes carry around with me in order to jot things down in. They often go missing for months on end only to turn up in obscure pockets in lesser used jackets. Anyway, a few weeks ago one reappeared and flipping through it I found the scrawl: O. G. S. Crawford Wessex From The Air. I can't remember how or when this came to my attention but decided it was time to follow it up.

Unfortunately a quick search of the usual internet places revealed a staggering price tag of around £300. So that was that. Not to be completely stymied I ordered instead a copy ofBloody Old Britain a biography of Crawford by Kitty Hauser. If you haven't already scuttled off to check I'll mention now that Crawford was first and foremost an archaeologist, and his day job was ensuring that ancient monuments were included on ordnance survey maps.

At first glance he probably looks just like you'd expect him to look, old school. And he was really, in his notion that, if enough evidence were gathered, we'd eventually know in full what actually happened in the past. I studied archaeology for a bit and loved the scientific side of it, like carbon dating and dendrochronology etc.(not that I actually did any of that kind of thing, but it was very interesting to read about). I remember though that the overwhelming attitude was that we couldn't possibly, really, ever know the past. I found that frustrating and packed it in.

I hadn't really thought about all this for a long time but there's a line in the book, "In their more extreme formulations post modern thinkers see historians as little more than glorified story tellers" . It took me back to an evening visit I paid to a friend some time shortly after I'd finished at college. My friend was still studying and his degree was in media studies. While he was off making us cups of tea I had a read through some of his notes. Very thought-provoking stuff, I remember thinking. And it struck me then that my own degree (in ancient history) was, by comparison, just...a load of old stories. I don't mean to knock it too much, it comes in handy sometimes when I'm doing the crossword (example in today's Observer, "The Queen of Carthage, accomplished nothing").

Anyway, back to O. G. S. Crawford. One of the first things that I noticed was what a close contemporary he was of my old favourite Wyndham Lewis (Crawford 1886 - 1957, Lewis 1882 - 1957). They were similar characters to an extent, bullishly convinced of their own rightness and doomed to suffer for their forcefulness. I wondered if they'd ever encountered one another and a scan of the index did turn up an entry for Lewis. Sadly, it deals not with a meeting between them but an amusing aside detailing Lewis' hatred for the scourge of advertising and his hope that fascism might do away with some of the many nonsenses that offended him, instigating, for a start, a single brand of state soap. I can't decide whether I'm for or against this stance on soap. The fact that it makes me laugh means, I suppose, that I find it ridiculous. It reminds me a bit of Arthur J. Evil's rant against god in Time Bandits ("Forty-three species of parrot...Are we or are we not in the hands of a lunatic?").

So far so not very much on Crawford. Already a competent field archaeologist a stint as an aerial observer in WW1 revealed to Crawford the clear outlines of ancient buildings and earthworks visible from the air, but which at best were only vaguely apparent at ground level. (Later, spreading the word, he would illustrate his point with two photographs of a patterned carpet, one from above, a man's view, and one from a few inches high, a cat's view.) Obviously the archaeological stuff is important and very interesting but the big deal in this book, I think, is that Crawford was a communist.

Parallel to his highly practical application of technology to his field of study he was a massively utopian idealist. His faith in communism staggered on until the end of the Forties but collapsed under the onslaught of revelations of persecutions. Without nailing my colours to the mast as far as communism's concerned (I don't know enough about the details) I certainly go along with his belief in the desirability of a single world government and the pre-eminence of science and rational thought as the basis for solving the world's problems.

The only thing that's missing are details of his personal life, on which his autobiography is apparently silent and so, consequently, is the biography. I'm not sure how important it is to have such details, however having come this far I'm sure I'll pick his autobiography up, just to hear what's been covered in Bloody Old Britain in his own words.

Excerpt from a teenage record collection pt. 3

2011-10-20T17:52:00.008+01:00

I like weird dissonant music as much as the next man, more than the next man probably, but Loveless was just a bit too shapeless for me and also had some really naff sounds running through it. I have a copy of course and when I give it a spin the tunes on there affect me, make me feel a bit sad really. However, my great love of My Bloody Valentine is based on their previous album Isn't Anything and its two accompanying eps.

Amazingly, to me anyway, the tracks on these eps are only available on the original issues. The nine combined tracks are all excellent and when Isn't Anything gets its inevitable remastered reissue I'm sure they'll make a lovely disc two. Anyway, here's the track I listened to most, excuse the crackle.

My Bloody Valentine I Believe

Magnificent pagan beast

2011-10-17T00:07:00.023+01:00

Julian Cope that is. Until a few months ago I'd got along with just the compilation Floored Genius Vol 1. Throughout the eighties I loved all of his singles that I heard and, I think, came close to buying Peggy Suicide. The only other homage I paid was in my student days when, on trips to the jukebox, Reward featured in my unbeatable 50p triumvirate (the other two being Geno and, slightly edgier, Love is the Drug).

As the years rolled by I'd sometimes give the neighbours a blast of Safe Surfer (still probably my favourite) but he was a relative stranger to my turntable and I never thought to fill the gaps between the Floored Genius tracks. And that might have been it had my interest not been reawakened by his autobiographies Head On and Repossessed, the best pop autobiographies ever written I think. At least the best pop autobiographies written by someone whose music I respected. (As I've said before George Melly's Owning Up is probably the ultimate music autobiography, but I just can't get excited by Bessie Smith). Oh, and that big book about megalithic monuments he wrote. He's an interesting guy.

So yes, I've been catching up with his eighties solo output, concentrating most recently on Fried. That's the cover up there. The record company hated it (Repossessed pg 74). My own position: what's not to like? It's one of those "two kinds of people in the world" thingies maybe, but I just don't get how a picture of a man wearing a giant turtle shell can be deemed inappropriate for an album sleeve.

Anyway, a snippet - this sounds very influential, or is it just so simple that other people were bound to come up with something similar?

Julian Cope Mic Mak Mok

The right to bear umbrellas

2011-10-16T15:40:00.009+01:00

While I own coats with hoods I'll often take an umbrella out with me if I think it looks like rain. At times I've become aware that people (other men, my friends in fact) regard the use of a brolly as somehow unmanly. Naturally, after this realisation I not only continue to use an umbrella to keep the rain off my head and upper body but also in utter defiance of this macho bollocks.

Anyway, my umbrella broke the other day. Or rather one of its spokes did. And then I discovered that it's almost impossible to get an umbrella repaired, the attitude of umbrella vendors is, unsurprisingly, that I should buy a new one. This irks me, considering it seems so minor an injury. I did find a couple of places that'd do repairs, but only if the umbrella was one of theirs. Which it was not.

Forced by this to put the broken brolly to one side (for now) I started to look into getting a replacement. On my lunch breaks I often used to walk past a suitable shop. James Smith & Sons, it looks lovely doesn't it? I should have guessed what was in store for me there. For something that looked just like my stricken brolly I was looking at £75, and you can spend almost £300. Unbelievable.

I found one for £25 eventually (here) and they even threw in a junior hiking stick, which I think I'll give to my mum, it's about the right size.

Despiritualized

2011-10-12T23:00:00.005+01:00

I was disappointed by the Spiritualized concert. The performance was, in a word, turgid. Great venue, great back catalogue but on the night the presence of a choir and string section seemed to drag the whole thing down, "Messy", was the wife's conclusion.

After about an hour and a half everyone shuffled off stage and ten minutes later I was relieved when just the band and three backing singers returned. The remaining thirty minutes or so were an improvement but I was still far from blown away. At times I looked around and a few people were slowly nodding along, those whose heads were still were not (judging by their expressions) caught up in ecstacy, just a bit bored.

I don't mind the whole repetitive thing - if it's built right I can listen to the same guitar sound going round and around, with minimal variations, for however long. But as another tune ploughed towards its end in a crescendo of feedback I was thinking "What is the fucking point in this?". And then, to be fair, there was one immense moment - in what can only be described as a blink of the ears the maelstrom of sound ceased and we were listening to the beautifully gentle Shine a Light. The change in sound was matched by as sudden a change from blazing strobes to a still deep purple light. That bit was great, but I'd expected a whole evening of such quality. A final consolation prize was a decent enough run through of Take Me to the Other Side, allowing me to tick off another Spacemen 3 track heard live.

Rethinks

2011-10-09T09:14:00.012+01:00

Years ago I gave Geogaddi a try and didn't like it. But recently I find I'm getting quite into Boards of Canada. Maybe it's the influence of liking their label mates Broadcast that has brought me round to giving them another whirl. Since last week I've been mesmerised by this track.

I looked into buying it - but have you ever tried getting their stuff on vinyl? Good Lord! I'd maintained a vinyl only stance for the last few months and paid out what I regard as some reasonably hefty prices, $54 for the Human Beinz Evolutions, 230 Kronor for Gene Harris' The 3 Sounds (only about £21 actually, but it sounds horrendous in kronor). Anyway, I met my match with The Campfire Headphase. I watched another copy go on ebay for just over £64 yesterday morning.

Boards of Canada Chromakey Dreamcoat

Year zero

2011-10-07T20:26:00.001+01:00

I was reading the other day about the slight controversy over the use of Common Era and Before Common Era for Anno Domini and Before Christ. I'm not really too bothered about keeping AD and BC, and generally I'm in favour of political correctness (or being nice anyway). But just removing the references to Christ while keeping the whole thing based on his birthdate and then calling it the common era seems worse than keeping it explicitly Christian. If, for whatever reasons, the dominance of the Christian calendar gets up your nose, then having it rebranded as the universal Common Era is even worse isn't it?

And so, after some thought I've decided that the date we should use as year zero is the date of the moon landing. I wasn't alive at the time but apparently the whole human race was united in thinking it was very cool. There might be rumblings that this was a victory for the American industrial military complex, but it was an undeniably big deal and furthermore a magnificent scientific achievement - no gods or prophets involved at all. So, there you have it - Happy Year 42.

It's a bit of a small number that perhaps doesn't do justice to humanity's many millennia of doing stuff but sadly the exact dates of a lot of our most significant achievements (the wheel, writing etc.) are lost in the mists of time.

So sad about them

2011-10-06T20:59:00.013+01:00

The first 15 seconds of this track is, I think, one of the most amazing things ever recorded. Nothing else I've heard comes out of your stereo like this. There are plenty of other Mary Chain tracks that I listen to more often and which are better songs, but as a listening experience this section is unsurpassed in its heavyosity.

I mention this in the wake of the reissues, particularly Psychocandy. Rather than giving us a load of previously released b-sides I wish they'd fling open the vaults and give us a mindnumbingly detailed account of how this singular album and its contemporary tracks were assembled (similar to the treatment that Pet Sounds got). Obviously accompanied by a sixty odd page booklet with tons of unseen photos and an Ian MacDonald style dissection.

Jesus & Mary Chain Cracked

Er...

2011-10-01T01:02:00.003+01:00

I got fed up with EARTH CAPITOL. Like so many of my utterances it was cribbed from the Simpsons (one of Kodos and Kang's exchanges) and the other day I saw they spelled it capital and that was just the last straw.

Living in the past

2011-09-06T13:07:00.013+01:00

Not so long ago I bought, for three reasons, Osbert Lancaster's Sailing to Byzantium at Oxfam: it has a nice cover; I like Osbert Lancaster's stuff and, having been to Rome, Istanbul is the city that I most want to visit and (as far as I know in ignorance of this book) I'd got the idea into my head that when I do go I'd like to arrive by boat. I see though, while looking for a scan of the book cover, that it's the title of a poem by Keats. Didn't know that. I love the word Byzantium. Imagine getting it (or byzantine, I suppose) on a triple word score in Scrabble.

Anyway, reading through the book, on reaching page 11 a paragraph on the monophysite controversy hit me like a hammer blow. I remembered it as a lecturer had used almost the exact wording years before. The odd sensation was heightened as a few days earlier I'd been flipping at random through St Augustine's Confessions and had landed on the part in which the pious Alypius is drawn into watching gladiatorial contests at the Coliseum*, which again I'd remembered very clearly hearing from the same lecturer.

My first feeling was a consciousness of walking in his footsteps (twenty years later than he'd have liked really, though I doubt Sailing to Byzantium was on the reading lists, the Confessions probably was though). Another part of me felt, at the discovery of these ingredients, something like disappointment, along the lines of, "So that's how how he came across as so knowledgeable and erudite, he just read a load of stuff. Pah!" . Simple, isn't it?

On a cold winter's night, years after I'd graduated, I walked into my local in Sheffield. It was very busy and as I stood defrosting at the bar surveying the throng I was astonished to see, sat in a corner, the spit and image of this old lecturer. "It can't be", I thought. And it probably wasn't, but as my dope-addled brain grappled with the situation the doppelganger looked across at me, smiled and raised his glass. That definitely freaked me out a bit and, still not certain, I didn't go over for a chat. I don't know, maybe it was him.

*Isn't it amazing what's on wikipedia?

Francophonic Thursday

2011-08-18T19:53:00.013+01:00

Davy H today posted Francoise Hardy's Voila, and so I drew his attention to the Voila-sampling Lord Knows Best which by co-incidence I'd bought last night. Meanwhile over on Across The Kitchen Table Drew responded to Davy with Jacqueline Taieb's Sept Heures Du Matin, which in a further co-incidence, I'd also bought last night, along with two other tracks, both of which were also French. Clearly the gods of blogging demand that I post one of those tracks right now.

The Liminanas Funeral Girl

Jazz odyssey

2011-08-15T15:26:00.010+01:00

My copy of Taschen's Jazz Covers has not, so far, thrown up any direct hits as far as the music is concerned. The only album featured in the book that I've bought is Monk Montgomery's Bass Odyssey - but I think that's because I was blown away by a couple of its tracks posted over on Aquarium Drunkard (I'm slightly embarrassed about how many records I've bought after hearing them there, I feel as though I'm being spoonfed). I don't think I'd have clicked play if I hadn't seen the sleeve in the book, so maybe we should chalk it up as a victory for Jazz Covers.

The plan is to give anything whose cover intrigues me a whirl and the inclusion of Keith Jarrett's Life Between The Exit Signs and Facing You led indirectly to his Restoration Ruin. I didn't know but Keith Jarrett is a top flight and rather scary pianist (he shouts at people who cough during his concerts). However, back in the day he recorded this album which, as a weird, folk type thing, is a complete aberration in his discography.

The delightfully Sixties sleeve notes describe it as, "Contemporary. Off-Beat. Very NOW". Richie Unterberger thinks it's only so so and the solitary Amazon commentator has some very harsh things to say about it. I, on the other hand, love it. Ramshackle and a bit whimsical he sounds like Arthur Lee a lot of the time and there's even a touch of Syd Barrett about the title track. The whole thing's got a sort of Sesame Street vibe to it.

Keith Jarrett All Right

Music from beneath the Earth's core

2011-07-16T14:33:00.013+01:00

I don't know if I'd heard of Tame Impala before I found myself listening to them last night and I can't remember what prompted me to give them a whirl. I started off with It Is Not Meant To Be, and straight away was thinking, "Nice" then following a chord change (or something changing anyway) at 1' 58" I thought, "This is amazing". After the sub-aquatic guitar solo (from 3' 18") I was hooked. I picked I Don't Really Mind at random next and I'd ordered the album before the track had finished.

Tame Impala I Don't Really Mind

Excerpt from a teenage record collection pt. 2

2011-07-15T10:01:00.012+01:00

A few days ago I was rummaging through a clothes drawer and my hand touched an item that was incredibly soft - I pulled it out and was amazed to see it was an old band tee shirt that I'd thought had been thrown out years ago. It was so tatty and the material was so thin you could half see through it. The band in question? Birdland. I don't know if you remember them? Obnoxious brummies who were officially deemed uncool a long time ago. The Manic Street Preachers were big fans but they soon shut up about it.

Anyway, I loved their first two eps and saw them live a couple of times. Easily the most ferocious band I ever saw, and not just the speed of the playing - they actually hit members of the crowd with their guitars and after about twenty minutes of playing smashed the guitars to bits. Cool, I thought. I was into the general shoegaziness of the times and they were coming from a different place altogether, I don't think I'd heard of Television or Patti Smith before.

A lot of music I was into (like Ride for instance) featured strummed waves of distorted guitar, in contrast to which Birdland's guitarist was amazingly dexterous. Ultimately though their singer couldn't sing, and when the tunes inevitably slowed down and got quieter this shortcoming was cruelly exposed. The end.

Years later, chatting to the friendly owner of the record shop in Wigan, we'd got onto bands we'd been really into as teenagers (you think Birdland were bad, his was U2). When I mentioned Birdland he raised his eyebrows, he'd known someone who'd worked at their label and said he'd heard some very strange stories about them. Sadly our conversation was cut short at this intriguing juncture, (I forget how exactly, probably my missus storming into the shop and demanding to know how much fucking longer I was going to be). Anyway, the strange, sort of thoughtful look on the chappie's face suggested that these tales he'd heard were beyond the run of the mill decadence of your average touring band.

This track is from their first ep the first side of which has three songs on it which they just run into each other, if you listen to the end you can hear them storming into the next track - still pretty good I think. I wanted to rip the whole side but unfortunately I'm struggling with my USB device at the moment. Instead I've burned it from Gigantic 2, a cd given away with Melody Maker in 1990, which I was delighted to find in a charity shop a few months back.

Birdland Hollow Heart

Percy Wyndham Lewis

2011-07-14T00:25:00.017+01:00

For someone regularly referred to as an overlooked figure Wyndham Lewis certainly has his fair share of exhibitions. The latest ,The Vorticists at the Tate, sees him share the bill with his fellow vorticists though in truth his were the only pictures I was interested in seeing. One other thing did catch my attention for more than a few seconds, a statue by Gaudier-Brzeska - The Singer which is better than anything else I've seen by him, and interesting from every angle.

If you're a fan of Lewis's work it's worth going along just to see his Advertisement for the Cabaret Theatre Club and several others (namely) Kermesse, The Dancers, Design for a Programme Cover - Kermesse all from 1912 and A Feast of the Overmen and Alcibiades from an unfinished series of illustrations for an edition of Timon of Athens (from 1913).

As well as being produced in the same year the first four of these pictures are very similar in content as well as style - smallish black and white (with touches of blue paint) ink drawings of dancing figures, with either blank, dead expressions or fierce grimaces. Incredibly incisive, each has more life in it than the rest of the larger abstract pieces on display put together. Sadly I can't find any decent versions of them on the internet.

My first exposure to Lewis was his Praxitella at Leeds City Art Gallery. Supposed to be a portrait of his lover Iris Barry - I've seen photographs of Iris Barry and don't see the resemblance myself. Maybe it makes sense of the title though, a reference to the story of the sculptor Praxiteles sleeping with his model Phryne. Bit of a long shot maybe, but then there must be a reason behind the name.

It's always tricky to put into words what you like about a painting, but perhaps with Praxitella part of it was a sense of anachronism - a flaking oil painting of what looked just like a sleek android (completed in 1922, ahead of Metropolis' Maria, of which it reminds me, by a few years).

Anyway, it got me interested in Wyndham Lewis - I borrowed a copy of Walter Michel's The Paintings of Wyndham Lewis from the library, had a stab at Tarr, flipped through a facsimile of Blast, went to a couple of galleries in Manchester (Portrait of the Artist as Raphael, the Lascar) and one in Sheffield (a tiny little portrait of James Joyce and a Timon of Athens portfolio). The current exhibition makes a lot of Blast - I've been through it a few times and find it quaint to be honest, but I accept it could have startled at the time.

There are a few photos of the artists involved and while the men's suits don't particularly date them, the dresses worn by the female members of the group really bring home the fact that this was all taking place in what was still an Edwardian world. There's a line in Blast that, ever since I read that Mark E. Smith was a fan, makes me smile - I can almost hear him barking it: DIABOLICS raptures and roses of the erotic bookshelves culminating in the PURGATORY OF PUTNEY.

In addition to Tarr I started The Childermass a couple of times and there's a copy of The Revenge for Love at my parents somewhere. Otherwise Julian Symons' Essential Wyndham Lewis left me decided that his writing was rather dense to the point of being, in the words of somebody whose name escapes me, unreadable. I remember reading somewhere Anthony Burgess's comparison of Mervyn Peake and Wyndham Lewis as alone (together) in the British cultural landscape as masters both of drawing and literature. While I do find Peake's writing dense (at least the Gormenghast books), it is also brilliant, somehow more controlled than Lewis's language. But I can't say I think that much of his illustration.

With Lewis it's the opposite, for me he's foremost a visual artist. I think I'll always prefer his pre-WW1 drawings but I find pictures from all his periods attractive and wish a career-spanning exhibition could be staged in the UK at some point. As it is, with his work scattered about here and there, each exhibition has its treats - this one brings the Cabaret Theatre Club poster and Kermesse from Cornell and Yale respectively. And the Portraits exhibition a while back saved me from a trip to Durban that I was never going to make to see his famous portrait of T.S. Eliot.

My opinion of Lewis's writing (based unfairly perhaps on a relatively small sample of his output) and Lewis himself changed when, most unexpectedly, I came across a copy Blasting & Bombardiering in a bookshop on a rainy day. Prior to this my take on Lewis had been formed mainly from Jeffrey Meyer's sympathetic biography The Enemy which I first read as a callous teenager, going through it again more recently it strikes me as one of the saddest stories I've ever read.

While I thought Meyer's exculpatory take on the allegations of Lewis' anti-semitism and fascism were probably fair I'd come away from the book with the impression that Lewis was a formidable character and a bit too full of himself. This was dispelled within the first few pages of Blasting & Bombardiering, by a self-deprecating comment on his book the Lion and the Fox:

Take the Lion and the Fox. That was a big book, too, all about Shakespeare's politics. You can imagine how many people read that!

This, of course, seriously makes me want to read it. Despite the fact that a large part of the book deals with the insanity of World War One it's extremely droll and, given his absence from my Penguin book of modern quotations, were I compiling entries for a book of quotations here are a couple from it that I think are worth having:

Need I say that there is nothing as romantic as war? If you are 'a romantic', you have not lived if you have not been present at a battle, of that I assure you..If your mind is of a romantic cast, there is nothing for it, I'm afraid. The likelihood that you will get your head blown off cannot weigh with you for a moment.

Lewis was part of the artillery and not on the actual front line, though on one occasion he accompanies a gung ho commanding officer into the unsettled No Man's Land immediately after a battle:

We met an infantry party coming up, about ten men, with their earthern faces and heads bowed, their eyes turned inward as it seemed, to shut out this too-familiar scene. As a shell came rushing down beside them, they did not notice it. There was no sidestepping death if this was where you lived. It was worth our while to prostrate ourselves, when death came over-near. We might escape, in spite of death. But they were its servants.

But they were its servants - what a line.

I never studied WW1 at school (at least not for O level or A level) so I don't know if Blasting & Bombardiering is generally on reading lists. It should be. While it seems to be his doom to be of marginal interest only every now and again, to have produced such a riveting (and uncharacteristically straightforward) eyewitness account of one of the seismic events in world history should ensure that every school child knows his name, if only through this one book.

Two nines clash

2011-06-20T23:20:00.009+01:00

The other day Ally at Dusty Sevens posted Get Up And Use Me by the Fire Engines. Because she doesn't like it. I think. Anyway, I thought it was great and one thing led to another and I discovered Nectarine No. 9. This is what I always hoped the Apples in Stereo or the Lilys would sound like: laidback psychedelia (those whoopwhoopwhoop bits). Throw in the fact that nine has always been my lucky number and it's all totally irresistible.

Nectarine No. 9 I Love Total Destruction

Lord Sitar

2011-06-07T11:26:00.008+01:00

Turning over the pages in today's little Guardian supplement I was almost startled by the stark elegance of Ravi Shankar. Given this and his cultural contribution I'd say he was an excellent candidate for a statue. And sitars are such beautiful looking instruments as well, it'd be great.

On a final note: what man looking at that picture could fear the onset of baldness?

Campaign for real record shops

2011-05-28T22:45:00.015+01:00

A while back I wrote of my joy at discovering a cafe in Kingston (the Eden Cafe, sadly now defunct). Fantastic though that experience was it was as nothing compared to finding, in the same town today, the Collectors Record Centre. A proper second hand record shop. It's been there twenty years apparently. I've been coming into Kingston for ages and had absolutely no idea. There ought to be a little directory or something.

Hall of mirrors

2011-05-27T11:40:00.009+01:00

The latest track that I'm playing to death, from the excellent Saigon Rock & Soul, Vietnamese Classic Tracks 1968 - 1974. An album (and label) that brings home how vast an ocean of music there is out there.

Thanh Mai Long, Uneven Hair

Le Top Cafe

2011-05-24T21:18:00.013+01:00

I've been seeking out and visiting new greasy spoons on a fairly regular basis for the last few months, the only reason I haven't mentioned any of them is that none have been that great. Thinking back I should probably have given H's Cafe on Blackshaw Road in Tooting a write up, it was perfect as far as layout and decor go, and with a nice relaxing view of a graveyard - but the chips were a bit dry. With hindsight though I'd say it's a safe bet that I'll be popping in again whenever I'm over that way.

Anyway, my cafe dry spell well and truly came to an end today with a visit to The (or Le) Top Cafe on Richmond Road (on the run up to Richmond Bridge on the Middlesex side). I've been passing the place for years but never had the time to stop in the morning and it was always shut by the time I was heading back.

Above, my standard sausage, egg and chips - at first glance the chips look a bit soggy perhaps and they've done that weird sausage slicing thing. It was however extremely tasty.

As well as serving great grub it's a lovely, unspoiled cafe environment - lots of potted plants and walls adorned with an eclectic selection of pictures in rickety frames. Also, though I was in a hurry today, I'd imagine it's better than your average cafe for people watching, having a longer front along the pavement than other similar establishments.

I reach that

2011-05-05T16:54:00.006+01:00

I discovered this the other day, I can't quite remember how, other than through the track Love is Everyone.

It sounds straightforward enough in its own weird way, although apparently the instrument (a tiple) is quite tricky to play. Just strumming and a voice - I suspect the simpler music seems the harder it's been to pull off. Maybe the secret ingredient is soul.

Ed Askew Peter & David

The twang's the thang

2011-04-27T20:52:00.005+01:00

From Magic Alphabet a seventeen track album using only the humble jews harp (with a bit of tambourine sometimes). Like the tampura track I posted ages ago it's hard to believe such a simple instrument can make such an otherworldly and somehow futuristic sound. I know it's highly repetitious but I find it such a fascinating noise, conjuring up an image of a ravenous pan-dimensional worm gnawing away at the fabric of the universe. Just me? Anyway, a bit reminiscent of Spacemen 3's Suicide or, in places, some of your more minimal acid house (my favourite kind).

Daniel Higgs Cosmic Equinox

Still on Daniel Higgs but this time from the snappily titled Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot. A good one for the walk to work I used to find, stick with it for the all too brief stretch of chiming harmonics from 4'24"

Daniel Higgs Spectral Hues

More twee vicar?

2011-03-28T14:06:00.006+01:00

Dead Jazzmen, unhinged rockabilly, French sci fi comic illustrations and dub reggae - time, perhaps, for something of a more obvious beauty.

Magpahi. Probably at the top of the list of artists that I want to see play live. The main draw is her voice, but also the interesting instruments: xylophone, recorder, harmonium (or variations on). I posted her song Seed a while back. Brisk and a little bit twee (it contains the phrase,"not even a small bumble bee"). I don't mind twee and I love that track but it took me a while to follow it up with her six track ep - mainly, I think, because I thought it was only available as a download. Anyway, this is from that.

Magpahi Horses In The Night

Flook

2011-03-27T16:14:00.012+01:00

Browsing the shelves of Oxfam the other lunchtime I saw, and immediately snapped up, a copy of I, Flook. On the face of it an autobiography of the eponymous star of the long running cartoon strip in the dreaded Daily Mail, though (as I knew), really written by the always interesting George Melly. I've never read any of the actual strips (albums of which go for about £30 each when they're available). Flook is a funny little creature from the Stone Age, possibly a woolly mammoth, but it's not clear. He (I think he's a he) has lots of skills and attributes that you wouldn't normally attribute to a mammoth, and he gets into lots of quite amusing adventures.

Anyway, my curiosity was aroused by the fact that this book was written by Melly during the period of his life covered in the first part of his autobiography, one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read. In common with that book it also has excellent illustrations by the cartoonist Trog. Having read Owning Up to death a bit I thought I, Flook might provide some further scraps of insight into the great Melly's life. This view was encouraged when I saw that pictures of a character named Scoop were blatantly based on Melly (see below, and what nice shoes!).

As I scanned the pages a description of bleary eyed gamblers stumbling into the dawn to see Albert Bridge gilded by the morning sun jumped out at me. "Aha", I thought,"clearly informed by the years the author spent living in Margarette Terrace", and felt quite pleased with myself. At one point Flook refers with fondness to the decor of his flat, a feature of which is a phrenologists' head - while over in Owning Up George recounts his own joy at turning up just such an object at a junk shop in Grimsby.

Perhaps not staggering revelations, but little pieces of a puzzle nonetheless. As it happens the author takes up three pages in Owning Up on Flook, admitting that his lifestyle was all grist to the mill or, as he puts it, "Flook meat".

Bad case of the snakes

2011-03-13T00:19:00.019Z

Dan Sartain was possibly the last act I got into through hearing on MTV. Off the back of Walk Among the Cobras I bought his first album and then his second when that came out. Both are excellent.

Dan Sartain Walk Among The Cobras

I don't know why it occurred to me to post this now, I certainly didn't know he had a new album coming out. But he has and the first single off it is called Fuck Friday, Fuck Saturday, Fuck Sunday. It's 58 seconds long and is a work of utter genius, single-handedly rendering the Ramones' entire back catalogue redundant. I especially like the line about the barbecue. Listen here.

I promise I have not been bought by One Little Indian.

Moebius

2011-03-12T14:02:00.022Z

Back in January I commented on how much a piece of Egyptian sculpture I'd seen reminded me of the work of the French illustrator Moebius. I was, it turns out, actually thinking of La Foire aux Immortels by Bilal, another French illustrator. But anyway, I thought it was Moebius and when I looked him up on the internet my brain was flooded by his vast body of intricate and mindblowing work. The best site I found was Quenched Consciousness which, I don't know if you've noticed, I put in my links.

Other than the work itself the most interesting thing I turned up was that the largest exhibition of his work ever put on was currently running. The only thing was it was in Paris. However, I was feeling saucy so I booked myself a Eurostar ticket.

I suspect the first drawing I ever saw by Moebius was the third panel of this cityscape from The Long Tomorrow, which I think was included in some long forgotten sci fi anthology I borrowed from my school library. I'm a big fan of dense, vertiginous future cityscapes and this depiction is possibly the most simply satisfying I've ever seen. The original artwork (in black and white) was on display.

This coloured version is well done - most of the art on display was just black ink on white paper and the lines were so sharp. The addition of colour to most editions of his work seems to bland them out. Seeing the crisp, original pages in the subterranean gallery at the exhibition came close to bringing on sensory overload - it was all I could do to fight the urge to run, gibbering, between all the immaculate little masterpieces. I nearly wore my eyeballs out staring so intently at a picture entitled Chaoma (detail in the second column below) and three pages from Incal Book 4 (detail in first column top).

It's tough finding good images of the pictures I wanted on the internet, and even harder to get hold of copies of paper editions (Moebius should never be out of print). Sadly, I can't find any images at all of his depiction of Jimi Hendrix's disembodied head making its haphazard way, on ectoplasmic tentacles, down some freaky highway. Again, like all the best stuff on display, done in black and white - and somehow, despite how utterly clean the lines of the illustration were, managing to give an incredibly powerful suggestion of motion.

The exhibition catalogue cost 49 euros but having had a chance to look at it I decided it was worth every cent. While I was flipping through it though a bloke came up to the counter, asked about it (in French) and after a short conversation went away looking a bit disappointed. There was a little sign on the counter about le catalogue. I could only make out the last sentence which said "Thank you for your understanding in this matter". Hmm, the preceding sentence all seemed to hinge on this word epuise. After a bit of lurking I strode towards the counter and launched into my spiel: "Je suis anglais. Je ne parle pas francais". The attendant was very good about it but it was clear in about half a second that he didn't speak English. "Le catalogue...", I continued. "Ah, epuise", he said. I pulled my best puzzled face. "Er...sold out", he managed. "Ah, merci". And that was that. Bummer.

I had about four hours before my train so I went for a wander. I remembered from a previous visit a particular book shop and set off to find it. I didn't and drifted to a halt outside Notre Dame. After a refreshing slice of pizza I turned back into the Latin Quarter and immediately hit the motherlode, which, if you're ever comic shopping in Paris, is Rue Dante. Reprints were available in most of them but they were a bit too glossy.

The last shop I went in had a load of slightly earlier, slightly less glossy reprints. I nearly bought the first Humanoides Associes anthology but decided, after about 30 minutes, that I shouldn't really shell out about thirty quid for the sake of the four pages of artwork that I loved. Of course now I'm kicking myself. This was one of the pages that tempted me so.

Frequencies

2011-02-28T22:47:00.011Z

Moving chronologically forward into the realm of dub, a couple of things from Tunes from the Missing Channel. Despite being a classic this album seems to have dropped off the map a bit. Well, it's not available digitally in any of the usual places. "One of the most upfront dub albums ever recorded" pontificated one of my friends at the time. He was not wrong. It's all very good but here's side one, track one - I'm not sure what the instrument is that comes in at 41 seconds but if you're in the right mood and you're playing it loud enough, it might just rip your head off. I imagine it'll have quite a nice effect on your graphic equalizer as well.

Dub Syndicate Ravi Shankar Pt1

Side one, track two is This Show is Coming which, much as I love it, is showing its age a bit due to some overly snazzy keyboards. So I've ruthlessly swapped it for a younger model - a version from Pay It All Back Volume 2 featuring Lee Scratch Perry spouting his inimitable cosmological, messianic stuff over the top of it. Rather a long intro, the track proper kicks in at 57 seconds.

Lee Scratch Perry Train to Doomsville

Buzz feeling

2011-02-25T22:13:00.014Z

Inspired by the general reggae goings on around Reggae Britannia (which I didn't watch) and by an article I read yesterday about Rastamouse, here is one of my favourite reggae tunes. Though is it reggae? It's very slow - but it's Bob Marley produced by Lee Perry, so it must be reggae.

Weirder than your average though, it certainly seems to be the odd one out on my copy of The Best of Bob Marley 1968 - 1972 on which it's credited to B. Marley - the most rudimentary of searches reveals the writer in fact to be Glen Adams. Over the years I've probably spent a few minutes pondering the meaning of the lyrics. I can't remember if I'd come to any conclusions, but if I had they were wrong.

Bob Marley Mr Brown

Minor public building

2011-02-22T22:02:00.017Z

Cleland House. Until recently the home of the prison service. It looks more like it should have been the headquarters for the British Interplanetary Society, I think. I was often distracted by its jutting profile while on my way to work and made several mental notes to myself to take some snaps. So when I saw it was going to be demolished I made sure I put my camera in my bag. I'd have liked to have gone to the top of Millbank Tower and taken a photo from there.

White rabbits

2011-02-01T06:22:00.007Z

On a dark night shortly before or after my seventeenth birthday I found myself at a party thrown by a girl I did not know. By the open window a curtain billowed, stained orange by the streetlight; all the while, to my intermittent distraction, dragons flapped in inky silhouette across its surface. Looking about the carpet writhed with dark patterns and the floor beneath it undulated gently. At some point I remember handling a rough ceramic vase, through the pores of which I could see and hear lava crackling. I was tripping fairly hard.

I don’t think I’d noticed the music until a friend went to change the disc, only, on experiencing some difficulty, to report from across the room that the drawer had been glued shut. We blandly accepted his assessment of the situation. So, for however long, we sat there and listened to Treasure by the Cocteau Twins. I slowly realised that I had to own the album and the next day I floated into Our Price I think it was, and plucked it from the racks.

Whenever I play the album four lines scored into its inner sleeve always give cause for a poignant moment. They were made by Tig, my brother’s cat, long since dead.

Cocteau Twins Lorelei

Pilgrim's progress

2011-01-31T16:35:00.031Z

I was chatting to my brother the other night and the topic of film adaptations came up. He was lamenting the dire version of A Wizard of Earthsea that he'd seen. It hasn't been done yet, and so I don't think I mentioned it, but I've thought for a long time that The Last American would make a great film. The story covers the first few days of Ulysses S. Pilgrim after he emerges from suspended animation twenty years after World War Three.

It came out on Epic (a Marvel subsiduary) back in 1990 and I'm not sure how I would've heard about it. I imagine it was the artwork that persuaded me into buying them, though possibly the storyline - nuclear war was my most morbid fear throughout childhood and I find myself drawn to the topic (my brother's the same about sharks).

Post nuclear apocalypse scenarios aren't very fashionable at the moment but there was meant to be a trend emerging a while back for bleak sci fi (Moon being the only example I can think of right now).

The artwork, (by long time favourite and regular 2000AD contributor Mike McMahon) is, as befits such a storyline, brutal. Whatever humour can be mustered from the situation comes from the dialogue between Pilgrim and his three robot helpers (Able, Baker and Charlie - a nod to Huey, Dewey and Louis in Silent Running?).

Here are a few random pages that I particularly like. Copies can be picked up for buttons on ebay.

And finally, I'd have this as the soundtrack.

Laurie Anderson O Superman

It always seemed to me that this song was about the start of World War Three. The lyrics "Here come the planes" and then "Smoking or non-smoking" and "Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay theses couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" - highly suggestive to me of the bomber in Dr Strangelove, unstoppable once the process has been set in motion.

And the lyric asking "Who is this?" and the voice replying, "This is the hand, the hand that takes" a reference maybe to the bit in the book of Daniel when the hand appears and writes "Mene, mene, shekel upharsin" - I find it a pleasingly spooky idea that god might reveal himself, even if only to one person, at the climax of humanity's hubris.

In the garden

2011-01-18T13:31:00.005Z

When I was a kid I didn't buy albums, I didn't notice that groups tended to release song after song. I lived, as was only right, in the moment and was continually knocked sideways by random singles. The earliest that I remember being really addicted to were The Model, Senses Working Overtime and Golden Brown - all three of which, when I check, I see were released between Dec 81 and Jan 82 - pinpointing the dawning of my pop consciousness.

At about this time a genuine appreciation of their music, and a certain amount of peer pressure, led to me declaring that Madness were officially my favourite group and I bought my first ever album (One Step Beyond) and maintained a preference for this earlier, more ska-ified version of the band.

At the time I considered Madness's streak of pop genius (Tomorrow's (Just Another Day), Michael Caine and Yesterday's Men for example) as something of a loss of form and when the single Sweet Dreams came along what might previously have been just another one hit fixation saw the purchase of my second ever album Sweet Dreams and the Eurythmics assume the mantle of my favourite band (later sharing the honour with Talking Heads) until sometime in 1987, when Indie finally beckoned me across the generation gap.

So, the Eurythmics - as big a fan as I was I'd never heard of their first album In the Garden until I discovered it, oddly enough, while flipping through the collection of the friend who had introduced me to Spacemen 3. I gave it a spin and absolutely loved it: my old beloved Eurythmics but without the histrionic vocals and the worst excesses of eighties drum and synth production and, on the plus side, fuzzy guitars and the odd squeak of feedback. Definitely a great lost album.

Anyway, here's my favourite track off it, one of the more gentle tunes from Annie Lennox's endless supply of bummed out love songs.

Eurythmics Never Gonna Cry Again

Ahmes Meryet Amun

2011-01-17T19:18:00.008Z

Following up on that exhibition of Ghanaian coffins I went to the British Museum the other day and tracked down the two examples they have there. They're in the Living and Dying Room - one was a big eagle very similar to one of those at the exhibition but it was the other one, in the shape of a giant Nikon camera, that was really worth seeing. It was, for reasons of space I suppose, very high up though, so you couldn't get a brilliant look at it. Anyway, having seen that I thought I might as well have a wander.

Over the years I must have been in the museum literally umpteen times and out of all the monumental bits of Egyptian sculpture there this is easily my favourite - it looks exactly like an illustration by Moebius. There's something so satisfying about it, the shape of the hair (a Hathor wig according to this). I looked her up when I got home and found her in my copy of Faces of Pharaohs. I find it slightly mindblowing that, should I travel to Cairo, I could go to the museum there and gaze upon the actual (highly mummified) face of the woman whose three and a half thousand year old portrait this is.

Ping!

2011-01-16T15:26:00.009Z

I stepped out of my front door yesterday to find a copy of Lightbulbs by Fujiya & Miyagi resting on the doormat (a nice big vinyl copy, on account of the great sleeve artwork there). It's another album I'd been led to by the inclusion of one of its tracks a MOJO cover cd. The track in question was the drowsily lovely Goosebumps.

Fujiya & Miyagi Goosebumps

For the first however many listens I thought this track was actually the last part of the preceding track (Hot Chip's We're Looking For a Lot of Love) such was the excellence of that particular bit of sequencing.

Creation myth

2011-01-14T19:59:00.003Z

Here and there I've spoken disparagingly of Bobby Gillespie (his often painful media persona, the vast gulf between his opinion of his abilities and the quality of his musical output, his blathering on and on about being strung out on heroin). And so, in the interests of balance, some good things. His haircut, not so much these days but earlier on - a classic. And secondly, by and large I find Primal Scream's music a bit... bloodless, but here are two of their tracks that I must admit I do really like, Imperial from when I was young and When the Kingdom Comes from when I was almost young.

Primal Scream Imperial

Primal Scream When the Kingdom Comes

Roving about for a little picture to go at the top of the post my eye was caught by the cover for Shoot Speed featuring Mr Gillespie in more innocent times, against a suitably pop art background. By co-incidence it features both the tracks. Only released in Japan for some reason, the tracklisting looks pretty good I think, expensive though.

Noli me tangere

2011-01-04T07:53:00.002Z

A few months ago I got all excited about Soul Jazz Records. Scrolling through their discography I was struck by the songs on the album Polyphonic Voices of Georgia. The album information mentions that this music had been, "proclaimed by Unesco as one of the Oral and Intangible Masterpieces of Humanity". This intrigued me quite a bit and led me to this.

Anyway, one day over the Christmas break I arranged to go walking in the Peak District with some friends. As the train pulled out of Sheffield station I saw that picture of the weird creature above. Given the condition of the building I don't imagine it's going to be there for too long and I really wanted to take a photo, my own little attempt to preserve something that while not actually intangible seems destined for a fleeting existance. I'll be honest I didn't get round to taking a photo, but luckily the good people at Unurth have.

In further linkage the artist who drew it goes by the name of Phlegm and has his (?) own blog full of a load more fascinating images.

Have yourself a hillbilly Christmas

2010-12-22T17:01:00.019Z

I decided to get this the other day after hearing one of the tracks on MOJO's Electra compilation. I was vaguely aware of them due to Gene Clark having recorded a couple of albums with one of them (looked it up: Doug). It's a full on bluegrass affair which, if I'm remembering the blurb in the magazine right, was recorded as a fuck off to the label which backfired by becoming a hit (I love it when that happens). Seems harsh though, I'd have thought Electra was a very cool set up.

The Dillards Old Joseph

I'm safely tucked away up north for Christmas now, after a nightmare journey. I think I might grow a beard.

Tickle on the tum

2010-12-15T23:20:00.020Z

From time to time it's occurred to me to write some things about where I live and now, inspired by a property type article about the place in today's Evening Standard, here's my guide to Twickenham.

The Stadium. I've never been to a sporting event or a gig here. Just an art deco pottery fair. And I didn't buy anything. So, moving on into the town itself, being a delicate indie-type I don't venture into the high street pubs - the Cabbage Patch and the George etc. The closest I get to entering a manly, rugger pub is the St Margarets Tavern over in St Margarets (which, when I think, I have sort of written a bit about).

When it's not chock full of hearty types in Harlequin tops it's very relaxing and cosy for such a big pub. The food's very good too and one of my mates was always chuffed to drink there cos they did Becks on tap. It's across the road from Twickenham film studios where the Beatles recorded some bits of the Magical Mystery Tour I think, they did something there anyway. I imagine there's a good chance they had a few beers in the place.

Also in St Margarets is Ches' caff which does an excellent breakfast, though it was done up a while ago and now has a proper evening restaurant bit. This has rendered it ever so slightly poncified. Moving along into the main bit of Twickenham the article mentions Church Street which features the Fox, the only pub in central Twickenham that I drink in. The first time I stepped down into the place two old buffers puffing away on pipes had created a mighty fug. It is, of course, not like that now. A shame, the pipe smoke, the lower than street level floor and the riverside location gave it a piratical vibe.

Also good on Church Street is Langton's Bookshop. I tend only to buy kids book in there to be honest. It scores heavily though for having a tearoom in the back - very comfy. Last stop for me on Church Street is Sweet Memories, which as the name suggests, is one of those boutique sweet shops that have sprung up recently to cater for sweet toothed nostalgists such as me, and for which trend I'm grateful. I noticed a few years ago that newsagents had stopped selling boiled sweets - and I do like to have a quarter of aniseed rock in my coat pocket when I go for a long walk.

Round the corner (past Flood Lane, look up to see commemorative plaque in the wall opposite showing the level of a flood in 1775) is the Thames. On the right is Eel Pie Island. Sadly you no longer haul yourself across on a rope ferry, there is instead quite a striking, high-arched bridge. My wife's known this part of the world for longer than me and the first time we walked down to this bit of the river I said something like, "That looks interesting" to which she casually replied something like "Oh yeah, it's Eel Pie Island". I couldn't believe it - as a big fan of both George Melly and the Rolling Stones the place was semi-mythological to me. I raced over the bridge to explore and...was pretty disappointed really. It's all private, as far as I could make out the general public only have access to a few yards of pathway. There's an article about it in this month's Uncut actually.

Along the Thames the other way (towards Richmond) you go past another good pub, the White Swan. It's long been an ambition of mine to get there early on a misty winter morning and get a window seat. Most times though it's been sunny afternoons and I've sat in the beer garden, which floods when the tide comes in. Trevor Bayliss, ladykiller and inventor of the clockwork radio, can occassionally be seen sat seductively in his powder blue E Type Jag outside this pub. Such a beautiful car.

Back into Twickenham and the main drag, as the article says, is a disappointment. There are plenty of charity shops, though not much vinyl to be had. The high street is long and featureless - it could do with a cinema round about where the big timber merchants is now. It needs a bit of character - which,speaking for myself, I think a greasy spoon and a decent record shop would go a long way towards providing.

Back to reality - trudging along the next good thing you come to is Angelo's. A slighly scruffy Italian restaurant. The owner (Angelo?) is, on the other hand, a very dapper Italian gentleman, probably in his sixties now but still capable of carrying off his dazzling tonic suit. Slightly further up is Panda Garden which does the best beef chow mein I've ever eaten, but my wife hates it. As a consequence I'm usually dispatched to get the Chinese from the brilliantly named, and admittedly superior, Ewok over in St Margarets.

Moving beyond Panda Garden (past the brand new tattoo parlour) you come to a railway bridge. Being a provincial country mouse I always get a big kick out of seeing trains going by overhead. It is, in my opinion, one of the most urban things ever. Walking under the bridge you cross from TW1 into TW2 and in doing so you are now unlikely to be eligible for free delivery from takeaways in places such as Mortlake and Sheen. Emerging from the shadow of the arches you are faced with the impressive horse chestnut lined triangle of Twickenham Green, the easternmost surviving portion of Hounslow Heath apparently.

Arthur's Restaurant there does a decent bacon sandwich but I mention it mainly because I'm certain that the building was originally a large (probably Edwardian) public lavatory, it's got that look about it. On the opposite side of the green is the cricket pavilion. According to their election literature the local Tories are very proud of the pavilion, and I admit it is a lovely building. Cricket is played on the widest part of the green but that doesn't stop them from hitting the cars parked around it. I've never seen them hit a moving car but it'd only take a good six.

A row of shops runs along the green the most fantastic of which is Shepperton Design Studio. Many's the time I've stood gawping at the reflec armour on display. However tempting the Tie Fighter pilot's outfit is I don't think I'd get away with buying one considering the sulks I've gone into when I've discovered the true price of some of my wife's handbags. I'd never, ever live down spending over a grand on a plastic spacesuit which I'd almost certainly never wear outside my flat.

If you've travelled this far and fancy a curry you'll be faced with a choice between the Green Spice and the Taste of Raj which, oddly, are right next door to each other. I favour the Green Spice on the grounds that it has booths and a mirrored mosaic bar that is a classic of its type. And I suppose it's a few feet closer to my flat that the Taste of Raj. A little further along you'll see the burnt out remains of two shops - a post office and a laundrette. Allegedly the fire was caused by a cannabis factory in the flat above the post office. I fantasize about turning the laundrette into a greasy spoon, it's just the right shape and size and the door and windows arrangement is perfect for a caff.

Finally, a bit further along, Crane Park - a long thin park that stretches alongside the River Crane (I noticed in the Guardian's obituary of Monty Sunshine that one of his first bands had been the River Crane Jazz Band, Twickenham was clearly a hotbed of post-war beatniks). I remember a few years ago commenting in the pub on the pleasant ease of walking by rivers, only to be slighty crestfallen at a colleague's prosaic observation that this was probably down to the fact that such walks were almost guaranteed to be along the flat. Hmm, good point I suppose.

Anyway, Crane Park has been on a couple of occasions the route along which, in a fit of post New Year disgust, I've taken myself out for a jog. Predictably enough I was defeated after five minutes or so, my mouth filling up with warm saliva and terrible aches wracking my body. So each time it turned into a slightly delirious amble through the nature reserve there. The park features an unusual, fairy tale looking tower, ironically in fact the sole remnant of the once extensive munitions industry that existed here. The towers were required for the manufacture of shot, which was made by pouring molten lead through a gauze at the top of the tower into a vat of cold water below. I'd never thought about how shot was made before. Will Self writes a bit about it one of his books (Psycho Too, by the sound of it).

Cold comfort

2010-12-09T18:35:00.009Z

I usually post tunes at random fairly soon after I discover them and I’ve been meaning to post this for ages. But anyway, as you may have noticed, it’s freezing so not only an amazing track, but also highly topical. I can’t remember where I first ran into it – possibly it was mentioned in a Stereolab interview or something.

Wendy & Bonnie The Winter is Cold

In further cold-weather-related-trend behaviour I’m sporting a fantastic duffle coat at the moment. I’d been on the lookout for ages – I had thought I’d pick one up at an Army and Navy Surplus easy but they all seem to have closed down when I wasn’t looking. The purist in me would only settle for a very basic style and on that score the high street was a dead loss. I did find one that I liked in a department store but when I checked the price tag it was £250 – I just thought, “Has the world gone mad?” I got a secondhand one for thirty quid in the end.

Cult corner

2010-12-08T20:01:00.009Z

I've never been that bothered about bootlegs but years ago, after reading an article in MOJO or some such, I went on a search for Pink Floyd's Vegetable Man. I'd heard the version of it on the b side of the Mary Chain's Upside Down, and fine though that is, the lyrics are drowned under an avalanche of feedback. I approached likely looking stalls from Camden to Portobello Road only to find the vendors there couldn't help and seemed reluctant to discuss bootlegs. Eventually I did acquire a copy on vinyl but it was very murky indeed.

Anyway, about a week ago (I don't know why I hadn't thought before) I realised I could probably, quite easily, find a decent version of it online somewhere. And so I did. Because I could never clearly make them out I'd looked up the lyrics ages ago and they're some of my favourites ever. Incredibly simple - I think what I find so compelling about them is that they're so direct. A description of his physical trappings that's so straight forward that it becomes weird, especially the bit about his watch.

Pink Floyd Vegetable Man

Burrito No 1

2010-12-02T10:38:00.006Z

Going to the same sandwich shop week in week out, no matter how good, is one of those little things that can have you wondering what you're doing with your life. Here lies Artog, he ate about 10,000 salami and salad baguettes. So I was pleased, walking through the side streets of SW1 yesterday, to find Picante tucked away on Greencoat Row. (I also noticed that the Cardinal is having a refurb - I hope they keep the dinginess.)

My patronage often seems to be the kiss of death for any range of establishments, so I recommend this fantastic eatery in an attempt to preserve the only source of burritos within easy walking distance of my work place.

Hall of Bright Carvings

2010-12-01T21:49:00.014Z

I read about this exhibition in the Observer, a little article accompanied by a picture of the car or the eagle, I can't remember. The first thing that sprang to mind was the Hall of Bright Carvings. I was keen to go, and when I saw that it was only a ten minute walk from work that settled it.

I’m a bit wary of small galleries and it was weird compared to the anonymity of a bigger gallery, to stand there next to the gallery owner in a room that was maybe only just twice the size of my living room. But the owner (Jack) was a thoroughly nice guy, very chatty about the whole phenomenon.

My favourite was the aeroplane - would they take the wings off to bury it, I wondered, otherwise you’d be looking at digging a seriously big hole in the ground. It wasn't built for a pilot but for an old lady whose unfulfilled wish it had been to fly in one. Others were more representative of their final occupant, lions were popular for warriors and the eagle was for a king.

Another sign of my advancing years, the gallery owner seemed so young. Which brings us naturally enough to mortality and death. Until quite recently it’s fair to say that I spent too much time worrying about death. No matter how long you contemplate it I don’t think you can ever get your head round it.

When I would turn my mind to the practicalities of it all I thought I'd like to be buried, and I previously imagined a cardboard coffin. Now it seems a shame not to try to come up with some everyday item, a freakishly large wooden version of which I could be interred in. Maybe a cigarette packet. Benson and Hedges. As I’ve repeatedly said, I don’t really smoke, but I do enjoy my lapses and I’m pretty certain that the best part of two decades that I spent idiotically puffing away will be at the root of my demise.

A thousand years

2010-11-14T00:52:00.006Z

While reading about Trinity House I found a link to this - through a link to London's only lighthouse Trinity Buoy Wharf, which is now a venue for cultural happenings and flagship host of Longplayer, which I'd never heard of before. I think it's truly mindblowing. Not the sound so much (though I do really like it) but just the thought of it. It reminds me a bit of the vestal virgins keeping the flame going in their temple.

Itchy and scratchy

2010-11-13T13:28:00.012Z

Before I moved to London I used to get the train down a lot to visit my girlfriend and for the journey I'd always get a newspaper or two and a music magazine to read. While some people clearly found a couple of hours on a train a bit of a drag I loved it, especially when they still had smoking carriages. (The same with hospital waiting rooms - there's always someone moaning about the wait, I regard it as a golden opportunity to thoroughly read the papers - once they had the Ashes showing on the telly as well, I could have sat there all day.)

Anyway, back in the day I left a free cd given away with one of my train journey magazines at my girlfriend's flat - generally these cds were poor but on one there was a track that I found utterly beguiling, its appeal heightened because I only got to listen to it every three or four weeks (I never took it back with me for some reason). I always meant to pick up the band's album but before I did the cd was mislaid in a move and I realised I'd forgotten both the track and the band name.

I like having a half remembered track or two to be hunting down at any given time, but as the years went by it occurred to me that I'd probably had it with this one. My attempts to track it down were, it transpires, only hindered by my having a vague recall that the bandname contained the word hospital and that the female vocalist was Scottish.

But, wuffling round the blogosphere the other day I saw a band mentioned in a post and a little lightbulb pinged on above my head. Less than a minute later I was reunited with my long lost track.

The Paradise Motel Derwent River Star

This just leaves me now trying to track down a very brisk reggae track with the vocalist toasting over the top a lyric about "them old, old Europeans" and a Dub track that I can only describe as sounding quaintly science fiction spacey with a very tight whirring noise running through it. I despair of ever finding the Dub track.

Blustery with some helicopters

2010-10-26T19:05:00.009+01:00

I bumped into this on my walk home. Cool eh? I just missed seeing it land. There seemed to be a problem involving a coach outside the Tate.

Double dip

2010-10-19T19:39:00.018+01:00

The record shopping in Wales was very fine. I was heading to Porthmadog anyway to take a trip on the Festiniog Railway and a tip from the Plashing Vole put me onto Cob Records there. It's a serious establishment. As usual I had to go through everything as I always forget particular albums that I want, only that I'll know them when I see them - so I was delighted to so quickly chance on It's My Way by Buffy Sainte Marie (I often start with the Ss, I don't know why). My elation evaporated when I saw the price though: £22. I kept going and moments later found the less crucial but nonetheless intriguing Best of the Vibratrions but again reeled at the price tag: £42.

Later in the week I headed south and paid a visit to Hag's Records in Lampeter. Lampeter is where I went to college and in the three years I was there the almost daily purchases I made at Hag's provided a sizeable part of my collection. My customer loyalty was amply rewarded the first time I went back, about ten years after I graduated, when the great Hag himself walked in and, without any prompts on my part, recognised me straight away.

It's my favourite record shop for two reasons - I always find something that I really, really want there. And it's always incredibly cheap. This visit was no different and I was, very discreetly (it never does to show too much emotion on these occasions), ecstatic to find a copy of Buffy Sainte Marie's It's My Way for a mere fiver.

Buffy Sainte Marie Ananias

South Stack lighting

2010-10-16T20:12:00.010+01:00

I find lighthouses a bit terrifying for some reason. It may stem from a Dr Who story I vaguely remember set in one - featuring a classic blob-type creature killing off the occupants one by one. (I looked it up: The Horror of Fang Rock. Broadcast September 1977. I was five).

Lighthouses perched atop headlands I can deal with, in fact I'd love to live in one. But those standing in the sea, rearing up from the very waters themselves, I can hardly bear to look at them. I think because when I do I inevitably imagine myself in those waters desperately scabbling for a hold on the slippery walls. It isn't just a straightforward fear of drowning, even if I were safely afloat in a lifejacket and knew help was on the way I wouldn't be able to look up at my surroundings. I'm not sure what this is all about - possibly some kind of cosmic dread, like the sea is the universe or something.

Despite all that I'm quite into going to see lighthouses. While I was planning my recent holiday my research consisted of checking Lighthouses of England & Wales and The Modern Antiquarian (and, er...the Readers Digest Touring Guide to Great Britain). I'd been thinking more of heading south and so it was only a couple weeks before I set off that I looked north and realised Anglesey was in easy striking distance and that South Stack, somewhere I've wanted to visit for years, was seriously on the agenda. I did my homework and was gutted to discover that the lighthouse would be closed to the public from the end of September - a few days before I could get there.

I crossed the drab expanse of Anglesey to get there anyway and sure enough the little office was shut up. However, I obstinately made my way down the four hundred steps and, magically, found the gate across the little bridge unpadlocked. I snuck across and approached the tower. I didn't go right up to it as I could see an open door with paint pots lying about and I didn't fancy a telling off from some gruff, nautical type.

It was certainly a weird environment, half sacred precinct and half secret military installation (the latter effect heightened by the pair of jet fighters circling about). I don't know why I found the tower so sinister - it works, after all, unceasingly for good. But I dunno, its whiteness, its height, the barely audible turning of its great cyclopean eye and its remote location all added up to a very strange vibe.

The authority responsible for lighthouses in the UK is Trinity House, which I think sounds ancient, respectable and somehow quietly evil. And that was before I read that it was governed by a court of elder brethern, and presided over by a master, none other than arch-lizard HRH the Duke of Edinburgh himself.

C'est Fab, part deux

2010-10-04T09:11:00.019+01:00

Yesterday I killed two birds with one stone and saw the impossibly svelte Fabienne Delsol at the 100 Club. I'd never been to this legendary venue and apparently sky high rents are forcing it to close by Christmas - which, now that I've been, I can say would be a great shame - it's exactly the kind of club that I love. It's just the right size and last night it was reasonably full of blokes in snazzy cardigans and aging retro beauties.

The first support act, an instrumental three piece, efficiently cranked it out and I missed most of the second band as I went for a wander down Wardour Street in search of cigarettes. When I got back in I walked over to the stage and positioned myself near where the microphone had been set up and that was that - I'm so used to hardly being able to see bands it was weird to be standing two yards away, I didn't know quite where to look half the time.

The show was to promote her new album which I haven't heard but according to the blurb is meant to be a bit mellower than her previous output, but everything sounded pretty crunchy last night. The highlights for me, not very adventurously, were the ones I'd heard before, the best being the closer - a cover of early Quo tune When My Mind Is Not Live. After this they left the stage and someone (the club owner?) jumped up and tried to cajole them into an encore - Fabienne returned to the stage and said she'd sing if the band were up for it. They weren't. At least I think that's what happened - I was a bit drunk. I was hoping that they'd play My Love Is Like A Spaceship.

I was surprised at how low key the event was, I clearly have a tendency to assume that bands I like are bigger than they are - I was amazed when I saw Fabienne walk around the stage placing out the set lists and just generally hanging around throughout the evening. I'm fairly sure that kind of thing didn't happen at even the crummiest gigs I attended as a teenager. Someone's posted a tune from the very night on youtube already. My bowlcut makes an appearance from 1' 03" onwards.

American dream

2010-09-30T21:41:00.004+01:00

Today I achieved one of my longest standing ambitions - I ate a Twinkie (about five actually). If I'm honest I hadn't really thought about them for ages. But when I was a kid I used to see adverts for them (and for sea monkees) in the back of American comics and they were just one of the things that seemed to epitomise America. I haven't been to America but never doubted that one day I will, and on that day I'd buy and devour some Twinkies.

Anyway, a few weeks ago a quip from me within earshot of one of my wife's American friends led to a box of Twinkies being dispatched over the Atlantic. And the verdict? They're alright. A bit like miniature Victoria Sponges but without the jam. I expected them to be crunchier I think. Maybe if I deep-fried them?

Behind the sleeves

2010-09-23T23:14:00.010+01:00

The other week I was listening to Stereolab's Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night and while I sat there, stroking my chin, I admired the sleeve art. It had crossed my mind before that a lot of their sleeves, as well as being dead good, were also often in a similar style.

So I arose from my beanbag to do a little research, and a few minutes later I'd discovered my favourites were indeed the work of one man and on finding this very helpful webpage I realised that I'd unwittingly been into the work of Julian House for ages. Even the little covers he did for those MOJO compilations.

I'd heard of him in connection with the last Broadcast album but I think it was only after seeing the sleeves he'd done that I decided to have a listen to the Ghostbox catalogue. A lot of the music's a little too library for my liking (though And The Cuckoo Comes is one of the best things I've heard for ages). But again I love their sleeves, he's clearly in thrall to Penguin book design, in particular the Marber grid.

Anyway, back to Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, this is my favourite song on the album - despite their reputation I don't think tunes really come much more accessible than this.

Stereolab The Emergency Kisses

Oh, and this one as well. Another of my favourite musical moments at 0.10. I don't know what's making that noise but it sounds like the future.

Stereolab Op Hop Detonation

More autumn stone

2010-09-16T21:23:00.018+01:00

I thought I'd post these because it's autumn (I'm not complicated) and because I really like the sleeve there. Dead leaves and some nice Arnold Bocklin text, no wonder you see it called the Autumn Store from time to time.

The Small Faces What'cha Gonna Do About It

I never realised just how short this track is. It jumped on my first vinyl copy between 1:24 and 1:27, I still find it odd hearing the lyrics in full there. It also features a great stretch of feedback which ends with one of my favourite little musical moments at 1:10 when a piercing guitar note caroms off an organ jab.

The Small Faces Red Balloon

I only found out this was a Tim Hardin cover a few weeks ago, still prefer this version though.

Tony's place

2010-09-15T23:05:00.019+01:00

What with the onset of autumn and the cooling of the weather I find the call of the greasy spoon that much harder to resist. I went for a wander this lunchtime and decided to give Tony's Snack Bar on Chapter Street a try. I've walked past it dozens of times I suppose but today for the first time I peered in and knew straight away that I was onto a winner. It's about a five minute walk from the much vaunted Regency Cafe. And part of its attraction was that compared to the Regency, with its crowds and bellowing hostess, Tony's is an oasis of calm.

The seating consists I think entirely of booths - my favourite arrangement, the whole look of the place is pleasingly muted and, while I'm sure it's well within health and safety requirements, the place doesn't seem fanatically antiseptic. I can't stand places where every aspect of the decor is subservient to hygiene.

My lunch there, not too promising at first sight perhaps - the squared off egg, the sausage sliced down the middle. I normally specify two sausages, egg and chips but, trying a new cafe and not wishing to make a fuss, I just casually requested sausage, egg and chips and to hell with the consequences. Sometimes that'll mean two sausages, sometimes not. Now I know. It was all surprisingly tasty and, washed down with a can of coke, it came to £3.50, which was good value - especially compared to the £7.70 I ended up paying last week for a take away burrito over on Fleet Street.

I got the funk

2010-09-14T06:43:00.034+01:00

I may have suggested recently that I find London a hassle but if you want stuff it's hard to beat. The other day I was roving the internet and some reggae tunes led me to Soul Jazz's Dancehall compilation. Checking out their website I dropped my quest for reggae and realised that I probably couldn't live without both their New Orleans Funk compilations.

And so lunchtime the next day I hopped on a bike and pedalled to Sounds of the Universe. Five minutes and about twenty-four quid later I walked out of there with six shiny vinyl discs of very high quality funk. What a bargain. What a label. What a shop. It's impossible to go wrong. I'm even considering that Polyphonic Voices of Georgia album.

Anyway, a tune from vol 2. The original, which I'm not ashamed to say I'd never heard before.

Benny Spellman Fortune Teller

And, for variety, a less funk but no less cool cover version. I've always loved the Stones version but found this during some pre-purchase sussing out. The Vibrations - a bit of confusion had me thinking those brothers really nailed that British Invasion sound. But no, a classic British garage track with one of the scruffiest riffs this side of You Really Got Me.

The Vibrations Fortune Teller

Cold dead hands

2010-09-13T22:25:00.004+01:00

I was following blog links the other day and found a site which had some amusing things to say about some cool tunes. The blogger was American and when I hit home his most recent post was a gloating tract on the relative failure of recent gun control legislation in that country. I thought about leaving a comment but didn't. I've forgotten the name of the blog now but I'd like to hear him or anybody else continue to defend such widespread gun ownership in the face of this pathetic lunacy.

Clarks for the winter

2010-09-13T07:15:00.015+01:00

I bought these beauties the other day. I missed them in the sale but when I went to buy them they fetched some out of the back and only charged me the sale price anyway. Absolutely made my day. My love of Clarks shoes has been a source of amusement to several of my acquaintances over the years, especially at work for some reason. I suppose they do look a bit like two great big Cornish pasties.

The Small Faces The Autumn Stone

Ad astra

2010-09-12T00:26:00.006+01:00

I've been having a great run in secondhand book shops recently, the highlight of which has been Spacecraft 2000-2100AD. It was in the window at Oxfam, I had it when I was a kid, I went in and asked: £3.99. How could I resist?

It's a load of sci-fi book cover illustrations gathered together with a narrative spun around them. My favourite back then was the TDA 107C Partisan and I think it probably still is. Published in 1978 its timeline is on the verge of looking a bit ridiculous - work is due to start on Mars Station by 2012. And we'd better get a wiggle on if we're to perfect the warp generator by 2027. But you never know.

Inevitably there's a website dedicated to it now and you can buy mugs, a tee-shirt and little models of the spaceships are planned. I was most intrigued to see that there had been follow up books which I never knew about when I was a kid - Spacewreck: Ghost Ships and Derelicts of Space looks cool.

Nostalgia is a dish best served cold

2010-09-11T17:19:00.012+01:00

The Day Of The Triffids is listed in my profile's favourite books but I love The Midwich Cuckoos just as much. The film version Village of the Damned is a classic Saturday afternoon film, but the title is so crude in comparison to the quainter yet so much more sinister title of the novel. The cover illustration there bears a slight resemblence to the work of Ronald Searle, another of my favourites from the same period. The artist in question, Paul Hogarth, was a friend of Searle's I read somewhere.

The reason I mention all this is that I'm going through a fifties sci-fi phase at the moment. Well, I watched Quatermass And The Pit the other night. I'd been curious about it for as long as I can remember due to my mum going on about it, and my brother bought it me for my birthday the other month. Like the Wyndham novels it's an amazingly original idea. The most obvious heir of both Wyndham and Quatermass is Dr Who, which at its best (Tom Baker for me) shares their spookiness and brutality. Apparently they used to throw references to Bernard into episodes of Dr Who.

Anyway, The Midwich Cuckoos, if anyone out there gets the allusion in the title of the final chapter, Zellaby of Macedon, I'd be grateful if you could clue me in. It's been bugging me for years.

And now a track. No direct relationship as far as I know. Just the word cuckoo, a high level of eeriness and a description of a world turned upside down. I couldn't find out where the vocal comes from (I'm assuming it was sampled from something). And the sleeve art is yet another homage to Penguin. Actually there is a link, there's a sort of Quatermass soundtrack on Ghost Box Records. This isn't from that though.

The Advisory Circle And The Cuckoo Comes

There aren't many tracks I find unnerving. Frankie Teardrop a bit maybe, even though I know the screams are coming. But the track above is in a different class. It's the voice mainly - with its strange, tranquilized resignation, and the sound effects suggestive of some desolate aftermath. Added to the lyric's simple inversion of the seasons and it all leads inescapably to a feeling that something terrible has happened.

Mega mega

2010-09-06T19:38:00.019+01:00

From time to time I mention that I’d like to run away from London and live somewhere quieter. Somewhere in the countryside. West Wales perhaps. The North probably. I spent most of my childhood in a rural setting, the kind of place where you could wake up and find a cow had invaded the garden. At the time, surrounded by all that fresh air and greenery, where I really wanted to live was Mega City One, the fictional stamping ground of Judge Dredd. This was entirely down to the artwork of Carlos Ezquerra.

Ezquerra illustrated most of the Judge Dredd stories in a run from prog 245 through to about prog 320. He came back every so often and the last big story I remember him doing was Necropolis, but by then my interest was waning.

I've not read enough comics to say that his depiction of the future is unique but I certainly preferred it to the other artists in 2000AD (with Mike McMahon a not particularly close second). When I was a kid megacities seemed a certainty (like BosWash). Now though, what with ecological concerns and the massive advances in IT, we’ll probably all be living in sensibly distributed eco-units, attending work (if at all) by some kind of holographic conference call type thing (like in The Naked Sun or A Very Private Life).

When I was little I used to find it a downer that it was all so far off into the future (the Apocalypse War is set in 2105) and that I probably wouldn't be around to witness it. So I was cheered up by the story Night of the Rad Beast, when two of the characters' dates of birth were given and they were slightly older than me. Maybe I'd live to see the Mega City after all, even if I had to become a decrepit cyborg to do so.

I soon started to buy up older issues of 2000AD (and the defunct Starlord) and saw his artwork for the Strontium Dog stories. Following the caseload of an interstellar bounty hunter gave a lot more scope for illustrating alien life forms. Like Dredd, the stories are shot through with a dark strain of humour. One of my favourites was The Killing, in which plot is dispensed with and, as the name suggests, it just gets straight to business with some fantastic pictures of aliens blasting/gutting/dissolving each other.

There’s just the right touch of pulp or hack work to his pictures – hardly surprising given that I read somewhere that he was churning out the artwork for the episodes of the Apocalypse War on a weekly basis rather than months in advance. In most of his pictures there's tons of grimy detail. In an interview he cited as his major influences Breccia and Hugo Pratt, neither of who I'd heard of but after a little digging I can certainly see the influence of Hugo Pratt.

Sci fi films rarely get both the look of the cities or the outfits right or credible. Often the clothing styles are mimimal, white robes or utilitarian uniform type outfits. Compared to these stiff and sterile depictions Ezquerra’s future seems pretty funky. I’m amazed that no film makers have ripped him off – it can’t be that expensive, just lots of rubbery foam to make the outfits (all those knee and shoulder pads).

Boris bikes

2010-08-24T20:13:00.009+01:00

I didn't vote for Boris and I never will but I was all excited about his cycle hire scheme. And today I actually used one of them. And it was great. My morning journey threatened to turn into a bit of a farce when I couldn't find a docking space. I had to go to three ranks before I did and ended up walking slightly further back to my office than makes sense of hiring a cycle in the first place. Still, it all took under 30 minutes so was free anyway. Looking up my homeward journey on my activity log reveals that the usual twenty minute slog has been transformed into a mere seven minute breeze on the bike. What will I do with all the extra time?

Ian Tomlinson

2010-07-22T20:05:00.008+01:00

Do they really think this is the best decision? It's so wrong it makes me feel physically sick. I accepted that Jean Charles de Menezes' killing was the result merely of terrifying incompetence, though I found the failure of Cressida Dick to resign incomprehensible. But that a man can be killed with such casual brutality and the officer responsible face only the possibility of some internal disciplinary action. How can anyone not be outraged by the utter contempt this displays?

Here, there and everywhere

2010-07-12T12:10:00.023+01:00

I had one of those falling into place musical moments the other day - somewhere out there I was listening to a version of Angel of the Morning by Evie Sands. I'd always assumed the Joya Landis (I had to check) version was the original but I should have realised by now, there's no such thing as an original reggae version of a song.

As I listened I knew that I'd heard Evie's vocals before and after a few minutes of pondering reached for Sonic Sounds for Subterraneans and there she was, side 3 track 1, I Can't Let Go. Possibly my favourite track on there, and that's saying something. I really can't recommend that compilation highly enough.

Evie Sands: I Can't Let Go

Obviously this all merited further investigation and it turns out she did the original version of Anyway That You Want Me, that she was surprisingly white and impossibly beautiful, and that I should probably buy The Red Bird Story.

Pretty much your standard ranch stash

2010-07-10T19:32:00.013+01:00

A few years ago I bought The Everly Brothers Roots on the strength of a very brief mention by Bob Stanley of its version of I Wonder If I'll Care As Much. According to Bob this version floated by on a cloud of feedback. The Everlys and feedback - I though that sounded like it could be good. Sadly it's a bit dull. But Roots is still worth having - the brothers look pretty cool on the cover. Turn Around is probably the best thing on it and the sleeve notes led me to its writer's own band, The Beau Brummels and the excellent Bradley's Barn.

I was burned quite recently by Phil's Star Spangled Springer, lured into buying what is in truth a fairly bland album by such an excellent cover. I'll probably keep hold of it if only for the cover and maybe the track Poisonberry Pie. Once albums are in the collection I find it hard to deselect them (on vinyl anyway, I'm more ruthless with cds). I think I've only got rid of three vinyl lps - a Roky Erickson solo effort that had loads of terrible synthesizer noises on it, Hawkwind's Text of the Festival (what the fuck was I on?) and Shuggy Otis's alleged masterpiece Inspiration Information.

Anyway, the Everly Brothers. They were the first band I saw live. Not long after their eighties reconcilliation. A very good show - incredibly loud renditions of all the hits and some droll between song banter. They even managed to restrain themselves from smashing guitars over each others heads.

The Everly Brothers: I Wonder If I Care As Much

The Everly Brothers: Turn Around

The Beau Brummels: Love Can Fall A Long Way Down

Learning tree

2010-07-09T20:12:00.026+01:00

I bought a book about trees the other day. I usually know straight away if I’m going to buy a book and this one drew me in pretty quick. In the space of a few random pages I had learned that John Galbraith Graham took his nom de crossword from the Monkey Puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana), and that that thoroughly rock and roll word Tupelo is actually a type of tree.

The decider though was a picture of a shiny conker peeping out of its spiky pod. It was just so perfect. And then there are twenty odd pages of pine cones of the type that I can't resist picking up when I go for a walk around Kew. The pictures are all painted by David More who seems to have opted for a life of internet-proof obscurity.

Anyway, while I was feasting my eyes on all the tree pictures I was tapping my foot to the music coming from the shop’s little stereo. I’ve said before that they usually play good stuff and I was absent-mindedly enjoying the track when some lyrics grabbed my attention. “Hello” I thought, “I haven’t heard this version before”. A nice campfire version of the Super Furry Animals' The Man Don’t Give A Fuck.

As I was buying the book I asked the man behind the till what album the track was from. To my momentary bafflement he handed me a Steely Dan cd. I think I probably knew that they'd sampled something. A few years back I bought Pretzel Logic (probably because of an amusing Judge Dredd story that pinched the title). I couldn’t really get into it, but Show Biz Kids: what a track.

Steely Dan: Show Biz Kids

And for comparison purposes the Super Furry Animals track.

Super Furry Animals: The Man Don't Give A Fuck

Nightmare at 120 ft

2010-07-05T10:56:00.007+01:00

Without doubt one of the best £10 I've ever spent.

Sit on it mother

2010-07-03T20:41:00.013+01:00

It doesn't take much to make me happy. Today for instance - a two for one offer on McVities Jamaica Cake and then this bench. I don't know when it was built but part of its appeal is that it's a modern thing that's been around long enough to acquire lichen. But mainly it's the shape of it - simple and logical, like a park bench from the planet Vulcan.

Hey man*, that's beautiful

2010-06-27T07:05:00.009+01:00

I've gone on about this track before but I only found this version quite recently. A good one for Sunday morning.

Spacemen 3: Transparent Radiation (violin mix)

*For the record, I never say man like this in real life.

Grimly fiendish

2010-06-26T15:28:00.017+01:00

I mentioned in a comment a while back what a fan I am of Ronald Searle. Today, after having been told about it a couple of months ago by my dad, I got my act together and trotted down to the Cartoon Museum's exhibition of his work. I urge anybody who's interested to get their skates on as it closes on 4 July. Having said that the Toy Tales exhibition starting up straight afterwards looks good as well.

Anyway, Ronald Searle, how great is my admiration for his work? I've picked up nearly thirty of his books over the years. I think I prefer his pictures from the fifties and sixties and the exhibition features a fair number of these, though his style hasn't really changed and the pictures here from the nineties are just as good in a way.

Searle's pictures for me will always evoke the 1950s - the gloomy, gothic aftermath of the Victorian empire, ladies in rooms stuffed with knick-knacks, colonial club bores (see below), even the most minor of officials wearing uniform (the zoo keepers above). A certain type of birdcage always puts me in mind of his work. He shares the same sort of space as Ealing comedies (though possibly this is down to the presence of Alastair Sim in the St Trinian films).

While it was great to see some familiar pictures in the flesh - the straight reportage from Looking at London, the brilliant seven phases of Molesworth's Batmanship (uncannily similar to my own experiences at the crease), it was the stuff that I hadn't seen before that exerted the greater hold over me. Some of these labelled from the collection of Ronald and Monica Searle I'm not sure will have been on display before.
The portrait of a Moroccan entitled just Fez, March 1951 for instance. This was sketched while Searle was convalescing there for a bout of bronchitis - again, another world, people just don't do that anymore. Anyway, it was a small but perfect piece of art that was worth the price of the ticket (£5.50) alone.
Another that I don't think I've seen before was Kaiserlauten US Army Base (1964). This again was reportage but of a more satirical nature than either his drawings of London or Paris. Germany seems to bring out more of the savagery (especially a few years later in his Secret Sketchbook, from which no pictures are on display).
She wasn't in the exhibition this time but I saw the unmistakeable Fenella Fielding again on the tube on my way home.

One, two, three. Two, two, three.

2010-06-25T21:45:00.003+01:00

God, it's been a long week. It's not been cheering me up that I've been unable to post any music either. But tonight, I find all my little widgets have reactivated. So, here we are. Something I found the other day. Has fiercer, more exuberant whistling ever been committed to tape?

Roger Whittaker: Mexican Whistler

No need for all this new fangled nonsense, all you need is an acoustic guitar, a tambourine and a lot of puff.

A man that you meet every day

2010-06-20T23:21:00.020+01:00

After a lot of lunchtime wandering I realised that I really liked this building. It doesn't come through so clearly on the photograph but it's constructed from highly polished browny-purple granite. That and the geometry of it make it look like some kind of immaculate volcanic remnant.

I tried looking it up on the internet but floundered a bit using searches like Transport for London and Victoria Street and a few others. Anyway, on closer inspection I discovered the architect's inscription: Seifert. Using this as a search term the veil lifted from my eyes and I suddenly saw how many fantastic buildings were his. Of the ones I was already aware of the most gratifying was the International Press Centre on Shoe Lane.

When I worked over in Holborn I walked past this every day and always admired it (for a period weaving my way through a crowd of animal rights protesters, who were very angry at one of the companies housed within). When I was younger I think I probably hated all modern office buildings as featureless monoliths, but now I can't get over the modular honeycomb character of this one, Centre Point, Space House and no doubt dozens if not hundreds of others. Perhaps comparable buildings in my native Sheffield just weren't as good, I don't know. I'm wondering if my hatred for the Eggbox might have been, with hindsight, a little callow.

As the most interesting of his buildings that I'd never heard of and which wasn't too far off the beaten track I went for a good look at Space House (now, I think, far more boringly referred to as 1 Kemble Street). It's plan is a bit like a squashed up Starship Enterprise the flat back end of which lies on Kingsway and which I must have walked past so many times but never once cut through to Covent Garden and chanced upon the amazing rotunda. Snapping away a women exiting the building was bemused at my admiration for it, she worked there and its form had somehow failed to lift her spirits.

The lists I've seen so far consist of about fifty buildings which, from what I've read, sounds like about a tenth of the number he actually produced. I was surprised to see that he doesn't seem to be the subject of any large coffee table type book, or any book at all.

The best thing about this is the prospect of going out to see a lot of these buildings that previously I'd never even heard of, though a pleasingly weird aspect of it was the ones that I've been faced with nearly all my life. Going to visit my grandma in Manchester and walking along Gateway House every time I came out of Piccadilly. And King's Reach Tower - for so many years just the location of Tharg's Command Module.

Hurry slowly

2010-06-17T22:52:00.009+01:00

I found this the other day. I was unexpectedly watching (and quite enjoying) It's All Gone Pete Tong and it popped up in the background. Due to prolonged musical widget failure I thought I'd check youtube. And this is now my favourite video ever.

I'm kicking myself because I saw the relevant album in a charity shop not so long ago. But I can't remember where exactly.

Twelfth incarnation

2010-06-16T20:25:00.005+01:00

Browsing idly this afternoon I read Stephen Fry lambasting the state of telly. He’s right I suppose. I’ve got satellite, if I had the energy I could scour the schedules and line up almost constant interesting and/or edifying programming.

Anyway, this is the picture they used to illustrate article – he’s an absolute natural for Dr Who isn’t he?

London eye

2010-05-26T21:53:00.018+01:00

After a rummage I found the list I referred to in the robot bar post. It was (of course) in a shoe box under the bed. I've put an asterisk next to the ones I've actually visited.

Karl Marx's Tomb
Top of the list and still not been. One for autumn.

Thames Flood Barrier
Probably made a big impression on me in the days when I used to watch Blue Peter. A bit awkward to get to I think.

The Blind Beggar*
Rubbish, just a really boring pub.

The Prospect of Whitby
Because my parents had their engagement bash here. And it's got a funny name.

Boat from Westminster to Richmond
On a hot sunny day. I like falling asleep on boats on hot sunny days.

Greenwich Market
Other than I love markets not sure why this was so important.

Savoy Grill
Very intimidated by big fancy restaurants so haven't been here yet.

Regents Park Zoo
Walked past it a few times, not really bothered about this one now.

Row on the Serpentine
I like rowing. A friend of a friend fell in here once. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person.

Hampstead Heath*
Nice, but to paraphrase Scoobius Pip, just a park.

Somerset House*
Been a few times but not for ages now, can't really get there in a lunch break anymore.

Shri Swaminarayan Mandir *
Absolutely mindblowing. Everybody was very friendly but I felt like an interloper. I'd be peering at a statue and someone would come along and start praying to it. Weird.

Brick Lane Market*
Went a few years ago - had a fantastic day.

Sherlock Holmes statue*
Walked up and down Baker Street looking for this and somehow managed to miss it. Maybe he was being polished that day.

Peter Pan statue
No longer care about this, I'm less whimsical these days.

Old Bailey murder trial
I worked just round the corner for years and never popped in.

Globe Theatre
Still really want to do this one. Quick check of the website...Henry IV, pt 1, that's a possibility.

And two that weren't on the list but which I'll add now:

Big Ben
Like in the Thirty Nine Steps. My fear of heights and of oversized Victorian machinery probably adds up to this being a fairly nightmarish experience, but I can't help myself.

Battersea Power station
I’ve always wanted to get close up to this. I read a great article (in the Independent I think) proposing that instead of developing the station it should be allowed to stand as a picturesque ruin and the area around it should be a park. I think that’s one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard. Instead we will of course get a boring bloody hotel/luxury apartments/shopping mall monstrosity. That’s if they don’t just knock the thing down outright.

And finally, one that was on a proto-list but which had fallen off the list I found.

Wormwood Scrubs
Just to walk up to the gates - are you allowed to do that?

My beautiful caff

2010-05-24T17:16:00.018+01:00

Wandering about Kingston at brunch time last Monday I was saddened to discover that the Eden Cafe had closed for the last time. Such was my job dissatisfaction recently I did some research into opening a cafe. Just the fun bits really – coming up with a menu, costing the various bits of kitchen equipment, trying to decide on the seating, looking up retail leases. Stuff like that.

Phallus uber alles

2010-05-19T10:32:00.004+01:00

Have you ever heard of The Monument? Built by Wren, to commemorate the Fire of London? I hadn’t until my dad mentioned it in passing during a tale about his going to see a rugby final at Wembley back in the day. Once I’d heard of it I had to go – it just sounded so weird. A giant, freestanding Doric column? Tucked away near London Bridge? It seemed so unlikely.

Anyway, it was still there and so obviously I had to go to the top. I’m not good with heights but as the ascent was up an enclosed, narrow staircase I thought I’d be alright. This was disproved about half the way up when I suffered a severe dose of the fear caused by a crowd of Italian school children surging around me on their way down. At the top my previously unimpressed wife started to gambol about saying how great it was and cooing at the view. I held grimly onto the hand rail and, with leaden legs, made the one circuit of the viewing platform demanded by my pathetic male pride. You get a little certificate for going to the top.

The lost robot bars of London

2010-05-09T14:56:00.030+01:00

When I moved down to London I made a list of places that I was determined to visit. I've not seen it for a while, but from what I can remember I don't think I've done very well over the last decade. Cynthia's Robot Bar is one of the places I did get to. It was a bit depressing actually, the robot Cynthia wasn't even switched on.

Anyway, I was thinking about doing a podcast with the theme being "Robot Disco", I only got so far though.

Imitation Electric Piano: What We Do We Do

I reckon that's the riff from "WIld Flower".

As you might know (or have guessed) Imitation Electric Piano are a Stereolab off-shoot. The track above is from the excellently titled "Blow It Up, Burn it Down, Kick It 'Til It Bleeds" - an album I was drawn to after hearing the impossibly breezy "I Mean Wow", which I wasn't going to post because it's not really robotic sounding, but I've mentioned it now...

Imitation Electric Piano: I Mean Wow

Aftermath

2010-05-07T20:15:00.006+01:00

It's not so bad is it? The Tories are in a bit of a spot aren't they? They can either try to go it alone and be humiliated in the Commons on a regular basis. Or they can be left outside of a Lib-Lab pact. The other option of the Lib Dems supporting the Tories just seems so unnatural, with such glaring descrepancies between virtually all their policies. How can that lead to a strong and stable government?

The best Cameron could offer in his first statement was something called the pupil premium - I'd not even heard of that. How can the Lib Dems countenance going into alliance with a party that wouldn't give them anything on massive issues like Trident, tax, Europe and PR? Members of one of the parties (let's face it, the Lib Dems) are sure to be left very disappointed and left wing supporters (the majority? And me, for instance) will leave them in droves - just in time for the next, probably quite imminent, general election. Does it seem insane to think that Labour are actually in the best middle to long term position?

Two mad election things - one of my sisters in law voted Tory. It took a whole day to establish that she wasn't just winding us up. I can't believe it. My wife's sister I'm glad to say, my own family name remains untainted. Secondly, one of my oldest friends has featured quite prominently in the election coverage - he's the copper getting all the abuse in the polling station in Sheffield.

Broadcasting on your frequency

2010-04-23T22:13:00.019+01:00

Years ago I was walking along the Embankment with my dad and looking across the river I commented on the ugliness of the South Bank. My dad, with a faint smile, said that the war had just finished and they'd all needed cheering up at the time. Since then I've taken a great liking to the place and when I saw that Broadcast were playing the Queen Elizabeth Hall I bought up some tickets (after a bit of dithering that meant we ended up sitting on the very back row).

I only got into Broadcast through their most recent album "Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age". It topped Wire magazine's 2009 run down and it's got a really cool cover and that was good enough for me. I've listened to it a lot during my commute. The extremely varied tracks come and go so quickly - there are some I'm not mad on but mainly I wish a lot of them lasted longer, ones like "One million Years Ago"and "Let It Begin".

While I can think of half a dozen things that may have influenced them it's still the most original album I've heard for years. I was walking along the other day when my right headphone konked out, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" continued to grate into my left ear but the other was getting the sounds of a car alarm and some passing children and the high street in general. Maybe that sounds terrible (try it) but it was not dissimilar to one of the less great tracks on the album. It's the same with bus brakes and the start of "Never Understand".

Anyway, the concert. We got there just in time to hear the remaining support act furiously sawing away at his cello for about thirty seconds before the lights came up and we spent the next half hour in the bar. Broadcast started off facing each other over dimly lit consoles that they tweaked to produce a heavy track that went on for a bit too long really, a good ten minutes at least of electronic vipp noises with percussion that sounded like some huge wooden sprocket and treadle.

After that the male half of the band picked up one the guitars that I had assumed had been positioned on stage for feedback purposes only. The track they then played was "Corporeal" - good enough for me to be buying its album.

From this point on the music got more interesting with the noises becoming more intricate and Trish Keenan's vocals more focussed than the earlier portentous wailing. The guitar got another outing for a naggingly familiar riff. It did my brain in until I finally placed it - it was from "I Could Be Happy" - the bit where the guitar really breaks about halfway through into an oriental sounding cascade. I hadn't expected that.

Visually the show was dominated by a continuous flow of images onto one screen - it started off with what seemed like footage from an old black and white sci fi film giving a distorted, alien's eye view of the planet. Other images in conjunction with some effects-channelled vocals often gave off an eerie vibe - which I'm sure is their aim. The Wicker Man, at the instigation of the likes of Jonny Trunk and Bob Stanley, seems to have been seeping through this corner of indie for years.

Probably the most effective image was when the singer cast a stark shadow onto a brightly coloured backdrop for the duration of an almost lullaby-ish song. Standing in front of the black space of her own shadow, bathed in the multi-coloured projection, it looked as though she'd stepped out of the image.

Then all of a sudden it was over, and I knew we weren't going to get an encore. Brilliant.

Imitation Pixie songs

2010-04-17T08:08:00.001+01:00

I was going through the Ike and Tina Turner clips on youtube recently (prompted by a post on Crying All The Way To The Chip Shop) and I was drawn to one entitled “Ike and Tina Do The Pixies”. I think I was probably expecting some kind of late sixties tv appearance in the vein of Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge” or something. Instead I found an insanely catchy and brilliant pastiche of the Pixies song “River Euphrates” as if performed by Tina Turner. The video’s a bit rubbish so I haven’t posted it. But it did lead to a website with more Pixies covers.

Like the Bob Dylan “Green Eggs and Ham” I’m not totally sure how I feel about this type of thing. I don’t regard myself as too serious but a little voice somewhere seems to cry out, “Fake, fake”, trying to spoil my enjoyment. On the other hand I can’t stop listening to it – which I normally take to be a sign that I think a track is brilliant.

Some of the others:

“Levitate Me”, a not very good Pixies song is, it turns out, a great Beach Boys song. The first minute or so of this is probably the most disconcertingly spot on and, if found out of this context, might have had me wondering if I should check the credit on “Come On Pilgrim”.

“Vamos” – vies with “River Euphrates” as my favourite Pixies song. This version is let down a bit by the slightly unconvincing Jimi vocals but still a good match of song to performer.

Finally Elvis and “No.13 Baby” – like “Vamos” you’re never going to be fooled for even a second that this could somehow, somewhen be the real Elvis – but it does demonstrate that it is so an Elvis song.

SHE

2010-04-16T06:06:00.053+01:00

I discovered the missing link between The Shaggs and The B52s the other day. As you can imagine I’m pretty pleased with myself. I can’t take all the credit though, it was a MOJO cover cd featuring “Outta Reach” that put me onto the scent. I loved that track and nearly bought the album on the strength of it but I didn't, and then it wasn’t available any more.

Years later I decided to treat myself to a slap up record buying expedition into central London. The usual thing happened though, the moment I strode over the threshold of Sister Ray’s I completely forgot the content of my wants list and just started to flip aimlessly through the racks. In this random manner I found, and snapped up, Ace Record’s bumper retrospective: “She Wants A Piece Of You”.

She: Like A Snake

She: Hey You

The record buying expedition got off to a wobbly start - I popped into Slam City Skates intending to go down the spiral staircase into Rough Trade records, but the way was blocked by a bench and when I peered down it looked very untidy. I was informed by a haircut that the shop had moved to Brick Lane, "like about two years ago, dude". I felt like Rip Van Winkle.

Excerpt from a teenage record collection

2010-04-15T07:38:00.039+01:00

In the deepest, darkest recesses of my teenage memories lurk a load of old shoegazing tunes. And in the same trawl of old tapes that produced the post below I found "Walking 5th Carnival", which featured on many a mix tape back in the day. It's from "Ichabod and I" which the Boo Radleys were later a bit disparaging about about. I can see why - cool name, excellent psychedelic sleeve but a disappointing album. It was a present though so I can't complain.

However, this track is exactly the kind of thing I loved when I was 18, I still do really - mainly on account of that expanding guitar noise. Is it just a wah wah pedal?

Boo Radleys: Walking 5th Carnival

Have lungs, will travel

2010-04-13T19:47:00.009+01:00

At the weekend, fooled by the sunny weather, I went for a walk in a nearby park. I've mentioned before how great it is and this visit only added to my liking for the place. Graffiti is normally depressing but on the walls of the park hut there I found a collection of funny little drawings. This one was the best I think - it looks like an early tetrapod (maybe). Anyway, a nice change.

And then the cafe had apple and blueberry cake. Exceedingly good.

Movin' right along

2010-04-11T00:02:00.014+01:00

Fozzy & Kermit Movin' Right Along

Is there still dimples?

2010-04-08T21:50:00.022+01:00

Probably recorded in the summer holidays in 1992 this is the only surviving mix tape I did for the winsome philosophy student who later became my wife. All the others were taped over by her younger sister (mainly with stuff like the Levellers and the Wonder Stuff). I'm slightly surprised that I've mentioned as many as six of the tracks in posts gone by.

Speeding Motorcycle - The Pastels
Jet Boy, Jet Girl - The Damned
Buzz, Buzz, Buzz - The Primitives
Sit On It Mother - The Pastels
Bed & Breakfast Man - Madness
Love Is The Drug - Roxy Music
You're Wondering Now - The Specials
Stupid Marriage - The Specials
Change In Speak - De La Soul
Human Fly - The Cramps
Shimmer - Jesus & Mary Chain
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - The Animals
Today - Ride
Feel A Whole Lot Better - The Byrds

I'm Losing More Than I Ever Had - Primal Scream
Little Doll - The Stooges
I'm A Believer - The Monkees
Freakscene - Dinosaur Jnr
The Nile Song - Pink FloydBiding My Time - Pink Floyd
Bike - Pink Floyd
Good Lovin' - Tammy Wynette
Treasure Trip - Primal ScreamAre You Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Crab Song - Faith No More
Jerusalem - The Fall

Breaking the no-two-by-the-same-band rule within the first four tracks and I think I must have stepped out of the room for a while after cueing up "The Nile Song". I stand by the choices. Except perhaps for "Stupid Marriage", which is just not a very good song. The most pleasant surprise was probably "Buzz, Buzz, Buzz" - I'd forgotten all about the Primitives.

Because he was the standing up drummer of the Jesus and Mary Chain Bobby Gillespie was, by default, cool. But after years of reading interviews with him I finally realised the man is an almost total dick: "Bomb the Pentagon", "Make Israel History", "Black man innovator, white man imitator" (er..Bobby, I don't know quite how to tell you this...), and their greatest hits album that left off all the songs from their soppy first album phase. "I'm Losing More Than I Ever Had" is the best thing they ever did, but still not enough to justify twenty years of hype.

And finally Jimi - have you forgotten how good this is?

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced?

Message in a bottle

2010-04-06T00:39:00.010+01:00

The Scottish holiday brought out the Edwardian gentleman in me - kippers, haggis and single malt whisky. And that was just for breakfast. Special mention must go to Ramsay of Carluke Haggis. They are the best I've had - and as an Englishman who has tried three different brands of Haggis I regard myself as an expert. The whisky was Jura - selected on the grounds that it was going for £16 a bottle in Tescos. And what a lovely bottle it is too. A few weeks ago I was loitering in the serious booze aisle of my local supermarket and I noticed they've changed the Drambuie bottle - it's sleeker and far more boring now. My faith was restored by the Lamb's Navy Rum bottle. Still hexagonal. Stops it rolling off the table during a storm you see.

Staffa

2010-04-04T20:34:00.018+01:00

Last Thursday I achieved one of my little adventuring ambitions by visiting the island of Staffa. I'm sure I've been vaguely aware of its existance for ages but it only came fully to my attention on my first visit to Scotland a mere three years ago.

I was staying in a cottage about twenty miles south of Oban and the journey to Staffa took just under six hours and involved hopping over Mull and Iona to get there. I'd been to Mull before, but to Tobermory and on that occasion the weather was dull and the scenery I didn't think was up to much (a very dry driver though - "Tobermory... probably best known for... the womble of the same name"). On the way to Fionnphort the driver was silent but the view from the window was amazing (especially along Loch Scridain) and I've never spent a more enjoyable hour on a coach. At Fionnphort we took a much smaller ferry to Iona and from there we sailed on a tiny little boat called the Ullin of Staffa, which I think sounds like the name of one of the dwarves in The Hobbit.

After a nauseating hour in the Ullin we arrived at Staffa and, without any pushing or shoving, I was first off the boat. I almost ran to Fingal's Cave - I didn't hang around for long though because I'm not great at heights. You're not very high up really but health and safety hasn't reached Staffa yet and there's nothing there to stop you plummeting into the waters below - a situation which, while perhaps not fatal, would be extremely trying.

After that I doubled back towards the jetty and up some (rickety) steps to the roof of the island. I'd come for the basalt but the views from here were worth the journey and impossible to capture on my camera. Until recently sheep had been ferried across from Iona to graze on the island but now the grass had been allowed to grow quite long and has been formed by the wind into funny looking mumps - very Dr Seuss.

Despite the time it took to get here Mull still loomed massively to the east. Much more intriguing were the Treshnish Isles - probably even more desolate than Staffa, I really wanted to go on and visit them. Very unlikely that I ever will, I think you'd have to hire a boat specifically. I might go back to Staffa at some point - later in the year puffins stay there. And puffins (along with badgers) are high on my list of animals that I'd like to see in the wild.

We were only there for an hour - I spent about twenty minutes walking up and down this colonnade - it really is a perfect thing and reminded me of the columns of the temples at Paestum.

Shrive me

2010-03-25T22:15:00.029Z

I don't drink that much these days, so hangovers aren't as common as they used to be but they are getting worse. My favourites are the ones where I wake up after three hours sleep still drunk. When this happens I'll have a cigarette with a cup of tea and sing along to some very loud music before putting on last night's clothes and going out into the drizzle* to look for a cooked breakfast.

My top giddy hangover tunes:

The Monks: Cuckoo

I first became aware of The Monks through The Fall's cover of "I Hate You" on "Extricate", still my favourite Fall album.

The Who: Boris The Spider

Dexy's Midnight Runners: Thankfully Not Living In Yorkshire It Doesn't Apply

"Searching For The Young Soul Rebels" is, along with The Pastel's "Sittin' Pretty", one of the only albums that I've got twice on vinyl. For some reason.

*I never have this kind of hangover when it's warm and sunny, the weather has to be a bit miserable.

Khan!

2010-03-24T13:49:00.027Z

From time to time I ponder the question: who does Rock 'n' Roll the best? The British or the Americans? Certainly America got off to a head start with Little Richard and Elvis, but bands such as The Who, The Stones and Led Zeppelin make the issue far from clear cut.

In the end though I think it's the American ability (not to say inclination) to perform a set in nothing but a pair of snazzy blue underpants that shows where the true spirit of Rock 'n' Roll resides. That and a more intuitive way with horn sections.

King Khan & The Shrines: 69 Faces of Love

Random pop attack

2010-03-22T17:13:00.012Z

I found this last night, not quite sure how. Anyway, it's well and truly latched onto my brain, a proper earworm. An interesting looking bunch and probably a good bet to see play live.

Dengue Fever: Tiger Phone Card