Learning tree

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

White noise

I picked this up at Oxfam this afternoon for a mere £1.99. I already had the track below and I don't think any of the others on the album will nudge it from the top spot, but one never knows. Besides I love the sleeve art - it reminds me a bit of Blue Note. And he's smoking a pipe - swish.

"What a Bringdown" is pretty close to a perfect track - everything about it seems light. I'm not a big fan of samples, they usually strike me as clumsy, but the woman's voice on this is great: strange and distracted, possibly a bit stoned. It reminds me of Sissy Spacek in Badlands or "Little Fluffy Clouds". I did some detective work (the internet is a powerful tool) and it's from an album called "Motor-Cycle" by Lotti Golden.

MC Honky: What A Bringdown

He had a way

I bought this book the other day. I wasn't going to, I was just browsing but then the inclusion of a particular album caught my eye so I had it. For the record I own 204 of the recommended albums and plan at some point to pick up about another hundred. Of the remainder I've probably heard at least fifty that I like but which I've no intention of buying for whatever reason ("Nevermind" by Nirvana for instance, because I've heard it too many times).

Anyway the album that snagged me was "White Light" by Gene Clark. I've liked the Byrds since time immemorial but it was only quite recently that I bought up a load of their albums in an HMV sale and, looking at the songwriting credits in those nice little booklets, realised it was Gene Clark who had written all my favourite Byrds songs.

After this revelation I did some research and ordered "White Light" and "No Other" from Selectadisc. "White Light" I got into pretty quick but "No Other", his so called masterpiece, I find hard to digest, smothered as it is in 1974 style west coast widdliness. There are good tunes underneath it all though as the fortunate inclusion of a load of demo versions proves. The album sleeve provides graphic evidence of how badly Gene lost it in the dress sense department too, he's shown posing in what can only be described as monstrously flared silken pantaloons and with his shirt knotted at the waist (all the better to show off his medallions). He didn't have the best bowlcut in the Byrds but I don't know what you'd call his haircut on the sleeve here, or why anybody would do that to their hair. Too much cocaine?

However, he wrote the tunes so all is forgiven. My all time favourites have to be "Feel a Whole Lot Better" and "Eight Miles High" but for a bit of a change:

Gene Clark: So You Say You Lost Your Baby

I only discovered this one a few days ago. From "Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers", an album I tried to get when I first twigged but I kept getting outbid on ebay.

The Turtles: You Showed Me

Co-written with Roger McGuinn (I'll bet anything Clark was responsible for the bit starting at 1' 00", "And when I try-eye-eye-eyed it..." ) and performed here by the Turtles. I didn't know it but I've loved this since De La Soul sampled it for "Transmitting Live From Mars", which I think I'd always lazily assumed was sampling "Je T'Aime (Moi Non Plus)".