Which Reminds Me…

Looking at the list of contributors on the sleeve of that Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album I featured in the Sunday Morning Coming Down post from this morning, one name leapt out at me.

There, bottom left, is the name Norman Blake.

That Norman Blake is one of the leading figures in the American bluegrass movement. It’s not the same Norman Blake who is a mainstay of one of my favourite bands ever: Teenage Fanclub.

Any excuse will do:

Teenage Fanclub – Did I Say

“Did I Say” was specially recorded for the band’s 2003 Best of Album “Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds – A Short Cut to Teenage Fanclub”. Ordinarily, I’d be quite scathing about any band who added new material to a Best Of album, viewing it as a cynical marketing move to get genuine long-standing fans to buy it, as well as any newcomers to their music.

But I’m going to let Teenage Fanclub off, for three reasons:

1. I bloody love that song
2. It’s Teenage Fanclub, they can do what they like
3. I went to see them promote the album in question in Bristol, and they played “Did I Say”. I stood, as I often do now I’m too old for venturing down the front, towards the back, near the mixing desk, where you get the best sound and view (which is why the mixing and lighting desk is there, after all), happily singing along, when the chap stood next to me tapped me on the arm. I assumed he was going to ask me to stop singing, but no: “Okay,” he said, “I’m going to have to ask: I don’t know this song, what is it?” I filled him in on the details, he thanked me, I felt somewhat smug and superior.

The blogosphere is getting quite excited right now, as the first new Teenage Fanclub album in six years, “Here”, is imminent (September 9th in the UK), and we’ve recently got our first proper taste of what to expect:

No surprises, then. Which is exactly what we want from them.

Norman himself has been honoured in a song, albeit with his surname slightly, deliberately, mis-spelt:

I Was A King – Norman Bleik

How do I know it’s a homage to the Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub, and not the bluegrass Norman Blake?

Well, for a start, it sounds exactly like a Teenage Fanclub record, albeit with a female vocal.

And also, because of this:

More soon.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

This morning, a Country staple, although actually a folk song (the line between Country and Traditional American Folk is often quite blurred), performed by one of the great Country family bands:

The Carter Family – Wildwood Flower

It’s a song I’ve known since I was a kid, since it appears on a triple album my Dad owns. Credited to The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, a cursory look at the album sleeve tells you it’s an album which features collaborations with a whole host of country, bluegrass and folk folks:

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Wildwood Flower

And that was the unmistakable (I hope, or I’m going to look pretty stoopid) sound of Mother Maybelle Carter singing the lead vocal.

As you can imagine with a triple album, there’s plenty more quality songs to choose from, so expect this to feature again, quite a bit, on this thread.

Or, to put it another way: More Soon.

Late Night Stargazing

A few years ago, when Chill Out albums were selling like hot cakes, there were several songs which you could absolutely guarantee would appear on every one.

There would always be at least one track from Moby’s “Play” album, something from Air’s “Moon Safari”, and this:

Kinobe – Slip Into Something

The force is strong in that one. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

More soon.

Friday Night Music Club

Today is Andrew’s birthday. Andrew is my older/only brother.

For once I don’t have to take international time-zones into consideration to ensure that he reads my birthday wishes on the right day, for this year he’s home from India and back in the UK for a couple of weeks.

To mark the occasion, I’m travelling up to my folks for the weekend, and to inevitably spend Saturday night sitting up and drinking Jack Daniels with him. Often when I go home, I’ll prepare a playlist of stuff to listen to, but often this has to take into consideration what the ‘rents will put up with having to listen to. So I thought this week, I’d post a few songs here which remind me of my Big Bro because…well, he bought (most of) them when we were kids.

As I was choosing the songs to play tonight, it occurred to me that my musical evolution followed a pretty similar path to his. This is hardly surprising since I used to listen to his records in that period before I started buying my own on a regular basis. We both had: a dodgy rock stage, a dodgy pop phase, followed by some semblance of redemption by way of liking something approaching decent indie records (although he had more than a passing Goth phase too).

I’ve talked about some of the records from our shared past before, here and he even wrote about the songs he bought when he was younger here. I’ve tried to avoid the songs played on those posts and focus on the…less cool stuff. For a start, anyway.

(By the way: my file sharing service Cut Pi, seems to be becoming increasingly erratic, and doesn’t seem to recognise some of the mp3s as being mp3s. It’s been doing this for a while and I can’t work out why. Upshot is, some of the links are shared via Zippyshare. Hope they work okay. And George – you got your wish.)

So let’s break these into the aforementioned three sections.

The Rock Stage

Of course, he had bought AC/DC’s seminal 1980 “Back in Black” album, (and later owned copies of “Let There Be Rock” and “If You Want Blood…You Got It!” (an album title I always thought would have been better suited to Kiss or Alice Cooper) but I imagine you all know pretty much every song from that album, so I’ve plumped for this from their 1981 release, which pretty much sums up us at the time, the band, and how the start of tonight’s post is going to go:

337. AC/DC – For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)

Shortly after we moved into what became the family home throughout our childhood (mid-1970s), our parents converted a part of the loft into what they christened “The Playroom” – which was fine whilst we were kids, when it housed Andrew’s model train set and my Dr Who toys, but a little embarrassing, in the way that teenagers find everything embarrassing, when they would suggest we took any friends who called round up to The Playroom, which by our teens housed a sofa, a TV and a record player.

At first, the record player was one of those old ones, with the arm that came across and held your next record on the spindle whilst the current record played underneath. But soon, Andrew had saved enough cash up to purchase his first stereo system, one of those with a radio, twin tape deck, a space for records to be stored, a silver beast housed in a teak cabinet with a glass door to the front.

This next album made regular appearances on both turntables; I preferred the album’s title tracks, whilst Andrew always loved this one, ironically, I like to think, given he spent 20-odd years in the RAF:

338. Black Sabbath – War Pigs

Next, a song which he didn’t buy, but every time I hear it I am reminded of those formative years spent listening to records, and in particular one Thursday evening when we had been banished upstairs to watch Top of the Pops, on which this record appeared, and which led to the pair of us leaping up from the sofa and frantically playing air-guitar, in full on foot-on the monitor mode:

339. Iron Maiden – Run to the Hills

The reason I think I remember that is because it was probably a turning point, where we both admitted to liking the same records as each other. Up until then, we hated, or pretended to, each other’s musical choices – dammit, we pretended to hate each other (that’s what siblings did when they were that age, right?), having many a play fight which spilt over into full on physical violence, as the snooker cue that I broke over his back once attests (Look, he was bigger than me, I was fully entitled to come tooled up, okay?). As does the broken violin bow we had argued over a few years earlier when we had both found ourselves learning the instrument at Junior School. (I know, I know – fights involving violin bows: it’s not exactly “Angela’s Ashes”, is it…?)

(As an aside: my friends Hel and Llyr went to the Reading Festival in 2005 when Iron Maiden head-lined. They watched them, and afterwards reported that the section of the crowd they were in were distinctly non-plussed by the veteran rockers. Lead warbler Bruce Dickinson, attempting to whip the crowd up into a frenzy would call “Do you remember this one…?”; the crown responded as one “Nope!”)

Particularly indicative of our love/hate relationship came one Saturday night in, I guess, the early 80s. Saturday nights were a family night, which we would spend playing records from my Dad’s record collection. As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, Dad’s taste is predominantly Country records, but there was/is diversity there: he likes a bit of jazz, some folk, some classical. There was a series of classical albums that he owned, a spin off from a BBC radio programme, called “The World of Your Hundred Best Tunes” (a name I toyed with giving this very blog, until I realised there may be copyright issues). We were categorically not allowed to bring our own records down to play. But my brother figured out a way round this, and got one song – a cover version of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony by the next band from their “Difficult to Cure” album – played. So offended was I that he had been allowed to have one of his songs played, but I hadn’t (as I had no rock covers of classical records) I spent the entirety of the song under the dining room table, kicking and screaming about “how unfair” it was. (“So Unfair” was, I’m reliably informed, mostly anytime my parents watch any Harry Enfield sketch involving Kevin & Perry, practically my catchphrase when I was a teenager. This was just me warming up, I reckon)

Obviously, I’ve mellowed with age. But I’m still not playing “Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince unless someone comes up with a bloody good reason to. And I mean bloody good.

Anyway, I’m not playing the Beethoven cover either; since they’re unlikely to feature again (more than once more) on these pages, I thought I’d plump for the big single from the same album:

340. Rainbow – I Surrender

Rainbow were, of course, one of the many bands to rise from the ashes of Deep Purple, another band that we begrudgingly admitted to having a shared passion for back then. Again, Big Bro’s record collection featured several of their albums, but the first I recall seeing – and to this day, the only one I’ve ever purchased myself (Cheers Fopp (Cardiff  branch) and your £2.00 shelf!) – was a compilation album called “Deepest Purple”, from which this one is lifted:

341. Deep Purple – Woman from Tokyo [Single Edit]

And you’ll be relieved to hear, that’s the end of the Rock Stage…

The Pop Phase

…and perhaps less relieved when you see what comes next.

Luckily for you, I’ve talked before – here – about the fact that we both mysteriously somehow came to own our own copies of Billy Joel’s “An innocent Man” album, so I’ll spare you that.

Ditto, I’ve previously posted – here – the two songs from Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” album, which he also owned that are any good (and I’m not going to post “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” as it annoys me even more than the aforementioned “Summertime”)

But here’s a song by a band I’ve never really liked but – and I can say this without fear of correction, as he denies remembering anything from our childhood – I’m pretty sure Andrew joined the fan-club of:

342. Thompson Twins – Doctor Doctor

Twins, see? And there were three of them. Pfffffft. Funny guys (and a girl). (They were named after the characters from the Tintin cartoons, as everyone knows – The Ed)

Moving swiftly on, to a song which I had completely forgotten about until Brian over at Linear Tracking Lives! posted it a month or so in his wonderful alphabetical trawl through his own record-buying history.

Lifted from her “The Drum is Everything”, much was expected of Carmel and her brand of smoky, jazzy pop, but she feel by the wayside shortly after this was released (although I did pick up one of the singles from the follow-up album, which I’ll feature soon enough, and which utterly tanked):

343. Carmel – More, More, More

I should at this point talk about the records by groups like The Go-Go’s which he brought back from a summer in America staying with relatives, working on their blueberry farm. Instead, I’m going to post something from an album which contains another of my most disliked pop songs ever by another group I was fairly indifferent to for much of their existence, but with the benefit of hindsight I can see did have some decent pop tunes, particularly in their early 80s synth-pop phase.

But the album Andrew bought by Eurythmics – “Be Yourself Tonight” – does not come from that period. It comes from their just-after-the-synth-pop-phase, and from an album which brought their only UK Number 1, the aforementioned disliked pop song “There Must Be an Angel (Playing With My Heart)” (It’s the over-singing that does my head in). The album spawned two other hits: “Would I Lie To You?”, which I posted recently, and this one, which I’d completely forgotten about until I came to write this, gave it a listen, and decided it’s not too bad at all:

344. Eurythmics – It’s Alright (Baby’s Coming Back)

But there was one band from his pop period who loomed large. I believe they were the first band he ever saw live (albeit supporting The Police), and, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, a band I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for too:

345. The Alarm – Where Were You Hiding When The Storm Broke?

It was The Alarm more than any other band, I think, that focused my brother’s attentions on records which were…well, let’s say more critically acclaimed shall we?

But first, two more bands that I remember compilation albums appearing amongst his burgeoning record collection. Neither need any introduction:

346. The Rolling Stones – Get Off Of My Cloud

347. The Jam – Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

I don’t recall which of these albums first surfaced on The Playroom’s record decks (ha! like it was anyway near as cool in there as that sounds), what I do know is that a) I have recently bought both of these albums on vinyl myself, and b) shortly after The Jam album appeared I remember laughing at my brother for wearing white socks, the only mod accessory one could get away with at our school. Still, at least he didn’t steal them, of if he did, he wasn’t dumb enough to get caught. Ahem.

But these were the first shoots of liking more credible records, for very soon, we were fully into stage three, where he has resided ever since.

The Road to Redemption

There’s only one place to start. The Alarm’s haircuts may have influenced his for many years afterwards, when he could get away with it, but it was the dress sense and image of one of the Sex Pistols that most captured his imagination. He was told many times that he looked like this sneerer, which I’m pretty sure always thrilled him, however indifferent he may have appeared to look.

It’s credited to Sex Pistols, but make no mistake, released in 1978 as the band were imploding, this is a Sid Vicious record in everything but name:

348. Sex Pistols – My Way

And so, with his black hair sprayed vertically, skinny black jeans with black studded belt and black winkle-pickers or occasionally cowboy boots (which, if memory serves, were brown when he bought them, unable to source a black pair, and which he spent several hours glossing over with a tub of Kiwi black polish and an oily rag), there was only one place he was going to go next:

349. The Sisters of Mercy – Alice

And of course, this lot, who we are both unified in our admiration of, so it seems appropriate this song occupies the 350th slot in this section:

350. The Jesus & Mary Chain – You Trip Me Up

He also bought the one and only album by this next lot, who I mention because I cannot hear it without thinking of the summer I spent as an underage drinker, hanging out with him and his mates Rob and Phil, driving round Cambridgeshire’s village pubs, where no-one knew our names, pubs like The Barnwell Mill, which had a massive juke box, and only one record they liked upon it. Once they realised that it didn’t differentiate between the same song having been selected twice by different people, they realised they could have hours of fun, by simply playing this, over and over and over and over and over again, often leaving after they’d heard it once, leaving the rest of the drinkers to sup their way through it another 17 times:

351. Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Love Missile F1-11

Gradually, our musical tastes have pretty much merged. At no time was this more apparent than when I was at Sixth Form, between 1986 and 1988. As I mentioned recently, on a nightly basis  I found myself preparing mixtapes to play in the Sixth Form common room the following day, and there was one album which Andrew had bought which was invaluable for that. For he is the only person I know to have bought the legendary NME C86 album when it came out (admittedly, he bought the vinyl version, not the original cassette only version, but props are still due).

This band featured on the album in question, but not with this song, which he both realised we loved within the last few years, when discussing how much the much-missed The Long Blondes reminded us of them:

352. The Shop Assistants – Safety Net

In 1997, our paths crossed back at our folks house, and, presumably after they’d gone to bed we were either playing records, or more likely watching a music TV channel, this came on. I’d not seen him so enthused for some years (actually, I’d probably not seen him for years), and he proclaimed this “the new punk”:

353. The Prodigy – Firestarter

At which point, I’d better draw things to a close. If I don’t, it won’t be his birthday anymore by the time I post this.

So, one last one, by a band I remember him going to see towards the start of their career, and telling me afterwards how he’d been to see a band who used bashing-themselves-on- the-head-with-a-metal-tea-tray as a percussion instrument. I’d be very surprised if this doesn’t get an airing tomorrow night:

354. The Pogues – Boys From the County Hell

Happy Birthday Bro. See you tomorrow. I’ll bring the Jack Daniels.

And to the rest of you – well, as I’m away, it’ll be a little quiet around here for the next couple of days, certainly not as busy as it normally is of a weekend. If I have time to write them before I set off tomorrow, there will be a Late Night Stargazing and a Sunday Morning Coming Down, but no promises. Otherwise, The Chain will return on Monday, so you’ve got another couple of days to get your suggestions in if you haven’t done so already.

Til then, have a fab weekend.

Oh, and More Soon, obviously.

That Summer Feeling #23

For many youngsters in the UK, today is the first day of the summer holidays, so today’s post seems rather appropriate.

Lifted from their third album, here’s some Art Brut:

Art Brut – Summer Job

Be a nice change to get served in shops by stroppy, disenfranchised teenagers instead of bored, disinterested adults for a few weeks, won’t it?

I’ve loved Art Brut and lead singer Eddie Argos’s witty lyrics and, shall we say, distinctive vocal style since the moment Llyr and I first stumbled across their debut single back in 2004. It’s a glorious yelp of youth, an announcement of arrival, coupled with an archness, a knowingness and it steals the thunder of any critics who don’t like his “singing voice” before they have chance to fire up their laptops to pen a scathing diatribe: “It’s not irony, it’s not rock’n’roll, we’re just talking to The Kids!”

Art Brut – Formed a Band

Love it. There’s a slightly more polished version on their debut album “Bang Bang Rock’n’Roll” which, if you don’t own, you really should. Or just stick around, I’ll find an excuse to post more from it sooner or later.

More soon.

That Summer Feeling #22

Last one for this weekend.

And I’m not sure that, strictly speaking, this qualifies as a summer record.

But, since part of the name of the act includes the word “Summer”, I’m posting it. The thread’s called “That Summer Feeling” for a reason. My rules. Moan and I’m taking my ball home.

I first stumbled across this record back when The Chart Show was still on Channel 4 on a Friday evening. I was aware of the female part of the three acts involved, through their “Rules and Regulations” 12″ which I’ve mentioned before, my brother and I both having purchased copies of it, in all its one-side-music-the-other-side-etched-caricature-of-the-band glory.

It took me a looooooonnnnnnnnnnngggggg time to track down a copy of this record. In fact, it was a good 15 – 20 years later that I finally stumbled upon it in Kelly’s Records, the second-hand record stall in Cardiff’s indoor market.

It was also, I think, my first introduction to the deadpan brilliance that is Ted Chippington, of whom I’ve also banged on about quite a bit here before, so I’ll spare you this time.

I speak of this:

The Vindaloo Summer Special – Rockin’ With Rita (Head to Toe)

I bloody love that record. Cheesy smile on my face whenever I hear it.

More soon.

How to Do a Cover Version (That Summer Feeling #20 – #21)

Aww, you guys.

Following on from my post yesterday about Mr Blue Sky, I received two comments nudging me in the direction of two more, very different, cover versions that I wasn’t aware of, both of which are so good, I felt obliged to seek them out and post them.

So, and with thanks to Alex G, first up here’s Lily Allen, who did a version for a French mobile phone network advert (I think) which doesn’t seem to have ever had an official release here in the UK, hence this awful sleeve I found online:

Lily Allen – Mr Blue Sky

Further thanks to julianbadenoch for letting me know about this:

 

Joe Brown – Mr Blue Sky

Joe will be featuring in a future post I have lined up, so I won’t talk about him now, but I have to say, that’s bloody good, isn’t it? It really captures the happy-go-lucky essence not just of the record, but of Joe himself.

Dad – one for you to learn?

More soon.

Sunday Morning Coming Down (That Summer Feeling #19)

If you want a happy, summery, slightly cheesy, Country record, there’s really only one person to turn to:

John Denver – Sunshine On My Shoulders

Don’t forget the after sun.

More soon.

Late Night Stargazing (That Summer Feeling #18)

Tonight, a song which means a lot to me.

Actually, three songs.

Over the past ten years or so, I’ve had the misfortune to spend some time unemployed. When you’re around the 40-mark, this is a scary place to be.

Needless to say, it was an incredibly demoralising situation. My jobless times happened to correspond with summer weather, but I can assure you, the last thing you feel like doing is going out and passing the time sunbathing.

The first time it happened, I had just moved from Cardiff to Cheltenham. I’d landed a job with a firm of solicitors, and had been commuting between the two cities for three months whilst I worked out my probation period. Just before that three month period was up, I was called into the office by the MD, told I was doing great and encouraged to make the move to Cheltenham. Which I did, finding a decent two bedroom flat I could afford, and moving in as fast as I could.

No more than a couple of weeks later, I was called into the office again by the main partner of the firm – who had interviewed me, and given me the positon because of my background in insurance – who promptly “let me go” (which sounds so much nicer than “fired”) because I was “too Insurance-y” and because they’d hired people from an insurance background before and “it had never worked”. So: fired for the exact reason I’d been hired. Cheers for that.

There followed an extended period of unemployment, where I was stranded high and dry in a town where there were no prospects, and where I knew nobody (bar one girl, Emily, who I had befriended when she was a rollie-smoking temp at the same firm, summarily dismissed in much the same way as I) until I finally landed a job which allowed me to get the fuck out of Cheltenham and on to London. (As it goes, a year later I got made redundant from that job. I was really on a roll, or as my brother summarised in one phone call “Jesus, you just can’t catch a break at the moment, can you?”)

Anyway, tonight’s song was played quite a lot during the darker hours which occurred during that period of nothingness:

Emiliana Torrini – Unemployed in Summertime

Categorically, this is not how unemployment treated me. It was a horrid, hollow, vacuous experience, where the only person I spoke to face to face was my counsellor, once a fortnight, at the Job Centre. It was not all sitting on Primrose Hill doing magazine sex quizzes.

There are two more songs, which articulate the pit I was in at the time, both suitable for posting here. Firstly, this, possibly one of the most depressing records you’ll ever hear, dealing as it does with rejection, depression, suicide, and the death of your parents:

Gilbert O’Sullivan – Alone Again (Naturally)

Cheery stuff, no? But perfect for late night contemplation.

And then there was this, a song about loneliness and depression, but penned in a defiant, triumphant manner:

Neil Diamond – I Am…I Said

I would sing along, supplementing the word “Cardiff” for “New York”, and “Cheltenham” for “L.A.”, which, with the benefit of hindsight, didn’t scan so well, if I’m honest.

Ordinarily, I’m a fairly happy-go-lucky, laid back, nothing really fazes me kind of chap, but I’m sure anyone who knew me and was in contact with me in those times would confirm that’s certainly not how I was then. I may have fronted it up, but I was miserable. Had I been to see my GP and explained, I think I could easily have been diagnosed with depression.

Happy to report, though, all is well now. A friend of mine, Holmesy (hello! and thank you!), regularly tells me now how good it is to have “the old me” back, which is just lovely to hear, but the fact he feels the need to say it is a marker for just how down and insular I became.

By the way, I should make it clear that I could never have got through those months without the support of my family and friends. My folks for helping me with the financial problems that being on Job Seeker’s Allowance (which just about covered all of my bills, after which, if I was lucky, I might have enough left over to buy food) inevitably brings; my friends – and Hel in particular – for just saying “Come and see us. We’ll pay. We want you to be here with us.” I can never thank any of you enough.

On top of that, writing this helps. So to anyone who has ever commented or tweeted me because of something I’ve written here: thank you. It really means a lot.

Ahem. *Pulls himself together*

I guess what I’m trying to say is: just because it’s sunny outside, don’t assume everyone is happy inside.

More (and hopefully less depressing) soon.

Same Title, Different Song (That Summer Feeling #17)

And the hits just keep on coming.

So, what we have here is a triple whammy: one of the very few glorious Britpop summer romps, one which has absolutely nothing to do with summer at all, but it’s by a band that I haven’t posted enough of, even if this song is from one of my least favourite periods in their recording career (although this one does sound rather nice on a sunny day or late at night, take your pick), and one by one of the most influential dance acts of the last twenty years, who just happen to be French. Take that, Brexiters! (It’s not Take That, Brexiters)

First up: what’s not to like about Ash?

Ash – Oh Yeah

And so to Roxy Music, and a single lifted from their “Flesh + Blood” album, and which is kinda okay in a suave, croony kinda way, but far, far away from how the band sounded when Brian Eno was involved, when we all know they were at the height of their powers:

Roxy Music – Oh Yeah

And just to round things off (and I’m sure there area million other records with the same name, by the way), a little something a little more influential. From their debut album “Homework”, this:

Daft Punk – Oh Yeah

More soon.