Dad

It says '1952' on the back, so he'll have been 29. Just a couple of years after this.

My Dad died this morning, sometime between 8 and 9am, in his room, in his care home, eighteen hours or so after Mum's last visit...

"I said to him, 'Do you know who I am?' and he looked at me like I was daft,

'Of course I know who you are'

'Well, who am I then?'

'You're you'..."

He didn't believe in 'heroes', but he was mine.

We will miss him very much.

[Blog 'closed' for a bit].

Hide Your Face From Searching Eyes

I danced around the Durutti Column (not actually a pagan rite) for donkey's - knowing the FAC history, borrowing and taping LPs from the library and loving single tracks on comps and so on, but it was a big and daunting body of work I only really plunged properly into five years or so back, and I still have lots more of it to explore.

Sunlight To Blue...Blue To Blackness, a late, post-Anthony H. Wilson album soaked through with mourning for him I downloaded via some emusic package, offered up so many brilliant things; this I've already blogged, and 'Demo For Gathering Dust', a dark and lovely flamenco I've played over and over these past years but only this week found in vocal form on the album before.

Vini, who has had the roughest time of it recently, must be both the greatest and most criminally undersung guitar player of our time - though not by those who know - amongst them Johnny Marr and, as I found out today when I was about to post this, Roddy Frame, who tweeted...

"When I was 15/16 I tried to play guitar like Vini Reilly..."



The Durutti Column website is here.

The Durutti Column - 'Demo For Gathering Dust' (2008)
The Durutti Column - 'Gathering Dust' (2007)

The Smiling Hour

I posted this six years ago - but all old people repeat themselves.

And it's one of Glo's favourites. 

Chin chin companeros.

Dean Martin - 'Little Ole Wine Drinker, Me' (1967)

Yeah Baby

This cracker from ye olde Vinyl District freebie shuffled up on the iPo the other day as the sun burst through bruise-coloured clouds: bluesy, blousy and blowy,  it's a surefire Friday choon.

I am home. It's not late. I shall require a beverage, oh yeah.

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - 'I'll Still Be True' (2010)

In A Sentimental Mood

This is a song Mrs H always asks me to play when she's in her cups a sentimental mood.

It's a pretty thing, as Bing Crosby might say.

I only really listened to the lyrics properly the other day.

And when I looked it up found that they were written by one Felice Mancini, and set to music by her very great and famous composer Dad.

Sometimes, not often enough
We reflect upon the good things
And those thoughts always centre around those we love
 
And I think about those people who mean so much to me
And for so many years have made me so very happy
And I count the times I have forgotten to say "thank you"
 
And just how much I love them

Carpenters - 'Sometimes' (1971)

Tuesday (!) Reggae

Yes, unorthodox I know, but I'm seizing the day with this because a) it's a great record and I want to share it with you and b) I am, shockingly, going to be late back from selling the snake-oil in town on Friday and so likely slinging that post together in an even more slapdash fashion than usual, and this warrants a tad more attention.

It leapt out at me from this Soundcloud of reggae choons from the 'classic' era - some cut/crunched together a bit too rapidly for my liking, but I get the vibe - and I'd never heard it before.

It sounds like an old Studio One production pure and simple but is, according to the nice people at this site, a bit of a mongrel - an unreleased late 60s riddim track by The Soul Vendors, backing a vocal group called The Saints and harmonies by The Silvertones, with a lead vocal added in 1999 when the whole thing was re-engineered in Jamaica (by Courtney Dodd) and mixed in Brooklyn, NY. 

Like say, it's very good indeed.

Nina Soul - 'Sleeping Trees' (1999 - kind of)

Float, Float On

It was back from over there, rest up and Bank Holiday car-booting and straight into stuff over here and I've only just come up for air now really, so sorry to have been so quiet, though being quiet seems to be the new norm around here; I blame that Twitter. There's a navel-gazing post to be writ I'm sure about Whatever Happened To (Noodly) Music Blogs, with so many having fallen by the wayside, but some other feller or lass can write it, if that's alright.

I'll have a large Tanqueray over crushed ice, chunk of lime, tonic and some classic Balearica, ta.

The Grid - 'Floatation (Subsonic Grid Mix)' (1990)

Old Lag

Where am I? What time is it? Where'd all the big yellow taxis go? Wha_?

Odyssey - 'Native New Yorker' (1977)