We'll Talk Away The Morning, Read The Papers, Misbehave

A song for the day, and for the mood if the day is good.

A rarity, the B-side of a 1983 single 'Here's To The Band', and the only Sinatra recording to feature only his vocal and a solo acoustic guitar.

Music by Jule 'Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend' Styne, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead; guitar - Tony Mottola.

A simple sketch from a master artist in his twilight years. Hope you like it.

Frank Sinatra - 'It's Sunday' (1983)

(Available on The Reprise Collection - buy).

Get The Funk In Here 2!

My local Oxfam shop came up with the goods big time this week - some (much sampled) rare groove and jazz funk/soul selected by UK hip-hop DJ Cutmaster Swift for this 'B Boy classics' compilation in 1999.

Having bought it for the price of a pint, I was amused to find some guy attempting to sell his on Amazon Marketplace for £74.

Buy it new for a slightly more reasonable price here.

You know I like to funk on a Friday.

King Curtis - 'Memphis Soul Stew' (MP3)

Skull Snaps - 'It's A New Day' (MP3)

Aaron Neville - 'Hercules' (MP3)
The Commodores - 'The Assembly Line' (MP3)

When You've Got The Looks Then The Rest Just Works

90s movie icon; Stateside shoegaze classic.

Delaware is criminally in need of reissue on CD.

Drop Nineteens - 'Winona' (1992)

You Saw Brigadoon (January 1986)

WARNING: contains nostalgia.

Part of my excitement in discovering this had been released to iTunes was that it was one of only two tracks I still needed to complete a digital reproduction of a compilation tape I made in January 1986.

(I know, I know - I need to get out more. But I'm 75! And my knees are playing up! You wanna read about The Fratellis, go talk to that nice Mr Cameron. You think I'm joking? Here.)

The tape was called You Saw Brigadoon (!) and its full track listing was:

Side 1

Sunday (Rebel Soul) - The Faith Brothers

Days Like These - Billy Bragg
Walk On The Wild Side - Lou Reed

The Whole Of The Moon - The Waterboys

In Between Days - The Cure

Twenty Four Hours - Joy Division

Ocean Rain - Echo & The Bunnymen

Song To The Siren - This Mortal Coil

Side 2

Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust - This Mortal Coil

Eventide - The Faith Brothers

Nocturnal Me - Echo & The Bunnymen

I Don't Need This Pressure Ron - Billy Bragg

The Ghost In You - The Psychedelic Furs

Shakespeare's Sister - The Smiths

Thieves Like Us - New Order

Now, I have earlier mixtapes than this, and more 'Peely' ones, but this one's special to me for a few reasons.

1) I made it at the start of the 2nd term of my final year at University. Annus mirabilis! It evoketh. Big time.

2) I still like everything on it.

3) It hangs together quite nicely - at least until the second half of the second side where I can't help but feel The Smiths track (not one of their best) blows the mood slightly. It made the cut because it was a recent single; The Queen Is Dead didn't come out until later that year. Imagine! (and also imagine...C86, grunge, baggy, Madchester, shoegaze, Oasis, Britpop, New Labour, even bloody John Major - all still to happen).

Everything on the tape was stuff I was enjoying then and there, and bar the obvious already 'classic' Joy Division and Lou Reed tracks, it all dates from the period 1983-1985 (I had got Ocean Rain that Christmas, though nearly had to give it back when my Dad said he thought it 'sounded quite nice').

.

Finally getting the TMC track left me with just one final missing piece - the all-important Track One, Side One - The Faith Brothers' 'Sunday'...

Why did I not have this?

1. It was taped from an LP that belonged to my flatmate Carlos.

2. This LP (Eventide) is rare as hen's teeth - and has never been issued on CD.

3. You try finding it on the Hype Machine.

The Faith Brothers were a fabulous band, especially live - all soaring melodies, urgent brass, elatory vocals and humanistic commitment. Lead singer/writer Billy Franks was a passionate and charismatic frontman - even when long after the band's glory days (supporting The Alarm!) performing to a few hundred with his soul band in 'The Leather Bottle' pub in Wimbledon Chase.

So....I was about to issue an appeal to anyone who had 'Sunday (Rebel Soul)' ('Spare an MP3 guv'nor?') when in putting this post together I checked out Billy Franks website and found he had posted the whole of the Eventide LP (and others) for download free of charge.

He's even added this non-LP early single

The Faith Brothers - 'A Stranger On Homeground'

What a man!

My restoration project is complete. Closure. Enough nostalgia already.

Billy Franks plays O'Neill's, 326 Earl's Court Rd, London this Sunday 25th March from 6:30pm - free.

Only You Alone Can Quench This Here Thirst

OK, no need for lots of verbiage with this one; it's just how I'm feeling right now.

Gregory Isaacs - 'Night Nurse' (1982)

Get The Funk In Here!

This is a post that's been a while in the waiting.

Dave Brown is a DJ who presents a Sunday night Motown show on London's Smooth FM 102.2 (formerly Jazz FM). It's a gem of a programme because 1) Brown really knows his stuff 2) he manages to resist what I would imagine is considerable commercial and audience pressure to stack the four hours with the over-familiar hits (the station's daytime schedule is deeply mainstream), choosing instead to air many rare, lost and forgotten tracks from the late 50s through to the present. I've heard some stunning soul records on this programme, most of them for the first time.

I was knocked back a few weeks ago when I heard this contemporary remix of a 1975 Smokey Robinson track and bought it off iTunes pronto - but not until I bought the whole Motown Remixed CD it's from could I upload it to The Ghost of course (hey there again, Digital Rights Bloody Protection Software!).

Remixes of classic tracks can be hit and miss affairs - what I love about this is the way it massively opens up and deepens, whilst respecting, the source material - especially with the inspired addition of Roy Ayers' vibes accompaniment (not on the original).

Smokey Robinson - 'Quiet Storm' (Groove Boutique Chill Jazz Mix, feat. Roy Ayers)

Hope you like it. The album is well worth a listen (buy here) - maybe I'll post some more tracks soon.

Now to our pictured artist...

A lot of people say to me "Davy H, your blog's alright - but I just don't feel you post enough stuff by female African-American jazz funk flautists..."

I'm happy to oblige.

Bobbi Humphrey - 'Harlem River Drive' (1973) (available on Blue Break Beats Vol 1 - buy)

(Website here). Have (another) funky weekend.

Do You Remember My Face?

Archetypal rock ‘n’ roll story maaaan….

Charismatic, if slightly weird, band leader, singer, songwriter and prime animus parts company with cultish band in not entirely happy circumstances (musical/personal differences, frustration at lack of commercial success, sense of compromised integrity, claustrophobia, drug-related sacking, etc); is widely tipped to carve out hugely successful yet iconoclastic solo career while jobbing ex-colleagues return to obscurity whence they had sprung.

Watches as said bandmates recruit new singer, reinvent selves as mainstream act, storm charts, become megastars.

Examples:

Syd Barrett - The Pink Floyd

Peter Gabriel – Genesis (‘Was feeling part of the scenery/Walked right out of the machinery’, etc)

John Foxx - Ultravox!

Foxx (real name Dennis Leigh) trained as a graphic artist - a career to which he returned in the 1990s having quit the music business. He had been active on the glam scene from as early as 1974 with his band Tiger Lily, once tried out as vocalist for the nascent Clash (then known with Year Zero tastelessness as The London SS), fell in love with the music of the electronic avant garde and Kraftwerk, formed the band Ultravox! (always with an exclamation mark) and enjoyed critical acclaim, hipster status and the production services of Brian Eno on Island records for two years before being unceremoniously dropped by the label in 1979.

Signing to Virgin as a solo artist, Foxx released ‘Underpass’ (MP3), which peaked at number 31 on the singles charts. Subsequent singles grazed the lower reaches of the Top 40, then later only the Top 75; albums picked up some plaudits, but failed to substantially scratch the consciousness of either post-punkers or synthpop kids.

Meanwhile Ultravox regrouped, dropped the ! , hired a guy that used to sing in a teen band and.....“Aaaah, Vienna!”…

I always thought Foxx was interesting and loved his cold, alienated keyboard landscapes and chipped vocals – a major influence on (the also much more commercially successful) Gary Numan.

I had the free-with-Smash Hits yellow ‘flexidisc’ (!) of an obscure Foxx track called ‘My Face’ (MP3) for many years before the crease it sustained in the mail finally made it unplayable, and though we did nickname it ‘Underpants’ at school, his debut stuck with us more than its chart position would indicate.

Might I also suggest that ‘Europe After The Rain’ (MP3) (number 40, August 1981) is one of the very best proto electro dance tracks of the 1980s?

It is surely time for a Foxx revival. I would like to start it here.

Five quid gets you this budget compilation – a sterling slice of the best of Dennis Leigh from the synthrock 80s through the rather marvellously ambient 90s. It includes 'My Face' !!! Buy!


(John Foxx's official website here).

More Than Five Leaves Left

I nipped into our local Notting Hill Housing Trust charity shop on Saturday to peruse the second hand CDs, and there amongst the usual Uncut magazine giveaways, 90s dance mix compilations and East 17 singles, I found Made To Love Magic by Nick Drake - for £1.

This is not a rare or amazing record but I think you will agree it was being sold at a rare and amazing price, so I bought it.

Accusations of barrel-scraping were levelled at Island/Universal when this compilation of studio outakes, demos and reorchestrated tracks was released in 2004, mostly because the truly sought-after stuff had already been given a respectful first airing on a bonus CD included with the 1986 Fruit Tree box set (and released separately a year later as Time Of No Reply).

Famously, Nick Drake released only three albums in his lifetime, none of which received much critical attention or any commercial success at the time.

His unreleased recordings are also thin on the ground - solo demos recorded by his friend and future orchestrator Robert Kirby at Cambridge; rough self-recorded tapes made at his family home in Tanworth-in-Arden (bootlegged, much to the distress of his family); outtakes from the studio albums, especially the debut Five Leaves Left (buy); and four songs from his final studio sessions in 1974 for an intended 4th album.

Given how little we have of Nick Drake, there's something of interest, and much to enjoy, in all the songs - but for me the stand-out tracks are those recorded for, but left off, Five Leaves Left. It's a mark of the quality of the released material that songs of this standard were not considered up-to-scratch: hard to imagine an artist or producer leaving them off an album these days, especially not with 60-70 minutes of CD space to fill (the original LP lasted just 42 minutes).

The album we know is, of course, perfection - and now appears routinely in all those Greatest Albums Of All Time lists.

How different it was in the dog-days of the 1960s when a quiet, upper middle class Cambridge undergraduate with his intricate guitar stylings and opaque, melancholy lyrics went largely unheard by a world with the electric blues ringing in its ears...

Nick Drake - 'Clothes Of Sand' (MP3)
Nick Drake - 'Joey' (MP3)
Nick Drake - 'The Thoughts Of Mary Jane' (MP3) [alternate version: Richard Thompson - electric guitar]

All tracks recorded November/December 1968 and available here; an excellent biography of Nick Drake by Patrick Humphries available here.

My Whole Life Stretches In Front Of Me

Today I walked past those buds I knew I could not hasten to bloom. And look at them now.

David Sylvian - 'Brilliant Trees' (1984)

Weekend - 'Leaves Of Spring' (1982)

*sigh*

Early 21st Century Blues Continued

Glad tidings reach The Ghost that a new Cowboy Junkies album, At The Ends Of Paths Taken, is scheduled for release in mid-April. Three (rather excellent) tracks from it are streaming right now at the band's Myspace page.

I've had a soft spot for the Canadian siblings' low-key lyrical blues ever since 1988's seminal Trinity Session, which was recorded, as Wikipedia gleefully notes, 'live in a single day on a single microphone in a church in Toronto' and I suppose is most famous to the world at large for featuring a cover of the Velvet Underground's 'Sweet Jane' which Lou Reed described as his all-time favourite version of the song (it's based on the longer, slower reading of the track that Reed began performing live in the late 60s).

My desert island CJ track though (and I suspect many other people's) would have to be 'Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning' (from 1990's Caution Horses) a song whose lyric brilliantly evokes the mash of emotions (sadness, loss, relief, the comfort of returning-to-self) that follows a relationship break-up. I have a friend who once gave this to a girlfriend he'd just dumped - which seems a bit harsh, now I come to think of it...

Always cultish, never especially hip, the Junkies have doggedly etched out their very particular alt. musical groove for twenty years now, even releasing their recordings themselves since the late 90s.

Here's a smattering of tracks from their illustrious past.

Cowboy Junkies - 'Sweet Jane' [Velvet Underground cover]

(from The Trinity Session)

Cowboy Junkies - 'Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning' [Radio One session 1989]

(from The Radio One Sessions)

Cowboy Junkies - 'A Horse In The Country'

Cowboy Junkies - 'Oregon Hill'

(from 'Black Eyed Man' )

I Do Not Like Green Eggs And HEMMM

I hate to second-hand blog, and I honestly promise not to do it again, but I really feel I must pass the word on about this - in which a Highway 61 Revisited era Bob Dylan sings the poems and rhyming stories of, erm, Dr Seuss.

Brilliant.

Huge shout out to Jon at Southcoasting for drawing our attention to this.

Anyone know who it is? Weird Al Yankovic again??

Speaking of matters Dylan, here's a little Chumbawamba to get your week off to a 'radical' start.

They're being sniffy about Bob in Don't Look Back of course, but hey! he can take it and so can we.

Chumbawamba - 'Give The Anarchist A Cigarette' (MP3) (from Anarchy - buy).

PS: Dr Seuss's publisher Random House has put together a lovely site in celebration of The Cat In The Hat's 50th birthday here. Fun for all the family!

Does She Love Us?

If Jenny Lewis didn’t exist, we middle-aged, male, indie-nostalgic, back-room bloggers would have had to invent her.

Gorgeous, flirtatious, guitar-playing, gutsy and literate, Ms Lewis has all that we require of our alternative rock fantasy objects and now that Louise Wener is a successful novelist, the stage must be hers alone.

The quality of La Lewis's work, both with Rilo Kiley and The Watson Twins, speaks for itself; for me, Rabbit Fur Coat (buy) was easily one of the best albums of 2006 and the last RK album More Adventurous (buy) an absolute CRACKER that’s still on heavy rotation play at Ghost Central.

The NME reported way back in October that Rilo Kiley had '20 new songs recorded' and that mixing would begin in November for a new album to be released ‘early in 2007’ but since then there’s been, as far as I can tell, no more news of the release (even the band’s website is still streaming tracks from More Adventurous).

Anyone know if we can expect something soon?

We can’t wait around till we’re all 'Portions For Foxes' you know Jen…!

Feel Like I Want To Testify

My mate Wayne grew up in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. Came of age back in the early 80s. Had a wedge haircut and wore soul-boy shoes and white socks. Was a Number on the Scene. Liked a bit of the old jazz funk: early Level 42, Spyro Gyra, Weather Report - maybe a touch of Luther now and then.

Now he’s 40-something and on a P&O cruise of the world; a few weeks ago we received a card from him in Buenos Aires, and I think he’s somewhere off the coast of Australia now. As far as we know he isn’t playing fretless bass in the house band, but you never know with Wayne.

It’s largely down to Wayne that I own the 1981 Bobby Womack album The Poet, which is something of a genre masterpiece.

At a time when the best soul/funk music of the period that the excellent Art Decade calls ‘the long seventies’ had pretty much played out, and before soul/pop saviours like Prince had really established a foothold, where hip-hop and electro had begun to flourish (even Marvin Gaye’s music would be synth-heavy on 1982’s Midnight Love album) but traditional horn-heavy and heartfelt soul melodies seemed to be a thing of the past, this recording from an artist whose best work many had considered to be behind him was a massive, and surprise, hit.

It’s a fabulously atmospheric, emotionally-wrought and gutsy late-night soul album that stands with the best of its kind and proved hugely influential on much of the 80s ‘groove’ scene.

Throughout, Womack’s voice is full of raw feeling, and his guitar work is terrific.

If you dig real soul music, you should invest.

And raise a glass to His Womackness, who’ll be 63 on Sunday.

Here are two sample tracks from The Poet, plus the bonus of the 1976 single ‘Daylight’ – because it’s Friday, and this is a staying-up-thru-Saturday kind of record.

Bobby Womack - 'If You Think You're Lonely Now'
Bobby Womack - 'Games'

Bobby Womack - 'Daylight'

Have a funky weekend.

Now That Mermaid's Dressed In Tears

Seth Lakeman. Sings. Plays violin (and viola and guitar). Is from Yelverton, Devon (not the home of many 'rock' stars previously) Has taken traditional English music and given it a right good kick up the arse. Love him.

London In The Rain

It's been raining big time in London this afternoon, the sky doing that evil-bruiseblack-in-places-and-cracked/shot-through-with-lurid-gold thing.

Which makes me think of rain songs, and how many great ones there are.

Something about this weather phenomenon that's desolate and melancholy and/or crazy to walk through/listen to the pitter patter of as you lie with The One You Love (etc) seems to bring out the best in songwriters.

So...here are three rain songs for you from The Ghost: one happy, one sad and one contrasting a happy rainy day past (with him) with a lonely rainy day present (without him).

(Ah yes dear reader, there was so much more to Minnie Ripperton than just 'Lovin' You'....).

Blossom Dearie - 'I Like London In The Rain' (from 'For Cafe Apres Midi' - buy)

Frank Sinatra - 'Here's That Rainy Day' (from 'No-One Cares' - buy)
Minnie Ripperton - 'Rainy Day In Centerville' (from 'Come Into My Garden' - buy)

24 Years Gathering Dust

News Flash: to commemorate what I understand is the 25th anniversary of their pioneering label, the groovy people at 4AD have exclusively licensed 5 rare tracks from their archive to the iTunes Music Store.

Most excitement - not least in this quarter - has been generated by the inclusion amongst these tracks of the anthemic 9 minute 'Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust' by This Mortal Coil (1983).

This originally occupied a whole side of the 12" vinyl 'Song To The Siren' EP (not to mention the beginning of Side 2 of a seminal mix tape I compiled in 1986 and am attempting to replicate on CD, but let's not go there right now) and has, rather shamefully, never been available digitally before.

The new 4AD/iTunes 'compilation' is called 'Full Of Dust And Guitars' and also features tracks by The Wolfgang Press, Rachel Goswell (ex-Slowdive - aaah! Slowdive!), His Name Is Alive and MARRS (yes, that one).

Remember, as they used to say on TV ads for dodgy Richard Clayderman box sets, This Item Is Not Available In The Shops.

It would seem to me therefore that acquiring 'Sixteen Days', should you not already possess it and a USB turntable to upload it, would be an excellent use of 79p (Digital Rights Management fascist bloody 'protection' software notwithstanding).

This has been a public service announcement.

I Know There's No Way I Can Hasten The Buds To Bloom

Something's got me thinking about Heidi Berry.

I don't know what it is, but I suspect that the other day when I walked with one of my little girls to the playpark and we spied some small, tightly-clasped-shut fluffy green magnolia buds on a tree in a London garden I may have thought of the imminence of spring and I may have hummed to myself my favourite song on the subject - Ms Berry's 'Hasten The Buds To Bloom' from her album 'Firefly' (1987).

Heidi was born in Boston, Mass, but grew up in London, England. She signed to Alan McGee's Creation Records when it was the home of bands like My Bloody Valentine, The Pastels, House Of Love, Felt and a pre-Screamadelica Primal Scream, but her music owed more to the English folk tradition as developed by Sandy Denny & Fairport Convention than it did to the late 80s indie scene.

I first heard her on a Creation compilation called 'Doing It For The Kids' , side 2 of which opens with her long, lovely, lyrical 'Northshore Train'. It's easily the best (though least typical) track on the album; certainly the most timeless.

She signed to 4AD in the early 90s and sang on the third 4AD 'collective' This Mortal Coil album 'Blood' before going on to record three solo abums for the label.

According to Heidi's website, she now teaches Songwriting and Live Performance at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music having last year

'.....enrolled on the songwriting course run by Ray Davies at The Arvon Foundation. She found this experience, “renewing, inspiring and the hardest work I’ve ever done”. The result is, Heidi is currently recording a collection of new songs. She says, “I’ve got about 40 songs now. How and when they will be released, I haven’t the faintest idea. I just know I need to do this with all my heart.” '

Here are three Heidi tracks - two we've mentioned and that you can buy on the CD issue of 'Beneath The Waves' which contains both the original album of that title and her debut; the third a superb cover of a Husker Du song from her 1991 album 'Love'.

Heidi Berry - 'Northshore Train'

Heidi Berry - 'Hasten The Buds To Bloom'

Heidi Berry - 'Up In The Air' (Husker Du cover)

Creation Records were long ago sold (out) to The Man, but there's a decent site for them here.

Hope the buds bloom wherever you are soon...

Return Of The Smalltown Girl

Has there been a female singer in the last twenty years with a voice as sad, distinctive, unaffected and English as Tracey Thorn's?

I've listened to it and loved it for more than a quarter of a century now - from the wilfully artless student days of The Marine Girls through the beautifully simple acoustic sketches of her solo debut 'A Distant Shore' along Everything But The Girl's melodic trail through indie jazz to torch balladry and House and onto her collaborations with Massive Attack, Deep Dish and German electro duo Tiefschwarz (the excellent dance track 'Damage', her last release).

Terrific news then that, 25 years after that first solo album, Tracey has recorded a follow up 'Out Of The Woods' which is released on March 5th.

We are promised "bed-sit disco torch songs"- so no change there then - recorded with a veritable who's who of dance music producers. As Tracey writes...

'....my main collaborator/producer is Ewan Pearson, and we've done seven tracks together. A cover of Arthur Russell's Get Around To It, featuring some wonky freakout sax from Gabe of The Rapture. A new song called It's All True, co-written with Sasse and Darshan Jesrani (Metro Area), which is pure early 80's New York dance pop. A piano ballad which Ewan says sounds like "The Carpenters on acid". Also a cover of King's Cross by the Pet Shop Boys, which isn't on the actual album (had too many songs!), but will be available as a bonus track somewhere, and downloadable from iTunes'

Can't wait.

Here's a sample to tide you over

Tracey Thorn - 'Grand Canyon'
There's a great interview with Tracey in this month's The Word magazine - website here.

Tracey's Myspace page? Here.

Pre-order the album here.

Sometimes I Feel So Lonely (1977 cont.)

Reading all those 1977 retrospectives – and maybe even Monday’s Ghost post - you could be forgiven for thinking that the year was all Sod The Jubilee (UK) and CBGB heaven (US), but the fact is that, for the most part, the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic were dominated by The Eagles’ Hotel California (released in late 76), Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the live double Wings Over America and Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life.

Singing cop David Soul was HUGE in Britain - and the 12 year old me was very much enjoying ABBA’s Arrival, thank you very much.

But ask me thirty years on for two albums I’d take from 1977 and I’d pick a perilous path through the burgeoning punk/new wave releases (debuts this year from The Clash, Pistols, Elvis Costello, Wire, The Jam and The Damned) and the mass market mega sellers (look out! It’s ELO’s Out Of The Blue!) to David Bowie’s Low and Steely Dan’s Aja.

We’ll return to the Dan in future posts if we may, because they seem to me to be one of the most widely misunderstood and criminally under appreciated acts of the era and I’m engaged in a sort of haphazard campaign to get 2007 people listening to them, but for now - to Mr Bowie (and Mr Eno…)…

Phew! Does this album INVENT the bloody 1980s or what?! In a really good way I mean – doom laden synth, existential angst, coke-wasted emptiness, urban alienation...would Ultravox, Japan, Gary Numan, JOY DIVISION!!! have had careers without it???

A masterpiece. As I expect you know.

Sadly (and perversely) the 90s CD reissue with its excellent bonus tracks is no longer available, but fear not, The Ghost is here to help.

Buy the original track-listed version here and sample a couple of those extras on us...

David Bowie - 'All Saints'
David Bowie - 'Some Are'

As they said at the time - 'There's new wave, there's old wave - and there's David Bowie' (thanks Alex).

I Recall Lightning Struck Itself (1977)

'No Elvis, Beatles and the Rolling Stones' sang The Clash memorably in the patently Year Zero, nostalgia-rejecting '1977' - but 30 years later, that Jubilee summer itself is an occasion for the inevitable photospread retrospectives, archive interview reprints and glossy souvenir supplements that sell backward-looking monthly music magazines here in the UK.

Yesterday's rebel music, today's Golden Oldies - ah, 'twas ever thus.

Of course the past music that punk was rejecting was really the rather more recent Emerson Lake & PalmerYes proggy stadium stuff, and not the rock 'n' roll of the 50s and 60s. As it's often noted, no-one was more 'in love with the rock 'n' roll world' than Messrs Strummer & Jones (pre-Clash, Strummer had fronted The 101ers, a band firmly rooted in sharp-sounding R&B) and even those 'can't play' Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Glen Matlock were fairly competent Eddie Cochran-loving rock 'n' rollers on the quiet.

UK punk's attitude, energy and catalystic ETHIC aside ('Woodstock coming at you - get off your arse!' - J. Lydon), perhaps the most important and durable musical legacy of 1977 came from bands like Television, whose taut, wiry, rhythmic, spare and spacey sound and unabashed artiness (very New York, that) pretty much kick-started the whole Post-Punk/New Wave thing. Hard to imagine Gang Of Four, Wire, New Order, The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, and, God knows, The Futureheads or The Klaxons without them.

Hats off to NME legend Nick Kent, who saw it all even then...

'They are one band in a million; the songs are some of the greatest ever. The album is Marquee Moon.'

Enjoy an un-punk like ten (!) minutes of radicalism on us....

Television - 'Marquee Moon'

...then celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of '1977 and all that' the right way - by buying the whole thing, remastered & expanded, here.

Saturday Night's Drunken Dreams

No, of course he's not 'the Top Shop Mike Skinner'(and variants) you lazy broadsheet music journos.

He may be 2007's Daniel 'Television Personalities' Treacey (younger readers, Google now); autre main, he may be 2007's Jilted John.

Still - wise, topical words (Wotcha Jade Goody!) funky retro backing track, good to sing along to in the car.

No wonder Va Kidz are buying it by the cartload.

We like!

Sometimes Less Is More

A recent conversation with a friend who got one of those USB turntables for Christmas and is busy uploading all his old LPs and singles set me to thinking about the music I have on vinyl that I haven't bought again on CD.

Aside from stuff I don't play anymore (I feel no compulsion nowadays to listen to The Housemartins, for example) and stuff you can't get anymore (old jazz LPs I bought second hand from Ray's Jazz when it was a real shop next to a greasy spoon in Shaftesbury Avenue, not a 'concession' in Foyles bookstore) there is some stuff here I absolutely love, that I have had for 20 years or more, that I continue to play - and of which the CD version just seems....wrong.

One such album is 'Songs For Distingué Lovers' by Billie Holiday.

On the original LP there are six tracks of around 5-6 mins each (three per side).

The songs, which were already iconic standards when Ms Holiday recorded them with a small group of jazz legends (including Ben Webster, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Rowles) and no strings in three days in January 1957 (two years before her death at the age of 44) are

Side 1

Day In, Day Out
A Foggy Day
Stars Fell On Alabama

Side 2

One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)
Just One Of Those Things
I Didn't Know What Time It Was

You could add nothing, and you could take nothing away.

In little more than thirty minutes the LP tells a story with economy, artistry and restraint.

It's as perfect a selection of songs and performances as you could imagine.

And the warm, full sound that comes out of that black plastic is a cruel reminder of all we have flattened out of music in our pursuit of the 'perfect' digital sound.

So when I was rummaging in a music store lately and I came across the CD version -remastered, perfectly packaged with a cardboard facsimile of the original record cover, additional sleeve notes and WHAT! Another six tracks from the original sessions! BOLTED ON THE END???!!!! I sniffed sadly at it, and put it back.

Would you sellotape some extra characters into an original Da Vinci cartoon because you found some other sketches he did at the same sitting?

You would not.

For me this album will always end

I didn't know what year it was
Life was no prize
I wanted love and here it was
Shining out of your eyes.

I'm wise
And I know what time it is now.

(Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart).

You'll Grow Down In A Small Town

I grew up in a small town. Everything they say is true.

From the excellent Reed/Cale Warhol tribute 'Songs For Drella' (1990)

13 Songs

Seasoned readers will remember the High Fidelity-esque challenge foisted upon me after I acquired a mobile phone with MP3 capacity but tragically little of it; there was room for 21 songs - so what would they be?

In a similar spirit, here's a lucky 13 tracks I am liking right now. Because I know you love lists.

1. Green Fields - The Good , The Bad & The Queen (from The Good, The Bad & The Queen)

I wrote this song years ago

Late at night, somewhere on the Goldhawk Road

I was never sure how or why.

Before the war and the tidal wave engulfed us all, it's true

How the world has changed

And I was learning how to change with you

2. Teen Age Riot - Sonic Youth (from Daydream Nation)

1988 - ah what bliss it was to be alive at the very beginning of leftfield grunge...

3. E-Bow The Letter - R.E.M. (from New Adventures In Hi-Fi)

Patti Smith!

4. Wasted Little DJs - The View (from Hats Off To The Buskers)

Dundee's Arctic Monkeys. Kind of.

5. Primitive Painters - Felt (from Absolute Classic Masterpieces)

In which Felt's 'Lawrence', 80s indie auteur sina qua non, is joined on vocals by Ms Elizabeth 'Cocteau Twins' Fraser. Whom we rather like. Produced by Robin Guthrie too. Peel to the max!

6. 80s Life - The Good, The Bad & The Queen (from The Good, The Bad & The Queen)

Oh Lord can a stone be ballast for an aching soul?

7. Just Another Day - Brian Eno (from Just Another Day On Earth)

8. Trains To Brazil - Guillemots (from Through The Window Pane)

Was Richard Hawley robbed by Monkeys - or were they?

9. Word On A Wing (live) - David Bowie (from StationToStation - bonus tracks)

In this age of grand illusion you walked into my life out of my dreams

I don't need another change, still you forced a way into my scheme of things

Becoming, year-by-year, my favourite Bowie album.

10. Once I Was (live) - Tim Buckley (from Dream Letter - Live In London 1968)

Buckley pere shows us where the sprog got that 4 octave range from. Cracking live acoustic version of my favourite track from Hello & Goodbye.

11. Brompton Oratory - Nick Cave (from The Boatman's Call)

Stand-out track (from many) on an album of love songs done the Cave way (i.e. full of doubt, darkness, Jesus and the Devil).

12. Twelve Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming To The Canyon) - The Mamas & The Papas

Acknowledgements to An Aquarium Drunkard's 'LA Burnout' compilation - and RIP Denny Doherty, founder member and lead vocalist (November 29th 1940 - January 19th 2007).

13. Garlands - Cocteau Twins (from Garlands)

Chaplets see me drugged/I could die in your rosary

I hit 41, I go Gothish again. Weird. Their first album. Bassist Will Heggie, who left shortly afterwards, is very much in the Peter Hook school of doomy bottom end. Which is how it should be.

You must buy The Good, The Bad & The Queen NOW.

Trust me, it will be album of the year.

Something About England

Here's one The Ghost is really looking forward to: the debut album from Damon Albarn's latest (he says one-off) musical project The Good, The Bad & The Queen, featuring former Verve guitarist Simon Tong, Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen and ex-Clash bassist Paul Simonon.

On the tracks I've already heard, Albarn's voice and acoustic guitar are upfront in the mix, often 'treated', the rhythms are lovely, as we might expect, and the sound of that big dubby bass underpins everything.

Blur meets Sandinista??

The album is streaming here.

It's released officially on January 22nd.

Farewell Sneaky Pete

The list of musicians from important bands who were also stop frame animators must be a pretty short one. In fact, it would almost certainly contain just one name: that of 'Sneaky' Pete Kleinow, pedal steel guitarist with Gram Parson's Flying Burrito Brothers and movie effects wizard, who died in a Californian nursing home on January 6th, having suffered from Alzheimer's for the past year.

Kleinow began his career in TV and movies visual effects, but in his spare time sat in on pedal steel with various early country rock bands in the LA area, eventually becoming acquainted with Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons, both then of The Byrds. When the band wanted help in reproducing their new-found country sound in concert, Kleinow got the call.

Parsons and Hillman left The Byrds in 1968, and asked Kleinow to join their new band, The Burritos (he's pictured bottom right in the classic line-up above). His classically plaintive sound adds much to their debut The Gilded Palace Of Sin, especially on heartbreak ballads like Hot Burrito # 1 (AKA 'I'm Your Toy'); at other times, Kleinow uses fuzzbox effects to bring a contemporary edge to proceedings.

After working as a session musician throughout the 70s, Kleinow returned to special effects work in the 80s and 90s, contributing to movies that included Gremlins, The Empire Strikes Back and The Terminator.

You can invest in a copy of the excellent Gilded Palace, backed with follow up Burrito Deluxe, here.

The fascinating story of the music scene and musicians of the LA canyons in the late 60s and early 70s is chronicled in Barney Hoskyn's exhaustive Hotel California (Fourth Estate) available here.

Sample some of the music from the period at the Aquarium Drunkard's 'LA Burnout' posts.

Zen & The Art Of Concussive iPod Maintenance

In early December, my iPod Photo froze while I was listening to it. I dutifully attempted to reset it - and to do all the other things the Apple site says you should do - but to no avail. It struggled over and over to start up again with tragically wheezy hard disk movements, before giving me the old 'sad iPod icon' and falling into a deep, deep coma.

Despite this, something told me it might not be dead - for this had happened before, and Lazarus-like it had risen again. So I took it to the Apple store in Regent Street. Maybe it needed a replacement battery. Or something.

Sadly, the Apple Genius (sic), who was a very nice man, told me after what I guess they would call running some diagnostics, but which looked suspiciously to me like giving it a bit of a fiddle and plugging it into an iBook - that it had, and I quote, 'gone to iPod Heaven' (how lovely to think that there is an other-wordly afterlife for spent audio hardware).

My options (of course) were to swap it, and £150, for a reconditioned equivalent (which would have only a three month warranty) or buy a new one. Reluctantly and sadly (the old feller had been a fortieth birthday present from My Lovely Wife, *weep*) I bought a new one.

The old one sat on my desk while I thought about sending it off to one of those repair firms you see on the web: if they couldn't fix it they said, they'd buy it for the parts. Fine.

I got on with listening to the new one, and more importantly, with Christmas and New Year.

Weeks passed.....

And then....

And then, I don't know why but something made me plug it in. The Apple logo appeared, it lit, nothing wheezed or whirred: it worked. It worked!!!

But this was a false and cruel alarm.

Two days later, it died again.

I went back on the web, trawled the blogs and the chat forums, and this time the solution I found was brilliant! audacious! - and as it turns out, permanent!

If you have a busted iPod that responds to nothing and you seriously think it may be buggered and you have nothing else to lose - GIVE IT A REALLY GOOD WHACK ON A DESK.

This I did. The iPod is reborn. And so far, it shows no signs of dying again.

Read the thrilling testimonies of many who have done this with success here.

21st century technology my arse!

What's He Like?

Word reaches The Ghost that Kevin Rowland is working on an album of new material for release in 2007 - the first such to be issued under the Dexy's Midnight Runners name since 1985's 'Don't Stand Me Down'.

Rowland has posted a sample track 'It's OK, Johanna' - which he is calling a demo - on his MySpace page.

If it's a reliable indication of the quality of the rest of his new material, we are in for a treat - it's a characteristically heartfelt Kev monologue on love and beauty (Reminisce Part 3?) spoken over Moonlight Sonata (or Shangri Las 'Past, Present & Future'?) type piano, with a lovely break into a sung refrain that has his voice on top form. There's also a musical quotation from Marvin Gaye (with a joke), and a surprise ending that suggests the Dexy's horns are waiting restlessly in the wings.

We like the John Steed look Kev!

Ex Fan Des Sixties, Petite Baby Doll

Jane Birkin turned 60 on 14th December.

Remembered in England mostly for recording 'Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus' with her beloved Serge Gainsbourg, and perhaps by a few cult film fans for bobbing about in a state of undress in 'Blow Up' and 'Wonderwall', Birkin is something of an icon in her adopted France, and has carved out an idiosyncratic career for herself as an actor and singer, with recent North African/Arabic-influenced albums drawing a fair bit of critical acclaim.

This performance may be simultaneously the sexiest and silliest thing of its kind you have ever seen (nice that the set designers decided to use images of screen idols from the, erm, 1950s. DOH!).

Anyway, as you can probably tell, The Ghost loves her.

Belated Happy Birthday Jane.

Radio with SHOES in

As the Christmas and New Year holidays slip away from us as quickly as they arrived slowly - a sad kinda feeling I find (because I love Christmas...not so much New Year...) one thing's been keeping me, well, not just sane, actually - more Feeling Alive, Invigorated, Inspired, Amused, Entertained - and that thing has been Satellite XM's Theme Time Radio Hour With Your Host Bob Dylan which the lovely people at BBC Radio 2 are bringing at last to us British Bobcats.

This may be, without exaggeration, the best radio I have ever listened to in my life so far (possible exception - and maybe joint equal - John Peel shows in my bedroom while my parents watched god-knows-what on the TV downstairs, 1980-1983).

Why?

Because - well let's start with the obvious: this is BOB DYLAN DJing here. I mean, wouldn't you like a night in, chewing the conversational fat with Bob while he plays you some of his favourite records? Of course you would. And you know how funny and wise he can be.

Second - the concept is brilliant and simple: one hour, one 'theme' for all the music (the big ones guys - 'Weather', 'Drinking', 'Mother', 'Devil', 'Radio', 'Coffee') .

Third - THE MUSIC. Whether it's long lost 40s jukejoint R'n'B, blues, gospel, country swing, Southern soul, rap - dammit, even UK post-punk, the man's got it and the man plays it. A playlist that spans eight decades, minimum. The music of Bob's life and he's having a ball with it, you can tell.

A series of programmes to renew your faith in the eternal restorative power of good music.

As inciteful and personal a testimony from and into Dylan as any of his work.

In fact - I sincerely think this needs to be thought of as His Current Work.

Splendid.

UK people can, and really should, 'listen again' here.

From January, BBC Radio 6 Music takes up the baton.

This excellent fan-site has playlists for all the shows.

And finally, anyone out there with even a vague interest in, or affection for, Sir Bob should certainly invest in his marvellous memoir Chronicles - Volume One here.