Yeah Baby

What's that Davy? New stuff ? On a Friday night?!

Oh yes! because this is so big and crunchy and synthy and funky, and we'll even forgive them for ripping off the Rotary Connection pose since they were decent enough to choose 'I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun' as their 'show and tell' track on Radcliffe & Maconie this week.

Groovy! To the bar!!

The Phenomenal Handclap Band - 'You'll Disappear' (2009)

[TheirSpace]

Doo Wop That Thing

The Persuasions are an a cappella group who began singing together in Brooklyn, New York in the early 1960s and have gone on to produce many albums covering a wide range of musical genres, yet all filtered through their own four-to-six-part a cappella doo-wop sensibilities. During their major years of recording, to date, they have produced 25 original albums (not including compilations of their material) within a 35-year period, in addition to appearing on numerous recordings by other popular artists. They continue to perform and record on a regular basis, appearing in concert many times each year, and constantly expanding their repertoire to include more current compositions than the "street-corner" rhythm and blues doo-wop on which their style was founded (Wiki).

I've had this LP since my Camden Town rummage days and there are many lovely things on it, but this is the one I always come back to.

Goffin and King at their Brillest, and a fine song for a bright, crisp morning in the city.

The Persuasions - 'Up On The Roof' (1969)

The Pop Clock

When exactly did cassettes become fetish objects? Just look at that baby...!

So I woke up this morning with 'War Baby' in my head, and then 'Cruel Summer' and 'Forbidden Colours' and I couldn't work out why, until BING! it dawned on me that all of these things were on this tape I made off of the radio Top 40; and when I checked the date they were all in the chart and the music-killing home taping must have occurred, I realised it was at exactly this time of year in 1983.

Kids, the Pop Clock never lies.

(DavyH has done his A Levels; he is hanging out down the beach; he will protest about, but still go on, a final holiday with his parents to Majorca in September before starting college in London in October).

The other things on the tape are: 'Come Live With Me' by Heaven 17 ('I was 37, she was 17' - curses! I'm nearly 44!!!) 'Do It Again/Billie Jean (medley)' by Clubhouse (it's Steely Dan with the diddle-diddly dinga ding guitar bit from Billie Jean plonked in the middle! A mash up before mash ups!) 'Club Tropicana' by Wham! (c'mon!) 'The Crown' by Gary Byrd (Kips!) 'Wherever I Lay My Hat' by Paul Young (erm...) and 'Right Now' by The Creatures (which I don't think I have heard since. And is excellent. In fact, I am so excited about hearing it again that I've just secured an mp3 of it which I present here for your delectation).

As if all of this were not frisson enough, at the end of the tape the not-quite 18 year old me stuck a load of little drum bits from various records together - Lord alone knows why, but it must have taken hours and occasioned a chronic case of pause-button finger.

The quiz-minded and/or terminally bored amongst you may have some fun with it...

Drum bit montage thing by DavyH, aged 17 and three quarters (1983)

And here's Siouxsie and Budgie...

The Creatures - 'Right Now' (1983)

PS: Yes. The cassette label really does say 'an embryonic journey down the acoustic annals of a great Revolving semi-styletto breath...' . I must have had some 60s psych stuff on it before. Cough.

PPS: Oh go on, have a Bananarama too, I won't tell.

Friday Reggae # 12

It's the Bob Marley record no-one plays!

Which is, on the one hand, a great shame, since it is full of 'conscious' Afro-centric reggae music and mighty rhythms, but also, on the other hand, quite a good thing, since it has not been over-exposed in a thousand 'Bob Marley Bars' from Phuket* to Paphos.

I have been loving it all week @ 28 degrees C.

Bob Marley & The Wailers - 'Zimbabwe' (1979)
Bob Marley & The Wailers - 'Babylon System' (1979)
Bob Marley & The Wailers - 'Ambush In The Night' (1979)

*I actually have been in one there. It was at the end of the beach no-one went to. It was not really very Irie, but possibly they meant well.

Sound D'Afrique

Five days in a row of 27c + temperatures in London and it's all gone tropical, baby - I have the midge bites to prove it. Obviously this will all end in an almighty storm sometime around Friday, but for now I'm all shorts and sandalled up and walking like a Jamaican (slowly and to an imagined reggae beat - it's the only way to stay cool).

Coincidentally, the eldest daughter has a Caribbean Day at school today; she has taken a coconut, and a steel band are allegedly dropping in later.

Meanwhile, I figured you could use some 'infectious guitar-based Soukous from Zaire' (Democratic Republic Of Congo) from a cassette I ordered from The Observer newspaper 20 years ago (and Sound D'Afrique Vol II, hipsters).

Pablo Lubadika Porthos - 'Madeleina' (1981)

Help with your moves here.

Summer Of Sam

Swingin' !

Sammy Davis, Jr. - 'Too Darn Hot' (1963)

Remember Him This Way

What a sorry tale it ended up being; what a talented young man he was.

Summer Soft

Sort of obsessed with this track at the moment - two songs in one.

The sound of Stevie, the sound of summer.

Stevie Wonder - 'Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)' (1972)

The Right Stuff

It's the summer of Space, in case you hadn't noticed.

I watched The Right Stuff last night. Don't test me on the names. Sam Shepard plays Chuck Yeager but Alan Shepard was the first American in space; he is played by Scott Glenn, but John Glenn is played by Ed Harris and Scott Carpenter by Charles Frank; Scott Paulin plays Deke Slayton and Scott Wilson plays Scott Crossfield. I think.

The rockets were mostly designed by Nazis.

No wonder I'd finished that bottle of wine before I'd finished the film.

Anyway. Chuck Yeager, whaddaguy: flew faster than the speed of sound with two cracked ribs because he fell off a horse the day before.

Unsurprising that generation's kids all fetched up with flowers in their hair; their Dads sure had the whole macho thing nailed.

Brian Eno - 'Here Come The Warm Jets' (1973)
Bryan Ferry - 'The Right Stuff' (1987)

Friday Reggae # 11

Three from a record of Mrs H's we certainly won't be car booting; in fact, we've been enjoying it muchly these light June evenings, especially as played on the, ahem, Stanton...

Third World - 'Cold Sweat' (1978)
Third World - 'Cool Meditation' (1978)
Third World - 'African Woman' (1978)

I is well jammy, innit?

Jah bless!

Time In A Bottle

We went to our first car boot sale as stall holders on Sunday; it wasn't very busy but we did OK.

We liked the man rolling a cigarette who phoned his brother to ask him if he wanted Mrs H's copy of Thin Lizzy Live & Dangerous (£3. I know, some of you would have taken it) and who came back later for the old viola; we liked the nice lady who bought a clutch of the girls' Polly Pockets for her niece and the big bloke with his wife who pumped my hand super-firmly when we agreed on a price for the wooden bathroom cabinet; we liked the whole 'anyone want a cup of tea?' ambience really.

There was a chap at the end selling old bottles, which put me in mind of this one I've had since I was about 12. I like its connection to a very specific place (a small village between Totnes and Dartmouth in Devon). I can't remember where I got it exactly - either at a school jumble sale, or maybe I dug it up, because me and my friend Brian certainly went through a phase of doing that after I got a book on collecting from the library - but it sat on bookshelves and window sills all through my teenage and student years and it's stood behind me now as I'm writing this.

After the boot sale I thought I'd try to find out about the old 'mineral water works' of Harbertonford and W.G Grills & Son, but drew a blank apart from stumbling on this site and in particular this picture, taken in 1965 - the year I was born. It could have been taken in 1865.

Some lines from the last chapter of the Eno book leapt out at me as I finished it yesterday.

Sheppard writes about trawling through old photos in Eno's personal archive...

It was difficult to reconcile the neatly side-parted schoolboy Brian, smiling by his father's side in a sunlit back garden in the middle of the last century, with the pouting, futuristic figure in gold lipstick and ziggurat-like platform boots I'd just picked from a fat folder marked matter-of-factly, '1970s'. These contrasting images seemed to speak volumes - a vivid illustration of the chalk and cheese disparity between the predictable, buttoned-up England of the 1950s and the outrageous, liberated 1970s. To have grown up in Britain during the intervening hothouse decades was to have experienced an unprecedented acceleration in social and technological transformation that is almost inconceivable to anyone born after about 1970.

Jim Croce - 'Time In A Bottle' (1973)

Yeah Baby

A story that started over two years ago with a post from Emmett at the excellent Art Decade (who are celebrating their 1,000th post today in characteristically self-effacing fashion) reached one of those once-in-a-blue-moon, 'my my the gods of vinyl are smiling down on us Centurion' conclusions a few weeks ago in my local Oxfam shop's closing down sale when I picked up this rare and special gem in mint condition for just 75p. You can, I am sure, imagine my surprise and delight.

Today it supplies our track for Friday cocktails and I'm sure you'll find its easy groove, light vocals and typically brilliant Hungarian-inflected jazz guitar conducive to your happy hour(s).

By coincidence, the musical quotation from William DeVaughn's 'Be Thankful For What You Got' at 3 mins 30 links us back again to Massive Attack, who covered the song on 'Blue Lines'.

Garcon, I shall require a beverage.

Gabor Szabo - 'Keep Smilin' (1976)

[More about the genius that was Gabor here ]

A Massive Attack

It starts with New Agey keyboards before the drum solo with the bubbly synth beneath bursts and then, three minutes in, that 'Safe From Harm' bassline breaks.

Is it jazz? Is it rock? Is it.....prog????

It's 'kin massive, is what it is, maaaan.

Billy Cobham - 'Stratus' (1973)

Aftermath

I couldn't face posting earlier. I took the morning off and went to the Courtauld Gallery to look at the paintings and I had a mooch in the record shops and a wander about town and I tried not to think about the nearly quarter of a million people in the North and North West who voted BNP last Thursday, and tried not to watch the men in suits on the TV today who start off talking so smoothly but become so angry so quickly and the skinhead thugs behind them that say nothing but everything with their dead eyes and all the hate crimes this poison fuels and perpetuates and 'excuses' and the Great British Public on the messageboards unapologetically outing themselves as supporters and 'proud of it'.

Not In My Name.

Nitin Sawhney - 'Bengali Song' (1996)

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

 This is Chris Packham, broadcaster, naturalist and new presenter of four nights a week, three week, seasonal live BBC family nature programme Springwatch.

Chris is a little different from sexagenarian predecessor Bill 'The Goodies' Oddie. Chris was born in 1961. He has a quiff, and two pet poodles called Itchy and Scratchy. He likes The Jesus and Mary Chain. And The Smiths.

And seemingly without the knowledge of his production crew and co-presenters, Chris has bet a friend that he can slip a Smiths song title into every episode of Springwatch.

So: he informs his co-presenter Kate 'looks more like a Chris Rea fan' Humble that she doesn't get any points for correctly predicting the date the baby blackbirds would fledge because 'You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby'; he describes a male bustard in courtship plumage as resembling a 'Vicar In A Tutu'; he says that with the warbler chick "it really is the case that 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' "; and he wonders, in a solemn discussion about the global threat to bees, if indeed 'The Queen Is Dead'.

He is also a t-shirt connoisseur...



....and has my daughters wondering 'why Daddy is laughing again'.

Genius, genius, genius.

Can we please make him Prime Minister?

The Rutles - 'Let's Be Natural' (1978)

A Kiss To Start The Morning Off

A London Lee Picture - respect!

Doh! I'm mad, mad, bonkers busy taking sick-makingly early trains out of St Pancras to Nottingham and back to London and up and out again tomorrow and just loony bonkers mad busy.

Still...at least I might get to finish that cracking Eno book in transit.

Here's a song for hot weather fading in and out and out and in, and gone, gone, gone on the train from Platform 3 with a snatched croissant and an Innocent smoothie.

Maaan, I love this one.

Stevie Wonder - 'Summer Soft' (1976)

High, High, High, High There

And Scorchio it continues.

This is something I used to play a lot on happy Hospital Radio Nine when things got sticky on the gritty streets of Tooting.

My vinyl copy of Sly's Greatest Hits is a tad worse for wear, so have this nice clean mp3 instead.

Wear sunscreen!

Sly & The Family Stone - 'Hot Fun In The Summertime' (1969)

Your Weekend Outlook

Whit Sun

I took the girlies to Littlehampton yesterday (the 'real, sandy beach Daddy') while Mrs H selflessly finished the gloss work on the stairs (= true).

We were struck by this café on the East Beach and well done I thought to the I imagine not especially radical local council for commissioning it; and lo, it turns out to be incredibly famous and in one of those thrilling coincidences we love in life is even in the paper today. It has a posh restaurant inside, but we mistook the long line of people waiting to be seated for a queue for takeaway chips, so we passed it by for the hotdog stand further down - by the lighthouse, which we also rather liked.

[Sorry, rubbishy picture from my phone - no competition here for Dane].

We came back tired and sunsplashed, with wet jeans and a plastic bucket full of shells, as is the tradition.

And the bannisters looked lovely.

Alison Statton & Spike - 'Seaport Town' (1994)

Meanwhile...

Bless 'im.

Five of your Anglo-Irish decades old today.

"History" Stephen said, "Is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" (James Joyce - Ulysses)

Morrissey - 'Irish Blood, English Heart' (2004)

Bronx Holiday Weekend

So, in the end Dean and I kind of lost touch; maybe it was his constant touring, maybe it was my insouciance. Still, I have no regrets. I look back on our time together fondly, but I accept I must now move on. Only occasionally I hear his songs on the radio and feel a tinge of sadness at what could have been.

Feckit. Let's rap! (old school stylee).

The snippet of the NYC street trader at the start of this ("Look at the bargains over here ladies") is also at the start of 'If I Was Your Girlfriend' by Prince. Do I get a prize?

Spyder D - 'Big Apple Rappin' (12") (1980)

I Have No Alibis

Like many great dramas it begins in medias res.

What is it that she has said as we join the song? It can't have been a direct reference to 'Lisa', that comes later - perhaps a suggestion though that he'd rather be with 'someone' else?

Ha! Changing the subject to be catty about her mother's hardly going to help, is it!

Did he see Lisa? Yes he saw Lisa. Is that why he's angry? He wasn't angry.

Lisa's life is in disarray. She still goes around as if she is always stumbling off a cliff. And yet...

Does he still want her?

(Why won't he give a straight answer.....?)

-----

Shurely a shoe-in for Best Worst record of all time.

Magnificent to sing, I can vouch, when you are very, very drunk.

Co-vocalist Denise Marsa, uncredited on the single and Top Of The Pops, now runs her own PR firm and 'writes original music for films and TV'.

Dean Friedman tours Britain in July.

Lisa's whereabouts are unknown.

Dean Friedman - 'Lucky Stars' (1978)

I've Seen How You Sparkle

Aretha Franklin - 'If Ever I Would Leave You' (1963)

Meanwhile...

Tangerine Dream - 'Love On A Real Train' (1983)

Douze Points (Slight Return)

I wasn't going to write about the Eurovision Song Contest this year since it'll be dull as a very dull thing without Wogan and since the magnificent French entry by Sebastien Tellier that I hotly tipped here last year performed so risibly thanks to the Eastern Bloc/Balkans cartel that now holds inexorable sway over the voting.

But then, partly prompted by Adam's Turkish delight, I had a Google through the entrant videos and stumbled upon this, which can only be described as a masterpiece in the finest traditions of the competition. I swear it brought a tear late last night to my sleepydust-silted old eyes.
I really can't better the description given to it in today's Guardian, so reproduce it here in full...

Language buffs might be drawn to the Eurovision Song Contest for its cultural plurality. A statistician might revel in the quirks of its voting system. A homesick expatriate might place an emotional stake in the success of his or her homeland, however justifiably (most former Soviet or Yugoslav republics) or foolishly (all points west of Prague). But for Britons, the contest represents one of the last outposts of that most devalued of currencies: high camp. And in this year's finals in Moscow, the camp comes no higher than Sweden's daring fusion of light opera and throbbing eurodance.

Graced with the voice of a song-thrush, the shoulders of a stevedore and the lung power of an industrial dehumidifier, Malena Ernman is an internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano with serious chops: she's played Carmen and Dido, sung at Vienna and Glyndebourne, and worked with Barenboim and Rattle. Tomorrow night, equipped with little more than a feathery frock, a souped-up karaoke machine and a mask-flaunting dance troupe, she faces an audience of 100 million, whose unqualified respect might not be forthcoming. If camp's comedic power resides in the gap between intention and effect, then the gap here is one in which we may all gratefully luxuriate.

It won't win of course.
But enjoy.

For All We Know

This may only be a dream
We come and we go
Like the ripples in the stream

So baby love me
Love me tonight
Tomorrow
Was made for some

Oh, but tomorrow may never never come
For all we know

Nina Simone - 'For All We Know' (1957)

Radio On

I'm in love with rock and roll - and I'll be out all night!

The Modern Lovers - 'Roadrunner' (1972, released 1976)

TFIF.

A Leaf On A Windy Day

There's no reason why there shouldn't be a Surf's Up-era Brian Wilson quotation in a 2008 Durutti Column song, but I find it startling nonetheless.

Beautiful album by the way, partly I think in memoriam Anthony H. Wilson.

The Durutti Column - 'So Many Crumbs And Monkeys!' (2008)
The Beach Boys - 'Til I Die' (1971)

Trivial Pursuits

Four days of rather aimless noodling otherwise known as leisure, in which...

We see an unusual goose on the river Thames.

A 'cocktail expert' in The Guardian confirms Drew's assertion that the perfect gin and tonic probably involves Tanqueray gin.

I am disappointed to discover that the new Ray's Jazz, a distressingly antiseptic 'concession' in the horrible Foyles bookshop, has only about five boxes of second hand LPs compared to the old real shop's entire store full.

The soundtrack to The Deep I ordered on vinyl turns out to contain the worst 'disco' song I have ever heard right in the middle of an otherwise lovely side 2.

I learn I am so old and decrepit that if I do four hours of routine weeding, tidying and lawn mowing I will ache like I have run a marathon.

It turns out I needed a large, not extra large, Stax t-shirt from 8Ball.

Getting up to 30 people to write your blog posts for you while you're away proves a bloody brilliant idea.

It's clear you can take lovely pictures at an allotment.

Welcome to my world.

Bettye Swann - 'Little Things Mean A Lot' (1969)

Yeah Baby

Cheesy 80s pop gem turned all-time Balearic classic?

For relaxing times, make it Ghost Of Electricity time...

William Pitt - 'City Lights' (1986)