I've Got A Loverly Bunch Of Coconuts

August Darnell! Hipster turned popstar! A single I haven't played in 25 years!

Steady me matron, I'm getting a Proustian rush....'Stool Pigeon' at the Radio One roadshow at Torre Abbey Meadows Torquay with your host DJ Mike Read, get there early and get to the front, it's the happy, happy sound, souvenir mug and back to Tall Phil's to hear 'Sandinista'.

This is slower than I remember. Is there another version they play on the radio? I tried cranking it up, but then it goes all Alvin & The Chipmunks.

No hang on, that lilting bass is a bit sexy....Damn it, it sounds good.

'Ona, ona, onomatopoeia, ona, ona, onomatopoeia...'

Kid Creole & The Coconuts - 'Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy' (1982)

Finders Keepers

Friday Mrs H and I take some quality time-out together down the Portobello Road, saying we must come back with the eldest daughter, who at 10 is very interested in small things from bric-a-brac stalls.

Saturday This excerpt from Victoria Coren's new book appears in the paper...

I am 12 years old, in Portobello market with my father. He thinks it's time for me to start collecting something. So we are rummaging around the antique shops and the bric-a-brac stalls, looking at ornaments and knick-knacks and pictures and hats and stuffed animals and silver trinkets, deciding what I am going to start collecting.

It's a beautiful day. The air is soft and warm, smelling of jasmine and hot-dog stands. All the stall-holders are chatty and ready to haggle. I've got a toffee apple. In the back of a dusty little shop near the Ladbroke Grove end of the market, my father picks up a china boat. It has a funnel at each end, also made of china, and if you lift them out they are salt-and-pepper shakers. The boat is a creamy-pearly colour, with blue piping, and on the side is printed "A Present from Southend-on-Sea".

"How about that?" my father says.

I think it is the cleverest, prettiest thing I have ever seen. It is a lovely shiny object anyway, but it's also a salt-and-pepper set and it's also a boat!

"And it's a present from Southend-on-Sea," my father says. "You could collect china seaside souvenirs. You could look for ones that said Bournemouth and Weymouth and Margate and Clacton. That's about right for a collection: bit difficult to find, but not too difficult."

We buy it for £12. "Just enough to make it a significant purchase," my father says, "but not enough to cripple you." The man from the shop wraps it up in newspaper and gives it to me. And as we walk back down the street, me gingerly clutching what at this point constitutes my entire collection, my father says, "One day, when you're all grown up and I'm not here any more, you'll remember the sunny day we went to the market together and bought a boat."
My throat feels tight because, as soon as he says it, I am already there. Standing on another street, without my father, trying to get back.

I try to soak up every aspect of the moment, to help me get back when I need to. I feel the weight of the chunky parcel under my arm, and the warmth of the sun, and my father's hand in mine. I smell the flowers with their sharp undertang of cheap hot-dog, and taste the slick of toffee on my teeth. I feel the joy of an adventurous Saturday with my father and no school, and I feel the sadness of looking back when it is all gone. When he is gone.

------

I've had this post-Tamla Four Tops song about fathers on my brain for the last few days; I found it in a junk shop years ago. It's a curious old thing with it's wah-wah pastiche of the Whitfield/Strong Temptations 'protest' sound and its contrasting call to absent Dads to quit said protest and get on back to their families where they belong. I like the tune though, and the pink Probe label.

The Four Tops - 'Keeper Of The Castle' (1972)

You Should Know The Score By Now

Extended disco classics to cut out and keep; our occasional series builds into a magnificent collection your whole family will enjoy.

Odyssey - 'Native New Yorker' (12") (1977)

(With big love to the good people of New York City).

Face Dances

 

Long time, no blog tennis. 

The Small Faces - 'I'm Only Dreaming' (1967)

Winner's Speech

Never mind Kate Moss stropping and dropping her lipstick (though that is very funny), this was the big entertainment news last night.

Well done Ms Elliot.

Speech Debelle - 'Live & Learn' (2009)

Her site

Meanwhile...

Yeah Baby

We're pushing it with this in early September I know, especially after 'Harvest Home' and all, but 'Ian just driving back from Margate to London' asked Trevor Nelson to play it on the radio the other night and good for you Ian just driving, because it's lovely.

If you listened to Robbie Vincent's Soul Shows in the mid-80s I'm told you might know it well; me, I heard it this week for the very first time. And all I know about the McCrarys is here.

Did Lady Summer quit your scene? Then turn up the music baby, and dream...

The McCrarys - 'Love On A Summer Night' (extended mix) (1982)

Sweet Rain

I first got this out of Torquay Library (on a cassette tape!) when I were a lad.

(It smelt of old books and old people, did Torquay Library; the old people came in there to sit somewhere warm, the old books didn't seem to mind).

Later I bought it on Compact Disc: older readers may remember these unloved and unlovely things, insets always too small to read the sleeve notes, and that was the least of their problems, oh yes.

Now here it is (or a bit of it) as a little file in the ether.....whilst thick drizzle thwacks SW London, my, my.

Stan Getz - 'Sweet Rain' (1967)

Traditional (Reprise)

David Sylvian - 'September' (1987)

And We Have A Caller On Line One

"Allo? DavyH? C'est Françoise. Oui ça va - et toi? Ecoutes, ils m'ont dit que tu cherches un idée pour le vendredi. Trois petits mots cheri: Un. Gin. Tonic.......Oui. Bisous".

Françoise Hardy - 'Gin Tonic' (1980)

On The Boundary

It's all over by August Bank Holiday weekend, the English summer, everyone knows that. The shadows are long, the evenings are drawing in and there's a slight chill in the air; they'll soon leave the cricket fields and the pub gardens, unless there's a sunny September, and that's the best thing, like you somehow cheated death, chased winter away, but of course you haven't really, it's a stay of execution, nothing more.

And musically it's all Skylarking, Apple Venus and the splendid new Duckworth Lewis Method at my house, and Mrs H is making passata with the excess cherry tomatoes...

Toodle pip old summer, old boy.

The Duckworth Lewis Method - 'Mason On The Boundary' (2009)
XTC - 'The Last Balloon' (1999)
Ronnie Lane - 'Harvest Home' (1976)*

For Dr. Al * Thanks Mondo

Sad Songs & Sunsets

Yes, yes, I know some of you North Americans drive 700 miles for a pint of milk of an evening but for tiny little island types like me that's a long (11 hours!) drive in a day, so you'll excuse me if I'm a tad post-autoroute today, all unkempt demeanour and dirty washing, and not especially inspired as a consequence.

We had a lovely time, thank you - like we had driven into summer: it was sunsets and rosé and acting like we were kings o' the hill.

Had one great night in particular cooking after sundown with John Peel's 40th Birthday Party Show playing on the iPo, the girls chasing the cats and chickens around outside and Mrs H with her nose in a book and a bottle....sigh.

This is, as JP says, a very sad song (on his own Dandelion label) and I was very happy when I heard it, but nevertheless it was a....moment.....you know?

Mike Hart - 'Almost Liverpool 8' (1969)

I've posted the actual (bit hissy) clip from the show with Peelie's intro/outro, but you can buy the original here, like I just did.

En Vacances

So our bags are packed, we're ready to go, the motor's waiting outside our doh, etc.

We have the obligatory early rise tomorrow (boo!), but Big Fat Breakfast on the ferry (hooray!) before several long hours of autorouting South begin. Should hit Paris and the fairground ride-like thrills of the périphérique around lunchtime, the stopover budget hotel by teatime, the Rustic Retreat (sic) we're renting sometime Saturday afternoon.

About this we are excited, there being apparently two cats and five chickens to look after, eggs to collect and, undoubtedly, small and very nimble lizards to attempt, and fail, to catch. Et du vin rouge, naturellement.

There's no internet connection and no dishwasher; whether I miss you or the 40 minute hot-wash setting more, we'll have to see.

Don't be daft, it'll be you of course!

Good job I'll have with me all the lovely music we've blethered on about and shared to remember you by, eh?

We're back Aug 25th.

Look after yourselves x

Françoise Hardy - 'Qu'Ils Sont Heureux' (1966)
Canned Heat - 'Going Up The Country' (1968)

Blue Tuesday

A few too many late nights lately, and that next day lethargy that comes with them; I'd been doing so well too with the cycling helping me crunch up the calories (I bought a new bike, and it's been brill; whizzing round the park with my lungs working for the first time in ages, it feels).

London is emptying - well, our bit of it seems like it is, anyhow....and you feel odd and a little melancholy still to be here, kicking about, hoping for a sunny day, getting one sometimes.

We have a few days before we head South too - across the Channel, down on the autoroutes, into (we hope) the Blue encore une fois.

Here's a bitta Oscar I picked up just yesterday. "Nice".

Oscar Peterson Trio - 'Night Train' (1962)

I Think I Went To Heaven

Three hours to kill whilst the car got its service and M.O.T, I thought I'd pop up to Notting Hill Gate and have a look at Mick Jones's clobber whilst there's still time, thanks Miss Ally for the reminder.

Bloody marvellous - BOAC bags, Clash tour guitar cases, Linn drum machines, Grundig radiograms, ancient samplers, as-worn-in-famous-photoshoots shirts (several), B.A.D set lists, mix tapes, videos, LPs, old punk fanzines, a hundred NMEs, Beatles Books and defunct pop mags, Shoot annuals, Dixon of Dock Green games (!) signed copies of Peter Orlovsky's poems ("To Mick Jones & Joe Strummer 1981"), toy redcoats and zulus frozen fighting the Battle of Rourke's Drift, Dinky models, London Calling gold discs, plastic Statues Of Liberty.

And then I grab a very nice anchovy pizza slice here and pop in to the Uxbridge for a pint where the bloke at the bar in the big hat and musical-note socks can't help but ask me about my 1977 t-shirt, which was a birthday present from Mrs H, and it turns out he's Gaz Mayall, ska-skankin' son of John, who's just made a record about Ronnie Biggs - released today, turns 80 tomorrow - "in the spirit of 77" with..........Mick Jones.

My friends, I call that a good Friday morning.

(They gave the car a vacuum too).

Have some Clash rappin'...

The Clash - 'The Magnificent Seven' (1980)

Far Beyond The Wave

Blair Drawson

Here's a little lost three minute gem I've been enjoying a lot lately, from the other side of the very famous and still lovely 'First Picture Of You'. It's like a slight sketch dashed off on a dreamy day, but no elaboration could make it better.

Looking them up, I see they reunited for a concert in Liverpool last month, and are planning to release a new album soon; there are some working versions of new songs on their MySpace.

Who'd have thought?

The Lotus Eaters - 'The Lotus Eaters' (1983)

All On A Golden Afternoon

Balthus

'Evans was having trouble finding good bassists, but La Faro's arrival precipitated the advent of one of the finest piano trios jazz has ever documented. The bassist's melodic sensitivity and insinuating sound flowed between Evans and Motian like water, and....the playing of the three men is so sympathetic that it set a universal standard for the piano-bass-drums set-up which has persisted to this day.

Evan's own playing is elevated by the immediacy of the occasion; all his contributions seem all of a piece, lines spreading through and across the melodies and harmonies of the tune, pointing the way to modality yet retaining the singing, rapturous qualities which the pianist heard in this material.

All of the Vanguard music is informed by an extra sense of discovery, as if the musicians were suddenly aware of what they were on to, and were celebrating their achievement.

They didn't have much time: LaFaro was killed in a car accident ten days later.'

Richard Cook & Brian Morton - The Penguin Guide To Jazz on CD, LP and Cassette (1992)
-----

'So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality...'

Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (1865)

------

Bill Evans - piano
Scott LaFaro - bass
Paul Motian - drums

Recorded live at The Village Vanguard, New York City, Sunday June 25th 1961.

Bill Evans Trio - 'Alice In Wonderland (Take 2)' (1961)

Lord, Hear Me Now...

Gorillaz - 'Hong Kong' (2005)

'One of Albarn's best' - Simon.

Thanks to my good friend Dr Al, who first played me this. Warchild.

44

Another year older, another year wider.

Me and the lovely 'Jo' Rowling celebrate the not-especially-significant 44th anniversary of our births today - she, I do not doubt, in a manner befitting her glamourous lifestyle and hard-earned wealth, me with a curry at the local tandoori.

Cracking to have a birthday on a Friday though, eh Gromit?

According to the lodestone of eternal truth that is da Wiki, 44 is : the international telephone dialling code for the UK; the number of Barack Obama's presidency; a kind of Magnum revolver and associated blues tune; a Vicks cough suppressant.

Since I am not in possession of said blues tune and did the obvious 'post the Number 1 song when I was born' thing last year, here is a big Friday Smash Hits-reviewed disco floorfillin' Philly 12" in the traditional manner, with a suitably uplifting message perhaps reminding us, like Dickie and Miss Ally are always saying, that still being alive is, frankly, cause for celebration enough.

Poppadom?

McFadden & Whitehead - 'Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now' (12") (1979)

Some Candi Singing

It being a slack, sluggish week of unpredictable weather and no work (stroke, money) I finally got round to new turntable-spinning and for-convenience computerising that old Candi Staton b/w Bettye Swann LP we've mentioned before in despatches, and it sounds just glorious, glorious, glorious my friends, yeah baby and amen.

Everything on it was famously re-reissued on this, but my compilation, a bit of a curiosity with its 60s style, one-artist-per-side Beatles Versus The Four Seasons kinda thing, came out in 1986. I can tell from the neatly biroed date on the inner sleeve (sorry, really I am) that I bought it two years later, on the day after my 23rd birthday. Musta gotta voucha.

Anyway, I thought I'd post some tracks here since 1) they are what's going round at my place right now, and what's going round at my place is, as you know, what's going up on this and 2) this is my 500th post, and some Candi singing seems a better way of celebrating than me blethering on about...well, anything, really.

Thanks for popping in on however many of those 500 you made x

Candi Staton - 'I'm Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin')' (1969)
Candi Staton - 'Evidence' (1970)
Candi Staton - 'I'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheart (Than A Young Man's Fool)' (1970)

Readers already in possession of CD versions may find these vinyl uploads unaccustomedly warm.

New (To Me) Soul Music Tuesday

I utterly, utterly love this and have pretty much only just discovered it/him.

We'll certainly have to describe it as hard-hitting funk-soul from the James Brown mould, with a contemporary kick (OW!).

Lee Fields - 'Problems' (2002)

Yeah Baby

I woke with this in my head this morning and I don't really know why, but I'm betting the old popclock is at work again and the day I found it in that Paignton junk shop was a wet one in late July.

We had the A side a good while back* and since this is a 45 you flip over and back again and over and back again, loving both songs equally and all the more because they're so contrasting, I think it's time the B made an appearance here, don't you?

You'll forgive me I'm sure that this Friday spin is a Philly ballad not a funk or disco tune, and you'll pardon the crackles too if I know you as well as I think I do because you'll be too busy lying back and diggin' Teddy to carp about such nonsense.

It's raining, so pour me a gin.

Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes - 'I'm Weak For You' (1973)

* I've re-upped it

'Moon Landing'

It's natural the Boys should whoop it up for
so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure
      it would not have occurred to women
      to think worth while, made possible only

because we like huddling in gangs and knowing
the exact time: yes, our sex may in fairness
      hurrah the deed, although the motives
      that primed it were somewhat less than menschlich.

A grand gesture. But what does it period?
What does it osse? We were always adroiter
      with objects than lives, and more facile
      at courage than kindness: from the moment

the first flint was flaked this landing was merely
a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's,
      still don't fit us exactly, modern
      only in this---our lack of decorum.

Homer's heroes were certainly no braver
than our Trio, but more fortunate: Hector
      was excused the insult of having
      his valor covered by television.

Worth going to see? I can well believe it.
Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert
      and was not charmed: give me a watered
      lively garden, remote from blatherers

about the New, the von Brauns and their ilk, where
on August mornings I can count the morning
      glories where to die has a meaning,
      and no engine can shift my perspective.

Unsmudged, thank God, my Moon still queens the Heavens
as She ebbs and fulls, a Presence to glop at,
      Her Old Man, made of grit not protein,
      still visits my Austrian several

with His old detachment, and the old warnings
still have power to scare me: Hybris comes to
      an ugly finish, Irreverence
      is a greater oaf than Superstition.

Our apparatniks will continue making
the usual squalid mess called History:
     all we can pray for is that artists,
     chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it.

- W. H Auden (1969)

--------

My very long-standing Wystan fanclub membership aside, I am still (not having seen Buzz) planning to personally commemorate the event tomorrow, in my own way.

Whoop it up, boys.

Shirley Bassey - 'Moonraker' (1979)

School's Out For Summer

Can it really have been a year? Again home come the masks they have made and the pictures they have painted, the pots they have fired and the papier-mâché they have, er, mâchéd. Tears in the playground from the leavers and the teachers who are being left, and flowers and chocolates and things the kids have made for their favourites and six weeks (six weeks!) of holidays begin.

With classic timing, the heatwave has crumbled and the skies are grey.

When I was little I knew we wouldn't be going anywhere exotic, it'd probably be Mid Wales again, and a long journey up the motorway in a Hillman Minx that rattled when it hit speeds above 60mph; for the most part though we'd be at home bombing about on our bikes, wishing the sun would come out so we could go to the beach, waiting for Something To Happen that never did. In the Famous Five they'd be off to Kirrin Island and caught up in a smugglers plot with gypsies, but we had Why Don't You Turn Off Your TV And Do Something Less Boring Instead, Belle & Sebastian and Flash Gordon films from the 30s (in 1975!). The summer holidays never really lived up to the hype, and a week in Tenby or Minehead hardly compensated.

Unless there was crazy golf, of course. Or we went to Butlins and rode the monorail (in the future we would travel everywhere on one of those....).

Happy holidays children.

Alessi Brothers - 'Oh Lori' (1977)

Simplicity Of Expression: Depth Of Thought

Another vinyl rarity, £1 from my newest charity shop - today!

Funny, since we were talking about Billy Cobham only recently.

If you liked that and this, and Terry Callier's What Color Is Love, you'll dig this, baby.

Billy Cobham - 'Early Libra' (1978)

[Vocalist - Kenneth Kamal Scott. Randy 'American Idol' Jackson on bass - '110 percent']

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.