House Work

This Friday, in a change from our usual programme, we go all post-punk funk agitprop with some people from Leeds, one of whom's called Hugh.

If you are unfamiliar with this and expect dour avant-gardeism you may be pleasantly surprised by its sprightly pace and funky bass'n' drum.

Lefties can dance! It's like the 80s were about to happen!

Gang Of Four - 'It's Her Factory' (1979)

House Music

Tonight back late, tired and tapped out, I poured myself a glass of wine and briefly exchanged news of the day with Mrs H who was imminently off on a Girls' Night Out (outrageous!). The daughters got the Monopoly out ("Well, it is a bit late for that..." - 'Oh, Daddy...!"), I set Mr Shuffle to 'Go' and started cooking up a dhal.

Mr Shuffle played the best, most right-for-my-mood and the moment and the time of year and all, little shuffle sequence.

The girls played on, buying up the train stations - two a piece ("always buy up the train stations"), building houses and hotels, and Mr Shuffle dropped his tunes and the tomatoes sank into the cooking lentils and the aroma of fresh ground ginger and garlic arose and.....things were good.

The wine was fine.

Things were good.

------

I go all old indie and goth at this time of year - it's an almost involuntary reaction to the turning of the earth and the lengthening of the shadows.

If you came here for this sort of thing once upon a blogdream you'll now be saying 'At last!'

If you came here for the funky when the summer was around, you'll now be thinking 'You wha-?'

If you've been around for a while, you'll know the score by now.

This Mortal Coil - 'Help Me Lift You Up' (1991)
Biff Bang Pow! - 'She Paints' (1988)

Mr S. actually played these back to back; it just went. We must add TMC to our list of tracks with good thundery bits at the start.

Peachy

Our occasional series of extended disco classics builds into a magnificent libr-oh, you know the rest.

This baby has a bass line that can only be described as FAT and Melba funks around it like a good 'un: you best turn it up and tell your neighbours it's Friday.

Melba Moore - 'Standing Right Here' (extended version) (1977)

[Still recording]

King Richard

Some of you might be wondering how Hawley was last night and the answer is quite, quite superb - tighter and slicker and more serious than when I last saw him, his voice still astonishing and his guitar-playing exemplary. The songs from Truelove's Gutter were razor-sharp live and this one, of course, made me cry (maybe I will drink a little less).

"I wrote it for The Mrs. I were dead pleased with it and played it to her. I said 'What do you think of that then?' She said 'Yeah, it's all right is that. Now what do you want for your tea? Shall we have a Chinese?' "

[All things Hawley here: buy stuff!]

Echo In A Shabby Bay

Way back in the dying, dog days of the late 80s I was a summer out of college and had failed to get a job to keep me in London. I had returned, sad and defeated, to my parents' in Torbay. Applying for jobs in the local paper, I'd wound up in the customer accounts department of British Gas.

It was the run-up to the 'Tell Sid' privatisation and they'd taken on extra people to cope with what they imagined would be an increase in calls from members of the public wanting info about shares. No such calls, of course, came (there was a well-publicised hotline the gullible phoned instead) and I just got absorbed into the department, taking final meter readings over the phone from people moving house, clearing up account queries, helping old ladies understand why their bills had been 'estimated' even though 'I'm always in my dear, they only have to knock', making appointments for meter readers, referring hardship cases to the DHSS. It was, for the most part, inestimably grim.

I spent rainy lunchtimes (and in my memory of those days it is always raining) in the library, or in the not especially well-stocked Torquay branch of HMV or with a sympathetic colleague in the town's one proper coffee shop. I was living an extended hangover from a terrific time at college where the world had been my oyster, now fearing - like the old Jam lyric had said - that my future was a clam. And the sympathetic colleague turned out to be a sort of Mrs Robinson figure, which, calm yourself, didn't really help, to be honest.

One impossibly dark and drizzly lunchtime I went and bought this; how odd to think now that this 'late' there were still new Echo & The Bunnymen albums out. Its sweep and its tug and its singing-through-grey seemed all I needed, and I played it to bits.

The summer came and went and like Billy Liar I knew I had to get out; unlike poor Billy, I did. 'Do you think you've made the right decision this time?'. Yes. I packed a bag for London and I never went back.

I've been playing these songs again lately, not because it is grim here, or I am sad, or nostalgic for the past, or any of that obvious stuff, but because they stand up as songs, seem right for the season* and because the LP is, I think, underrated, and I like it a lot.

Echo & The Bunnymen - 'The Game' (1987)
Echo & The Bunnymen - 'The Game' (acoustic demo) (1987)
Echo & The Bunnymen - 'All My Life' (1987)

[*I see the album came out in July. Bah! It'll always be autumn for me]

At Last I Am...

Three years of my life peddling this nonsense! 526 posts! 4,695 comments! Some of them from real people! And popstars! Write ups in The Grauniad! Links from The Word! Countless witterings! Quite a lot of music! But still no podcasts! Or pre-planning! Hurrah!

Thank you for your companionship - I'd have given this up long, long ago had it not been for you - yes, you! xx

Here's a lovely, apposite, 3 minute 42 second thing from a while back you can listen to whilst, Winslet-like, I 'gather, gather'.

Tanya Donelly - 'My Life As A Ghost' (2004)

Echoes In A Shallow Bay

Dark in the mornings now, isn't it? And it's a drizzly-greasy one today, a slow drip drip drip.

Here's a perfect thing.

From Elizabeth via Robert Wyatt out of, somewhat incredibly, Chic.

Elizabeth Fraser - 'At Last I Am Free' (2003)

[From this]

Yeah Baby

Our occasional series of extended disco classics builds into a magnificent library your whole family will enjoy.

This week - La Ross! Enfin!

Diana Ross - 'Love Hangover' (12") (1976)

Duke Consideration

I don't imagine you'd think yourself familiar with the work of Vladimir Dukelsky, and the name Vernon Duke might draw a blank with you too.

But if you've been digging 'Can't Get Started' in the Cannonball or maybe already know vocal versions by Sinatra or Mel Tormé, if you've ever sung along to 'Autumn In New York' or 'April In Paris' or swung along to 'Taking A Chance On Love' then You Have Been Listening to the man in question.

A Belarusian émigré to the US who trained at the Kiev Conservatory, staged ballets with Serge Diaghilev, became a close friend of both Sergei Prokofiev and George Gershwin and continued to compose 'classical' music throughout his life under his real name, Duke (as we shall cheekily call him) also happened to pen some of the most beautiful standards in the American popular songbook.

Sinatra especially always namechecked him in performance. His wistful lyricism and soaring melodies are really quite something; and with Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern as contemporaries, he was hardly running in a race of pygmies.

On Monday I started playing his tunes, but the strange thing is, I didn't make the connection...I just hopped from the perfect-for-the-time-of-year 'Autumn' to a lovely 'What Is There To Say?' as done by both Bill Evans and Sonny Rollins, to 'Can't Get Started', which I posted for feeling that way, and only afterwards did I realise all these songs were Vernon Duke's.

Then I learned from Wiki that his 'old calendar' birthday was on Sunday.

'These are the coincidences that thrill my imagination'.

Let the leaves fall....

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong - 'Autumn In New York' (1957)
Sonny Rollins - 'What Is There To Say?' (1957)
Frank Sinatra - 'I Can't Get Started' (1959)

As you'll tell from the crackles, the first and third are vinyl rips. Thanks to Greer, who stoked the flames of this one x

Blue Monday

We've got that same feelin', Jules and me.

Julian "Cannonball" Adderley - 'I Can't Get Started' (1961)

FLASH! Aaa-AAAAAH!

Keepin' it old skool, bro.

I have this on single from back in the day; that Sugarhill label's a purty thang.

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - 'The Message' (1982)

No Smoke Without Fire

I bought my first new 7" single in two decades from the Rough Trade shop at the weekend. It's this lovely thing from the lovely Smoke Fairies, which comes in a limited edition pack with a 'free' 5 track CD (which is, let's face it, the EP). What larks!

The Smoke Fairies are two nice girls from Sussex who picked up some dirty blues and slide guitar licks and sad, dark Appalachian bits in the States and Canada that offset their sweet English folk harmonies like a good Kentucky bourbon does a ginger ale. Or something. I like them a lot.

They're supporting Richard Hawley on tour next month, which would seem a winning combination all round, so I'd better get my ticket sorted pronto.

Smoke Fairies - 'Morning Light' (2009)

Their MySpace.

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.