En Vacances

Mais oui et alors mes amis, the Famille H are off on their hols to South West France and hoping that the 40% chance of rain forecast for next week is an erreur; for heading South will be sweeter if to a warmer, sunnier place. Either way we are banking on groovy cheeses and groovier wine, fresh baked bread and some cheap gin from the hypermarket - and we've loved doing the London things this summer, but we also need to breathe some green, you know?

It's an early start and a long drive tomorrow, all frites by the autoroute and petit cafes to keep me awake, so don't make me stay up late tonight gassing away with you.

There's half a melon in the fridge if you want to use it up.

Salut!

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - 'Davy's On The Road Again' (1978)

Busking It

Our internets have been broken all day and Busby's only just fixed them. I should think all of Mrs H's crops in Farmville have died, and you can forget all about that erudite morning post I planned (I know I have). We best busk it, eh Ted? 

Ted Hawkins - 'He Will Break Your Heart' (1985) Jerry Butler!

Caught Up In This Big Rhythm

It's been rain/sun/rain/sun/rain here all week: off with the girlies, on the 'sun' days we did the Albert Memorial, red pavilion and Princess Di playground in Kensington Gardens, a parched Wimbledon Common/Cannizaro Park and light refreshments at The Hand In Hand, and squeezed in a pub lunch by the river today - low tide, drizzle-pitted Thames, herons and cormorants.

Tinseltown Is In The Rain.

I found this LP in the charity shop in the spring - already had the music, bought it anyway, it was such a nice thing. It has, on reflection, been a good year so far for vinyl finds in places whiffing of mothballs.

Chin Chin my lovelies.

The Blue Nile - 'Tinseltown In The Rain' (1984)

Zing!

Sitting reading last night and listening to the Blackpool Mecca comp, I was struck by just how terrific this is. It sounds so mid 70s Philly (and was a hit in '75), but it was recorded in 1971.

It's the kind of thing that's playing on those hot summer nights by the beach in the perfect August of my imagination.

The Trammps - 'Hold Back The Night' (1972)

It's Disco! With Guitars!

Your vote is well-hung.

Last For Long

So as I mentioned the other day to Simon, right after him posting about this feller and long, long since various people whose musical opinions I dig first blethered on at me about this record, I found it in my local charity shop for a quid, and bought it.

Would those of you who know it describe it as a grower?

I mean, it's dark and moody and complicated and sometimes a bit unexpected isn't it?

My first reaction is some of the tracks are walking dark funky paths in search of a tune, a bit.

I will stick with it, because I like unobviousness.

This (track one!) I think is superb. I'm sort of obsessed with it at the moment.

Lewis Taylor - 'Lucky' (1996)

First Be A Person Who Needs People

Jule Styne (music) (1905-1994) also wrote 'Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend', 'Everything's Coming Up Roses' and 'Saturday Night (Is The Loneliest Night Of The Week)'.

Bob Merrill (lyrics) (1929-1998) also wrote (ahem) 'She Wears Red Feathers (And A Huly Huly Skirt)' - which my Mum introduced me to long, long after its time, on a 7" single they'd kept since the 50s. Thanks Mum!

----

For Mondo, and Mondo's Mum.

Barbra Streisand - 'People' (1964)

The Smiling Hour

Ach yes, on the face of it this isn't so Friday night, but I reckon if you and your cocktails are chilled it could stack up very nicely.

And I'm 45 tomorrow; so like Lee once said (in so many words) I'm old enough not to have to Justify My Music to anyone.

Yeah baby - I *heart* Sade!

Which I do not think is hard to do with this lovely, lovely, slow-jam bassy thing.

Cheers!

Sade - 'Lovers Rock' (2000)

Sweet Sounds Of Summer

Here's something else I've been enjoying from my Big Summer Playlist 2010 (cunningly formed in iTunes by selecting all songs with 'summer' in the title - brilliant!).

This was written by The Shangs' personal manager Larry Martire, about whom I know nothing, sadly.

Say life’s a game and it hurries by so fast
And if you find someone to love, do your best to make it last
We were too young and the summer's come and gone
Until the time we meet again the memory lingers on

The Shangri-Las - 'The Sweet Sounds Of Summer' (1966)

Schhh...

Yessir.

Short Term

A bit of an emotional day for us today: the girlies break up for the summer hols and the eldest leaves her (lovely) primary school for good.

*gulp*

It's a cliché but true: it seems like only yesterday we first walked her through the gates, a late August birthday girl just 4 years old, the youngest in the class, the youngest in the school; a photo of her standing in front of the house in her bright new uniform.

Today she'll come home (considerably taller) with a hundred farewell signatures scribbled in biro on her shirt and a trace of a tear in her eye, though trying not to show it.

As Big School looms...

Black Box Recorder - 'The School Song' (2003)

Summer Making Sense

Continuing a sort of series of seasonal songs with a track you hear once and feel you've known all your life - another one that's been buzzing about my head lately like a housefly trapped inside on a hot summer's day.

With thanks to Drew, who first introduced us (*cough* nothing original to see here, move along).

The Airborne Toxic Event - 'The Girls In Their Summer Dresses' (2006)

Friday Reggae # 16

We're off to an end-of-school-year parents' social tonight, which is really not my sort of thing; I would much rather be at home getting myself outside of a bottle of vino with Mrs H whilst the girlies play out front and groovy sounds emanate from my gramophone.

Oh. I've just read on the 'confirmation email' that facilities at the venue exist to plug iPods into speakers, so maybe that'll keep me amused for the evening.

Perhaps it'll be like those 6th Form parties where you were forever taking off some fool's rubbish records to put your Tamla Motown on.

It'll end in tears.

Judy Mowatt - 'Emergency Call' (1974)

(I HEART this track!).

Bored Of The Flies

Is it me or are there an awful lot of flies about this year? Maybe it's because of all that hot weather and then the rain this week, but I can't lift a bloody banana in our house without disturbing hundreds of what Mrs H assures me are Drosophila, and last night walking home from the station in broad daylight, after I had already ducked great swirly clouds of gnats through the woods, some little blighter that looked like a small moth landed on my finger and bit it hard, right then and there as bold as brass. Tonight I hung up some seeds for the birds in our thorn tree and disturbed a major settlement of the buggers.

Anyway.

This has been lurking for a bit too - you'll see from the title nestling in the Wey post it's been on my mind for a while; and I am never one to ignore these clues/cues.

Now where's the witchhazel...

Tim Buckley - 'Buzzin' Fly' (1969)

Celebrated Summer

I kind of like Hüsker Dü without having much of their stuff - Candy Apple Grey, a few downloads and, if they count, a tape of a dark Bob Mould solo album and that splendid Sugar single.

I don't have any Red House Painters either, but this Mark Kozelek cover, which came to me in 2008 from a terrific, zeitgeisty zip from a much-missed Weegie blogger with a fringe*, has been on heavy rotation in my house and in my head this past week.

The Dü's Mould is famously one of those guys who has both a natural gift for melody and a contrasting penchant for thrashy noise - when the two come together well, as they do here, it is quite something; Kozelek meanwhile strips out the second thing so we can luxuriate fully in the glory of the first, and hey, that's appreciated too.

Hüsker Dü - 'Celebrated Summer' (1985)

Mark Kozelek - 'Celebrated Summer' (2008)

* thanks Colin

Yeah Harriet

Indie Siren In London Heatwave Blogpost Shocker!

I Don't Need Sunny Skies

I loved this when I was little and I love it forty years later.

Only truly great pop songs go on giving in this way.

It was a demo too!

Carole King - 'It Might As Well Rain Until September' (1962)

My Own Wey

And in complete contrast...

I walked the River Wey Navigations in deepest Surrey today - well, the stretch between Pyrford and Send and back, at least. A literal quiet stretch of stream to match the figurative one I've hit after a time of whiter water - canal boats and ancient locks, reedbeds, willows, wild meadow, a kestrel hovering overhead; buzzin' flies.

Four hours walking in green - it's good for the soul.

Not even the barking Surrey golfers through the trees could spoil my mood.

I wouldn't want them as my neighbours mind.

(London, That's The Place For Me, etc).

Paul Weller* - 'Country' (1993)

* Local boy made good.

(East) London Calling

I went along to the London Calling Exhibition in Bethnal Green today - a funky riffola around the paintings, design work and cartoons of the late Ray Lowry, especially his work as 'War Artist' and companero to The Clash and even more especially that album cover, on which there were many, variously, funny, affectionate, baffling and inspired takes by contemporary artists, famous fans, band associates and, even, band members (Messrs Jones and Simonon). Paul Simonon's tribute thrillingly included a tiny fragment of the actual bass guitar he is doing such violence to in the iconographic Pennie Smith image. Oo, and indeed, er.

It was all rather splendid, as was my amble afterwards down a sunny Brick Lane, and sorry for the late notice and all but the thing closes on Sunday, so if you can you must boogie on down there pronto.

Quiff it up!

Vince Taylor & The Playboys - 'Brand New Cadillac' (1958)

Gotta Put Me On

Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine : )

Can't get enough of this sort of thing right now.

Hey Anon, there's a lyrical wink to this in the P.M Dawn too.

A Tribe Called Quest - 'Bonita Applebum' (1990)

Subterranean By Design

You'll give me a hundred reasons why I shouldn't like this Joni Mitchell lyric-referencing Spandau Ballet-sampling soft pop hip-hop thing, but I have to tell you - I do.

Especially when the sun's shining, baby.

P.M Dawn - 'Set Adrift On Memory Bliss' (1991)

Yeah Baby

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

Confession: I knew the Ice Cube* before I knew the original.

In belated memoriam Marvin Isley (bass) who quit this crazy scene on 6th June.

The Isley Brothers - 'Footsteps In The Dark, Pts 1 & 2' (1977)

*re-upped

I Think I'll Call It A Morning

I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
And paint it all over my sky

Be no rain
Be no rain

Gil Scott-Heron - 'I Think I'll Call It A Morning' (1971)

Karma (coma)

Connections, connections, connections and....more connections.

I only went out to pay a cheque in at the bank but something made me drop into the strange-scrappy charity shop by the station and what, what should I find there but that dark masterpiece Maxinquaye - on vinyl, 'near-mint', a quid. I see it's going on the internets for £20. I'm feeling lucky, punk.

Thought my run of Massive Attack-linked things had ended with Wally Badarou, but Lady Serena Dibity had other plans.

Tricky - 'Overcome' (1995)

This Is England

Almost posted some Algerian rai, just for the heck of it...

But have this instead, because it is brill.

Still miss you Joe.

Daydreaming

Connections, connections, connections: another African (though in this case, Paris-born) artist and another track sampled by Massive Attack on Blue Lines (an album I am increasingly convinced was the finest of the 90s) - this one all funky synthy, and dig those (electronic?) bongos.

It's Isaac Hayes meets Jan Hammer, but in a good way.

I've been playing it over and over all week.

Wally Badarou - 'Mambo' (1983)

The Smiling Hour

It's a World Cup in South Africa cocktail special, baby.

And it's bloody lovely.

Hugh Masekela - 'Grazing In The Grass' (1968)

Tropicality

Strange weather here: rain/sun/rain/sun - heat: all a bit tropical, I thought, as I walked back through the woods from the station tonight, hacking dense vegetation from my path with my faithful machete.

So - this'll do nicely: lilting and lovely and impossible not to sway your big hips to.

From a 21 year old Observer offer mail-order cassette: the Lion Of Zimbabwe, banned from Mugabe's State radio and living in exile in the USA.

Thomas Mapfumo - 'Mwoyo Wangu (My Heart)' (1989)

Yeah Baby Serendipity

Working up to a Friday post as the sun beat down outside I ripped Stevie's 'Rocket Love' from Hotter Than July (and it is, baby) and thought to myself, out of nowhere - 'mellow, mellow right on!'

What a lucky (excuse the pun) break! As I bet Massive Attack agree.

For this it most certainly must be.

And it wouldn't surprise me if our occasional series of extended slow-jam classics builds into a stunning collection your whole family will enjoy.

Lowrell - 'Mellow Mellow Right On' (extended version) (1979)

Yeah Baby Tuesday

This week I'm off with the girlies for half term - which means not having to get up too early, which means not having to go to bed too early, which means staying up late listening to the funky sounds on Your Classic And 21st Century Soul Station Solar Radio and playing 'Intermediate, Portuguese' and the like at Windows internet checkers.

Hey, I know how to have a good time.

This starts out all 'Do The Latin Hustle' or Saturday Night Fever's 'Manhattan Skyline' until in come real steel drums and then a properly funky bassline bubbling up behind the disco strings; they say Larry Levan played it at the Paradise Garage and I bet Darcy's got the 12".

It's kinda TGOE Friday on a Tuesday, but I think you can take it.

John Gibbs & The US Steel Orchestra - 'Trinidad' (1977)