Static & Silence

The author of The Ghost Of Electricity blog is busy. The Harriet default has been activated. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

The Smiling Hour

Since you're here again I think it's fair to assume there isn't a musically-prejudiced bone in your body.

But just in case I say 'Azymuth' and you think: 'Oh noooohhh Mr H! Synthy noodly 80s jazz-funky? Not for me!' may I assure you that this is...

chilled
acoustic*
authentically Brazilian

and very unfeasibly-warm-March-evening-in-London-Town-with-a-cold-San Miguel-ey.

Hey! You're welcome!

Mine's a large one!

Azymuth - 'Salto Das Sete Quedas (Cascade Of The Seven Falls)' (1982)

*OK, there's a bit of synth at the end. And an electric keyboard all the way through. In fact...Oh bugger it.

Vernal

Bill Evans Trio - 'It Might As Well Be Spring' (1962)

Friday Reggae # 21

David Emmanuel aka Smiley Culture (10 February 1963 – 15 March 2011)

As Kippers put it succinctly in a Tweet this week, it is the cruellest of ironies that a man famous for this record should die in what look to be deeply suspicious circumstances during a police 'drugs raid'.

What a sad, sad end.

Here's to happier times with a witty pioneer of British reggae/ragga MCing.

Smiley Culture - 'Cockney Translation' (1984)

Soft Southern Jessie

Last night I dreamt I walked the streets of my old home town. Not as it is now, with its lar-dee-dar shops for the lar-dee-dar yachting types who've taken the place over and priced the locals out; as it was when I was small - a real place with real shops: the bakery on the corner with the girl called Wendy my Mum knew, Mr Shillabeer's butchers where he'd pull coins and sometimes, miraculously, eggs, from behind my ear, Pillar's the toy shop with its window stuffed full of Dinky cars and Belli's the tobacconist by the bus stop home where my Dad would buy his tins of St Bruno.

Why at 45 am I walking the streets of my early childhood in my sleep? What is the cranky old processor in my brain up to, sifting through this hardly-used stuff on the hard drive? Who knows.

But it reminds me of when my grandad, sat in late summer out the back of the modern house we moved to in the 70s, would talk to me about the Plymouth of his youth, before the bombs fell and the 60s planners finished the job.

That place existed only in his head, and so it is now with mine and me.

I lived in Trumpton and I am a Soft Southern Jessie.

Freddie Phillips - 'Chime And Clock Theme' (featuring Brian Cant, narrator) (1967)
Freddie Phillips - 'Band Concert' (1967)

[vinyl rips from the Music For Pleasure LP]

So Precious, So Sweet

I was noodling about on the internet the other night listening to Lou Reed and something made me Wikipedia his song, so I read inadvertently about this one which, excuse my very great ignorance, I was entirely unaware of before.

Very lovely, in that early 60s 'Patti Page And Lemonade' kind of way.

I needs to get me more doo wop.

The Excellents - 'Coney Island Baby' (1962)

Their nearly-men story here.

A Pop At The 80s

Our occasional series of extended 80s classics builds into a magnificent library your whole family will enjoy.

I've had the song stuck in my head all day so, grim world news rendering it inappropriate or no, there was nothing for it but to dig out the old LP and get computerising; and stone me, this is thirty years old.

Wailin' and skankin' to Bob Marley
Reggae's expanding with Sly and Robbie

------

In the '84 Talking Heads concerts that were filmed for 'Stop Making Sense', the band did this while David Byrne got into his Big Suit.

Ms Weymouth is utterly splendid here. I do like a woman with a bass.

And yes, I would say hello to a little drink, if you're asking.

Tom Tom Club - 'Genius Of Love' (album version) (1981)

See 86

She lives somewhere in China
I think that I'll go out and find her
Just to see if there's a better world for me

*drinks tea*

Shop Assistants - 'Somewhere In China' (1986)

The Smiling Hour

And speaking of songs whose words and melodies run headlong downhill sounding as if at any point they'll fall right over themselves like a small child over bicycle handlebars we present tonight at Davy's Bar two Brazilian legends in sparkling duet - it's the first spring-like Friday post of the year, baby.

Mine's a large one, if you're going.

Antônio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina - 'Águas de Março' (1974)

I Don't Let Go

I was mocked for having this record. Mocked! 'Today I am a small blue thing' indeed. But 'Marlene On The Wall' was rotation play on the relaunched 'Radio Caroline' all through the night handwriting essays in the crappy house in Turnpike Lane with the ruby-red flock wallpaper and the jetblack cockroaches that skittled through the kitchen at the flick/flick flicker-on of the fluorescent striplight. That headlong rush of words you only get on a song the singer means.

And this.

'I believe right now if I could, I would swallow you whole' ?

Mocked.

This is a davyh vinyl rip.

Suzanne Vega - 'Undertow' (1985)

Jane Russell (June 21st 1921- Feb 28th 2011)

Friday Reggae # 20

I was playing this last week and almost did a double Friday Reggae post I was so struck, once again, by how brilliant it is. But 'No, no davyh,' says I to myself, 'Hold fire till next Friday and let's cap off perhaps a whole week of things punky reggae/reggae in a manner fitting' and so it has come to pass companeros, so it has come to pass.

Celebrating British roots reggae at its finest.

I shall require a beverage, ya kna.

Steel Pulse - 'Ku Klux Klan' (1978)

(Still) Livin' In-A Babylon

@Johnnywas25 (AKA our Simon) set me off on this with his lovely early commuter train iPo #nowlistening Tweets which recently mentioned The Ruts Peel Sessions. I'd only a couple of things by them, the obvious ones, so thought I'd track their Beeb stuff down.

Here's something that neatly extends the punky reggae vibe from the last post, baby.

The Ruts - 'Black Man's Pinch' (Peel session) (1979)

Protest And Survive

This is something I have on an old tape I made from the Peel Show in 1982 or 3, a song like other things I've mentioned here over the years that has burrowed its way into my consciousness when so much else of arguably greater significance has fallen away. It's proven a pig to track down since, online or offline; I didn't even know what it was called for years, then found out it was the B side of the group's first not-quite hit single and fully expected to turn it up in a charity shop, but no dice. The interweb finally came through today.

The band were set for wacky pop image and promo vids (via The Young Ones) from this point on, but I can see why JP fell for this sub-Slits slice of No Nukes punky reggae. So did I.

Amazulu - 'Greenham Time' (1983)

Friday Reggae # 19

Listen to the beat, move your dancin' feet

And tune in to BBC4 at 9pm, if you can.

I'll be well up for it after cooking my celebrated veg chilli with avocado salsa.

Is someone going to the bar?

Toots & The Maytals - 'Reggae Got Soul' (1975)

Blue Valentine

Tom Waits - 'Blue Valentines' (1978)

A Pop At The 80s

Our occasional series of extended 80s classics builds into a magnificent library your whole family will enjoy.

This week, another song sort of suggested by the Liverpool book, and one of the first things I remember being excited to find on iTunes before I knew how to computerise my records. This though is a Full Fat, 100% real fruit luxury sound rip from the original 12 inch vinyl. Because I loves ya.

Crazy guy that Wylie.

I'm tired and old and broke but I'll say hello to a little drink, if you're asking.

Wah! - 'The Story Of The Blues Part I and Part II' (1982)

Blue Monday

But let's be clear, blue in a good way - rainswept, melancholy; that sort of thing.

Horace Silver - 'Lonely Woman' (1964)

A Pop At The 80s

Our occasional series of extended 80s classics builds into a magnificent library your whole family will enjoy. Innit.

Propaganda - 'Duel' (Bitter Sweet) (1985)

[The download versh is longer than the video; the pen is mightier than the sword. John Wayne is big leggie. Etc]

Call To Prayer

So Mondo's book on the train is the splendid Eno biog I loved so much last year, which has sent him into a Brian-Tweeting frenzy, and me back to the 'canon' too (like I ever 'left' it).

Here's a quite hard-to-get thing - pulled from all but the earliest issues of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts after complaints from the World Muslim Council and never reinstated, not even as a bonus on reissues.

'...featuring a field recording of Algerian devotees chanting Koranic verses (appropriated from the first track of Eno's Music In The World Of Islam LP)' [Sheppard]

Brian Eno & David Byrne - 'Qu'ran' (1981)

John Barry (3rd November 1933 – 30th January 2011)

He was, never mind our greatest film composer, one of our greatest composers of any kind.

Simply, a giant.

Just twelve years ago he wrote a kind of soundtrack to the film of his life, which may well be his masterwork and now sadly sounds like his epitaph.

Rest In Music JB.

John Barry - 'The Beyondness Of Things' (1998)

What Does God Say?

Orbital - 'Are We Here?' (1996)

The Quality Of Mersey

Great record this, and though the original's a lost soul classic, I still think I prefer the cover.

And I was pleased Paul Du Noyer was so kind about The Searchers in his book - 'the sound that was so special....radiant, chiming twin-guitars...a profound influence on The Byrds' Roger McGuinn' ; they weren't songwriters and couldn't compete with the Lennons and McCartneys and Davies and Stones, but their singles were so much a part of our late 60s infancies, always there, in the air, needles and pins-ah - shimmering clean.

I don't remember this one from the time, which made me love it all the more when it finally reached me on a reissue label sampler, sometime in the early 90s when it was otherwise all squall and baggy and blast.

The Searchers - 'Goodbye My Love' (1965)

The Smiling Hour

Last night I went to a 'do' and stayed up very late, or was it early, drinking outrageously priced gin and tonics bought for me on someone else's expense account and generally doing the schmoosy sorts of things I do not habitually do.

Today has not been entirely productive.

I shall require an early night.

And some sweet, sweet Nancy.

Nancy Wilson - 'Almost In Your Arms' (1963)

Shadow Play

A quickie whilst I'm waiting in for the washing machine repair man, and a sort of response to this and this.

Richard Hawley - 'I'm Absolutely Hank Marvin' (featuring Hank Marvin) (2005)

Letting It Fall

So - January eh? Dark mornings, thick rain, sparse cash and slim vinyl pickings in the second hand record shops. I had a heart-stopping moment when the left channel went dead on my ancient amplifier's 'phono' setting before a judicious thump to the top restored it, but was less lucky when I prized open the iPo to fix the wobbly headphone socket and triggered Apple's self-destruct mechanism, which they will of course deny exists. In other electrical news the washing machine's stopped heating the water and smells funny and the lights in the back room blew up. It's a Perfect Appliance Storm.

Actually, I'm desperate for something new on an old fashioned LP. Something warm and faintly crackly again like that last post, something to spin as the rain sets in. Computerising more of the old jazz archive is my default action in such times. Reawakening those tracks. And this is just swell; another from The Symphonic Ellington, don't you know.

Peace, as they say, out.

Duke Ellington - 'Non-Violent Integration' (1963)

Sure Thing

This Friday I fancy some smooth classic Stax with the warm, faintly crackly, sound of a davyh vinyl rip.

Yer tiz.

Ollie & The Nightingales - '(I Know) I Got A Sure Thing' (1968)

New Thing

I think this is the first new thing to have reached me via Twitter, so thank you @markbuckley1979.

Her album came out in November and is full of songs about working double shifts in low rent waitressing jobs, and such.

I see her record company have given a few tracks away as samplers, so I hope they won't mind if I slip you this on the qt.

I like it.

Amy Bezunartea - 'I Lie Away At Night (But That's Alright)' (2010)

Yeah Baby

As this blog enters its sixth (!) calendar year I become increasingly prone to 'senior moment'-type mallarkey. "Did I tell you the story about me and Cool Jim singing this on the bus back from seeing The Jam at Shepton Mallet Showground in 1982, our jackets soaking with sweat from the mosh pit and - ?"

'Yes Dad (yawn)'.

I even had to double check I hadn't posted it before (don't think so).

Yer tiz then, as they say in Devon.

I shall require a beverage*

The Chi-Lites - 'Stoned Out Of My Mind' (1973)

* not cider, thanks.

Going Forward, Going Back

Well it's about time I, er, opened my blogging account for 2011.

And if it's OK with you I'd like to do it with something old - old to me too, though lost for many years and restored just recently.

What an uplifting monster of a record this is.

Born in darkness
But I fought my way up to the sun

Yeah baby.

Garnet Mimms - 'As Long As I Have You' (1964)