What Does Become Of The Brokenhearted?

Last week me and my mate The Vorg were quaffing cold drinks in a groovy bar in Clapham, as one does, when we fell to discussing the late great singing voice of David Ruffin.

Ruffin was huge in the 1960s as the distinctive lead vocalist of The Temptations, but hubris and rather too much Bolivian marching powder got the better of him, and hacked off at being increasingly seen (by Ruffin at least) as his backing band, the other Temptations and their management team fired him.

After an acrimonious contractual tussle with Motown records, Ruffin embarked on a solo career which, patchy in parts, nevertheless involved the release of two or three of the finest soul records of the era.

He died of a drug overdose in 1991, aged just 50.

Strangely now, many of those people whose interest in 60s soul and pop is passing rather than, er, 'studious' seem not to have heard of him.

"Was he related to Jimmy Ruffin?" they ask.

Well, er, yeah, he was his brother.

"Oh, right...I do like that 'What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted'".

The Vorg and I disagreed over which of the two songs I'm posting here was our favourite track.

I plumped for 'My Whole World Ended' (a song originally intended for The Tempts and I think one of my all time favourite Motown recordings); The Vorg's always had a thing for 'Walk Away From Love'...

But we could not have agreed more that this was a great voice, sadly missed.

David Ruffin - 'My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)' (1969)

David Ruffin - 'Walk Away From Love' (1975)

(By the way, nice to see a soul singer with glasses isn't it? Not forgetting Curtis Mayfield of course).

(Buy DR here)

Shhh !

23 years ago when I was a student sharing a small terraced house in London's Turnpike Lane with a couple thousand cockroaches and a lot of flock wallpaper, I bought Miles Davis' In A Silent Way from the 'Record Tape & Video Exchange' in Notting Hill Gate. I liked Miles. I already had Kind Of Blue and Porgy And Bess. I had some Charlie Parker too! But this? I found it 'difficult'.

After a couple of days struggling with it, I took it back and swapped it (I don't even remember for what).

Yesterday I bought it for a fiver on remastered CD from Fopp Records, Cambridge Circus - The Best Record Store In Central London (Official!).

Now I am loving every inch of it.

I guess it's like my Dad said to me when I grimaced taking a sip of his Teacher's whisky at fifteen years of age... 'Some things are an acquired taste my son...'

I like whisky now too.

Maybe one day I'll be old enough to appreciate everything that's good...

Miles Davis - 'In A Silent Way' (1969) (Buy)

[PS: this edit is from Miles' Best Of: as cognoscenti will know, the full version tips without gap into 'It's About That Time' and is 19 mins long; but I don't think my bandwidth allowance is up to that.]

Frank

I haven't heard the rest of the album, so am prepared to accept that Mr Toad may be justified in his rather impressively bilious rant about producer Mark Ronson's covers project, but I have to say that I find this track, at least, to be rather bloody marvellous.

And I don't even like The Zutons original. Or The Zutons much at all, come to that.

I do however, love La Winehouse.

And though you couldn't move on the blogosphere without tripping over posts from Back To Black (buy) a few months ago, all the zeitgeisty types responsible have moved on to cut a new edge somewhere else now.

Meanwhile in my distinctly unzeitgeisty and today slightly Eeyore-esque hollow, I still have the album on rotation and this further collaboration with its producer is a very nice little adjunct, ta very much.

Mark Ronson (feat. Amy Winehouse) - 'Valerie' (2007)

Nothing Less Than Brilliant - still

There is a great interview with the legendary and very lovely Sandie Shaw in yesterday's Observer Music Monthly in which she reflects on winning the Eurovision Song Contest forty years ago with 'Puppet On A String', a song she hated then and has hated ever since.

"A few years ago I started my website, as I thought it was something I could play with and it's the first time I've felt at home since the Sixties, because you can communicate directly with your audience. I'd moaned to Howard Jones [Eighties pop star/producer], an old friend of mine, about 'Puppet' and it was his idea to re-record it, to cure me. He just made me sing it in a different way. I know it sounds strange, but it's been like therapy. I'm at peace with it now"

Sandie Shaw - 'Puppet's Got A Brand New String' (2007)

The track is available free from Sandie's excellent self-managed site - and she's promising to post still more material there soon in continued celebration of her sixtieth year.

I can't think of many other living 60s pop stars who've been cool for four decades, can you?

Love her.

Buy Sandie's records here.

This Boy

His missus is getting all the plaudits at the moment, and deservedly so - and of course he's an established dance music producer, DJ and record label owner now, but something in the air this morning, a whiff of melancholy in an overcast moment, makes me want to play these songs from the days when Ben Watt was 21, an investment of 99p got you Pillows & Prayers, and North Marine Drive was playing in my best friend's rented room in Whalley Range.

It was after punk and it was after post-punk and as someone said at the time it was 'our generation's quiet music'.

Excuse me, but I think I might have to have a little cry now.

Ben Watt 'On Box Hill' (1983)

Ben Watt 'Some Things Don't Matter' (1983)

Early Dawning, Sunday Morning

The Velvet Underground - 'Sunday Morning' (1966)

Get The Funk Back In Here!

This week three tracks from psychedelic soul/jazz/funk/pop pioneer genius (and son of blues guitarist Johnny) Shuggie Otis , who blazed a totally original musical trail for himself in the early-mid 70s, as composer, arranger, producer, singer and multi-instrumentalist (piano, synth, bass, drums, drum machine programming, vibes, lead and rhythm guitar) - a trail not picked up successfully by anybody again until the arrival of Prince a decade later.

The Shuggie song you will know if you know any at all will be 'Strawberry Letter 23', a candypopfunk confection taken Top 40 in the UK and to number 1 in the US in 1977 by The Brothers Johnson and featured twenty years later on the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown. The cover's good, but the original has a kind of tie-dyed innocence it's hard to better.

The album to get is Inspiration Information (1974), re-released a few years ago with extra tracks from 1971's Freedom Flight on David Byrne's Luaka Bop label (buy it).

Frequently defying categorisation - but prepare yourself for extended free and mellow jazz workouts, lush orchestrations, electro-funk and proto-synth pop - this is music far, far ahead of its time, and it seems to me that this man is long overdue the credit and acclaim he deserves.

(PS: the first ten seconds of the first track below are the best theme music for the best Starsky & Hutch episode you never saw...).

Shuggie Otis - 'Ice Cold Daydream'

Shuggie Otis - 'Sparkle City'

Shuggie Otis - 'Strawberry Letter 23'

Nice. Enjoy your weekend.

Leaks - A Morality Tale

Hard gigging unsigned band give away demo CDs at concerts that enthusiastic fans upload and share. Few fans become many fans, as more and more hear the MP3s, go to the gigs, tell their friends - and momentum gathers. Gigs grow and grow. Surviving UK Famous Music Weekly weighs in, loudly endorsing band, balance is tipped. Band release album featuring tracks fans already own for free - they buy them all again anyhow. Band now huge. Even broadsheet journos and fortysomething fathers of two (wotcha!) know who they are, and own their records. Brilliantly, success does NOT go to band's head. Band focuses on more hard gigging, writing, and recording much anticipated second album ('Second Coming or Morning Glory?' asks Famous Music Weekly...).

Album tracks are widely leaked on blogosphere.

But this time the lawyers are watching....

Oh dear.

Have we forgotten something somewhere Mr Man?

* * *

This is, I think, rather brilliant - more 'love it from the first time you hear it' than the other tracks I've heard, and so probably the next single.

I shall be posting this, my dears, for 48 hours only.

To encourage you, needless to say, to buy the album. Like you wouldn't!

Arctic Monkeys - 'Flourescent Adolescent' (2007)

PS: Working too hard this week - but hope to be back for some Friday Funk, and then all things shall be well. Missing you already x.

"Hello Again On Another Monday Morning"

UK dance/electronica duo Nick Franglin and Fred Deakin, working as Lemon Jelly, have produced some of the most original recordings of the last six or seven years, interweaving witty vocal samples, unlikely 'found' musical sources (70s soft rock, children's nursery rhymes) and frequently hilarious 'live' spoken word contributions from actors (William Shatner!), with their own crunchy ambient sounds to deliver a quirky, psychedelic and somehow very English spin on a genre too often characterised by bland muzak.

I first heard this track in a perfect setting - watching a big orange ball of a sun melt steadily into San Antonio Bay to DJ Bruno Lepretre's sunset session at the Cafe Del Mar, Ibiza. *sigh*. It
really doesn't get much better than that.

It took me a while to track it down - all I had to go on was the Chicago sample, and though I already knew and loved Lemon Jelly's stuff, this 'B' side (to 'Perfect Weather For Ducks') had until then passed me by.

Anyway, here it is, in all its AOR-istic glory.

All donations to fund a return trip to Ibiza this summer gratefully received ; )

Lemon Jelly - 'Soft' (2003)

Buy Lemon Jelly here.

Breakfast With Shaft

Morning! How are you today?

Bit bleary-eyed? Overdid the tequila last night?

Or maybe you're just fine - you slept well, the sun's shining, there's a whole day ahead of you, no place in particular you have to be...?

Either way, Mr. Hayes has a tune for you.

Enjoy.

Isaac Hayes - 'Early Sunday Morning' (1971)

From Shaft OST (buy).

My Life As A Ghost

So....I have had a Nice Eostre Break and Time With The Family and largely as predicted, the sun has shone. Which it did NOT when I was a kid, I can tell you. Easter Bank Holiday Monday? Long car journeys to 'beauty spots', hard boiled eggs and luncheon meat sandwiches, thermos of tea (Mother), winter jumpers, rain. A traffic jam on the way back.

All very Crying All The Way To The Chip Shop, in fact.

This holiday, however, I Have Been Mostly Listening To...well, lots of Field Mice actually, because Colin via JC set me off on a trip from 'Let's Kiss And Make Up' (ex-blog and eponymous track) to lots of emusic downloads to wondering how, given My Vintage And Tendencies, especially circa 1989-91, I had not heard these genius! music makers before (so, genuinely, thanks a million Colin/JC and goodness me, I love this blogosphere thing) ....BUT, also Tanya Donelly who I have been loving long time (Throwing Muses, Belly, etc) but whose 2004 album (great title) Whiskey Tango Ghosts I heard for the first time last week and have been PLAYING TO DEATH ever since.

It is marvellous: heartfelt, latenight, sharp and spooky - piano and acoustic guitary: lovely.

So, some tasters to encourage you to (and you really should) buy...

Tanya Donelly - 'Butterfly Thing'

Tanya Donelly - 'My Life As A Ghost'

While we're at it - her stepsister's new one is worth a listen too...

Down At The Lido They Welcome You

Sunny days, lighter evenings, charcoal burning everywhere - but we live in England baby and it's only April, so we know it won't last.

Still, it's cocktail hour in London and something about The Dan is right for the mood.

A quintessential track this, I think - that lyric 'In the night you hide from the madman you're longing to be/But it all comes out on the inside/Eventually'....

And they could afford to leave songs like this off albums.

Such talent.

And I could go on about it and them and try to convert those of you who mistakedly believe that they represent the worst of 1970s FM AOR by extolling their considerable genius, but you know what? I'd really rather just play the music.

Steely Dan - 'Here At The Western World' (1976)

Buy Steely Dan here.

Eostre's Parade

The lady in the picture is Eostre, the ancient Northern European goddess associated with the dawn, spring and fertility. Often depicted with eggs (new life!) and rabbits - or more correctly, hares - (procreation! prodigious fertility!) she graced our festivals of the Spring Equinox, and then like so many other symbols of our once close connection with the Earth and our celebration of its turning, she had her holiday ripped off and co-opted by the Christian church, and was forgotten. Now only a version of her name remains...

I shall be remembering Eostre this weekend - and no doubt imbibing invigorating liquor in her honour in the traditional manner.

I'll also be playing this...

Patti Smith Group - 'Easter' (1978) (buy here)

...and looking forward very much to seeing the artist in question at Camden's legendary Roundhouse on 17th May.

And if the sun really does shine, and all is vernal, I might dream of still warmer days and sunsets to come, and go, frankly, more than a bit Balearic...

A Man Called Adam - 'Easter Song (Cafe Del Mar mix)' (2004) (buy on this).

Enjoy your weekend - we'll be back in a few days' time.

But Why On Earth Should I Moan?

It looked (briefly) in London yesterday like we would be basking this whole pre-Easter week in warm, quasi-Mediterranean sunshine (18c!), but I see the old April grey is back with us this morning. *sigh*

Still, the happy anticipation of an extended Bank Holiday weekend and a temporary respite from work is still tangible...and it'll only take the sun to return for the good citizens of this fair city to spill once more onto the pavements and terraces outside the evening pubs and bars, and all shall be well again.

Which brings us to this song, which I found on emusic and couldn't resist. Not so much a cover as a complete re-invention, leaving only the barest bones of the original intact.

Lovely though, as I hope you'll agree.

Joyce (& Banda Maluca) - 'A Hard Day's Night' (2003)

(From Just A Little Bit Crazy - available here)

Anglo-American

David Shire - 'Manhattan Skyline' (1977) from Saturday Night Fever OST (buy)

John Barry - 'Nocturnal New York' (1998) from The Beyondness Of Things (buy)

Hotel Motel Holiday Inn

A Saturday night track if ever I heard one.

And this is the full-length (14 minute) version.

Hope your 'buffering' (and my bandwidth) is up to it.

Sugarhill Gang - 'Rapper's Delight' (12") (1979)

You should buy it, like I did, on this.

Good times!

Get The Funk In Here Now!

Your weekend starts here....

Lonnie Liston Smith - 'Give Peace A Chance' (1975)

From the 3 CD Kenny Dope-compiled Strange Games & Funky Things III (buy).

Counting Backwards

We all like a good cover, a good debate about good covers and maybe a rant about terrible covers too ('Love Will Tear Us Apart' by Paul Young - AAAAAARGHHHHH!!!!).

But how about the backwards cover thing - when you discover a superb original, and maybe even an artist's whole canon, as a result of someone you admire covering their stuff?

Did The Meat Puppets gather a whole raft of new fans because Nirvana covered three of their songs on MTV Unplugged? Did a generation of thrift-shop indie student-types invest in the first Velvet Underground album because Tracey Thorn covered 'Femme Fatale' on A Distant Shore? How many Generation X'ers got turned on to Leonard Cohen by Jeff Buckley or even Rufus Wainwright's 'Hallelujah'? Are these rhetorical questions or what?

For me one album in particular has turned out to be a rich jumping off point to fabulous tracks and/or whole albums by artists I had heard of but not heard and that album is the This Mortal Coil debut It'll End In Tears (I know, a third mention of TMC in as many months - but this post isn't really about them. Is my excuse).

The choice of artists covered herein (5 of 12 tracks are non-originals) displays, it must be said, impeccable taste, especially when you bear in mind that when this album was released (1983) there was no internet, no Wikipedia and no blogosphere - and really no common alt.consensus on 'cool':

'Kangaroo' (MP3) and 'Holocaust' - both from the Big Star album Third/Sister Lovers - one of the great 'disintegration' records.

'Not Me' (MP3) - a lost solo track from Wire founder Colin Newman (from A-Z)

'Another Day' (MP3) - from the unsung genius that is Roy Harper

Tim Buckley's 'Song To The Siren' (MP3) (available here).

Now every blogger worth his or her bandwidth is dropping Big Star, Wire and (both) Buckleys, but I don't see a lot of Roy Harper out there - and because for me he's been one of the great 'old music' 'finds' of the last few years, I'm working up to a full post on him soon.

Meanwhile, I thought it'd be fun to post some of the originals of the TMC tracks.

I have two versions of the Harper track: I've posted the slower live version originally from Flat Baroque And Beserk (1970) and which I have on the excellent 2 CD retrospective Counter Culture (you really must buy).

Confession time then: which seminal artists/tracks did you discover after hearing them covered by a band you like?

As Long As I Gaze On...

The view from Waterloo Bridge, London, England - 6:10pm, British Summer Time.

The Kinks - 'Waterloo Sunset' (1967)

Requiem For A Radio Station

I seem to have given it an unwitting kiss of death, because having mentioned the excellent Dave Brown Motown show on London's Smooth FM here recently I discovered last night that the station has been axed, and Brown's show along with it.

'Axed' isn't a word the station's owners the Guardian Media Group (GMG) are using of course - but their decision to 'merge' the station with Saga radio - an 'easy listening' channel 'aimed at the over 50s' amounts to the same thing.

Though Smooth FM's daytime fare was a commercial mix of light soul and r&b (and nothing wrong with that) its licensing deal with broadcast regulator Ofcom required it to devote a minimum number of hours to jazz and specialist programming, and its evening output was a rare respite from the endless diet of middle-of-the-road and/or chart-oriented fodder knocked out by other commercial radio stations in the capital. It was one place where you could hear classic and contemporary music of black origin from Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis, Grover Washington Jr, Natalie (and Nat) Cole and Marvin Gaye.

Despite this, GMG last year won the rights to overturn the terms of its licence and this week we are left with the Saga 'merger' and the sorry prospect of yet another national radio network playing 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' and 'Imagine' on seemingly endless loops.

It seems that if you value eclectic music programming and that wonderful opportunity of hearing something on the radio that you've never heard before, you're now entirely reliant on the BBC (bless it) in the UK - or you give up on the lot of them and turn to the internet.

At this point I suppose I should post Elvis Costello's 'Radio Radio' or The Clash's 'Capital Radio One' (I'm certainly angry enough) - but then I'd be as guilty as those I'm complaining about in taking the well-worn track over the road less-travelled.

So here's something you might not have heard.

Josh Ritter - 'Golden Age Of Radio' (2000)

He's lamenting the death of the spirit of true country radio, amongst other things - but it all amounts to the same damn thing.

Dave Brown if you're out there - I'll miss you mate.

We'll Talk Away The Morning, Read The Papers, Misbehave

A song for the day, and for the mood if the day is good.

A rarity, the B-side of a 1983 single 'Here's To The Band', and the only Sinatra recording to feature only his vocal and a solo acoustic guitar.

Music by Jule 'Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend' Styne, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead; guitar - Tony Mottola.

A simple sketch from a master artist in his twilight years. Hope you like it.

Frank Sinatra - 'It's Sunday' (1983)

(Available on The Reprise Collection - buy).

Get The Funk In Here 2!

My local Oxfam shop came up with the goods big time this week - some (much sampled) rare groove and jazz funk/soul selected by UK hip-hop DJ Cutmaster Swift for this 'B Boy classics' compilation in 1999.

Having bought it for the price of a pint, I was amused to find some guy attempting to sell his on Amazon Marketplace for £74.

Buy it new for a slightly more reasonable price here.

You know I like to funk on a Friday.

King Curtis - 'Memphis Soul Stew' (MP3)

Skull Snaps - 'It's A New Day' (MP3)

Aaron Neville - 'Hercules' (MP3)
The Commodores - 'The Assembly Line' (MP3)

When You've Got The Looks Then The Rest Just Works

90s movie icon; Stateside shoegaze classic.

Delaware is criminally in need of reissue on CD.

Drop Nineteens - 'Winona' (1992)

You Saw Brigadoon (January 1986)

WARNING: contains nostalgia.

Part of my excitement in discovering this had been released to iTunes was that it was one of only two tracks I still needed to complete a digital reproduction of a compilation tape I made in January 1986.

(I know, I know - I need to get out more. But I'm 75! And my knees are playing up! You wanna read about The Fratellis, go talk to that nice Mr Cameron. You think I'm joking? Here.)

The tape was called You Saw Brigadoon (!) and its full track listing was:

Side 1

Sunday (Rebel Soul) - The Faith Brothers

Days Like These - Billy Bragg
Walk On The Wild Side - Lou Reed

The Whole Of The Moon - The Waterboys

In Between Days - The Cure

Twenty Four Hours - Joy Division

Ocean Rain - Echo & The Bunnymen

Song To The Siren - This Mortal Coil

Side 2

Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust - This Mortal Coil

Eventide - The Faith Brothers

Nocturnal Me - Echo & The Bunnymen

I Don't Need This Pressure Ron - Billy Bragg

The Ghost In You - The Psychedelic Furs

Shakespeare's Sister - The Smiths

Thieves Like Us - New Order

Now, I have earlier mixtapes than this, and more 'Peely' ones, but this one's special to me for a few reasons.

1) I made it at the start of the 2nd term of my final year at University. Annus mirabilis! It evoketh. Big time.

2) I still like everything on it.

3) It hangs together quite nicely - at least until the second half of the second side where I can't help but feel The Smiths track (not one of their best) blows the mood slightly. It made the cut because it was a recent single; The Queen Is Dead didn't come out until later that year. Imagine! (and also imagine...C86, grunge, baggy, Madchester, shoegaze, Oasis, Britpop, New Labour, even bloody John Major - all still to happen).

Everything on the tape was stuff I was enjoying then and there, and bar the obvious already 'classic' Joy Division and Lou Reed tracks, it all dates from the period 1983-1985 (I had got Ocean Rain that Christmas, though nearly had to give it back when my Dad said he thought it 'sounded quite nice').

.

Finally getting the TMC track left me with just one final missing piece - the all-important Track One, Side One - The Faith Brothers' 'Sunday'...

Why did I not have this?

1. It was taped from an LP that belonged to my flatmate Carlos.

2. This LP (Eventide) is rare as hen's teeth - and has never been issued on CD.

3. You try finding it on the Hype Machine.

The Faith Brothers were a fabulous band, especially live - all soaring melodies, urgent brass, elatory vocals and humanistic commitment. Lead singer/writer Billy Franks was a passionate and charismatic frontman - even when long after the band's glory days (supporting The Alarm!) performing to a few hundred with his soul band in 'The Leather Bottle' pub in Wimbledon Chase.

So....I was about to issue an appeal to anyone who had 'Sunday (Rebel Soul)' ('Spare an MP3 guv'nor?') when in putting this post together I checked out Billy Franks website and found he had posted the whole of the Eventide LP (and others) for download free of charge.

He's even added this non-LP early single

The Faith Brothers - 'A Stranger On Homeground'

What a man!

My restoration project is complete. Closure. Enough nostalgia already.

Billy Franks plays O'Neill's, 326 Earl's Court Rd, London this Sunday 25th March from 6:30pm - free.

Only You Alone Can Quench This Here Thirst

OK, no need for lots of verbiage with this one; it's just how I'm feeling right now.

Gregory Isaacs - 'Night Nurse' (1982)

Get The Funk In Here!

This is a post that's been a while in the waiting.

Dave Brown is a DJ who presents a Sunday night Motown show on London's Smooth FM 102.2 (formerly Jazz FM). It's a gem of a programme because 1) Brown really knows his stuff 2) he manages to resist what I would imagine is considerable commercial and audience pressure to stack the four hours with the over-familiar hits (the station's daytime schedule is deeply mainstream), choosing instead to air many rare, lost and forgotten tracks from the late 50s through to the present. I've heard some stunning soul records on this programme, most of them for the first time.

I was knocked back a few weeks ago when I heard this contemporary remix of a 1975 Smokey Robinson track and bought it off iTunes pronto - but not until I bought the whole Motown Remixed CD it's from could I upload it to The Ghost of course (hey there again, Digital Rights Bloody Protection Software!).

Remixes of classic tracks can be hit and miss affairs - what I love about this is the way it massively opens up and deepens, whilst respecting, the source material - especially with the inspired addition of Roy Ayers' vibes accompaniment (not on the original).

Smokey Robinson - 'Quiet Storm' (Groove Boutique Chill Jazz Mix, feat. Roy Ayers)

Hope you like it. The album is well worth a listen (buy here) - maybe I'll post some more tracks soon.

Now to our pictured artist...

A lot of people say to me "Davy H, your blog's alright - but I just don't feel you post enough stuff by female African-American jazz funk flautists..."

I'm happy to oblige.

Bobbi Humphrey - 'Harlem River Drive' (1973) (available on Blue Break Beats Vol 1 - buy)

(Website here). Have (another) funky weekend.

Do You Remember My Face?

Archetypal rock ‘n’ roll story maaaan….

Charismatic, if slightly weird, band leader, singer, songwriter and prime animus parts company with cultish band in not entirely happy circumstances (musical/personal differences, frustration at lack of commercial success, sense of compromised integrity, claustrophobia, drug-related sacking, etc); is widely tipped to carve out hugely successful yet iconoclastic solo career while jobbing ex-colleagues return to obscurity whence they had sprung.

Watches as said bandmates recruit new singer, reinvent selves as mainstream act, storm charts, become megastars.

Examples:

Syd Barrett - The Pink Floyd

Peter Gabriel – Genesis (‘Was feeling part of the scenery/Walked right out of the machinery’, etc)

John Foxx - Ultravox!

Foxx (real name Dennis Leigh) trained as a graphic artist - a career to which he returned in the 1990s having quit the music business. He had been active on the glam scene from as early as 1974 with his band Tiger Lily, once tried out as vocalist for the nascent Clash (then known with Year Zero tastelessness as The London SS), fell in love with the music of the electronic avant garde and Kraftwerk, formed the band Ultravox! (always with an exclamation mark) and enjoyed critical acclaim, hipster status and the production services of Brian Eno on Island records for two years before being unceremoniously dropped by the label in 1979.

Signing to Virgin as a solo artist, Foxx released ‘Underpass’ (MP3), which peaked at number 31 on the singles charts. Subsequent singles grazed the lower reaches of the Top 40, then later only the Top 75; albums picked up some plaudits, but failed to substantially scratch the consciousness of either post-punkers or synthpop kids.

Meanwhile Ultravox regrouped, dropped the ! , hired a guy that used to sing in a teen band and.....“Aaaah, Vienna!”…

I always thought Foxx was interesting and loved his cold, alienated keyboard landscapes and chipped vocals – a major influence on (the also much more commercially successful) Gary Numan.

I had the free-with-Smash Hits yellow ‘flexidisc’ (!) of an obscure Foxx track called ‘My Face’ (MP3) for many years before the crease it sustained in the mail finally made it unplayable, and though we did nickname it ‘Underpants’ at school, his debut stuck with us more than its chart position would indicate.

Might I also suggest that ‘Europe After The Rain’ (MP3) (number 40, August 1981) is one of the very best proto electro dance tracks of the 1980s?

It is surely time for a Foxx revival. I would like to start it here.

Five quid gets you this budget compilation – a sterling slice of the best of Dennis Leigh from the synthrock 80s through the rather marvellously ambient 90s. It includes 'My Face' !!! Buy!


(John Foxx's official website here).

More Than Five Leaves Left

I nipped into our local Notting Hill Housing Trust charity shop on Saturday to peruse the second hand CDs, and there amongst the usual Uncut magazine giveaways, 90s dance mix compilations and East 17 singles, I found Made To Love Magic by Nick Drake - for £1.

This is not a rare or amazing record but I think you will agree it was being sold at a rare and amazing price, so I bought it.

Accusations of barrel-scraping were levelled at Island/Universal when this compilation of studio outakes, demos and reorchestrated tracks was released in 2004, mostly because the truly sought-after stuff had already been given a respectful first airing on a bonus CD included with the 1986 Fruit Tree box set (and released separately a year later as Time Of No Reply).

Famously, Nick Drake released only three albums in his lifetime, none of which received much critical attention or any commercial success at the time.

His unreleased recordings are also thin on the ground - solo demos recorded by his friend and future orchestrator Robert Kirby at Cambridge; rough self-recorded tapes made at his family home in Tanworth-in-Arden (bootlegged, much to the distress of his family); outtakes from the studio albums, especially the debut Five Leaves Left (buy); and four songs from his final studio sessions in 1974 for an intended 4th album.

Given how little we have of Nick Drake, there's something of interest, and much to enjoy, in all the songs - but for me the stand-out tracks are those recorded for, but left off, Five Leaves Left. It's a mark of the quality of the released material that songs of this standard were not considered up-to-scratch: hard to imagine an artist or producer leaving them off an album these days, especially not with 60-70 minutes of CD space to fill (the original LP lasted just 42 minutes).

The album we know is, of course, perfection - and now appears routinely in all those Greatest Albums Of All Time lists.

How different it was in the dog-days of the 1960s when a quiet, upper middle class Cambridge undergraduate with his intricate guitar stylings and opaque, melancholy lyrics went largely unheard by a world with the electric blues ringing in its ears...

Nick Drake - 'Clothes Of Sand' (MP3)
Nick Drake - 'Joey' (MP3)
Nick Drake - 'The Thoughts Of Mary Jane' (MP3) [alternate version: Richard Thompson - electric guitar]

All tracks recorded November/December 1968 and available here; an excellent biography of Nick Drake by Patrick Humphries available here.

My Whole Life Stretches In Front Of Me

Today I walked past those buds I knew I could not hasten to bloom. And look at them now.

David Sylvian - 'Brilliant Trees' (1984)

Weekend - 'Leaves Of Spring' (1982)

*sigh*

Early 21st Century Blues Continued

Glad tidings reach The Ghost that a new Cowboy Junkies album, At The Ends Of Paths Taken, is scheduled for release in mid-April. Three (rather excellent) tracks from it are streaming right now at the band's Myspace page.

I've had a soft spot for the Canadian siblings' low-key lyrical blues ever since 1988's seminal Trinity Session, which was recorded, as Wikipedia gleefully notes, 'live in a single day on a single microphone in a church in Toronto' and I suppose is most famous to the world at large for featuring a cover of the Velvet Underground's 'Sweet Jane' which Lou Reed described as his all-time favourite version of the song (it's based on the longer, slower reading of the track that Reed began performing live in the late 60s).

My desert island CJ track though (and I suspect many other people's) would have to be 'Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning' (from 1990's Caution Horses) a song whose lyric brilliantly evokes the mash of emotions (sadness, loss, relief, the comfort of returning-to-self) that follows a relationship break-up. I have a friend who once gave this to a girlfriend he'd just dumped - which seems a bit harsh, now I come to think of it...

Always cultish, never especially hip, the Junkies have doggedly etched out their very particular alt. musical groove for twenty years now, even releasing their recordings themselves since the late 90s.

Here's a smattering of tracks from their illustrious past.

Cowboy Junkies - 'Sweet Jane' [Velvet Underground cover]

(from The Trinity Session)

Cowboy Junkies - 'Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning' [Radio One session 1989]

(from The Radio One Sessions)

Cowboy Junkies - 'A Horse In The Country'

Cowboy Junkies - 'Oregon Hill'

(from 'Black Eyed Man' )