Swiss Role

Well that was my last night at home until Friday because I'm working in Zurich all next week and I'm flying out (from the infamous Heathrow Terminal 5) this evening.

I've never been to Zurich (or Switzerland) before, but I don't imagine it's exactly Barcelona or New York or Tokyo or, well, London - is it? I did a web search on it a while back and uncovered more than one site from people who live there saying it isn't a boring place, which rather suggests that it might be. We'll see.

I am staying in a hotel that has been described to me as 'functional'. Hmmm. Evidently though it has 'free wi-fi' in the rooms, so I've bought a new laptop that does that so I can reach out to home and the world beyond and feel a bit less like a sad, broken castaway. Who knows, I might even post something from there midweek. Get me.

Anyway please keep talking to me, because I'll be able to pick up comments whilst I'm gone. I'm not really the jet-set type and will miss my girlies big time, so the usual nonsense from you lovely people will be sweet.

Any suggestions for Swiss bands I could have posted here? I could only think of Yello, who I don't especially like, and Double, who I've already done. Some cursory research suggests Heavy Metal is quite big there. *sigh* I had a feeling it might be.

We best have some John Denver via PP&M.

Peter, Paul & Mary - 'Leaving On A Jet Plane' (1969)

x

Into The Light

On weekend nights when we fire up the phonogram and uncork the vino it is often that I turn to Mrs H and say, tenderly, 'Whadja want on the jukebox then?' and often that she lodges a nostalgic request for this, her Getting Ready For Going Out On Saturday Night track from Uni days.

I whack it on again, and smile a big smile at its arch romanticism, its spirited pastiche, its sparkly metropolitan.....pizazz!

Boy, I love it.

Waiter! Bring cocktails now!

Joe Jackson - 'Steppin' Out' (1982)

Confidence Is A Preference

But it's a mighty long way down rock and roll from Quadrophenia to Blur to Eastenders to Strictly Come Bloody Dancing, innit Phil?

Still, keep an eye on these guys - I reckon they could make it big.

The High Numbers - 'I'm The Face' (1964)
The High Numbers - 'Zoot Suit' (1964)

Nice curtains!

I Had To Let You Know

Over a civilised Guinness or few last night at the pub by the river we fell to discussing this man and his lovely music and how, I'm afraid to say, I had only just discovered this song.

Though if you asked me whether I would swap all the years I could have known it for the thrill of hearing it this week for the first time, like a new record, it would be a close-run thing.

Come on time
Do your magic trick

Grant McLennan - 'The Dark Side Of Town' (1992) [buy]

Blue Monday

And especially so. Yet such loveliness here.

John Coltrane - 'Naima' (1959)

And With Each Beat Of My Heart

Eddie Kendricks and Diana and The Supremes & The Tempts.

Turn up that volume and listen - did a Tamla record ever sound better? Frank Wilson, producer, and the legendary James Jamerson on bass.

Diana Ross & The Supremes With The Temptations - 'I'm Gonna Make You Love Me' (1968)

The Value Of Defiance

All this using up download credits on emusic mallarkey has been more testing than I thought. In a good way, of course.

Still, I was cockahoop to find this.

The tale of how Scritti Politti went from making anarcho-Marxist art squat anti-pop (or something) to supershiny chart smashes in just about five years has been well-rehearsed, especially, brilliantly, here; and I suppose that if there were a single 'transition' record, a beautiful bridge between what was and what would be, then this might well have been it.

I think it still sounds bloody marvellous, as a matter of fact.

Scritti Politti - 'The "Sweetest Girl"' (1981)

(very important those quotation marks; very "post-modern").

Blue Monday

Artist mentioned in despatches and so here for your week-starting delectation.

New Order famously nicked the title for their fantabulous new 12" single in 1983 leading, I remember, a Smash Hits reviewer with a ridiculous pseudonym ('Red Starr') and even more ridiculous (and out of place) intellectual pretensions to liken this to Harold Robbins calling his new paperback 'War And Peace'. This seemed slightly odd to me, even at the time.

*sniff*- I'm a bit coldy this morning but I reckon a dose of Lemsip and a blast of Fats'll soon sort that out.

Fats Domino - 'Blue Monday' (1956)

Hey Did I Get You Wrong?

Right, Friday night. I'm having my tea, which is Mum's homemade fish and chips, then I'm getting changed and I'm off to the school disco. Maybe I'll slap on some of that aftershave in the exotic green jar I got last Christmas. Not that I will be shaving 'before'.

Apparently in the bit after 'You wouldn't phone those guys that mess around with you girl' this bloke is singing

And when a guy you whack a stack-a-plass
You wet der met der fool you dry your ass

but I'm sure that can't be right.

The Jags - 'Back Of My Hand' (1979)

Help!

OK lovely people, I need your expertise. This hypnotic bluesy doo-woppy thing has sat on the same infernal Peel show tape that Ray Martell and this (and a copy of Arthur Alexander) are on for that same 26 years and I'm mad keen to know what it is.

I'm pretty sure it's from a programme broadcast on October 20th 1982 because my tape also has songs from reggae toasters Laurel And Hardy's Peel Session, which aired that night.

I have tried Googling the lyrics and I have tried that there young person's tune-identifying text service Shazam, both to no avail.

And so I throw it before you, the great and wonderful and complex and all-knowing collective.

Name that artist/tune! (er...even a few informed guesses would be nice...).

Unknown Artist - 'Even Though You Are Gone' (?) (unknown year)

PS: It does liderally fade in slowly.

Please Please Me

Well you can say what you like about Dr Winston O'Boogie but he knew a good record when he heard one.

Arthur Alexander - 'Anna (Go To Him)' (1962)

Blue Monday

Once upon a lost time in the early 1990s there was a TV play by Alan 'Beiderbecke Affair' Plater in which the lead character, a jazz club owner and musician played by the wonderful Jack Shepherd, describes this piece of music in the most beautiful and eloquent way. He says something about what it does technically, which is complicated, and rather more about it being, sort of, 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma', to misquote Winston Churchill; that there is something in it that is always elusive, always just ahead of you and just out of reach. There's a thematic link to the plot of the play, which centres on a daughter's search for the father (Shepherd) she didn't know she had.

No-one I've ever mentioned it to remembers this play, and there are no clips of it on YouTube.

Why am I thinking about it on a dull London Monday? I have no idea.

Thelonius Monk - 'Misterioso' (1948)

Meanwhile...

Stone me but this is good - new single from th'album, etc.

How very dare they be so young, handsome and clever...

The Last Shadow Puppets - 'My Mistakes Were Made For You' (2008)

It's A Tough, Tough World

So, speaking of the Albums Of Our Lives, which we weren't...

The economy's gone tits up, the price of oil and a bag of peas is soaring and the Right are on the rise boo-hiss. Hey! It's just like old times! We best play Sound Affects!!

You know by now I'm no good at all that critical reappraisal/album review stuff, so feel free to put your own little piece together with these handy fridge-magnet phrases....

Joy Division Wire Gang Of Four Foxton Buckler underrated rhythm section Revolver melodic bass offbeat drumming Vic Coppersmith-Heaven swansong studio time 'five minutes whilst pissed, Weller's best song yet' Percy Bysshe Shelley Shelly's Shoes Paisley shirts Thatcher class war fans favourite 'Man In The Corner Shop'.

More of this record's lyrics made my fifth form jotter than any other. Just looking at the cover* still fills me with wonder. And do you know the whole thing only lasts 35 minutes?

28 (!) years on, is this the best Jam album really?

The Jam - 'Monday' (1980)
The Jam - 'Dream Time' (1980)
The Jam - 'Man In The Corner Shop' (1980)
The Jam - 'Scrape Away' (1980)

* source

Sizzonal

Have you ever sizzled sausages over a fire on a beach - salt air, coming into dusk, put a jumper on, but summer's not quite gone?

I have, but not for years - decades! - and it must be the season, something in the breeze, because suddenly I want to do it now, badly.

I associate it with the turning year...things ending, other things about to start....someone's brought some rough old scrumpy and I'll sip some because the smoke from the fire and that salt air's making me thirsty, and oh yes I'll be sorry tomorrow. But now - the stars.

Anyway - campfire music...

Michelle Shocked - '5am In Amsterdam' (1986)
Davy Graham - 'Anji' (1964)

Traditional

David Sylvian - 'September' (1987)

Space Princess

I love this track in ways I cannot quite fathom - but it is very Friday night and very late August for me, probably because I first heard it courtesy of a characteristically cruel K-Tel edit on 'Cool Heat' ('The hottest. jazziest. coolest. funkiest hits' - sic) which I bought in my last summer in Devon before college. (I have made an mp3 of the entire album if you fancy it - no, really! - here).

Lonnie Liston Smith was a jazzer turned 'cosmic visionary' and is still a much-sampled funkmeister, but this is unashamedly (very classy) disco, LLS's long-standing penchant for all things extraterrestrial suddenly I guess looking marketable at a time when 'space princesses' were rather.......in vogue.

Still, this is a damn sight better than that bloody disco version of the Star Wars Theme (ahem, I'd bought that too).

Full length version here. Funky are you now.

Lonnie Liston Smith - 'Space Princess' (1978)

Fun Under The Covers

This week I've been very much enjoying a couple of old Peel Shows posted at the marvellous Perfumed Garden, which is back after a break so long I thought it had gone forever (hello and thanks to proprietor Kris).

I've listened on headphones late at night with the iPod under the bedcovers, sort of replicating the way I listened Back Then - in the dark on the clock radio in my teenage bedroom - and quite splendid has the experience been, for the shows are just as I remembered from that time (1980-83); as rich in reggae and lost soul and rock and roll and Ivor Cutler as they were in clanging art-punk or pub-pop or emerging 'indie', and Peel as warm and as funny and as relaxed as the music was thrilling. How often do you listen to the radio these days and quite literally not know what to expect at all next? DAMN I miss that.

Anyway, since the nice people at emusic recently made me an offer I couldn't refuse and successfully bribed me back with 75 free downloads in addition to their statutory 30 per month for a mere £10.99 and since I still even have a few quid left on the birthday vouchers after buying this and this, (why are The Flatmates not more widely lauded??) I am hoping to make a few happy forays into musically eclectic waters myself in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile this is a tip-top JP tribute which you must have...x

Jason Forrest with Laura Cantrell - 'Nightclothes And Headphones' (2005)

Still Miss Harriet

I don't mean this to be funny or clever or original or anything - I know you've all heard this song before but....I've been thinking of it today....

As summer ends before it has begun....possibly.

Happy birthday Marty x

Calling All Cars

 

Curses! I've been uptown today trying to look important so sadly haven't had time to upload anything from K-Tel Soul Motion - 20 Original Hits, 20 Original Stars ("As Advertised On TV & Radio") despite Kippers inspiring me this week with his talk of Rock And Roller Disco and Radio Active Hits and the like.

But here is one 'choice cut' from that compo I have previously MP3pld I hope will serve as a petit amuse-bouche whilst you get yourself outside of a few Friday-of-Bank-Holiday-weekend* cocktails. I was reminded of it today whilst rummaging in the soul section of HMV Oxford Street with a birthday 'gift card' from the mother-in-law burning a hole in my pocket (I bought this).

I don't know anything about First Choice, but this song always gets the missus making good 70s disco moves, so is surely worth posting on that basis alone.

Hmmm. Must get her to work on the 'flicks' and pop a pair of these on again....

First Choice - 'Armed And Extremely Dangerous' (1973)

*UK readers only

Moz & Me

Ach, we've been through our ups and downs, Moz and me.

We wore cardigans together in the student years and I hung on his every line - The Smiths, Meat, Queen, Hollow especially (student weekends away in cold, borrowed houses watching hastily assembled fires die down late at night)...truly this was the Music Of My Life. And after Johnny left us, I still loved Hate (Vini Reilly!), and I had my own Last Nights On Maudlin Street in the moves from the houses with the lads to the houses with the girlfriends, all that....

But we did grow apart. To be honest he seemed more often than not to be in lack of a tune, and since I like a tune, this became a problem for me. Old friends pressed 'Our Frank' and such on me, but I politely declined.... A successful reunion with the wonderful Vauxhall notwithstanding, it just wasn't like the old days anymore. Though I never swallowed all those NME lies about him.

But just lately, as you'll see from my Last FM thingy, I have been enjoying his company again - a great deal; though the family looked strangely at my holiday reading in France, I had been re-inspired. The over-all quality of this a year or two back and a splendid Greatest Hits have helped, to be sure. But it's good to have him back in my life, for I have missed him.

And there's a new one out next year. It could be genius, it could be rubbish, it could be half of both. That's always been the deal. Tell you what though, there's no-one else out there remotely like him.

Morrissey - 'Trouble Loves Me' (1997)
Morrissey - 'I'd Love To' (1994)

Ah. Yes.

Lou Reed & John Cale - 'Work' (1990)

Welcome To The Working Week

Cilla Black - 'Work Is A Four Letter Word' (1968)

Transmission Start Up

I am ten years old. I live in South West England. Television broadcasts do not commence before 12pm in the summer holidays. When they 'switch the transmitter on' they always show us this.

I just came to tell you that I'm, er, back....

En Vacances

I just came to tell you that I'm going.

Despite le crunch du credit and that tax man shouting 'cos he wants his dough, lawdy we do need a holiday - even if it's for only a week in France from tomorrow via the dreaded Ryanair and it'll probably rain; but, you know, the cheese is nice there, the wine's cheaper too and we can look at lavendery fields for a bit. I think a person needs to look at lavendery fields for a bit, sometimes. French supermarkets are fun too. Hey, I know how to have a good time.

I will miss you.

In the manner of your Collins French-English, English-French dictionary...

Serge Gainsbourg - 'Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'En Vais' (1975)
Jarvis Cocker & Kid Loco- 'I Just Came To Tell You That I'm Going' (2006)

Back August 18th.

Allez, salut maintenant x

Lost In An Angry Land?

I've been playing this a lot over the last few days, and I really don't know why, but I reckon 1) there is an entire world in this song 2) it is one of the best pop records ever made.

The Crystals - 'Uptown' (1962)

Meanwhile...

Down Deep Inside

Lovely, lovely nostalgia pieces and some gorgeous music over at Mondo's this week have set me off despite myself on memories of the summer of 77, 'glam girls with Farah flicks' and all.

I'm sure a person's Ideal Lust Object Type is firmly rooted in whoever s/he fancied from afar at the time of their First Sexual Awakening and given that Mr P.Uberty arrived chez Master H at this time I'm afraid it's the Barbara (Catherine!) Bach, Jaclyn Smith, 1978 Playgirl Of The Month sort of woman that still generates the strongest frisson hereabouts.

Heck, just five words'll do it....

Jacqueline. Bisset. In. The. Deep.

It's even my Best Ever Bad Film - Robert Shaw trowelling on his Salty Old Sea Dog schtick, some codswallopy plot about drug smuggling and buried treasure, lovely locations and underwater photography and That White T Shirt to gawk at and a John Barry soundtrack with Donna Summer disco tune to boot.

You can keep your bloody Ingmar Bergman.

A while back someone posted the whole of the opening sequence on YouTube but the lawyers must have been circling like so many hungry tiger sharks because it's gone now, so we'll have to make do with this instead.

At least it's the deliciously languid six minute long versh.

Donna Summer - 'Down Deep Inside (Theme From The Deep)' (1977)

Pet Sound Memories

The only album I think I have owned on tape, LP and CD, I first bought it in Paignton Woolworths when I was about 16 - it was on EMI's cheapie reissue Fame label, I assume because no-one much wanted it and, my, how the times have changed. Now you can buy it in Mono and Stereo versions and 4 disc box sets with unreleased outtakes and vocal samples and backing tracks and Brian Wilson's dog barking and his Mum shouting for him to come down from that studio, his tea's ready (not really, but, you know, almost).

Back in '81 I'd taken the cassette home, shoved it in the Tandy and thought it sounded odd - sad, slightly off-kilter, unorthodox and not at all, apart from 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' and 'Sloop John B', the Fun, Fun, Fun Beach Boys a person heard on the Radio One Roadshow Live From Torre Abbey Meadows, Torquay, With Your Host Mike Read (and Smiley Miley).

I was shacked up with the boys from college in a dodgy ex-council house in dodgy SE London by the time I bought the LP version - it reminds me of a sunny Sunday morning of big mugs of tea with an overnighted Dr Al and his girl, when we listened to this together for the first time too. It may have been paradise for Jack and Jacqueline.

And by the time the CD came I had heard the 'SMiLE' bootlegs and we knew that this was all done by Brian on his own, the Boys touring Japan - that they got back and he presented it to them all but finished, just asked them in for some vocals here and there, though he later wiped even some of them and re-did them solo.

It's the record I really had in mind the other day when I wrote that bit about great summer art containing the sadness of anticipated autumn, and you can definitely load the metaphoric autumn on this one; 'SMiLE' ("Brian's ego music" - Mike Love) would collapse around Brian and him around it - and summer? Never, never such innocence again...

The Beach Boys - 'Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)' (1966)

The Beach Boys - 'That's Not Me' (1966)

43

I am 43 today. Bit of an indeterminate age, isn't it? Neither micklin' nor mucklin' I'd say. Still, at least I STILL GOT ME ELF *cough*.

Speaking of elfs, did you know that I am the exact same age as bestselling Harry Potter author Joanne 'J.K' Rowling?

I wonder if she's off out for a curry and a few beers tonight too?

This was the UK number one when I was born. I believe pop stars had begun to smoke 'pot'...

The Byrds - 'Mr Tambourine Man' (1965)