Trick Or Treat

" 'Ere! You kids! Gedaadovitt!"

Siouxsie & The Banshees - 'Halloween' (Peel Session) (1981)

Friday Reggae # 18

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the big bass sound of Dennis Bovell, in dub.

If I blow just one person's speakers with this, it'll all have been worthwhile.

Linton Kwesi Johnson - 'Insohreckshan Dub' (1983)

Keeping It Peel

Well it had to be a (UK) reggae Session from me, and not only that but one I heard and taped at the time, upstairs in the 70s house with a Westerly dashing rain against the window (transmission date 4th November, it was always raining in Devon in November).

There's a happy blog connection with this one too since many, many years on from having no version of this but my crappy mono cassette recording, a complete, clean copy found its way to me in comments here courtesy 'marc from newsgroups' (shout out Marc!). So I suppose posting this is a bit of my story and a bit of this blog's too, as well as a fragment of JP's.

Everyone has their classic period Peel, their time of listening most intensely and connecting most passionately, and mine ran from about 1980 to 1983. Peel himself was then a year or two younger than I am now; it was a peak time for the show, though there would be many more to come.

Laurel & Hardy (aka Paul Dawkins and Anthony Robinson) had one novelty hit with 'Clunk Click' then pretty much disappeared. Meanwhile when I 'scrobble' 'Tell Her Sey Me Sorry' to Last FM I get a picture of Stan and Ollie. But I am still playing it, thanks John.

Laurel & Hardy - 'Peel Session' (1982)

[The tracks are: 'Speeding', 'Tell Her Sey Me Sorry', 'Toast One Quick', 'You're Nicked'. The musicians are Laurel (v), Hardy (v) John Kpyaie (g) Spy (b) Angus Gaye(d) Reg Graham (k) Annie Whitehead (brs), Chris Layne (v)]

Something For The Weakened

Boom Monday

This is the track after my favourite track (which is very favourite, and has already appeared here) on Duke Ellington's New Orleans Suite and it isn't one I often play; but yesterday, as I pulled the LP from its lovely thick gatefold sleeve, fancying a bit of a listen as the Sunday potatoes roasted, this happened, for a change, to be the track I chose.

And boy that bubbling bass boomed at me good.

On a late-period Ellington recording that contrastingly looks back, right back, at the Old Jazz, the place it came from and some of the people who made it, who are commemorated in musical 'portraits', this piece is a tribute to one of Ellington's own; his bassist throughout the 1920s and 30s whose 'vigorous melodic bass playing, alternately plucking, slapping, and bowing, was an important feature of the early Ellington Orchestra sound'.

Braud died in 1966. Joe Benjamin, the bass player here, would himself be gone four years after this recording - and so would Duke.

Duke Ellington & His Orchestra - 'Portrait Of Wellman Braud' (1970)

Friday Reggae # 17

Deep Joy.

Play loud.

*An Aswad track was here*

[ *sigh* Box.net has responded to a copyright infringement notice and removed this file; I've removed the link. First in 17 Friday Reggae posts over nearly 4 years that this has happened with. Tune's on YouTube mind].

Prayer

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

(Carol Ann Duffy)

Saint Etienne - 'Finisterre' (2002)

(Thanks to Lee for inspiration with this - and to Greer for reminding me that we haven't had a 'perm' here for a while).

Easy Skanking

I was mighty pleased to grab a newly computerised Peel show tape of '79 vintage this week from the Wiki and delighted too to hear this on it, for the first time in an age: it made me want to upload my original old 7" from back in the day - so I have; and it's here and it's Friday and the sun is shining and it's been 23 degrees in London today, yeah baby.

I shall require a beverage.

The Beat - 'Ranking Full Stop' (1979)

Four

It's four years to the day since I started up this blog (it was raining then too).

Can't imagine my life without it now.

Companeros, thanks so much for sticking around.

Like I always say, it'd be stupidly lonely here without you x

R. Dean Taylor - 'There's A Ghost In My House' (1966)

Blue Monday

'If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice' - Stan Getz.

Stan Getz - 'Tis Autumn' (1952)

A Tango Of Love

Frankie Laine is my Mum's favourite singer and one of only two recording artists in my experience who have the power to thoroughly transport her emotionally, the other being Glenn Miller (I once came home from school to find her dancing with a squeezy mop to 'Moonlight Serenade').

I always thought of Frankie as a cowboy because of how he looked on this album cover and because he sang songs about riding through the desert in search of water and High Noon and, famously, the TV themes to 'Champion The Wonder Horse' and 'Rawhide', but he was in truth a Chicago-born Italian-American whose real name was Francesco Lovecchio.

The Italian (Sicilian) ancestry might account for the operatic feel Frankie brought to his singing. He had a truly remarkable voice. I loved it, and I loved the dramatic arrangements - the brass and the tango tempo shifts in 'Jealousy' - the overblown passion of it all. I've been wanting to get some of his stuff for years but it's a nightmare trying to find the original recordings in a sea of cheap compilations since in later life, like many singers of his generation, Laine re-recorded his big hits and the new versions are unlistenably awash with synthesised strings and drum machines - just awful.

This budget Hallmark LP was the one I grew up with - I expect Mum bought it in Woolies. I've seen it a few times in charity shops, but always in terrible nick. Today I found a near mint copy - for a quid.

Saddle up and show 'em how it's done, Frankie.

Frankie Laine - 'Jealousy' (1951)
Frankie Laine - 'Cool Water' (1955)

Lightfooted

I didn't even know this existed until the other day when I found it on the YouTube.

It's from, of all things, a Valentines Day CD sold in Starbucks last year.

And since at the moment it couldn't get much gloomier here weather-wise, it'll do more than nicely.

Richard Hawley - 'Early Morning Rain' (2009)

The Smiling Hour

Ah, look at what the cat dragged in; I was wondering where you'd got to. Here, I kept you a seat. Still raining outside is it? Nice weather for ducks eh? That's the summer well and truly over then.

So anyway.

What can I get you?

Drop of the usual?

US3 - 'Cantaloupe (Flip Fantasia)' (1993)

New Music Monday

They're fine young fellows from Oxfordshire! They sing songs about conkers shining on the ground! One of them plays the trumpet! Hurrah!

Song was here*

More here.

*I've had a copyright infringement notice on this one via Box Net, and a revert to draft via Blogger too, so the file's removed (5th Oct). Sorry folks.

Yeah Baby

Nina Simone - 'Funkier Than A Mosquito's Tweeter' (1974)

And that's funky as in 'pungent', we should say.

I Would Be In Love Anyway

I have more Frank Sinatra records than anyone I know, but I didn't have this until Monday - even though it's been months since Her Allyness posted one of these songs (and longer still since she first mentioned the LP). It came up on the iPo in a quiet moment the other day when Mrs H was sitting listening and she said 'I've never heard that before. That's lovely' - which reminded me that indeed it was, and sent me, finally, off up the Amazon, and here we are.

The album's narrated by a smalltown guy whose wife has left him and their two boys (Michael & Peter) and taken off on a train for the big city - we're not told why; there's a suggestion he may be to blame. The songs, by Jake Holmes and Bob 'Four Seasons' Gaudio, are a 'series of brief lyrical snapshots that read like letters or soliloquies' (AllMusic); it is the ordinariness of the subject matter that really breaks your heart.

There's an academic interpretation of the album as an allegory for Sinatra's relationship with his recording audience - that by 1969 he was seen as a tired old Vegas-based Greatest Hits machine, out of touch with the Woodstock times, that they had left him and he wondered if he'd ever get them back again. Well, that's interesting, but I'm not sure I buy it: Sinatra was still a huge recording star at the end of the 60s - '69 had been the year of 'My Way', after all.

No. Me, I'm hearing it as an extension of 'A Man Alone' and a reference right back to what the other side of the ring-a-ding-ding Frank had always been doing - singing songs for and of the lonely, baby.

Belated thanks A x

Frank Sinatra - 'Michael & Peter' (1970)
Frank Sinatra - 'What A Funny Girl (You Used To Be)' (1970)

Meanwhile...

Yeah Baby

Summer's bitten the big one and it's dull as all heckfire out there; I'm stone cold broke into the bargain and there ain't no payday coming soon.

But Friday is Friday companeros - and like the lady once said, this here's funkier'n a mosquito's tweeter.

Break!

Gene Harris & The Three Sounds - 'Your Love Is Just Too Much' (1971)

Everything

In celebration of our inter-connectedness, yeah baby.

Donny Hathaway - 'Voices Inside (Everything Is Everything)' (1970)

Pulsing

We could run a competition on how best to describe the bassline on this one; I'm going for 'urgent and pulsing'. It's sure cutting through the gloom today.

James Carr - 'That's What I Want To Know' (1967)

Cracking!

Punching car radio buttons in despair as we hit the last few miles of our mega-trek home from hols last Sunday it was a surprise and delight to happen upon a Bank Holiday Northern Soul Special on, of all things, the usually unlistenable Smooth FM.

I was reminded of just how brilliant this is; it's our heartstarter for the week.

Roy Hamilton - 'Crackin' Up Over You' (1966)

The Smiling Hour

"We feel sorry for people that don't drink; when they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel all day" - Frank Sinatra.

Salute!

Dean Martin - 'Ain't That A Kick In The Head' (1960)

Here Again (Traditional)

 David Sylvian - 'September' (1987)

Memo To Self

Rouse yourself davyh, rouse yourself: you've a load of work to do this week and a charity cycle ride on Sunday and with a brain like stinky soft French cheese and a waistline impacted by same, plus all that Bergerac Rosé, you've much to do to get 'match fit'.

You can start by posting that Midlake song that sounded so good as you swept up the autoroute and make sure you don't fall by the blog wayside as so many around you appear to have done of late: was it all those threats from The Man or did they just get bored? Keep on keepin' on my boy, for autumn's coming and splendid things shall lie ahead if you just believe it, yeah baby.

Midlake - 'Head Home' (2008)

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)