Snowed Under

Actual picture taken by me of actual snow

I'm sorry. I've been too busy Tweeting about #uksnow to write a blog post - it's pathetic, it really is. And in other news I've had to computerise the mother-in-law's LP of The Very Best Of Manuel And His Music Of The Mountains since she no longer owns a record player. And Mrs H wants to get kittens. So as you can see, there have been many demands on my time.

I've gone on about all of my favourite snow records (Bon Iver, Aretha) here before, and I really do think it's still a bit early to post Low's 'Just Like Christmas' (even though it's not really a 'Christmas' record).

Can I offer you this as a sort of flip to Ms Ally's ?

Thank you for your understanding.

The Durutti Column - 'Sketch For Winter' (1980)

Meanwhile...

I don't think words are necessary here x

Shake!

WHAM!

Otis ain't messin' around.

And me? I shall require a beverage.

Otis Redding - 'Shake' (1965)

Oh Mersey

Having built up to it nicely with a weekend of listening to Echo & The Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes, China Crisis and, er, Gerry & The Pacemakers, I have just ordered Paul Du Noyer's book about Liverpool music from Amazon Marketplace.

So we best have this.

Wondrous indeed.

And not just the quiff.

Billy Fury - 'Wondrous Place' (1960)

Sweet Soul Music

POW!

And if you hear faint crackles, you are hearing a hundred dodgy styluses in a hundred dodgy halls where I played this in my youth and they never failed to dance.

Arthur Conley - 'Sweet Soul Music' (1967)

I shall require a beverage.

Sweet Irma

It's all about the Soul this week.

This song and Bettye Swann's 'Tell It Like It Is' are always connected in my mind since I first heard both on a Stateside compilation I know I've mentioned here before.

Sweet Irma. Still going strong and 70 years young in Feb.

Irma Thomas - 'Wish Someone Would Care' (1964)

Bettye Blue

Blue blue blue. 

This came on tonight and was just right.  

I work hard all day 

Stay home every night

Lord knows I try to do the thing that's right  

So tell, tell me baby  

What is my life coming to? 

It'd be unexceptional sung by almost anybody else but Bettye's definitely one of my top five favourite singers, and don't ask me who the others are, but Frank and Marvin'd be in there for sure. 

Bettye Swann - 'What Is My Life Coming To?' (1967)

Potato Roasting Music # 2

In this exciting new series, we post music that sounds good on Sunday whilst a person is roasting potatoes*.

This week -

Davy Graham - 'Anji' (1964)

[*If you ask me, there's too much salt on those]

Slight Reprieve

Well, it's been a strange week, but one that seems at least for now to have ended a bit less grimly than it began.

We have kept that wolf from the door one more time - but we know he's still prowling out there, hungry, and the winter could be hard.

We best light a fire with the coal we have, eh?

-------

I'm afraid I've been a soft old Hector these last few days, flattened by some bug but working, worried about money and Mum, and only my faithful old musical friends Frank, Nat and Tom have fit my mood.

So this ain't no glitzy disco nor bassy funk (can I be excused?) ; but it is kinda Friday, if you think about it.

Leave the porch light on for me x

Tom Waits - 'I Can't Wait To Get Off Work (And See My Baby On Montgomery Avenue)' (1976)

Unforeseen Circumstances

Back before too long I hope.

Potato Roasting Music # 1

In this exciting new series, we post music that sounds good on a Sunday whilst a person is roasting potatoes*

This week...

John Martyn - 'Just Now' (1971)

* I like mine with a dash of rosemary and a garlic clove centre-dish, for flavour. I always parboil first, but not for too long.

Meanwhile...

I've definitely posted this before, but I'm blowed if I can find when.

Searching For The Young Ska Rebels

A bunch of white Brummies singing in cod Jamaican accents notched up a number 25 hit with this Gus 'Space Oddity' Dudgeon-produced blue-eyed ska tune in 1968.

There's a rocking rhythm, pumping Hammond and brio in the brass.

All of which I rather like.

The Locomotive - 'Rudi's In Love' (1968)

'I Was Counting On You Being An Insubordinate Bastard, Palmer'

Lovely mini-series over at Drew's on songs that sound like they're from soundtracks to 60s spy films. This really is, of course. It's a great one for playing in your head as you step suited and booted from the train arriving at Platform 17, in my experience.

John Barry - 'The Ipcress File' (1965)

You Get What You Give

Right, so. This lot have been lurking in comments, and on me iPo, for the best part of a week. And back in the day, the lead singer was lurking in Miss Ally's supermarket, apparently. Tchh. It wouldn't happen in Waitrose.

Anyway, let's let it all out, eh?

Which is your favourite?

I'm torn between The Orb's and the second part of the Two Parts, chiefly on account of Wobble.

Primal Scream - 'Higher Than The Sun' (American Spring Mix) (1991)
Primal Scream - 'Higher Than The Sun' (Higher Than The Orb) (1991)
Primal Scream - 'Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts)' (1991)

It's all being re-released and re-toured*, blah, you knew that.

*which probably means I'll have to pull this in two days' time.

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.